Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History, 1987. Unpublished manuscript.

Carpatho-Ukraine: A People in Search of Their Identity*

In loving memory of my pobratym, Orest Zilynsky (1923-76)

The Interest of Carpatho-Ukrainian History

In reviewing the state of research on Eastern Europe at the 1960 meeting of the American Historical Association, the late Henry L. Roberts referred to the dearth of regional and local studies: "On the whole I have found in Eastern European history comparatively little of what one might call the 'flower in crannied wall' approach to history: the sense that a single community, or a particular episode, warrants affectionate recording.. . and also contains within it much of universal value."1 A region of Eastern Europe which appears particularly well suited to serve as an illustration of Professor Roberts's observations is Carpatho-Ukraine—a small land known also under several alternative names: Transcarpathian Ukraine, Transcarpathia, Subcarpathia, Subcarpathian Ruthenia or Sub-carpathian Rus', and, in earlier times, Hungarian Ruthenia (Rus'). The interest of Carpatho-Ukrainian history consists in its being a typical borderland or transitional territory, where for centuries various political, social, and cultural forces have met and clashed. Thus it is possible to study there, in an almost laboratory-like fashion, the interaction of factors which have shaped the evolution of that part of the world as a whole.

The term Carpatho-Ukraine designates the area inhabited by Ukrainians on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountain range and the adjacent foothills. All of Carpatho-Ukraine is contained within the basin of the upper Tisza River with its numerous tributaries, ultimately flowing into the Danube. The crest of the Carpathians is the territory's border with Galicia in the north; toward the south, Carpatho-Ukraine merges into the Hungarian plain. The western and eastern neighbouring lands are, respectively, Slovakia and Transylvania. The contemporary population of the Transcarpathian province (oblast), an administrative unit of the Ukrainian SSR, is in excess of 1,100,000,2 of whom c. 75 per cent are ethnic Ukrainians. In addition, some tens of thousands of Carpatho-Ukrainians live as a minority in the Presov (Priashiv) region of eastern Slovakia.

Ethnically and religiously the people of Carpatho-Ukraine belong to the East Slavic and Byzantine sphere. The traditional political ties of the territory, however, have been with East-Central Europe: Hungary, the Habsburg Empire, and Czechoslovakia. The early medieval history of Carpatho-Ukraine is moot, owing to the scarcity of reliable sources, and the question of the origins of Slavic settlement in the region has been much debated.3 But it is certain that since the eleventh century the territory of Carpatho-Ukraine found itself permanently included in the Hungarian kingdom. In the course of the late Middle Ages, Hungarian latifundialism and serfdom were imposed on the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) peasantry, and this was to determine the social structure of the land until the twentieth century. As an organic part of Hungary, Carpatho-Ukraine passed under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty in 1526. From the sixteenth until the early eighteenth century, it was the ground on which Habsburg absolutism and the recurrent frondes of the Hungarian nobility fought out their battles. The land was affected by Turkish invasions from the south, while the eastern section was for some time controlled by the principality of Transylvania. During the same period, the conflict between the Orthodox and Greek Catholic (Uniate) churches in Carpatho-Ukraine was closely connected, on the one hand, with religious developments in Polish Ukraine, and, on the other hand, with the struggle between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in Hungary. In the second half of the eighteenth century, during the reigns of Maria Theresa (1740-80) and Joseph II (1780-90), Carpatho-Ukraine became the object of the policies of Austrian enlightened despotism, especially in the ecclesiastical and agrarian spheres. In the nineteenth century, Magyar nationalism came to grips here with the influences of Russian Pan-Slavism.

In the course of the present century, virtually all powers active on the East European scene have had, at one time or another, a stake in this land: most obviously Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but also Russia (both tsarist and Soviet), and, to a lesser extent, Germany, Poland, and Romania. The political status of Carpatho-Ukraine changed several times in this century. It belonged to the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy until 1918. As a result of the post-World War I peace settlement, it became a province of the newly created Czechoslovak Republic. Re-annexed by Hungary in 1939, it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1945.

