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Announcing the 2021 Summer Seminars: Register today!

The Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center is pleased to invite you to the 2021 Summer Seminars, presented by the John and Helen Timo Foundation. This year’s exciting series features interactive presentations sharing new work in Carpatho-Rusyn Studies, and important discussions about what it means to be Carpatho-Rusyn today.

The Summer Seminars will take place the week of July 12, 2021, from Monday to Friday, at noon ET every day. These are all live events that will include the opportunity to ask questions to the presenters. All of the presentations will also be recorded and shared later on YouTube.

The seminars are free to attend, but registration is required. Please share this information with anyone you think may be interested: this is a great opportunity to engage with your friends and family and share Carpatho-Rusyn history and culture!

The Program

How the Carpatho-Rusyns Were Taught to Think Like White People: A Conversation with Dr. Robert Zecker

Monday, July 12, 2021 – noon ET: Drawing upon his monographs Race and America’s Immigrant Press: How the Slovaks were Taught to Think Like White People (2013) and “A Road to Peace and Freedom”: The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930-1954 (2018), Professor Robert Zecker (Saint Francis Xavier University) will speak about how Carpatho-Rusyns in North America in the early 20th century understood concepts of race, class, and ethnicity.

Stefan M. Pugh’s Вітаєме! Welcome! A Textbook of Rusyn: A Conversation with Dr. E. Wayles Browne 

Tuesday, July 13, 2021 – noon ET: The renowned linguist E. Wayles Browne (Cornell University) will speak about how he came to study the Rusyn language and his role in helping finish Stefan M. Pugh’s Вітаєме! Welcome!: A Textbook of Rusyn (2021), the first Rusyn textbook designed specifically for a North American university curriculum.

The Poetics and Politics of Andrii Karabelesh: A Lecture by Dr. Nick Kupensky

Wednesday, July 14, 2021 – noon ET: The vice president of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center will speak about the life and legacy of the Carpatho-Rusyn modernist writer Andrii Karabelesh (1906-1964), the bard of Subcarpathian Rus’ during the interwar period, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, and target of ideological attacks in Communist Czechoslovakia.  

Young Carpatho-Rusyn Professionals in America: A Roundtable with Alexandra Benc, Johna Cook, and Izzy Fernando

Thursday, July 15, 2021 – noon ET: Three young Rusyn professionals in the United States discuss how they learned about their Rusyn roots, how their Rusyn identity has shaped their college years, and how being Rusyn has influenced their professional trajectories.

Young Carpatho-Rusyn Professionals in Europe: A Roundtable with Tomaš Kalynyč, Myhal’ Lyzhechko, Peter Štefaňák, and Marta Watral

Friday, July 16, 2021 – noon ET: Four leading Rusyn activists in Europe speak about how they have contributed to Rusyn culture in their countries, how they have incorporated their Rusyn identities into their professions, and their thoughts on the state of Rusyn culture in Europe today. 

Register today!

You only have to register once to have access to all five events, and there is no cost to attend. We sincerely hope you’ll join us for all of them!

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Supporting the 2021 Census in Slovakia and Poland

The Carpatho-Rusyn Consortium of North America is a voluntary coalition of the North American Carpatho-Rusyn cultural organizations. Among other goals, the Consortium organizes and supports efforts surrounding Carpatho-Rusyns during the Census in the United States. This year, the Consortium asks for your support as countries in the Carpatho-Rusyn homeland – especially Slovakia and Poland – hold their censuses this year. Our Carpatho-Rusyn community is most vibrant when our community is strong and supported in the homeland, and increased numbers of Rusyns in the censuses in Slovakia and Poland this year will increase the visibility of Carpatho-Rusyns in those countries, helping organizers measure impact and gain critical support for programming to support continued language and cultural revival.

We hope you’ll use this as an opportunity to connect with your friends and relatives both in the Carpatho-Rusyn homeland, and here in North America. Share with your personal networks why it’s important to you to be part of the global Carpatho-Rusyn community.

We’ve created some tools to help you start the conversation:

All of these can be sent as they are, or you can make them your own! We also encourage you to follow and share social media supporting the census in Slovakia (web, Facebook, #smerusyny) and Poland (web, Facebook, Instagram). Share with #rusyncensus to make it easier for everyone to find!

In every census since 1989, the number of Rusyns in Slovakia has grown, as has the number of Lemkos in Poland. This is our chance this decade to help grow those numbers even more.

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2020 Summer Seminars

Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center 2020 Summer Seminars presented by the John and Helen Timo Foundation

The Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center is pleased to invite you to the 2020 Summer Seminars, presented by the John and Helen Timo Foundation. This exciting series features interactive presentations with some of the most prominent Carpatho-Rusyn American scholars working today.

The six seminars are thematically split into two groups:

  • Great Carpatho-Rusyn Americans
  • Being Carpatho-Rusyn American

The Summer Seminars will take place throughout June, July, and August 2020. These are all live events that will include the opportunity to ask questions to the presenters.

The seminars are free to attend, but registration and a free Zoom account are required. Please share this information with anyone you think may be interested: this is a great opportunity to engage with your friends and family and share Carpatho-Rusyn history and culture!

How to register

Individual registration is required for each presentation by clicking the link following each description. If you want to attend only one seminar, you can register for just one, but we sincerely hope you’ll join us for all of them!

Upon successful registration, you will receive an email with a link unique to you to join the webinar at the designated time.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020 – 1PM ET

A conversation with Professor Paul Robert Magocsi (University of Toronto) about his new biography of the Carpatho-Rusyn American politician Gregory Zhatkovych. Moderated by Professor Nick Kupensky (United States Air Force Academy). Watch here.

