I spent a large portion of my childhood in Čertižne, a small Rusyn village in the northern Carpathians on the Slovak-Polish border. It was the end of the world for us as beyond it lay the vast emptiness of the Polish Carpathians. As one of my father’s friends once said, “all roads end in Čertižne.”
That is not, however, how things stood before WW2. Back then, the northern side of the slopes was populated with the same kind of villages as ours on the southern side. Both sides of this stretch of the Carpathians were settled around 600 years ago by the Rusyn shepherds from further east. They brought their pastoral way of life and small wooden churches, which still dot the landscape. But while the villages in the south continue to hang on despite various demographic pressures, those to the north have been almost completely depopulated after their inhabitants were deported either into the USSR or to Poland’s interior.
My great-grandfather, who was born just to the north of Čertižne in Nižna Voľa, had escaped this fate by having married and settled on the Czechoslovak side of the mountains. His extended family wasn’t so fortunate.
In his books and lectures, Timothy Snyder refers to these people as well as those further east in the Transcarpathia region of Ukraine as Ukrainians, despite that the people have referred to themselves as Rusyns or Rusnaks for hundreds of years. In doing so, Snyder perpetuates in spirit the Stalinist policy which in the wake of WW2 had “solved” the ethnic question of the Rusyns and began their forceful Ukrainization.
Who is Timothy Snyder?
Anyone who has closely followed the war in Ukraine should be familiar with the historian turned spokesman for Ukraine in the west. His insight into the region’s history as well as his shrewd observations and accurate predictions just prior to the war have catapulted Snyder into the media sphere as one of the key voices on the war in Ukraine. His lectures on Ukrainian history are watched by hundreds of thousands and millions more tune in to watch his takes on key issues broadcast on news networks around the world. His library of work on Ukraine and other countries in the region of Eastern Europe is quite extensive. What won me over was his discipline and commitment with which he approaches his area of expertise. Instead of relying on translations, Snyder took the time to learn some of the local languages, like Ukrainian and Polish, so that he could work directly with the primary and secondary sources from these countries.
Over the past few months, I’ve listened to dozens of Snyder’s lectures – not just on Ukraine – read most of his historical volumes and some shorter pieces that I may better understand the author and his thought process. I wanted to understand how someone who has become the foremost authority on Ukraine could get things so deeply wrong about Rusyns.
What are the facts?
While Rusyns have a long history in the Polish and Hungarian kingdoms, our history as a nation can be traced to the 19th century when the organizations promoting our cultural and political goals first emerged. One of the most well-known figures of this time was Alexander Duchnovič, a Greek-Catholic priest who saw Rusyns as part of a larger Russian family, though with distinct linguistic and cultural characteristics. The Russophile movement was the most dominant political movement among the Rusyns during the 19th century. Toward the latter part of the century, influenced by the political and cultural changes to the north in the Austrian province of Galicia, a Ukrainophile movement began to emerge, which saw Rusyns as part of the Ukrainian nation, distinct from the Russian one. What needs to be stressed here is that whatever the political affiliations of the handful of Rusyn elites, the vast majority of the population was illiterate and could speak neither Russian nor Ukrainian.
The end of WW1 brought major political changes to the entire region. For Rusyns, this meant a second attempt at political autonomy – after the short-lived Užhorod District in 1849 – within a newly formed Czechoslovakia. In his Sketches from a Secret War, Snyder talks about this period of history in the Polish provinces to the north, most specifically in Volhynia. In many ways, the problems of poverty and lack of education were similar for the Ukrainians in the north and the Rusyns in the south. But unlike the Poles, who wouldn’t move against their own, Polish landholders to redistribute the land among the poor Ukrainians, Czechs had no qualms about seizing the land from mostly Hungarian landowners and redistributing it among the Rusyns.
Another problem that the Czechs tackled differently than their Polish neighbors to the north was education. Czechs brought the era of Magyarization to an end and promoted the education of Rusyns in their own language. However, after decades of Magyarization, which resulted in the closure of most of the Rusyn schools, there was a dire shortage of local teachers. Czechs decided to solve this problem by sending hundreds of educated emigres from the former Russian Empire or the newly created Poland. Many of these teachers were Ukrainians from Galicia, who over time began to Ukrainianize the local Rusyns.
It’s difficult to say how successful these first Ukrainianization attempts were as the interwar censuses in Czechoslovakia don’t reflect the Rusyn-Ukrainian split. However, certain indications, like polling results or enlistment in armies – Rusyns, for instance, made up the majority of soldiers of the Czechoslovak Corps, which fought alongside the USSR against the Nazis – suggest that the Rusyn orientation was still the dominant one.
