What do we need to become fully acknowledged as one nation? Do we have all that we need? How does one nation establish its essence? We can say a person’s national identity results directly from the presence of elements from the “common points” in people’s daily lives: language, history, culture, ethnicity, national symbols, music, television, education, blood ties, and conscience about all of the above. I do believe that every element above is constantly on the move. Intellectual sovereignty is never full-accepted the way it is, or as a static object. It has to make progress all the time and keep up with the world so it can be called successful. Let’s explore some of these elements above and the way they have progressed.
STANDARDIZATION – YES/NO? AND LEARNING ONLINE
Let’s begin with language. We all know that Rusyns don’t have one commonly used standardized language. What are the advantages and disadvantages of language standardization? First of all, it would be mutually comprehensible language. I say that because, as a Pannonian Rusyn, I must admit that I do have situations when I’m having difficulties understanding Rusyns from the Carpathians and their way of speaking. Besides, that one standardized language can tightly define one nation and signify its individualism. Looking from one different perspective, if non-Rusyn people would like to learn our language, wouldn’t it be much easier if there was only one standardized language for them to learn?
Of course, there is a disadvantage that I must mention and which is powerful enough to discourage standardization. If we consider standardization, would our “new” language become a mix of all language varieties, and would there be one prevalent side and one low-grade? There are many people of differing opinions, and we know not all of them would accept a “new language” variation. In that situation, would people who use the non-standardization form of language become old-fashioned, flawed, or something else? Making prejudices, divisions, and hierarchy of social positions between people based on which “language” they use could be inevitable too.
From the paragraph above, we can mark off some other meaningful elements. As I mentioned people who would like to learn the Rusyn language, the question is, is there adequate and high-level literature and a way of understanding it? If we’re going with online learning, the amount of different YouTube videos about the Rusyn language is amazingly huge. That is something we should be all proud about. There are a lot of varieties of YouTube video forms: school methods, duo studying, language comparison, basic phrases, story-telling, history teaching, etc.
Besides YouTube, there are not many other online forms of learning Rusyn. One way I would like and think of as an intriguing way would be the occurrence of the Rusyn language as part of the most popular apps for learning languages, such as Duolingo, Babbel, and Busuu. Imagine how fun that would be! Another interesting idea would be making an app specifically made only for learning the Rusyn language. But what about our school and educational system outside the digital world? As one of the most important institutions for Rusyns education, I choose Primary and secondary school with boarding school “Petro Kuzmjak” which takes place in Ruski Kerestur, the Rusyn cultural center in Vojvodina, Serbia. The level of its education is quite high, and it’s the perfect example of a strong and stable foundation for developing individual and national identity.
HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL
When the year 1945 finally came, the first Rusyn gymnasium in history was established. Three decades later, it finally received its official name as the Educational center “Petro Kuzmjak”. But what was happening with the school before those events? How long has it existed in total? It was originally established in 1753 as a trivial and confessional school (Schola vernaculars) under church patronage, created and led by parishes. In 1760 township built the first authorized school building, which was extremely small for students to gather inside, so in 1766 they rebuilt it again with the financial support of the township. People with priestly duties were teachers, and some of their names were Janko Paljinkas, Ferko Kirda, and Mikola Kozubski. At that time, the school faced many types of problems. Financially, it was hard because school was under state property, in public schools the main language was Hungarian, and Rusyn wasn’t a priority at all, a lot of injured soldiers were held in the schools, and some of the teachers had to go to war too. But the multiple world wars and their changes passed, and the year of 1945 finally came, with it the school continues to function normally as a Public school, mainly in the Rusyn language.
Organizationally, the school consists of three parts: required elementary school, high school, and dorm for students. The very interesting thing that makes this school unique is that the high school has three majors: a basic course held in the Rusyn language, a basic course held in the Serbian language, and a course for tourism technicians held in the Serbian language.
WHO WAS PETRO KUZMJAK?