Thursday, July 2, 2020 – 3PM ET

A lecture and discussion by Professor Nick Kupensky (United States Air Force Academy) about the Carpatho-Rusyn American writer Emil Kubek. Moderated by Maria Silvestri (Timo Foundation). Watch here.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020 – 7PM ET

A lecture and discussion by Professor Elaine Rusinko (University of Maryland — Baltimore County) about the Carpatho-Rusyn American artists Andy Warhol and Julia Warhola. Moderated by Maria Silvestri (Timo Foundation). Watch here.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020 – 1PM ET

A lecture and discussion by Professor Pat Krafcik (The Evergreen State College) about the Carpatho-Rusyn children’s book “In the Seventy-Seventh Kingdom”: Carpatho-Rusyn Folktales.” Moderated by Professor Nick Kupensky (United States Air Force Academy). Watch here.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020 – 10am ET

A roundtable discussion with Michael Bolds, Ifetayo Bolds-Jacob, Bethany Sromoski, and Maria Silvestri about growing up as a Carpatho-Rusyn American. Moderated by Professor Nick Kupensky (United States Air Force Academy). Watch here.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020 – 11am ET

A conversation with Bogdan Horbal (New York Public Library) about his professional successes as a Lemko Rusyn in the United States. Moderated by Professor Nick Kupensky (United States Air Force Academy). Watch here.

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Andy Warhol: His Art and Ethnic Roots

Panel discussion at the Ukrainian Museum, New York City on February 15, 2019

Paul Robert Magocsi

The task given to me by the organizers of this panel is to comment on the question of Andy Warhol’s ethnicity. My remarks will touch briefly on three topics: cultural appropriation; national identity; and the Warhola family. But before addressing those issues there are a few caveats about art and national identity that I wish to mention.

As much as I understand the visual arts, most artists are not concerned with their ethnic or national identity. They may ponder their role as creative artists but they are generally not concerned about an identity that may or may not be defined by the language they speak or the country where they were born.

To be sure, there have been exceptions, most particularly nineteenth-century artists whose deliberately chosen images of historical themes were often inspired by their deep patriotism and desire to serve their nation. Among such painters were Jan Matejko among the Poles, Alfonse Mucha among the Czechs, and Viktor Madarász and Bertalan Székely among the Hungarians, to name but a few.

Whereas representational art lends itself to depicting patriotic subjects, abstract art by its very nature precludes the ethnic or national factor. Although a representational artist, Warhol did nothing that purposefully reflected his specific ethnic identity or that could be construed to be in the service of the nation—any nation. Perhaps it is for this reason that the organizers of this panel wisely included in its title a reference not to Warhol’s ethnicity, but to his ethnic roots. And if implicit in the panel’s title is a question, I would think an answer is quite straightforward: Andy Warhol’s “national” identity was American; his ethnic roots—Carpatho-Rusyn.

Of course, it is true that until recently most people never heard of Carpatho-Rusyns, just as they have never heard of most other stateless peoples, whether Kashubes, Ladins, Frisians, or Sami, to name but a few of numerous such examples in Europe alone. And so, when Andy died in 1987, prompting a spate of biographical works about him, most writers needed a label when addressing his background. American seemed insufficient. Why not Czechoslovak, which Warhol himself used on occasion (but which meant nothing in ethnic terms), or Polish, or Slovak, or Ukrainian? All those ethnonyms were more or less known phenomena. The ethnonym Carpatho-Rusyn, even in its English form Ruthenian, was certainly not.

Now we may turn to the three topics I noted at the outset, the first of which is cultural appropriation. Considering the setting where our discussion is taking place, the Ukrainian Museum, I cannot help but be reminded of all those great “Russian” artists, like the abstract painter Kazimierz Malevich and sculptor Alexander Archipenko in the early twentieth century, or “Russian” writers like Nikolai Gogol in the early nineteenth century. Their ethnicity, like Warhol’s, has almost always been distorted by authors who facilely associate them with the state (the Russian Empire) where they were born and functioned. Their ethnic roots, on the other hand, were indisputably Ukrainian (or in the case of Malevich, someone of Polish heritage born in Ukraine). Therefore, one cannot help but have sympathy for Ukrainians who accuse most art historians, museum curators, and the general media of cultural appropriation; in other words, rendering Ukrainians as Russians.

However, the victim, in this case Ukrainians, can in other circumstances quite easily become the perpetrator. Even a sophisticated and nuanced scholar such as our panel chairman Professor Alexander Motyl, proposed in an article published in a scholarly journal by Harvard University that if one might not quite call Andy Warhol a Ukrainian, he nevertheless ostensibly belongs to the culture of Ukraine. Not Ukrainian, but belonging to the culture of Ukraine? I’ll leave that to others to determine what difference, if any, there is between the two.

Like Russians, Ukrainians—both before and certainly since they have obtained an independent state—have bordered at times on becoming themselves cultural imperialists. How else can one explain claims by Ukrainian patriots in Ukraine and abroad1 that Warhol’s ethnicity is Ukrainian? And why is the Ukrainian Museum in the New York holding an exhibit of some of Warhol’s art? Is it because Warhol is a famous American artist, or is it because of some ostensible Ukrainian connection? And is it possible to square the two aspects of the assertion by Professor Motyl that Warhol, without being Ukrainian, nevertheless “belongs at least partly to the culture of Ukraine.”2

To address that curious formula, let us look ever so briefly at the socio-cultural context of the Warhola family. It is common knowledge that Andy was an American born in Pittsburgh.3 His parents, however, both father and mother, came from a mountain village, Miková, in the pre-World War I Hungarian Kingdom, which is located in an area that after the war became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia, today Slovakia.