The purpose of the preceding remarks has been to give a glimpse of the rich texture of Carpatho-Ukrainian history and to intimate that this history may indeed contain "much of universal value."

Paul R. Magocsi's Work: Some Critical Comments

The scholarly, semi-scholarly, and publicist literature on Carpatho-Ukraine in several European languages is surprisingly rich,4 but it is Paul R. Magocsi's merit to have produced the first monograph on the modern history of the land in English. Recently Professor Magocsi has supplemented his major work with a study of the Ukrainian minority of the Presov region in Czechoslovakia.5 I propose to examine in some detail the former, major publication; the second, supplementary study will be discussed briefly toward the end of this paper.

The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus', 1848-1948, is a stout volume of over 600 pages, of which less than half contain the work's principal text; the rest consists of four long appendices, the notes, an impressive bibliography of no less than 2,279 entries, and an index. The author has used published materials in a number of languages: among others in Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and Ukrainian. In addition, he has consulted Czechoslovak archives and has conducted personal interviews with several surviving participants in Carpatho-Ukrainian political and cultural life of the inter-war period. Owing to its solid base of factual information and the clarity of presentation, Magocsi's book is bound to remain the standard work on the subject. It has deservedly attracted the attention of specialists in East European history and politics, and it has already been widely reviewed.

It was not Professor Magocsi's intention to write a complete history of Carpatho-Ukraine. Chronologically his study is limited to the century from 1848 to 1948, that is, from the Springtime of Nations to the aftermath of World War II. The two chapters on the pre-World War I era are somewhat sketchy; the interested reader may be referred to the German monograph by Ivan Zeguc, which deals more thoroughly with the same period.6 The treatment of the incipient Soviet era in the concluding chapter is in the nature of an epilogue. The core of the work is devoted to the twenty years of the Czechoslovak regime, from 1919 to 1939, and here the author indeed breaks new ground. However, while discussing at length political and cultural developments in inter-war Subcarpathian Ruthenia, as the territory was then officially known, he pays only scant attention to social and economic conditions.7

The thematic focus of Magocsi's work is indicated by its title—The Shaping of a National Identity. Carpatho-Ukraine is one of those backward areas of Europe whose population lacked, well into the present century, a crystallized national consciousness. Professor Magocsi has set himself the task of examining the groupings of the Carpatho-Ukrainian people, and especially of their intelligentsia, in trying to find an answer to the elementary and vitally important questions: "Who are we? To what nationality do we belong?" The problem is of more than local significance, because it provides a case study of the nation-building processes which have played, and still continue to play, a major role in the modern world.

Three national orientations used to contend for the allegiance of the population of Carpatho-Ukraine: a pro-Russian, a pro-Ukrainian, and a third orientation, which Magocsi calls "Rusynophile." The Russophiles and Ukrainophiles identified themselves, respectively, with the Russian ■ and the Ukrainian nations, while the Rusynophiles wished for their people to evolve into a separate nationality. These three trends originated in the second half of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth century, when the question of national identity began to be discussed in the tiny circles of the Subcarpathian intelligentsia, almost all of whose members were Greek Catholic (Uniate) clergymen. The peasantry, overwhelmingly illiterate and living under semi-feudal conditions, was still largely unaffected. The conflict came out into the open under the liberal Czechoslovak regime, and it played a crucial role in the province's political and cultural life during the 1920s and 30s. By that time, the issue of national identity had reached out from the intelligentsia to the masses. There is no doubt as to the final outcome of this struggle. Magocsi correctly describes the situation in present-day Soviet Transcarpathia: "Without exception, members of the younger generation identify themselves as being of the Ukrainian nationality and as part of one Ukrainian people" (267).