Poles were much more precise in this, as shown on their last census before the war in 1931. While Snyder talks of around 5 million Ukrainians living in Poland before the war, the census simply doesn’t reflect that. Given a choice, over one million identified Rusyn as their mother tongue, while another three million chose Ukrainian. It’s likely that a portion of those self-identified Rusyns simply didn’t distinguish between Rusyn and Ukrainian. But a large number of these people, like my great-grandfather and his kin, thought of themselves as Rusyns, not Ukrainians. In fact, in Čertižne where he settled down, the locals called him Vaňo Poľak, not Lemko – an ethnographic designation for Rusyns that caught on in Poland but was foreign to Rusyns in the south – and certainly not Ukrainian. As far as the locals were concerned the only difference between him and them was that he was born one village to the north.
To the east of Lemkos, was another group that the ethnographers designated as Boikos. They too faced similar Ukrainization pressures. Recently, a video about the tri-nation (Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia) national park listed in the UNESCO and known in Slovakia as Poloniny National Park was published. A Boiko gentleman in the middle of the video briefly discusses these problems as well as the importance of keeping their indigenous culture alive.
The end of WW2 saw the annexation of Subcarpathian Rus’, renamed Transcarpathia, into the USSR. To legitimize seizure of this territory, Stalin brought the debate over the ethnic identity to a close and deemed all Rusyns Ukrainian. Rusyn became a bourgeoise term placed outside of law and all those who identified as such were now forcefully Ukrainianized. Some Rusyns in Czechoslovakia, given the choice of complete assimilation or at least a partial preservation of their culture, accepted the Ukrainian label. For example, the current director of the Rusyn Museum in Prešov, Ľuba Kráľová, identified as a Ukrainian during the communist regime even though she doesn’t speak Ukrainian. Other Rusyns felt closer to the Slovak ethnic identity than to the Ukrainian one.
Once communism collapsed people were free to use the term Rusyn again. In fact, census data shows that Ukrainization policies had exacerbated Rusyn assimilation into the Slovak majority, as only a minority of Rusyns chose Ukrainian as their ethnic identity during the previous regime. Currently, the number of self-identified Rusyns has grown with each subsequent census, however, assimilation and depopulation are taking their toll and the overall trend is negative. The good thing is that now all the countries where Rusyns live once again include this ethnic category on their census. All but one: Ukraine.
Death by omission
Timothy Snyder is one of the foremost experts on the modern history of Eastern Europe. His two volumes, Bloodlands and Black Earth, have done much to deepen our understanding of the holocaust as well as other lesser-known genocides, such as Holodomor. His writings are not only informative, but also engaging as he zooms in on the human drama that unfolded amidst the tragic events.
One of those events which he briefly touches upon in his works are the ethnic cleansing operations committed by the communist Polish government after WW2. I’ve never heard any of these stories growing up. Only some vague references to people running across the mountains and hiding in the forests. Family trauma had to be deeply buried for another 40 years until we could finally learn the whole truth. I have read accounts of the thousands of Rusyn refugees who fled across the border, pleading with the Czechoslovak authorities to let them stay. The Stalinist policy was clear. These people were Ukrainians and thus a liability for either nation in case the Soviet appetite for new territory had not been satiated by 1945. Thus, the Ukrainization policy directly contributed to the fate of these people.
When Snyder repeats the Stalinist mantra of ethnic policy, he not only distorts the legacy of these events, although actual Ukrainians were deported in large numbers as well, he also contributes to legitimizing the actions of the Polish government, from whose point of view they were merely protecting their territorial integrity against further expansion of Ukraine under Stalin’s helm.
I can only imagine what my great-grandfather must have felt to see his entire extended family carted off never to return. One of his brothers, who resettled in the USSR, did manage to come back for a visit shortly before they both passed away. I am not sure if on that visit they were able to take a walk a little ways north to see the place they grew up in one last time. The border, despite that both, Czechoslovakia and Poland, were communist, was tightly guarded. But my great-grandfather didn’t much like the Poles – and I’d imagine his brother wouldn’t either – so perhaps one more chance to piss them off would be just the thing for his bucket list. By calling these people Ukrainians, Snyder perpetuates a certain type of narrative that fits neatly along the borders carved out of the post-war settlement, but one which ignores a largely forgotten community of people.
Another glaring omission in Snyder’s writing, given his specialization in genocides of Eastern Europe, is the Rusyn genocide during WW1, which saw thousands of Rusyns and non-Rusyns shot, hanged, and eventually loaded up onto trains to be interred in Europe’s first concentration camps. Granted, the size of this tragedy doesn’t even register on the scale compared to what we’d see in the next global war. Also, the target of this genocide wasn’t strictly on ethnic, but on political grounds. Since most of the Rusyn elites were at this time Russophiles that was enough to draw ire from the Austro-Hungarian armies retreating before the Russians. Still, the entire Rusyn elite in Galicia was deported and subject to torture and arbitrary executions. There are clear parallels between this genocide and other that would follow suit. To not recognize that is to fail to see the dangers of genocides emerging even out of seemingly benign societies.