How, then, can one speak of Andy Warhol belonging to the culture of Ukraine? If this is not cultural appropriation of the most misconstrued kind, I don’t know what else it is. Aside from the birthplace of Andy’s parents, in a village whose inhabitants were at various times Hungarian, Czechoslovak, and Slovak citizens—never Ukrainian—the Warhola family language was neither Hungarian, nor Czech, nor Slovak, but Rusyn or Ruthenian.

These realities are usually dismissed by Ukrainian commentators based on their own self-serving argument and belief that there is no Rusyn or Ruthenian language. For them Rusyn is a dialect of Ukrainian. Hence, speakers of that dialect are, ipso facto, Ukrainians.

The question of non-recognition of Carpatho-Rusyns as a distinct people is part of a long tradition of many peoples who have their own state, but who deny the existence of distinct ethnolinguistic groups who they claim as their own. Hence, in the nineteenth century, from the perspective of the German public, Luxembourgers were not a distinct nationality and Luxembourgish not a language but simply a dialect of German. In the twentieth century we have seen Bulgarians denying the distinct national existence of Macedonian Slavs, and in the twenty-first century Poles denying the distinct national existence of Silesians. The list could go on.

Back to the Warhola family. As for genealogy, my colleague Professor Elaine Rusinko has completed groundbreaking detailed archival research which proves that both the paternal and maternal sides of Andy Warhol’s forbears were for the most part of Carpatho-Rusyn ethnicity and of the Byzantine (Greek)-rite Catholic faith.4 Most important was the socio-cultural context in which the Warhola family—and Andy—functioned. In Pittsburgh, the family did not associate with the local Ukrainian community and did not attend the Ukrainian branch of the Byzantine (Greek)-rite Catholic Church. Andy’s family members did not intermarry with Americans of Ukrainian background. Why did they not have anything to do with the Ukrainian-American community? Because they did not feel themselves to be—and, therefore, were not—Ukrainians.

Instead, Andy was baptized in the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church; his entire family belonged to that denomination; and one of his nephews—encouraged by Andy—attended the Byzantine Catholic Seminary. Andy’s two older brothers and other family members intermarried with Americans of Slovak or of Carpatho-Rusyn background. In New York City, Andy attended regularly Catholic churches, at first together with his mother (who lived with him) the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church on Second Avenue and 15th Street. Neither mother or son ever attended the nearby Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic churches nor did they interact with Ukrainian Americans on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

If scholars and biographers feel the need to talk about Andy Warhol’s ancestral heritage and wish to link it to a people who have their own state, then, to use Motyl’s formula, it could be said that Andy belongs at least partly to the culture of Slovakia, but certainly not to the culture of Ukraine. The reality, however, is that Warhol’s state or “national” affiliation was American. And since all Americans come from somewhere, that somewhere—or as Andy would prefer “nowhere”—is historic Carpathian Rus’ in the heart of Europe. No cultural appropriation, Slovak or Ukrainian, is necessary for Andy Warhol, who undoubtedly is an American artist of Carpatho-Rusyn ethnic heritage.

NOTES

1 On the claims of the Ukrainians and other groups to make Andy Warhol “their own,” see Elaine Rusinko, “We Are All Warhol’s Children”: Andy and the Rusyns, Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 2204 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2012), pp. 9-14.

2 Alexander J. Motyl, “Was Andy Warhol Ukrainian?,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, XXXII-XXXIII [2011-2014], Part 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), p. 554. In one of his recent novels, Who Killed Andrei Warhol? (Santa Ana, Calif., 2007), Motyl dropped all nuances, describing Andy as “the son of a Ukrainian worker” (p. 75) and his mother “as Ukrainian in her features as one can possibly imagine” (p. 77). Functioning in the role of a novelist, Motyl may be excused for such exaggerations on the grounds of poetic license, but this is nonetheless an egregious example of cultural appropriation.

3 Actually,  Warhol’s birthplace was not determined until the last decade of his life, precisely because of Andy’s typical pattern of making up stories about his life, including contradictory dates (at various times between 1927 and 1931) and places (Philadelphia, Cleveland, Newport, Rhode Island) of birth. [Paul Robert Magocsi], “Andy Warhol,” Carpatho-Rusyn American, III, 2 (Fairview, N. J., 1980), p. 2.

4 Elaine Rusinko, “Andy Warhol’s Ancestry: Facts, Myths, and Mysteries,” January 7, 2019

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Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum 2019

Prešov University in Prešov, Slovakia, announces its ninth annual three-week Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum International Summer School for Rusyn Language and Culture to be held from June 9 – 29, 2019. The program is hosted by the university‘s Institute of Rusyn Language and Culture. Prešov University is the only university in the Slovak Republic offering a full-time academic program in Rusyn language and literature accredited for both the B.A and M.A. in Rusyn Language and Literature.

The Studium summer school is intended for those interested in studying the Rusyn language and the history of the Carpatho-Rusyns, including high school (18 and over) and college students, as well as Slavists and any who wish to broaden their knowledge of East Slavic language, history, and culture. Participants can expect to acquire a familiarity with or strengthen their competency in the Rusyn language, as well as gain an understanding of Carpatho-Rusyn history, culture, literature, and ethnography.

The Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum is held on the campus of Prešov University, at 17th of November Street, #15 (ulica 17. Novembra, č. 15), with the dormitory, cafeteria, and classroom building all located in close proximity. Instruction is provided by university professors, distinguished Slavists, and specialists in Carpatho-Rusyn studies from Slovakia, Ukraine, the United States, and Canada. The language of instruction, in parallel courses, is either Rusyn or English. The program offers 20 hours of history lectures and 20 hours of language instruction. A ten-hour minicourse in Carpatho-Rusyn ethnography will also be offered in both English and Rusyn as part of the curriculum. Extra practice sessions outside of the classroom will help participants strengthen their conversational skills. Participants who complete the program receive official certificates from the Studium, and transcripts will be available for students who wish to earn credits for the program through their home universities.

Click here for more information. [PDF]
Click here to download the application. [Word]

View photos and more from past years on Facebook.

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Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum 2018

Prešov University in Prešov, Slovakia, announces its ninth annual three-week Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum International Summer School for Rusyn Language and Culture to be held from June 10 – 30, 2018. The program is hosted by the university‘s Institute of Rusyn Language and Culture. Prešov University is the only university in the Slovak Republic offering a full-time academic program in Rusyn language and literature accredited for both the B.A and M.A. in Rusyn Language and Literature.

The Studium summer school is intended for those interested in studying the Rusyn language and the history of the Carpatho-Rusyns, including high school (18 and over) and college students, as well as Slavists and any who wish to broaden their knowledge of East Slavic language, history, and culture. Participants can expect to acquire a familiarity with or strengthen their competency in the Rusyn language, as well as gain an understanding of Carpatho-Rusyn history, culture, literature, and ethnography.

The Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum is held on the campus of Prešov University, at 17th of November Street, #15 (ulica 17. Novembra, č. 15), with the dormitory, cafeteria, and classroom building all located in close proximity. Instruction is provided by university professors, distinguished Slavists, and specialists in Carpatho-Rusyn studies from Slovakia, Ukraine, the United States, and Canada. The language of instruction, in parallel courses, is either Rusyn or English. The program offers 20 hours of history lectures and 20 hours of language instruction. A ten-hour minicourse in Carpatho-Rusyn ethnography will also be offered in both English and Rusyn as part of the curriculum. Extra practice sessions outside of the classroom will help participants strengthen their conversational skills. Participants who complete the program receive official certificates from the Studium, and transcripts will be available for students who wish to earn credits for the program through their home universities.

Click here for more information.

View photos and more from past years on Facebook.

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C-RRC Panels and Events at ASEEES 2017 | Chicago

ASEEES Chicago
Transgressing Identity: Choosing (Not) to Be Carpatho-Rusyn
Thursday, November 9, 3:00 to 4:45pm
Marriott Downtown Chicago, 3rd, Cook
In a review of Paul Robert Magocsi’s With Their Backs to the Mountains (2015), the anthropologist Chris Hann offered a sobering prediction about the prospects of Carpatho-Rusyn nation-building in the future. “The national awakening has yet to impact substantively on the majority of the population,” he argued: “Sadly, I rather doubt that it ever will.” Indeed, while Carpatho-Rusyn Studies as a field has made great strides in recent years, many Rusyns at home and abroad have largely assumed the identity of their countries of citizenship or that of a neighboring people. As each participant has recently conducted fieldwork on Rusyn communities in Europe (Halemba, Cantin) and the United States (Latanyshyn, MacGaffey), this roundtable investigates the factors that have caused particular Rusyn groups to opt in to (and out of) Rusyn identity. Halemba’s monograph Negotiating Marian Apparitions (2015) analyzes how religious and political factors have shaped the Ukrainian orientation of the village of Dzhublyk. Cantin’s doctoral dissertation “Peak Experiences and Hegemony Resistance” (2012) explores what has motivated Rusyns in Slovakia’s Prešov Region to participate in or to resist ethnicity-constructing projects. Latanyshyn’s fieldwork focuses on the fluidity of Lemko-Rusyn and Ukrainian identity at American folk festivals. And MacGaffey’s monograph Coal Dust on Your Feet (2013) investigates the intersection of class and ethnic identity in Shamokin, Pennsylvania’s Lemko-Rusyn community. Through the discussion of their ongoing research, the panelists will debate the push and pull factors influencing the maintenance and loss of Rusyn identity across historical and geographic contexts.

Continue reading C-RRC Panels and Events at ASEEES 2017 | Chicago

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No Friends But The Mountains: An Interview With Academic Paul Robert Magocsi

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the World Congress of Rusyns, Boris Varga, director of the Ruske Slovo Publishing House in Novi Sad, Serbia, asked Professor Paul Robert Magocsi for his views about the World Congress and about the past, present, and future of the Carpatho-Rusyn movement. The following is the text of the interview with Professor Magocsi.

 

You were a participant at the creation of the World Congress of Rusyns that happened 25 years ago. As a scholar, what do think is the over all importance of the congress?

The first World Congress of Rusyns that met in Medzilaborce (then Czechoslovakia) in March 1991 was of crucial importance. It not only symbolized the rebirth of our people, in a real sense it created, or rather re-created Carpatho-Rusyns. What do I mean by creation or recreation?

Ever since the end of World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, the Carpatho-Rusyn homeland was divided among several different states. A quarter of century later, at the close of World War II, some of our people (the Lemkos) were forcibly deported from the Carpathians. While most of our people were allowed to remain in their homeland, the new Communist regimes in Soviet Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary banned the Carpatho-Rusyn nationality and language.