While applauding Professor Magocsi's choice of a valid subject of inquiry and paying tribute to his exemplary diligence, I find his study less than fully satisfactory. My reservations pertain not to points of fact, but rather to those of emphasis and interpretation. Factual errors are relatively easy to set straight. The task of a discussant becomes more difficult whenever he feels impelled to question a scholar's interpretation. This requires not only a careful retracing of the arguments of the work under review, but also the presentation, at least in outline, of an alternative, more cogent interpretation.

In his treatment of the three Subcarpathian national orientations Professor Magocsi is not truly even-handed. His studious fagade of scholarly detachment notwithstanding, we shall do him no injustice in stating that his sympathies are clearly with the so-called Rusynophile orientation. Of course, Professor Magocsi, like everybody else, is entitled to his personal preferences, but, unfortunately, this bias has affected his historical judgment and, in certain instances, has induced him to bend the evidence in order to make it fit his preconceptions.

There is, in the first place, an issue of nomenclature. Magocsi consistently calls the people he is writing about "Rusyns," and he argues that "the name Rusyn was chosen because it is the name used by the inhabitants and by most of their leaders" (277). Today, however, the people in question call themselves Ukrainians. Thus, while it may be quite acceptable to use the old name in a retrospective frame of reference, the present tense in Magocsi's cited statement is obviously misleading. Furthermore, there is little justification for using the native form of an ethnonym where there exists a standard English equivalent. (We do not call the Germans, in English, "Deutsche.") The precise English equivalent of the Slavic term "Rusyn" is "Ruthenian," which is legitimized by an old tradition. In its Latin and German forms ("Rutheni," "die Ruthenen") it was universally applied to the East Slavic (Ukrainian and Belorussian) inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later to the Ukrainian subjects of the Habsburg Empire. In reference to the Subcarpathian region, it is attested already in medieval sources. In its French form, "les Ruthenes," it is found in the post-World War I peace treaties, in the acts of the League of Nations, and in the diplomatic documents and official pronouncements of the Czechoslovak government. It has also been widely used by writers in the English language, including Magocsi himself in one of his earlier articles.8 This makes one wonder about the motives which induced him to scuttle a well-established, traditional designation in favour of a newfangled one. By the exclusive use of the term "Rusyn," a bias in favour of the Rusynophile orientation is insinuated into the reader's mind.

The map of "Subcarpathian Ethno-Geographical Features" (11) shows the area of "Rusyn" settlement in Subcarpathia only, without placing it within an ethnic map of Eastern Europe as a whole. By this artful device the false impression is created that the Slavic population of the Subcarpathian land is ethnically distinct from the rest of the Ukrainian people.

It is noteworthy that the author of the first scholarly history of Carpatho-Ukraine, published in 1862-7, the German Austrian historian Hermann Ignaz Bidermann, unhesitatingly classified the Subcarpathian Ruthenians as belonging to the same nationality as the people of Russian Ukraine (to whom he also applied the traditional Ruthenian name), while, incidentally, contrasting them with the Great Russians:

The Hungarian Ruthenians are not free from Magyar and Slovak admixtures. Nevertheless, the core of the Ruthenian people displays such a clearly formed individuality that against this all attempts must fail to deny their distinct national character. Their contrast with the Great Russians is particularly striking. Every traveller in Russia who at all possesses an open eye for national differences will immediately notice when he has passed from the area of settlement of the Great Russians to that of the Ruthenians. He will notice this in the manner in which the houses are built, in the dress and the physiognomy of the people, and in their entire way of life (in deren ganzen Tun und Lassen).9

Magocsi does not deny that the people of Subcarpathia are Ukrainian according to ethnolinguistic criteria, but the wording of this admission is characteristically guarded and somewhat ambiguous: "Subcarpathian Rusyns speak a range of dialects that are closely related to those spoken in eastern Galicia. The Subcarpathian varieties have been classified by linguists as belonging to the Ukrainian language, even if they diverge substantially from the Ukrainian literary norm" (13-14). Actually, the Subcarpathian dialects are not only "related" to those spoken in Galicia: the same dialectal-tribal groups of Ukrainian mountaineers (moving from east to west, the Hutsuls, the Boikos, and the Lemkos) inhabit both sides of the Carpathians. Magocsi, moreover, fails to mention that the Ukrainian ethnic character of Subcarpathia is attested not only by language, but also by folk culture and the Eastern Christian religious tradition, which until recently stood at the very centre of the people's spiritual life.

