According to various estimates, there could be up to 1.6 million Rusyns that currently live throughout the world. However, according to official census data, only roughly 100,000 people around the world have officially identified themselves as Rusyns. While this is significant, statistically, the numbers when examining the status of Rusyn Americans are even more staggering. As of the 2020 Census, only about 8,000 people in America identify themselves as Rusyn. However, according to Paul Magocsi, there are likely as many as 620,000 Americans with Rusyn ancestry living today. That is only 1.29% of Rusyns-Americans that are conscious of their own ancestry. This illustrates that, within our community, the lack of a solid ethnic identity especially in the American diaspora is overwhelming. The reasons for this, I believe, are quite more complex than one would expect.
The historical suppression of Rusynness and Rusyn identity is only a modest part of the explanation. There are various theories for this phenomenon, and one significant explanation is that we are a nation without a state, much like the Kurds. However, it is difficult to compare our situation to the Kurds, as currently there exist as many as 50 million Kurds around the world, mostly concentrated in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Indeed, the Kurds have more influence globally due to their sheer numbers. With only 100,000 people that recognize themselves as Rusyns globally, the ability to exert any sort of meaningful influence whether culturally or politically becomes a difficult undertaking, even within the countries in the Carpathians that we refer to as the homeland. Even if the Kurds do not have a nation-state to call home, they still have a solid foundation of ethnic consciousness and have established separatist/sovereignty movements, on top of their large numbers across the globe and within their homeland.
The situation with the Rusyn community and greater diaspora is more difficult, I’d argue, than the Kurds. Rusyn identity was not truly set in stone until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the centuries prior, “Rusyn” or “Ruthenian” was a term used to describe all Eastern Slavic inhabitants of Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary. As time went on, national movements within the Ukrainian and Belarusian, and eventually the Carpatho-Rusyn communities allowed these groups to form solid identities, such that by the turn of the 20th century, Belarusians and Ukrainians would start to not refer to themselves as “Ruthenthians” or “Rusyns”. The only group that retained the “Rusyn” ethnonym were the Slavs residing in the Carpathians. This was achieved in the wake of hardcore Ukraninophilia that kept pushing to absorb the Carpathian Rusyns into the greater Ukrainian ethnosphere. By the middle of the 20th century, the Soviet government sought to eliminate “Rusynness” by absorbing all the Carpathian Rusyns into the greater Ukrainian ethnosphere. It was largely the efforts of the American diaspora that were able to retain their unique Rusynness, along with quite a few within the homeland. Ultimately, the collapse of Communism and the iron grip of the Soviet Empire saw an awakening and revival of Rusyn awareness and cultural affluence.
While many undoubted victories occurred in the 1990s, there were also many failures in a political sense. The clear lack of political action by the Rusyn community has led to a great stagnation of Rusynness during the past decade or so. This might be a controversial take because it’s clear that Rusyn folk festivals are well and alive in the homeland. However, this stagnation is evident in the realm of politics. Rusyn-orientated political parties in the homeland do not exist. Interestingly, this is even the case even when most other minorities in European countries typically have their own parties for representation purposes. Neither is there a collective political movement in any of the nations of the homeland. This great stagnation has also been a contributor to the modern lack of ethnic consciousness among Rusyns around the world. Regarding stagnation specifically in the United States diaspora, a similar yet even more potentially frightening consequence has occurred.
While the diaspora has been successful in many ways throughout the past 100 years in preserving Rusynness and Rusyn identity, the biggest failure has been the Rusyns not being able to entirely pass down their Rusynness down the generations. When comparing the situation with the diaspora and the homeland, even in the wake of cultural assimilation during the 20th century, Rusynness was still able to prevail across generations in Eastern Europe. My grandparents are a good example of this. Growing up in a village in the Pryashiv region in the 1950s, they were sent to Ukrainian language schools at young ages. But their parents did not support it and would not let them speak Ukrainian in the household; they understood that Ukrainian was not truly their mother tongue. This was commonplace for many, so coincidentally Rusynness was able to be preserved via parents and grandparents of that generation that understood that the government was attempting to Ukrainianize them and their children.
The issues the diaspora faced were a little different than the experience of those still in the homeland.
The largest wave of Rusyn emigration into the New World occurred between roughly 1880 and 1914. The generation that fled and raised their children in America was passed on, for the most part, by the 1960s and 1970s. But in the meantime, as hardworking individuals, many were able to raise children and then subsequently grandchildren, who chronologically today we would refer to them as the Silent and Baby Boomer Generations. And these Baby Boomers grew up enjoying the spoils of the American Empire, and likely today still have memories of Baba and Dido, who spoke Rusyn or “po nashomu” at home and cooked them Pirohy and Halusky as children. However, as time went on, many of these Baby Boomers did not and would not identify themselves as Rusyns. To be clear, I’m not blaming any single generation for this occurring. Ultimately, the origins of these failures lie with the first waves of immigrants yet even then, these individuals cannot be blamed, the blame lies in the unfortunate situation Rusynness found itself in at the turn of the 20th century.