What was the result? Most Carpatho-Rusyns, especially among the younger postwar generation, lost their national identity. They had little or no sense that they belonged to a distinct people whose historic homeland, Carpathian Rus’, was divided between different countries. For example, while many Carpatho-Rusyns did know they had relatives or friends who long ago had emigrated to the United States or Canada, hardly any in the Carpathian homeland knew about fellow Rusnaks living in the former Yugoslavia (the Vojvodina and Srem). For that matter most Carpatho-Rusyns in Transcarpathia did not know about the terrible fate of our Lemko-Rusyn brethren in Poland.

All that changed as a result of the First World Congress of Rusyns in 1991. From then on Carpatho-Rusyns gradually came to realize that they belonged to one people, who form a distinct nationality united by a common identity and language, even if they lived in different states. This enormous psychological change in the mindset of our people was the most significant achievement brought about by the first and subsequent World Congresses of Rusyns.

One other aspect of the first World Congress in Medzilaborce was of special importance for me. On one of the evenings during the congress I invited a small group of writers (Olena Duts’-Faifer, Volodymyr Fedynyshynets, Ivan Petrovtsi, and Petro Trokhanovskii) to meet at the home of Father Frantishek Krainiak who was at the time serving in the Greek Catholic parish in Medzilaborce. The specific goal of the meeting was to discuss the need to create a standard Rusyn language and to identify some of the problems we would face in carrying out that process. In a sense, the meeting at Father Krainiak’s home was the first international gathering to discuss the Rusyn language. I came away with the idea that we needed a larger gathering in order to undertake serious work on codification, and that eventually led to the First International Congress of the Rusyn Language which took place just over one year later, in November 1992, in Bardejovské Kúpele, Slovakia.

 

You were for a time the chairman of the World Council of Rusyns and are still today its honorary chairman. What were the achievements of the congress during your chairmanship?

Since Carpatho-Rusyns are like many other groups in Europe, a stateless people, I always felt that they need a body to represent their interests to the larger world community. That body became, in effect, the World Congress of Rusyns. Therefore, during my mandate as chairman of the World Council, from 2005 to 2009, I did my best to help initiate meetings with government officials of all countries where Carpatho-Rusyns live as well as with representatives of multinational bodies, such as the European Union and the Vatican.

Those encounters took various forms, such as personal visits to the embassies of Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, the Vatican, and to the European Union mission in Washington, D.C. We also met on more than one occasion in Kyiv with the United States ambassador and the European Union’s commissioner to Ukraine.

As important, we issued memoranda and letters to government leaders about specific problems. For example, we communicated with the ministers of education and of culture in Slovakia regarding the status of the Rusyn language, with the president of Hungary regarding the former university chair of Rusyn philology at Nyíregyháza, and with the government of Serbia regarding clarification about whether Vojvodinian Rusyns need a so-called mother country—and, if so, why Ukraine and not Slovakia—in order that they qualify for the status of a nationality. These are only some of the many issues we raised with governments concerning Carpatho-Rusyn interests.

It is important to note that in all our encounters with various governmental officials during the first decade of the twenty-first century, our hosts agreed to meet with myself and other representatives of the World Congress with the understanding that we represented a distinct nationality, Carpatho-Rusyns.

In response to requests from many Carpatho-Rusyns, it was while I was as chairman of the World Council that we adopted an official flag and national anthem. Each Carpatho-Rusyn community may have its own national songs, perhaps its own national colors and symbols, but through the instrument of the World Congress we all now recognize one common flag (with the beautiful bear symbol) and one common national anthem that begins with the words of our nineteenth-century national awakener Aleksander Dukhnovych, “Ia Rusyn bŷl, iesm i budu.”

It was also during my tenure as chairman of the World Council that efforts were made to make the World Congress more democratic, representative, and inclusive. I was always skeptical about the principle that each country where Carpatho-Rusyns live should be represented at the Congress by only one organization. Rather, each country should be represented by a group of organizations. For example, the official member of the World Congress from North America has, since the very beginning in 1991, been the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center, which is a legal non-profit cultural organization registered in the State of New York. Nevertheless, at every congress the North American delegation has always been comprised of representatives from six or seven of the most active Carpatho-Rusyn organizations in the United States and Canada.

Even before I became chairman I suggested at the Sixth World Congress held in Prague 2001 that we encourage young people (no older than 30) to organize a World Forum of Rusyn Youth. Happily, at the next congress held two years later in 2003 in Prešov the first International Forum of Rusyn Youth did take place. This, to my mind, is one of the most important developments in the Carpatho-Rusyn movement. Since 2003, there is a youth forum held every two years in conjunction with the World Congress, and several of its past and present participants already play important roles in the countries where they live.

 

You have been both an activist in the Rusyn movement and an academic historian. Is there any friction/clash between your views as a historian of Rusyns and of Ukrainians?

Being a scholar is life-long learning process. If one is serious and continues to read about and research the past, it is inevitable that one’s views will evolve and change. Although I have been studying Carpatho-Rusyns since the mid-1960s, it was in 1990s that I became convinced that our people must be considered what they are and have always been—a distinct nationality.

Since at least the 1970s I have been a historian not only of central Europe as a whole, but of Ukraine in particular. I see no contradiction between these two roles. Ukraine is a typical European country in the sense that it is a state within which live several peoples, or nationalities: Russians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Romanians, Bulgarians, Crimean Tatars, Hungarians, and Carpatho-Rusyns, among others. Unlike traditional Ukrainian historiography, I do not consider Carpatho-Rusyns a branch of Ukrainians, but rather a distinct nationality.

