This is part one in the July partial release of The New Rusyn Decade. You can access part two by clicking on this link: The Goals of a New Rusyn Decade
What we can first come to understand is that the condition we find ourselves in, both in Europe and North America, is not entirely the work of natural change brought forth by our own actions. If you are a diasporan, the reason why you likely do not know how to speak the Rusyn language, nor know anyone who does is a result of a dedicated policy to make it so. If you did not know that you were Rusyn at all or had believed yourself to be Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, or Russian, then this is again in the same domain. The process by which these realities have manifested is from something called Rusyn erasure, and the reasoning why depends on the guilty party involved in it.
Rusyn erasure, referring to a process or tendency that results in Rusyns being misrepresented, delegitimized, or appropriated, has been pervasive for the past 155 years. To understand what exactly this means in practice we can go through each of the major examples of it up to today. While it may seem like a tedious expedition, knowing the overarching events is essential because merely observing where we are now and how we behave lacks reason as to why. Furthermore, lacking a map of the why blocks one from realizing the position they are in so that they can escape it. Our traumas as a nation could stack up to be as thick as a book, but with keeping brevity in mind this brief overview will suffice.
The original form of Rusyn erasure took place during the period of Magyarization in Austria-Hungary between 1867 and 1918, where the government in Budapest attempted to assimilate its minorities into becoming Hungarians. This betrayal had ended nearly a millennia of a just relationship between the two groups. Some of our historical figures had suddenly become Hungarians in history books, people’s Rusyn surnames changed to Hungarian ones, and forced teaching of the Hungarian language as the only language of study had become the norm.
It was common in elite discourse to say that many people in the villages desired this, though that was rarely the case. Our awakener Alexander Dukhnovych (1803-1865) had seen this problem develop even earlier than 1867 and had begun the first great movement toward Rusyn intellectual autonomy in the 1840s. It would start the trend of a select few who would keep our identity alive through the worst of times.
During this period of assimilation there would be an emigration abroad to the United States. At first it was for the economic gains involved, as the counties that Rusyns resided in were some of the poorest in the entire subcontinent. If a man worked for a few years he could return home and buy a reasonable estate with money to spare. After a while many stayed due to the increasingly uncomfortable political situation of the time. It is unknown how many Rusyns were lost to these policies, but tens of thousands were assimilated at the minimum.
WWI would bring about a sudden change and conclusions to the previous forms of political oppression. Now that Austria-Hungary would be at war with Russia, Rusyns and the Ruthenians of Galicia (which were both part of Austria-Hungary at the time) were seen as potential fifth columns due to their perceived Russophilia. Russophilia in this context relates to a specific set of ideas about the identity of the descendants of the Rus and their relation to the states they resided in.
In the original times of the Rus its regions had been together under a loose confederation. It was only in the process of Muscovy developing on its own in Eastern Rus, and what was in the west being absorbed by the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, that major political divisions began to occur such as the Muscovite and Ruthenian division mentioned earlier. Consequently the ideal of reuniting the Rus all under one kingdom was very attractive to segments of both populations who were under siege with threats of assimilation.
During the war the Austrian government enacted a policy of mass repression and extermination against its Rusyn population. Murder without trial of activists was a regular occurrence in Lemkovyna and by government order the first concentration camp in Europe was constructed and named Thalerhof. It is where thousands of Lemko-Rusyns and Galician intellectuals alike perished in horrid squalor. The harrowing events of the camp would be reported in news outlets like the New York Times, where the brutality of it all was showcased in a type of witness account. Without warning a person could be tied up and stabbed to death in a barracks, and a simple accidental nudge against a guard could prove equally fatal. An airport was built on top of the former grounds and there is no monument to the victims of the camp. Austria to this day refuses to own up to its crimes. Imagine if the concentration camps of the Nazi regime were so purposefully forgotten?
In addition to these actions the government of Austria began a process of total delegitimization toward the Rusyn people. As Ukrainian identity was seen as less hostile to Austrian rule, it was promoted to the Lemko-Rusyns and the Ruthenians of Galicia even though it was a foreign concept from the lands of the Cossacks. One could not simply be Rusyn, as this was seen as a suspicious action by the authorities. The native institutions of the locals were crushed, with propped-up Ukrainophile counterparts allowed to operate freely.
