Cold, heavy wind blows against my face as I peek out of the train window and into the cold night. We had just crossed the Tisza river. It was the homeland in all of its beauty, not like I could see much of it though. Besides armed border guards and abandoned properties in the fields, there wasn’t much to look at in the border town of Chop. It would either be the first time of many, or the last view of it I would ever want.
Getting past the train station was an ungodly experience in itself. Even through all my times in the Caucasus, I had never been questioned so much by border guards straps with high-powered weapons. It didn’t help my traveling partner had a bunch of old Russian visas in his passport. Nevertheless, I knew they were at war and needed to do what they must. After thirty minutes of questioning, we are let through a door where there are twenty hawkish taxi drivers all yelling their offers to take us. We wait for a friend to pick us up instead.
The next few days in Uzhhorod were both exhilarating and depressing for different reasons. Every restaurant my friends bring me to is filled with delicious food and their own brand of “Limonade”, which seems to be pretty much anything under the sun. People are friendly to a point that in some ways surpass even American hospitality. This was nothing like the culture of other post-soviet places I had been to before. The old cobblestone-like streets of its downtown evoked an image of an older, better time when life was simple. I could imagine groups of children playing and soldiers alike marching through it. The old part in the north of the city was definitely prettier than anywhere else to its new south too, which reeked of communist ideology in its fashion sense. Every third man that passed by looked like they could be one of my cousins or uncles. I really did belong here in looks at least. Whether people saw themselves as part of Rusyns here was a different story.
Rusynness in a town like Uzhhorod was hidden behind the layers of Ukrainian bureaucracy and propaganda unparalleled in the rest of the province. Here there were probably plenty of Rusyns, but also those descendants of Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and others who had moved during the Soviet times. During my first meal the night we arrived, our group went out to a place right next to the dull SBU building in the Czechoslovak-built administration wing of the city. As I ate my pelmeni I wondered how many Rusyns had ended up inside there. Would I be next if I did something stupid by mistake?
Even with this outward Ukrainian appearance, the cracks of Rusyn identity still showed through in the city if one were to look hard enough. Signs scribbled in restaurants read out the languages the staff spoke. The normal variety appeared as always, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Russian, and also surprisingly Rusyn. This happened more than once, yet every time surprised me as much as the one before it. In the Uzhhorod castle, there was a bookstore with an entire shelf dedicated to Rusyn culture and literature. This was a government-run place, and it was just out in the open like a normal occurrence. In another instance, a place in the downtown area called Kobzar of all names had an entire half floor dedicated to Rusyn authors. I was also definitely followed once or twice already but never detained or beaten. It was an enormous contrast to the central government policy on Rusyns from Kyiv which looked to be far more authoritarian from afar.
My mental image of the Rusyn situation here immediately went back to the drawing board. What in the hell was going on? I would ask people over the following days what their thoughts were. To that end, they gave a mix of answers with some running themes. What I had seen with my own eyes painted a similar picture. The most talked-about issue was that the Rusyn movement here and elsewhere is horribly unorganized. These situations would range from no organizations in some areas to having one with about ten vice presidents in a total staff of thirty people. In other words, there were no leaders with the required combination of tact, experience, and desire to actually do something effectively. The lone Rusyn activists that did show skill, like the many wonderful individuals I met, also lacked the support that should have already come from these networks of organizations.
Worse than that though was that the Ukrainian approach to cultural assimilation was much smarter than I had realized. Superficial elements of our culture were allowed to be left out in the open, like what I had witnessed above, but once someone who was actually competent at organizing came along or an investor looking to fund Rusyn artists, they would often be squashed like a bug. I would hear stories from colleagues about being told not to present Rusyn literature at certain festivals, or that so and so was probably on the SBU payroll. This sense of paranoia permeated the air not just slightly. For the most part, local traditions would only be allowed to be praised in the context of being a special type of Ukrainian and nothing more. All the while our people’s youth continue to be poorly educated on their region’s history and ever increasingly assimilate by forgetting their heritage.
We often do not have simple situations to figure out, and this place called Transcarpathia is no different. You see, what I found in my time is that Rusyn ethnic consciousness here is not like what one sees in the nation-states of Europe today. It is far more similar to what a villager from Afghanistan sees their identity as than what a Ukrainian sees his. It matters more that one is Transcarpathian, a regional folk consciousness, than either Rusyn or Ukrainian. One says po-nashomu, not whatever term that was created by some academic. Nationality has little meaning to the majority and especially the older generations if you get to know and ask them about it. I have no doubt this exact type of mindset has been ingrained for a very long time here.
Because of this, the population is very malleable on the surface level to institutionalization. Kids may call themselves Ukrainian due to the school telling them that, but if given a Rusyn one they would likely use that too. Even though they are supposedly Ukrainian, they still proudly have their own type of speaking, clothing, and attitude. What word is used often does not matter to them that much except after one goes north of the mountains to see what Ukrainian actually means. Many then realize the vast amount of difference there is between Ukrainians and Rusyns. This if anything brought me hope as it meant the situation could still be changed for the better. If a large enough intelligentsia formed here we could truly turn this tide.
As days passed and my next trip drew near, the exhilaration and depression came into full force. For I had finally begun to realize what the situation was truly like. Guesses of what Rusyns thought had turned into the reality of experience, and the hundreds of hours taken to get here had not felt like they had been a waste. If anything my resolve had only strengthened in character. I knew now for sure that my mission would be to help change this for the better. None of these thoughts actually helped to give an answer to what should be done next. So entered the depression.
As the water of the slowly drying Uzh River ran past me as I sat on a park bench half expecting to be kidnapped by some intelligence officers, many theories raced through my head. I better understand our reality now, but what was next? What must we do to succeed? Apartment buildings and complexes covered the view of the other side of town in their mix of eighteenth-century and soviet block architecture. A symbol of what had become of our homeland during a period of fifty years. As I looked down I could see my legs continue bouncing as if they were almost uncontrollable. Stress from the impending trip to Volovets did not help when trying to relax. That would have to wait until I got back from the mountains.