In a legal sense, all the above-mentioned peoples are Ukrainians because they are citizens of Ukraine. Hence, among the citizens of Ukraine there are Ukrainians of Russian heritage, Ukrainians of Polish, Jewish, Crimean Tatar and other heritages, and, analogously, Ukrainians of Carpatho-Rusyn heritage.

By the way, you will notice that I use term Carpatho-Rusyn to describe our people, and not simply the term Rusyn. The reason for this is quite simple, but very important. Rusyn is a vague term originally used to describe all East Slavs living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Habsburg Empire. In other words, it was the ethnonym used by peoples who today call themselves Belarusans and Ukrainians. So, does that make our people Ukrainians, or perhaps Belarusans?

This may all sound very confusing, but hopefully it can be easily explained by the title of one of my recent books: Every Carpatho-Rusyn is a Rusyn, but not every Rusyn is a Carpatho-Rusyn. In other words, Carpatho-Rusyns have their own historic homeland Carpathian Rus’ (today within the borders of four countries), and they are a distinct East Slavic people equal to, but different from, the three other East Slavic peoples: Russians, Belarusans, and Ukrainians.

This is the conceptual approach I use in my writings about Ukraine, including my large 900-page History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, which has been published in two Ukrainian-language editions (Kyїv: Krytyka, 2007 and Uzhhorod: V. Padiak, 2012) and is now about to appear in a third edition.

To be sure, there are some scholars who cannot understand how the same person can be an impartial historian writing about two allegedly contradictory concepts: Ukrainian nationhood and Carpatho-Rusyn distinctiveness. Perhaps the best explanation of this seeming paradox comes from the pen of the respected American political scientist and unapologetic Ukrainian patriot, Alexander Motyl. At a seminar which took place in 2010 that was devoted to my career as a scholar, historian, and public advocate, he wrote the following: “Ukrainians must logically exist for Magocsi. They are, as it were, a necessary condition of his Carpatho-Rusyn nation-building efforts. To make the case for a distinct Ukrainian nationality and a distinct Ukraine . . . is to make the case for a distinct Carpatho-Rusyn nationality and a distinct Carpathian Rus’ homeland.

“In this sense, as in so many others, Magocsi is acting in accordance with traditional nationalist beliefs. . . . The logic of his thought and activity is also identical to that of Ukrainian nation-builders who have needed, and continue to need, a distinctly Russian Russia in order to make the case for a distinctly Ukrainian Ukraine. The paradoxes of Paul Robert Magocsi therefore dissolve, only to reveal what may be a true paradox—that all nation-builders are always builders of at least two nations, their own and the other’s.”

 

Do there exist external forces that have an influence on the World Congress of Rusyns, whether they are individuals, politicians, states where Rusyns live, the West, or Russia?

This is a complex issue that would require so much time to address that it could easily be the subject of an entire interview. At the risk perhaps of oversimplification, let me say the following. Yes, throughout the entire 25-year history of the World Congress of Rusyns there have been external forces that have tried to influence our organization, but for the most part those efforts have not succeeded.

Why, one might ask, is this so? It is true that Carpatho-Rusyns as a group do not have practical experience in formal political life. But Carpatho-Rusyns as individuals are by nature skeptics and, therefore, politically savvy (wise). While it is true that at some World Congresses a particular individual or country delegation might have acted in such a way to suggest external influence, there have always been enough other individuals and country delegations whose voices have been able to neutralize and negate such external influences.

 

Have Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan Revolution and the subsequent annexation of Crimea had any impact on the evolution of the Rusyn movement? What has been the position of Carpatho-Rusyns in this matter?

The views of Carpatho-Rusyns on contemporary events are inevitably varied. I think that most would be opposed to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, especially since such an act raises the possibility of a larger war, something that no one wants.

Certainly, many residents of Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region, including Carpatho-Rusyns, welcomed and even participated in the 2014 Euromaidan, which is now known as Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity. As for Carpatho-Rusyns in other countries, I have no way of knowing their views on the Euromaidan, although I suspect those views range from skepticism to sympathy for Ukraine.

As for the World Congress, it quite rightly expressed support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, implying that Russia’s annexation was illegal and a violation of international norms.

 

What is the likely impact of the frozen conflict in the Donbas on the Rusyn movement in Ukraine? To what degree can that tense situation in eastern Ukraine negatively influence the Rusyn movement?

The conflict in the Donbas since 2014 has had a very negative impact on the Carpatho-Rusyn movement, most especially in Ukraine. On the one hand, any reasonable person can support the right of Ukraine to exist as a sovereign state and oppose the actions of separatists in eastern Ukraine who, with the support of Russia, threaten the territorial integrity of the country. On the other hand, one cannot be sympathetic to a government and media in Ukraine, which uses the conflict in the Donbas to denounce Carpatho-Rusyns. After all, young men from Transcarpathia are fighting in the ranks of the army defending Ukraine, and many return home as casualties or worse—to be buried.

Because of the conflict in the Donbas, in present-day Ukraine “separatism” has become a dirty word that is equated with treasonous anti-state activity. Whereas before 2014 “political Rusynism” was the term used to denounce anyone who felt that Carpatho-Rusyns are a distinct people, today one encounters a more damning epithet, “Rusyn separatism.”

In a time of war—and Ukraine is at war—it is not uncommon to use simplistic concepts to describe all real and imagined enemies. Most unfortunately, the public in Ukraine is becoming used to a new equation: Carpatho-Rusyn equals “Rusyn separatist.” And we all know what that means: a separatist is a traitor!

