^{Photo Credit: Raymond Minaar}

I was around eight years old when I first became acquainted with the idea of “ethnic pride,” in its most romanticized, maybe even outdated, form. I knew that my father’s side had lived in western Romania, in the county of Satu Mare, in the northeastern Carpathians. My mother’s side had lived not far away, in the Prešov region of eastern Slovakia. It was with this knowledge that something arose in me, that which I could not properly describe to others. It was a created image in my mind of the Carpathians, a place whose native soil I had never touched. Yet I wanted to know how the lowlands looked after a rainstorm, and what kinds of waterfowl flocked over its lakes. I thought of the English language and how it had no relationship to my origins. I even remember thinking, “I am learning American history, but my family wasn’t even in this country for a majority of these events.” Why was I learning and identifying with someone else’s history? It was these realizations that enriched my relationship to being Rusyn, to being of Eastern European descent as a whole. Once the knowledge was established, I knew that it was mine to fully reclaim.

In my childhood and through my teenage years, my expression of ethnic pride was an uncensored one that disregarded any outside force. I knew that I could not sacrifice centuries of my own people’s history, for total assimilation into the culture of my geographic location. It is what those in literature describe as an internal conflict —  and so I did not believe I had to provide an explanation to others. I put my identity out there, and I was not afraid at all. Yet, for all of us who know exactly who we are, there are also those who are threatened by it. I learned this very well when I was twenty years old, when someone close to me remarked, “Yeah uh, can you stop describing yourself as Eastern European?” 

I never thought until then that my identity could make others uncomfortable. Did I owe them that comfort, for an inward experience that did not even involve them? One which they would never have to participate in? Today, I realize that this instance was an awakening for me, which actually had nothing to do with identity at all. Rather, it was the unfortunate fact that many times, your happiness is not someone else’s happiness. If they cannot control what you have, they will try to destroy it instead. Even so, the remark still stuck with me long after. It led me to newer, more defensive and outspoken expressions of identity, as though I needed to protect what was sacred to me.

I continued on this path until several months ago, when I had a rather thought-provoking conversation with a family member. We discussed why an ethnic minority in his home country was so vocal about their identity and pride in it. At the time, my response was a defensive one. Why wouldn’t they be? They had been repressed for centuries by the dominant culture, affecting every area of their lives, from language, religion, to even the names they gave their children. His response to me, however, was one that I had not considered: “How can you be proud of something you did not cause?”

He suggested that ethnic origin is neither something you should glorify nor detest, it simply is. With this logic, he stated, being proud of one’s culture is synonymous to having pride in being tall, right-handed, or other factors that can neither be chosen nor changed. For example, a person earns a science degree by spending hours in a lab and shadowing professionals in the field. A person buys their first house, usually having earned the money themselves. Even a simple accomplishment like baking bread, a person must first work through trial and error. Culture and ethnicity, on the other hand, are bestowed upon us at birth, just as our physical characteristics, and have no relationship to the choices we make as individuals.

Most likely, many would argue that you do choose to participate in your culture. Yet do we really choose? The vast majority of us could not choose whether or not to retain Rusyn culture, as it was already instilled in at least one part of our life from an early age. This might be expressed through language, religious tradition, family dynamic, or even the very menial aspects such as food or home decor. For example, I learned as a teenager in a Roman Catholic school years ago, that I could not simply “adopt” the traditions of the western rite. It was not that easy to reconstruct or repose of what I had already learned. After all, for centuries, my family had been Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic. So I knew that no matter how frequently I interacted with Italian, Irish, and Slovak Catholics, the fact remained: I was from an entirely different background. How could I possibly condense an entire background into singular, outward expressions of it?