Petro Kuzmjak was born in Czechoslovakia in 1816. Since he couldn’t get a scholarship to continue his studies after high school, so he went to the monastery in Mukachevo. He left in there in 1838 and took a pedagogical course in Uzhorod too. He came to Kerestur in May of the year 1855. As he was a well-educated teacher, we can say he was responsible for building-up scholarly and pedagogical levels of institutional education. To learn more about him, you can go to the school’s official website: https://petrokuzmjak.com/
As someone who graduated from this school (only elementary), I can gladly share my personal experience. To remind you about something I have already written in my past articles, this school holds classes just in the Rusyn language, in regards to other Rusyn schools which hold classes in both Rusyn and Serbian languages. I must say, it was one of the prudent decisions, even though the path of learning was pretty tough. I’m delighted I had an opportunity to study four languages: Rusyn (as the primary one), Serbian, English, and German. The educational system was at a high level even then, but it can’t compare to what it is nowadays. There is only one thing I have found as an “issue” with our educational system, which I would love to be changed. During my schooling, specifically in history classes, I don’t remember studying much about Rusyns from other areas. I can’t lie, we at times talked about the Carpathians and the Rusyns living there, but I can say with confidence that it’s not even 5% of what we should have been studying.
Rusyns who graduated from this school are highly educated, but the amount of knowledge about some important Rusyn kinds of stuff is still statistically low. As in, they know a lot about their own area but nothing about the greater Rusyn nation in general. My thinking is that without knowing about our ancestors and other branches we can’t stay confident in defending who and what we are. If we know who we were, we can tell who we currently are, and figure out what we want to become. In not so far future, within my next few articles, I will show you how much Pannonians know about the Carpathians and vice versa.
ETHNICITY AND CONSCIENCE
I do recall once when I was meeting a few people for the first time, we talked about each other’s national identities. It bothers me that people who’re living in Serbia are not so well informed about Rusyns, so I usually prepare myself to give some short description about us – who and what we are. Serbia has five main administrative and statistical regions. These are Vojvodina, Belgrade, Sumadija and West Serbia, South and East Serbia, and Kosovo and Metohija. Between these five regions, Rusyns are well known only in Vojvodina and maybe a low percentage in Belgrade. So, usually, when I meet people who live below the Danube, our conversations go like this:
– I am a Rusyn.
– Oh, right! (Has no idea what that means) So basically, you are Russian.
– No, I am Rusyn. It is a completely different nation. (Starts explaining about our origin, history, language, religion, migrations, etc.)
– Okay… that’s nice… so you are something similar to Russians.
– Bruh!
People usually don’t care about saying things like that, like it’s not a big deal for them. When I am not very successful in making them accept the fact that we’re not “something like-”, “similar to”, “same as“ some other nations, which often leads to disrespecting and underrating, I do make some counterattack based on things I know Serbs are sensitive to. I usually go with “Okay, if it doesn’t matter if you call me Rusyn or Russian, then you surely won’t mind whether I call you Serb, Croat, or Bosnian! I mean, you are technically the identical nation, correct?” And imagine that… calling a Serbian a Croat or Bosnian! After that, it won’t take much time for them to apologize and accept the fact that I’m not Russian. And that’s what 80% of discussions look like. I did have one extremely rare comparison (not to Russians!), which was hilarious! I met one man from Sumadija, and we talked about Rusyns.
He was very curious, so he wanted to know more about us because he didn’t know much besides our existence and name. He stared at me, and the words popped out of his mouth: Wow, you are a regular nation. I believed you were something like The Amish, isolated traditionalists who are not keeping up with the world today and have a habit of avoiding using the internet and technology in general. Honestly, I was not sure was I supposed to laugh or cry. I was waiting for the conclusive question, maybe something, from which planet we emigrated and came to the planet Earth, but I think he was already too stunned to speak. The worst thing is that he’s not the only one who makes conclusions like that.
An Individual’s racial/ethnic identity is an important basis for self-identity because it instills a sense of identification with a given group’s cultural values, kinship, and beliefs (Phinney, 1996). With ethnicity comes identity. With our identity comes status. With status comes a respectful place in the political field. The political field leads us to our deserved independence, having the right to participate in making meaningful decisions, and writing our future. One phrase that encapsulates these thoughts – it leads us to freedom. The percentage of having freedom is equal to the percentage of using our intellectuality against limitation. Suma summarum – we must take into consideration every step we’re making while we’re walking into the future, understand it, and have strong reasons so our gazing can walk over all of the barriers and injustices that may appear.