Labels can have serious consequences. Most recently, during the present 2016-2017 academic year, a professor and dean of the Faculty of History at Uzhhorod National University was denounced for promoting Carpatho-Rusyn “separatist” views in his publications and teaching. The result? He was forced to resign and History Faculty was abolished.

Whatever progress may have been made in advancing the idea that Carpatho-Rusyns form a distinct nationality while remaining loyal citizens has come to an end. Alas, Ukraine has become an enemy of Carpatho-Rusyns.

At the same time, one must be aware of false friends. I refer here to Russia, from which some Carpatho-Rusyns expect help. Let me repeat here what I have said to audiences in Toronto, L’viv, Mukachevo, New York, and Pittsburgh. Russian intellectual circles, whether in tsarist or Soviet times, never accepted the view that Carpatho-Rusyns are a distinct nationality. In that sense, they are no different from Ukrainian intellectual circles. And one should never forget what the East brought to our people. When, in the guise of the Soviet Union, “real Russians” (as opposed to local Russophiles) took control of Subcarpathian Rus’ in 1945, within a few years they brutally undermined traditional Carpatho-Rusyn cultural values by destroying the Greek Catholic Church, taking away individual farmland, and banning the Rusyn language and national identity. Carpatho-Rusyns have never gotten—nor do they need—help from Russia, whether tsarist, Soviet, or Putinesque.

In the end, Carpatho-Rusyns can expect no help from either the enemy or the false friend. They must depend upon themselves alone. In that sense, to quote the title of a book about Kurds, Carpatho-Rusyns have no friends but the mountains.

 

During your chairmanship, what was the attitude of the World Council of Rusyns toward certain Rusyn organizations and individuals who expressed separatist views regarding Subcarpathian Rus’/Transcarpathia?

While I was chairman of the World Council in the years 2005-2009, one of our major goals was to have Carpatho-Rusyns recognized in Ukraine as a distinct nationality. This was part of a long process that had begun from the time the congress was created in 1991. That process included several meetings with Ukrainian officials. For example, already in the mid-1990s I was invited by Ukraine’s Ministry of Nationality Affairs to give three lectures on the “Rusyn Question” to policy makers in Kyiv.

Also at that time minority rights organizations in Germany and Denmark helped us in negotiations with the office of Ukraine’s president, Leonid Kuchma. We also met on two occasions with the Ombudsman of Ukraine, who issued public statements calling for the recognition of Carpatho-Rusyns as a distinct nationality. In the United States we were successful in gaining the support of the influential head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John McCain, who in 2006 wrote a personal letter to President Yushchenko, urging him to encourage Ukraine to recognize Rusyns as a distinct nationality.

Finally, in early 2007, together with fellow Carpatho-Rusyn activists from Transcarpathia (Dr. Ievhenii Zhupan, Mykhailo Almashii among others), I met with the chairman of the Oblasna Rada and the region’s gubernator to discuss the question of the Rusyn nationality. Soon after, on March 7, 2007, Transcarpathia’s Oblasna Rada issued a decree that recognized Rusyns as a distinct nationality on the territory of Transcarpathia and called on the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv to do the same for the rest of Ukraine. It seemed that our many years work on behalf of official recognition of Rusyns in Ukraine had reached a significant first level of success.

But before the end of that very same year, one of the World Council’s members, the Soim podkarpatskykh rusynov headed by the Orthodox priest Dymytrii Sydor, unilaterally declared autonomy for the region and called on the European Union and the Russian Federation to guarantee that status. From that moment all further negotiations with Ukraine’s authorities about Carpatho-Rusyns became difficult if not impossible.

Many of us in the World Council considered the Soim’s declaration a provocation that undermined the Rusyn cause. Consequently, Father Sydor and his organization were suspended from the World Council and eventually World Congress.

In the end, the Soim’s December 2007 and the subsequent declarations of the so-called European Congress of Subcarpathian Rusyns did not bring autonomy to Carpatho-Rusyns. It did, however, certainly weaken the position of the World Council in its further negotiations with Ukraine. The fact that Father Sydor is a priest under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, that Russia was mentioned as a possible guarantor of Subcarpathian autonomy, and that Russia’s print and broadcast media continued to speak about the “suffering” of Carpatho-Rusyns in Transcarpathia were all factors that brought nothing positive for our people in Ukraine.

Politics requires realistic goals and patience to achieve them, not the publication of unrealistic proclamations and demands.

 

What is the official position of Kyiv toward the Rusyn question in central Europe and Ukraine?

In late 1996, just a few months after Ukraine adopted its new constitution, the government in Kyiv issued an internal document titled “Proposed Measures for Resolving the Problem of Ukrainian-Rusyns.” The document contained ten proposals addressed to various ministries, the office of the general prosecutor, the state administration in Transcarpathia, the National Academy of Sciences, the State Commission for Television and Radio, and Ukraine’s embassies abroad. All these bodies were given instructions on how to combat demands for political autonomy and the view that Carpatho-Rusyns are a distinct nationality. In short, to quote the document: Transcarpathia “is an age-old Ukrainian land, and local Ukrainians [that is, Carpatho-Rusyns] are an indelible part of the Ukrainian nation.”

It is true that since 1996 the Carpatho-Rusyn movement continued to exist in Ukraine and certainly in neighboring countries, that in 2007 Transcarpathia’s Oblasna Rada formerly recognized the Rusyn nationality, and that in 2013 Ukraine adopted a language law in which Rusyn was listed as an officially recognized regional language.