This round of oppression would not end us, and the Rusyn people would emerge from the war battered yet still alive without some of its greatest leaders and intellectuals. The year 1918 that had marked the war’s end would also note the first true attempt at Rusyn national sovereignty. It was on December 5th, 1918 that a group of over 500 Rusyns from 130 villages would declare the Lemko-Rusyn Republic. Its head would be Jaroslav Kacmarcyk, a Lemko from the town of Binczarova. This Lemko Republic’s official claimed borders covered nearly all of ethnographical Lemkovyna and some territory to its west.
It was a noble try, even if incredibly disorganized. The new government would be plagued by the inability to form a strong central authority. A famous account of the situation was written by Simeon Pyzh in his book of essays, A Short History of Carpathian Russia. For each village within its borders would have its own council look to make decisions, further weakening the state at large. People did not understand nor try to grasp the reality of political events at the time. Eventually when joining the Russian state was impossible, the Lemkos would look to join their brothers and sister in Subcarpathian Rus.
We, the Rusyn nation, living in a compact settlement in the southern parts of the Galician administrative units of Nowy Targ, Nowy Sącz, Grybów, Gorlice, Jasło, Krosno, and Sanok do not wish to be incorporated into the Polish state, and wish to share the fate of our Rusyn brothers [living] in Spiš, Šariš, and Zemplín counties as one indivisible geographic and ethnographic unit.
December 5th, 1918
Unfortunately, this plan would never come to fruition. Both the governor of Subcarpathian Rus at the time Gregory Žatkovich, a Rusyn-American, and the states of Czechoslovakia and Poland opposed this integration. It was in the end only a pipe dream that seemed too good to be real. Eventually the Polish authorities would disband the Lemko Republic in 1920 and put its leaders on trial. These were incredibly lenient compared to the Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia, and after they concluded the Polish government would mostly leave Lemkos to their own affairs. It was one of many differences that led to the significant difference in opinion regarding the character of the Polish state between these two groups until after the second world war.
Terrorism in Bohemia by Congressman Medill McCormick
New York Times, 1917
The Rusyns in Subcarpathian Rus experienced a completely different world in almost all respects. Like the Lemkos, the majority of Rusyns first wanted to join Russia after the end of the war. This was also not possible logistically for them as Poland controlled large swathes of western Ukraine and Belarus known as the Kresy. The westernmost part of the newly former USSR and the eastern border of Subcarpathian Rus were at a minimum 125 miles apart. Though a large percentage of the political class of the Rusyns at the time had called for some type of independence, the Wilsonian government in America would tell them that the only viable option would be to become incorporated into Czechoslovakia.
As part of this deal, the eastern section of Carpathian Rus (excluding Pryashiv) would become autonomous. Like many deals between nations in this period after the war, what was promised wasn’t exactly delivered. The notion of Rusyn autonomy was a superficial note on paper at best and the first modern appearance of internalized subjugation for our people. Czechs and Slovaks lined the offices of the provincial government, which itself had such little power compared to what it had been promised. The perception of the Rusyn homeland was also as a type of exotic backward place that lacked in civilization compared to the rest of the country.
The government of Czechoslovakia was as incompetent as it was controlling. Civil war in the Russian Empire led many former Ukrainian military members and intelligentsia to settle in Subcarpathian Rus with the goal of Ukrainianization. This was left to take root by the Czechoslovak government which did little to stop it. Native Rusyns would begin to be brainwashed by these Ukrainian nationalists through a variety of economic and cultural avenues. The ideals of Dukhnovych and the Rusyn language were downplayed to the level of subtle Rusyn erasure as they were totally against the new wave of theory about the Ukrainianness of Carpathian Rus. The worst of it would come in a coup in 1938 that would overthrow the legitimate government of Subcarpathian Rus.
What would be known as the project of Carpatho-Ukraine would set the preconditions for the worst era of Rusyn history. Ukrainian nationalists from Galicia formed as an infantry army known as the Carpathian Sich that would cross over the Carpathians and attack the Czechoslovak forces as the Czechoslovak state itself crumbled, eventually overrunning them and declaring a so-called Carpatho-Ukrainian state. They were aided by a small handful of Rusyn natives like Avgustyn Voloshyn, who would now be described as political opportunists, while there was almost zero participation from the rest of the population in the government or army.