Professor Magocsi's principal argument, however, is that "language cannot simply be equated with nationality" (14). I concede that this point is valid in principle. Ethnicity, indeed, cannot be equated with nationality, because the latter is a phenomenon of a different, higher order than the former. An ethnos is constituted by objective traits, such as language, folk culture, and an inherited way of life, while the existence of a nation presupposes a subjective element of consciousness and will. Owing to their backward and oppressed condition under Hungarian rule, the people of Carpatho-Ukraine entered the twentieth century without a crystallized national consciousness. To be more precise, they possessed such consciousness only in rudimentary form, for instance, in being aware of their religion as the "Ruthenian faith." This state of national underdevelopment was the point of departure for the emergence of the above-mentioned rival national orientations.

In a recent paper, Hugh Trevor-Roper has eloquently pleaded for a non-deterministic approach to the study of history. He proposes that in dealing with past conflicts a historian ought to view them not only from the perspective of the known outcome; he should also make an effort ot imagination and try to visualize them as open-ended, as they appeared at a time when the result was still in suspense. "History is not merely what happened; it is what happened in the context of what might have hap-pened. Therefore it must incorporate, as a necessary element, the alternatives, the might-have-beens."10

I am in full agreement with this position, provided that the deterministic and teleological elements, which undoubtedly also play a major role in historical processes, are not short-changed. A historian should, so to say, accord full hearing to all alternatives which at a given time contended for supremacy, but he is also under an obligation to account adequately for the reasons of the success of the one that ultimately prevailed. Applied to the problem at hand, this means that we must strive to understand the raison d'etre of the failed Russophile and Rusynophile national orientations in Subcarpathia, and the structural factors which determined the vicfory of the Ukrainian orientation. This is precisely the point in which I find Professor Magocsi's interpretation of "the shaping of a national identity" wanting.

In the following sections, I shall briefly review the three Subcarpathian national orientations, concentrating on their underlying ideological premises, and I shall attempt to show to what extent these concepts jibed with social and political realities and how they accorded with the people's needs and aspirations.

The Rusynophile Orientation

Professor Magocsi believes that there was a chance for the Subcarpathian Ruthenians to evolve into a separate nation: "Of these three, the separatist, or Rusyn, national orientation was the weakest. . . . This does not mean that Subcarpathian civilization did not possess the potential to be transformed into a separate nationality. It did. What the Rusyn orientation lacked, however, was purposeful leadership" (274). He blames this alleged failure on the inferiority complex of the Ruthenian intelligentsia, whose members preferred to adhere to existing larger national entities, the Russian or the Ukrainian, instead of building a distinct national identity on a purely local foundation.

The weakness of this reasoning consists in the plain fact that, on the level of ethnicity, a separate "Subcarpathian civilization" simply does not exist, since by language and folk culture the Subcarpathian Ruthenians are undoubtedly a branch of the Ukrainian people. But the problem may be approached from another angle as well. There are national formations that are not ethnically based, but owe their existence to a specific historico-political constellation. It is, therefore, permissible to speculate whether the Subcarpathian Ruthenians might under certain conditions have evolved a distinct national consciousness of a political kind while remaining ethnically Ukrainian. In that hypothetical event, their situation would perhaps have been comparable to that of the inhabitants of the canton of Tession, who are Italian by language and culture, but who politically identify themselves with the Swiss nation.