Nevertheless, the government’s position, backed up by Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences (especially scholars in the Institute of the Ukrainian Language, the Institute of Art, Folklore, and Ethnology, and the Institute of Political and Ethnonational Studies) is that Rusyn is a dialect of Ukrainian and that Rusyns are a regional branch of the Ukrainian people. In other words, Carpatho-Rusyn are Ukrainians.

 

What is your view of the future work of the World Congress of Rusyns and the Rusyn movement in general throughout the world?

There is no question that the World Congress of Rusyns has played an enormously positive role during its 25 years of existence. It has convinced Carpatho-Rusyns that even though they live in different countries, whether in Europe or North America, they together form a single people with a common cultural heritage. The congress has also been recognized by the authorities in countries where Carpatho-Rusyns live as the legitimate representative body for a distinct people.

By its very nature the World Congress is a diverse body made up of citizens of at least ten countries, whose delegates meet only once every two years. There is an executive body, the World Council, made up of nine members representing each member country, but it, too, meets only periodically and not always with all its members present. I mention this not as a criticism but as a reality which sometimes makes effective work difficult. The fact the World Congress has very limited funding does not help the situation. Very often individual members of the World Council have to use their own funds in order to participate in World Congress events. We should all be grateful to them for doing this.

Of course, the World Congress is not the only organization promoting Carpatho-Rusyns. Each country has several Carpatho-Rusyn organizations (not all of which are members of the World Congress) that do enormously important work in promoting Carpatho-Rusyn culture and identity through schools, publications, the media, the theater, and museums. There are also a few priests, especially in the Greek Catholic Church, who do very important work on behalf of Carpatho-Rusyn secular and religious culture. It is true that Carpatho-Rusyns in some countries may, at certain times, be doing better than in other countries. And it is true that there are still serious challenges, such as out-migration of young people from Carpatho-Rusyn villages or emigration abroad, language assimilation, reluctance of the Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches to accept the reality of a literary Rusyn language, and the antagonistic policies of at least one country (Ukraine) toward Carpatho-Rusyns. But these kinds of challenges are nothing new. What is new is that Carpatho-Rusyns are here to stay. And so, overall, one cannot help but feel optimistic about the future of the Carpatho-Rusyn movement.

 

You have written numerous works about Rusyns in various countries. How have they been accepted in those countries where Rusyns live?

The best way to answer this question is to consult the numerous reviews in professional journals about the 35 books and hundreds of articles I have published over the past four decades. Another way to gauge the positive reception is the sales records of each book. None have sold less than 1000 copies, and some have sold over 10,000 and even over 20,000 copies. Most of my books have gone into two, three, even four editions, and certain tittles have been translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Chinese, and Turkish and published by major publishers in those countries.

I should also note that I do not publish only about Carpatho-Rusyns. In fact, most people learn about Carpatho-Rusyns through discussion about them in my 900-page History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples and the lavish full-color Historical Atlas of Central Europe.

Even more important than my own books is the fact that we now have a professional discipline called Carpatho-Rusyn Studies. There is a research institute in the United States, the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center (established in 1978); there is the Carpato-Ruthenica Library at the University of Toronto (established in1995), which is the world’s most comprehensive library and archive on Carpatho-Rusyns; and there is the Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum international summer school, which in its seven years since 2010 has attracted to the University of Prešov 134 participants from no less than twelve countries throughout Europe, North America, and as far as away as Argentina and China. We have also held four international congresses of the Rusyn Language, and in 2004 we were invited to publish a 500-page volume on the Rusyn language as part of the 14-volume Modern History of the Slavonic Languages under the auspices of the University of Opole in Poland. Each year there are several panels on Carpatho-Rusyn studies held at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in the United States. These are only some of the many achievements in the scholarly world.

Twenty-five years ago not many people ever heard of Carpatho-Rusyns. Today, not only are Carpatho-Rusyns recognized in the scholarly world, there is an actual discipline of Carpatho-Rusyn Studies which continues to attract senior scholars, teachers, and students of all backgrounds to study, learn, and teach about all aspects of our people past and present.

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Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum 2017

 

Prešov University in Prešov, Slovakia, announces its eighth annual three-week Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum International Summer School for Rusyn Language and Culture to be held from June 4 – 24, 2017. The program is hosted by the university‘s Institute of Rusyn Language and Culture. Prešov University is the only university in the Slovak Republic offering a full-time academic program in Rusyn language and literature accredited for both the B.A and M.A. in Rusyn Language and Literature.

The Studium summer school is intended for those interested in studying the Rusyn language and the history of the Carpatho-Rusyns, including high school (18 and over) and college students, as well as Slavists and any who wish to broaden their knowledge of East Slavic language, history, and culture. Participants can expect to acquire a familiarity with or strengthen their competency in the Rusyn language, as well as gain an understanding of Carpatho-Rusyn history, culture, literature, and ethnography.

The Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum is held on the campus of Prešov University, at 17th of November Street, #15 (ulica 17. Novembra, č. 15), with the dormitory, cafeteria, and classroom building all located in close proximity. Instruction is provided by university professors, distinguished Slavists, and specialists in Carpatho-Rusyn studies from Slovakia, Ukraine, the United States, and Canada. The language of instruction, in parallel courses, is either Rusyn or English. The program offers 20 hours of history lectures and 20 hours of language instruction. A ten-hour minicourse in Carpatho-Rusyn ethnography will also be offered in both English and Rusyn as part of the curriculum. Extra practice sessions outside of the classroom will help participants strengthen their conversational skills. Participants who complete the program receive official certificates from the Studium, and transcripts will be available for students who wish to earn credits for the program through their home universities.

Click here for more information.

Click here to download application.

View photos and more from past years on Facebook.