The Carpathian Sich was closely aligned ideologically with the other ultranationalist groups in Western Ukraine like the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) which was responsible for the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and aiding the Nazi’s in the mass killings of Jews in Ukraine. These regions had been the sites of regular pogroms against the Jews over the previous century, whereas in Subcarpathian Rus there wasn’t a single one that had occurred in the entirety of its history. Regardless of this, the Hungary army would eventually obliterate the small army and officially annex the territory in what would become a change of tune from the previous experience under their rule. In fact this time around the government of Hungary actually supported the Rusynification of Subcarpathia and did so for nearly five years. It would hold parts of Carpathian Rus until 1945 when it would be annexed to Soviet Ukraine under the pretense that it was a Ukrainian majority territory, and be renamed Zakarpattia Oblast. So would begin the Decades of Silence.
The Decades of Silence was the period between 1945 and 1991 when all countries Rusyns resided in besides Yugoslavia outlawed the Rusyn identity and language. Claiming oneself as Rusyn was to risk being put in jail, or worse killed indiscriminately. The ties between Rusyns and their heritage were torn away without regard for the consequences. Any communication between those in the homeland and the diaspora was cut off, and the same was true even between Rusyn regions.
Hard borders between the USSR and the various Soviet satellite states meant that any dialogue stopped completely. The Greek Catholic church was also prosecuted, with many of our religious leaders being executed by Soviet authorities with the rest having to work underground if they wanted to survive.
Our people were forced to take on new ethnic identities and go to specific schools for these that were created to foster their artificial conversion. For example, it was not uncommon for Pryashiv Rusyns to have to choose whether they identified as Slovak or Ukrainian, with most choosing the first option. In Subcarpathian Rus Ukrainization was a matter of state policy and has been ever since the annexation of Podkarpatska Rus in 1945. The Rusyn language became the Zakarpattian dialect, and the Rusyn culture to Transcarpathian culture. In Romania, where a small section of Hutsulia exists, these people were also by default assigned as Ukrainians. Anyone that stood up against these conditions or spoke the truth of the situation was quickly jailed or fined. Only after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, and the Soviet collapse of 1991, did this begin to change for the better.
During this time the entire region of Lemkovyna was destroyed in 1947 by the Polish authorities under the idea that Rusyns were Ukrainians, and to stop the Ukrainian Insurgent Army required the complete removal of whatever Ukrainians still resided within Poland. It is called the Lemko Ethnocide and it was the culmination of a policy that began with the Austrians and Ukrainian nationalists and still exists today in modern Ukraine. Almost all Lemko-Rusyn villages were burned to the ground or resettled by Poles after the Lemkos were expelled. The government of Czechoslovakia was complicit in this as they shut down the border to Pryashiv Rus, stopping Lemkos from fleeing to there. Anyone who hadn’t been killed was rounded up and sent to Western Poland where many reside today except for the 10,000 that were allowed back at the end of the 1950s.
As we now enter the present day the effects of these events are still felt throughout the Rusyn regions. Thirty years of peace and recognition in most countries has still not removed the scars of the past, because the reality is that many of us are still living in it to this day. State policy in Ukraine is to declare Rusyns are Ukrainians, and as the government has gotten more nationalistic their attempts of Rusyn erasure have only gotten more pronounced. Now people are being arrested again in Subcarpathia for speaking out against the actions of the state and there is a full assault on Rusyn culture. Even Rusyn-Americans like Andy Warhol are being co-opted as Ukrainians through the help of propaganda research papers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Street signs with the names of local Rusyns heroes are being forced to be renamed to Ukrainian nationalists under the guise of desovietization.
In the background we also have our cultural institutions almost completely funded and controlled by the state governments of Slovakia, Romania, and Poland which forbid any steps outside a predetermined course of action. There can be no advocation for autonomy or an apology for the actions of the past. These same governments have done nothing to advocate for the rights of Rusyns in Ukraine, and have at every turn supported the greater interests of the Western alliance without fail.
Through great struggle we have still prevailed and are near the highest level of Rusyn consciousness since the era of WWII. New projects are popping up all over the world like never before, and dozens of people every day are learning about their ancestry in Europe and abroad with a large percentage of them looking to help put an end to our erasure. Yet the threat of Rusyn erasure has not dwindled because we are unaware of its history and reach. Nearly every interaction we have with those who control the countries we live in is guided by the dynamic of subjugator and subjugated.