Svidnícky Zemedelský spolok a rusínsky senátor Jurko Lažo
The Agricultural Association of Svidník and its founder Senator Jurko Lažo

Summary/Abstract: Since the very first day of Czechoslovakia, Jurko Lažo looked for a way to help his fellow countrymen change their unfavourable economic situation. One of the options was to establish a cooperative which would guarantee cheaper seed stock, bedding, and fertilisers for peasants; profits would provide cheap loans to help with the purchase of machinery, such an industrial threshers, the building of a mill, co-op store, etc. That is why, together with his fellow Ruthenian party member, social democrat Andrej Vaňug, they established the Agricultural Association of the Holy Trinity. Andrej Vaňuga became its first chairman, while Jurko Lažo helped him as a member and as a senator. In 1925, after an unsuccessful election to the Senate as a member of the Czechoslovak National Democratic Party, he took over the leadership of the association. Managing the association was complicated; there were good as well as bad results. Jurko Lažo, in an effort to obtain finances for the Agricultural Association, turned to Ruthenians living in America and offered to sell them shares in the association. They agreed and helped the association. However, insufficient financial competence, excessive trust towards members who borrowed money from the Agricultural Association and never returned it, created financial losses and, in the end, brought it to bankruptcy. Jurko Lažo, however, did not live to see it.

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