As Ukrainian and Belarusian identity was solidified, Rusyn identity was still not fully understood even at the turn of the century in the homeland. While it was developing, it wasn’t nearly as successful as the development of the Ukrainian identity. It’s a known fact that many Rusyns did not always call themselves Rusyns. Rusnaks, Ruthenians, Russians, Carpathian Russians, Slavish, Slav, Ukrainian, Slovak, Polish, etc. To many of them, it didn’t really matter what they called themselves. A decent amount that ended up permanently settling in America didn’t look back, and could care less about previous identities, such that their children and grandchildren would unfortunately not retain the “culture without a name.” The one exception that I noticed is with Lemkos, who often passed down the Lemko ethnic term to their descendants more often than other Rusyn ancestors. But given these conditions, it’s apparent why there is such a disparity these days in the national census. Some might have the attitude that if “Baba and Dido” did not call themselves Rusyns, then we must not be Rusyns. The loss of generational knowledge from the first generation that arrived here became evident. Assimilation into the American psyche became important for many for their children and grandchildren to live “successful” lives in the new world. This unfortunately meant, a significant loss of cultural identity as the generations continued. Frankly, this is commonplace for most types of immigrants, whereas by the 3rd and 4th generations, what remains of the original cultural identity is often lackluster and nearly non-existent. As the global Rusyn movement weakened in the aftermath of the Second World War, so did Rusyn identity itself for the descendants of many of the immigrants, who eventually ended up taking in Ukrainian or Slovak as their identities out of the sake of convenience and perhaps even disinterest in the truth.
As a result, there are certainly many Baby Boomers that did not grow up understanding they are perhaps truly Rusyn. So now their grandchildren – Gen Z and Millennials, likely do not realize their own Rusynness. I will give an example.
When I was in my teenage years, I had a girlfriend whose mother would always insist that the family had Ukrainian roots. However, while speaking to her father, he only mentioned Polish and Slovak ancestry existing in the family, and not Ukrainian. At the time, I did not think much about this. Perhaps they just weren’t sure about the identity and didn’t care to research. But the more I investigated it, apparently, her mother did do quite extensive research. I essentially just accepted that my ex-girlfriend was likely just a mix of the cultures. Things started to change when I started to discover my own Rusynness in the past year; I thought back to the interactions I had with my ex-girlfriend’s family and had a major realization. It’s likely that when the mother was doing ancestry research on the family, “Ruthenian” might have shown up on immigration records. And by doing basic due diligence and looking up what “Ruthenian” is on the internet, I assume Ukrainian would have been the first thing that popped up. What’s interesting is that the father had Slavic ancestry, while the Mother did not, but she was the one doing the research on behalf of the family. But when speaking to the Father and his own mother, they always would insist on Slovak and Polish roots with no mention of Ukrainian or even Ruthenian. I made the conclusion recently that within the claimed Slovak and Polish ancestry, it’s likely that there was Rusyn or maybe Lemko ancestry in there for sure, which is likely where the Mother found “Ruthenian” originating in genealogical records. Knowing the city in which the father grew up (a very Slovak and Polish coal mining town) the Rusyn ancestors likely assimilated into the greater Slovak and Polish cultural sphere of the town, and likely never referred to themselves as Ruthenians, let alone Rusyns. Further, I also realized that her surname was very common in the Pryashiv region of Slovakia, in Rusyn-populated villages, which 100% confirmed my suspicions that she most likely was Rusyn herself.
The more I pondered about this, the more I realized this similar sort of story must be commonplace for many in the diaspora. It’s incredibly likely that many Rusyns after several generations ended up identifying with Slovak, Ukrainian, and Polish. And moreover, this would further explain the disparity in the census greatly.
This poses a challenging predicament. One can’t go around to everyone that identifies as Polish, Slovak or Ukrainian in America and, start insisting they are also likely Rusyn. Beyond the fact that it’s just not physically viable, it also can come off as rude. But since there are so many people that are likely Rusyn, but don’t identify as such purely out of ignorance and unawareness, how does the Rusyn community try to educate people on these matters in a considerate manner?
I think that over the past several decades there have been indeed a large number of people that have figured out their Rusyn heritage naturally, through self-research. This has surely been exacerbated by the recent trends in many Americans trying to discover their ethnic origins via AncestryDNA and 23andme. But these DNA cites only capture a small picture – they do not even include Rusyn as an ethnic group within them. But from my experience, the sites do show clusters around the Carpathian Mountains, and with a bit of research, some people can figure it out from there. A good level of research is required in the person that is exploring their genealogy to be accurate. “Ruthenian” on historical immigration documents could mean Ukrainian or Rusyn in the modern sense, so at that point, the individual would need to investigate the location and specific village origins of their ancestors to accurately determine whether they are Rusyn.
Recently, Michael Burry, a famous American investor, and former Hedge Fund Manager tweeted the following:
To me, he is indirectly shouting out his Rusyn heritage here, without using the term “Rusyn.” He likely falls into the category of people that have Rusyn ancestry yet identify with other nationalities out of obliviousness. I would be willing to bet that a good chunk of his ancestors is Rusyn. But this perfectly illustrates this phenomenon and the lack of solid ethnic consciousness. If he was aware of who the Rusyns are, he likely would have used that term to describe his ancestors.
There is no single generation to lay blame here, nor any single individual. It is not our fault that our numbers have generally been small throughout history, even in the homeland. It is not our fault that our intelligentsia was almost nearly wiped out by the Austrians in the Thalerhof concentration camp, causing Rusynness and Rusyn’s intellectual sovereignty to stagnate. It is not our fault that our ancestors, who for the most part were destitute farmers and shepherds living in an impoverished region of Europe, did not have the time to sit around and ponder their ethnic identities. It is not our fault that during the reign of Soviet rule, the government attempted to all but wipe out our unique identities. These are the challenges we have faced throughout history and have ultimately led to a modern-day disparity where only a fraction of the estimated Rusyns around the world identify themselves as such, especially in the American diaspora. However, now these burdens rest upon our shoulders in the year 2022. We must act now before it is too late, and before Rusyn identity becomes a figment of history. Our identity is under threat, and if the Rusyn movement of today does not undertake actions that our ancestors did not, in a generation or two, what we’ve had for a millennium might be lost forever in the void of memories and the history books.