So I have begun to wonder, what do we actually get from outward expressions, like waving around the Rusyn flag wherever possible? From listening to Rusyn music or even using the “Cme Rusini” (I am Rusyn) Facebook frames? No, it is not that I have downright rejected these forms. Instead, what I am attempting to grasp is the practicality of them. Some will tell you, no, actually there is a political reason people do these things. They will tell you about census numbers or cultural visibility more generally. However, I do not believe these are the sole reasons we see these approaches so often taken. Unfortunately, I do think that many times it is a case of groupthink as opposed to individual participation. We have been led to believe that the appearance of being ethnically proud is more important than the internal peace of being proud, as individuals. To many of us, the outward appearance confirms our belonging to the Rusyn community, as observable to others. But how many people actually pause to think, Am I doing this because it has value to me, or because I think it’s compulsory to the Rusyn experience?

We are at a point where being proud of our ancestry is the default, without us knowing precisely why. After all, why are we reading articles on this website if we did not feel some sort of pull towards our Rusyn ancestry? We push the narrative of “minority status”, and believe that due to it, a cultural renaissance is necessary. I am not even certain the average layperson understands what this means, but we know it “seems to be working” for other groups (never mind that we are viewing their situation from the outside). For those outside of the intellectual and political spheres, we want to know how we too can partake. Do I hang a flag outside of my home? Do I write my name in Cyrillic online or sell Rusyn-inspired merchandise? Our forms of dedication to the Rusyn identity differ greatly of course, but have we stopped to ask ourselves what exactly we are accomplishing?

Some might argue, we don’t need to necessarily accomplish anything. That is, we have a part of ourselves that we want to pay tribute to, without there being an end goal. We are neither helping nor hurting anyone, so what does it matter? I suppose that for many people, this is the case, and they are perfectly content with it. But there comes a point in which we might also ask, how does expressing our pride in our culture truly differ from any other component we are proud of?

In my experience, I’ve asked this question the most in regard to my mixed ancestry. How does my pride in being Rusyn and Hungarian-American actually differ that much? Am I actually just caught in an endless loop of going back and forth between two identities and the same rhetoric? In other words, am I nurturing the aspects of each that require the most care, or am I using the same cookie-cutter approach for both?

We can apply these questions to any part of our identity that we emphasize in a similar manner. There are times when I must ask myself, do I sound the same way discussing women’s issues as I do Rusyn social issues? I have found that many have adopted the mindset of, “the more identities I emphasize, the better”. They value the quantity of different identities they have, as opposed to cultivating each according to their need. Seeing this pattern in other people has allowed me to be more conscious of how I approach the groups to which I belong. This means taking a step back and deciding whether I am showing people what I stand for and why they should care (even slightly) or merely telling people who I am.

So I have begun to look past outward expressions, like owning a Rusyn flag or occasionally wearing a Lemko beaded necklace. Instead, I have discovered that my inward experience is more than enough to satisfy the need for “ethnic pride.” It neither places me into a box nor coerces me into adopting a pre-made, one-dimensional view of pride. For me, my identity as a Rusyn is now comprised mainly of my lived experience. Like any other experience, it includes both the romanticized and the often painfully realistic reminders of what it means to belong to a group.

It is understanding this foundation for the larger human experience that has led me to view the Rusyn identity in a more neutral sense. More specifically, I realize that my connotation towards “Rusynness” cannot actually be changed by good or bad circumstances, as it has already been long established. As a member of the diaspora, I have especially felt the need to remind myself of this philosophy. We are too often faced with the overly simplistic criticism from those who believe everything is as basic as Americans being stupid or unqualified to speak on anything. With this logic, anyone who crosses the ocean must surely lose all of prior intellect and be rendered incapable of ever passing it onto another generation. 

Whether we tell others we are Rusyn, or we show them, we are faced with recycled arguments thrown around aimlessly, trying to convince us why our own relationship to culture needs to be revised so another person can feel secure. This is why, in many ways, I am still trying to reclaim that image of the Carpathian Mountains I had as a child. I return to that image, knowing there is always an opposing outside force or an urge to assimilate into community trends. It is not always us versus mainstream culture. Sometimes it is our own community that tells us how we must assert our own notion of pride, both mentally and tangibly. And when we make that choice to do so, we grow gradually further from that quiet place in our mind, where our identity is in its most pure and unadulterated form. That is where everything began, the foundation that was left for us, intended to be untouched by all others but ourselves.