Theory meets reality
The theories Snyder presents, whether about genocides, EU’s inception, or the rise of “not even fascism”, are seductively elegant. Snyder has the uncanny ability to take incredibly complex events and present them with such simplicity that anyone can understand. This elegance and simplicity are especially seductive given the chaotic times we currently inhabit. This elegance, however, comes at a cost. For Rusyns, the cost is denial of our history.
In one of his lectures, Snyder praises the Hapsburg regime as the only empire to take democratization seriously. While Hapsburgs did implement certain progressive reforms to give their different peoples some representation, upon closer inspection there are serious flaws in Snyder’s claims. Bulk of these reforms didn’t materialize in the Hungarian half of the monarchy. Instead of respecting minority rights, Hungary embarked on a series of assimilative policies collectively known as Magyarization. The state of affairs was appalling enough to lead a number of historians and journalists at the time, like R.W. Seton-Watson, to report on these events to a larger audience further west. In light of such reports, the Hapsburg monarchy looked anything but progressive or enlightened.
It’s difficult to find a group which was affected more severely by Magyarization than the Rusyns. Most of the Rusyn schools were closed down during that period and their literacy rates, at only 20%, were the lowest in the entire kingdom before the outbreak of the Great War. At a time when other nations were becoming more politically and culturally active, without a well-educated populace, Rusyns fell behind even when compared to their Ukrainian cousins, who could call upon a much larger population and Austrian support.
When discussing genocides, Snyder sets up certain conditions: powerful totalitarian states, which create zones of statelessness where the actual genocides happen. While this explanation fits neatly within the framework of the genocides committed by the Soviets and the Germans, they fail to explain the Rusyn genocide. Austria-Hungary was neither a totalitarian state, nor did it create any zones of statelessness. Still, even without these preconditions it managed to shoot, hang, and eventually intern thousands of its citizens in concentration camps.
When explaining the formation of the Ukrainian nation, Snyder stresses the opposing forces of the Polish and the Russian imperialism as the catalysts for that national phenomenon. Rusyns, whom Snyder brands as Ukrainians, having developed for the most part in the Hungarian kingdom, have been shielded from either the Polish or the Russian designs. At a time when the Ukrainian elites were learning to finesse their national arguments against their more powerful Slavic neighbors, the Rusyn elites didn’t feel the same pressure to distinguish themselves from their Hungarian overlords. The differences between Rusyns, a Slavic people, and Hungarians, who aren’t even Indo-Europeans, are self-evident. Without that sense of urgency, our political elites came to the game of nation-building much later than their Ukrainian cousins to the east, a deficit which is still felt today in the Rusyn community.
Here again, Rusyns stand in the way of Snyder’s explanation. We are apparently Ukrainians, but without any historical beef with the Poles or the Russians. There is a framework for genocides, but the Rusyn genocide doesn’t quite fit within it. Austria-Hungary was a benign regime, but one of its last acts was to build concentration camps. As these exceptions pile on, Rusyns become a bit of a nuisance and must therefore expiate by becoming Ukrainians.
One of my uncles who had lived through WW2 would, on most nights, swing by our apartment to watch the news. Then, after he was all caught up, he’d regale me with stories of his youth. He would sing the Rusyn anthem to me proudly, remembering a time when we were a people with a flag and country. He could still remember some Yiddish songs his Jewish friends and neighbors taught him when they were growing up together in Čertižne. After the war, when the Soviet agitators arrived, promising heaven and black earth to till in Ukraine, their family picked up and moved.
His grave now stands at a cemetery atop a small hill in Čertižne not far from my great-grandfather’s grave. The pictures of their faces on the grave stones fade, but their memory is still alive.
We’re in a war
The war in Ukraine brings misery and traumas which will last for generations. It’s changed the trajectories of millions of lives, including, to a small extent, my own. But had it not been for the war, there’s little chance that I would ever sit down to type these lines. I’d probably keep on getting my daily dose of news every morning with my coffee before work, like millions of anonymous working stiffs. Then, one man, believing himself to hold the destiny of his entire nation, overcommitted to his own delusion. Wars of conquest are back and this proves what can happen when, among other things, history is dictated from the top in absolute terms.
A few months ago, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) came away with a haul of anti-Ukrainian material after a raid in Užhorod. Among the seized contraband were Rusyn songs, books, our nation’s anthem and our flag. This was followed by a predictable barrage of commentary sowing hatred against an already marginalized group. It is unfortunate that people like Timothy Snyder, who on one hand promote western humanist values, give academic cover to such actions.