In order to obtain a better understanding of the problem, it will be helpful to adduce the actual case of an incipient "political nation" in Eastern Europe. During the Civil War in Russia there appeared a trend toward the federalization of the several Cossack "Hosts" and the establishment of an independent Cossack state. The projected "Cossackia" would have been multi-ethnic, as it would have included the Russian-speaking Don and Terek Cossacks, the Ukrainian-speaking Kuban Cossacks, and the non-Slavic mountain peoples of North Caucasia. This concept came to naught because of the Soviet victory in the Civil War, but at the same time it enjoyed a measure of genuine popular support in each of these regions, and partisans of an independent "Cossackia" remained vocal in the emigration for decades.

The contrasting example of the Cossack lands demonstrates why in the case of Subcarpathia the Rusynophile national orientation did not represent a viable option. A national identity of the non-ethnic, political kind must possess an institutional focus capable of evoking the citizens' allegiance. The corporate organization of the Cossack "Hosts" provided such a focus. The Cossacks could take pride in the awareness of having always been freemen and warriors, and in glorious memories of past revolts against the autocracy of Moscow. Features of a comparable nature were altogether absent in the historical record of Carpatho-Ukraine. The Ruthenians had lived for centuries in the Kingdom of Hungary as an enserfed peasant people, without any institutions of their own except for the church. In contradistinction to Croatia and Transylvania, the Subcarpathian region had never formed a distinct body within the framework of the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen. The modern Hungarian state, created by the 1867 Compromise, was from the very outset conceived as a unitary nation-state. What Hungary offered its minorities was the prospect of equal partnership in the life of the Magyar nation, to be obtained at the price of assimilation. This prospect was certainly attractive to many educated Ruthenians, among whom Magyarization made heavy inroads during the latter part of the nineteenth century. If the threat of Magyarization was to be averted, the only realistic foundation of the Subcarpathian Ruthenians' struggle for survival was the undeniable fact of their ethnicity—and this logically implied an orientation toward their ethnic kinsmen beyond the mountains. Where, then, we may ask of Professor Magocsi, were the building stones from which a separate "Rusyn" national identity could possibly have been constructed?

What did the Rusynophile orientation actually represent? Professor Magocsi subsumes under this label two phenomena which differed in both time and character: on the one hand, the pre-World War I populists (narodovtsi), and, on the other hand, the circle around the weekly Nedilia in the 1930s. I shall discuss the populist movement further below. For the moment, the statement must suffice that Subcarpathian populism, which emerged around the turn of the century, should properly be viewed as the embryonic stage of modern Ukrainian nationalism in this land. As to the so-called nedilianshnyky, they may be fairly described as thinly disguised Magyarones. Under the conditions of the Czechoslovak regime, overt expressions of a pro-Hungarian attitude had become inopportune. Consequently, the Magyarized segment of the Ruthenian intelligentsia (mostly men of the older generation) assumed the protective colours of Rusynophilism, while secretly hankering after the good old days under the Crown of St. Stephen. These were the first, and also the last, proponents of the idea that the Subcarpathian Ruthenians should become a separate nationality. The true nature of the self-styled Rusynophiles was revealed between 1939 and 1945, when they acted as quislings of the Hungarian occupant. By this behaviour they damned themselves in the eyes of the great majority of their compatriots.

Professor Magocsi admits, apparently not without a touch of regret, that the Rusynophile orientation was the weakest of the three national orientations in inter-war Subcarpathian Ruthenia. But this weakness was not accidental. The idea of the "Rusyns" becoming the fourth East Slavic nation, alongside the Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians, was a phantom without ethnic and historic substance. A few local figures could trifle with it, some Czech politicians could patronize it for reasons of their own, Hungarian revisionists could covertly support it in order to subvert the territorial provisions of the St. Germain and Trianon Treaties—but it could never get off the ground. The Rusynophile concept was an artificial contrivance, incapable of evoking the spirit of uncompromising dedication and self-sacrifice that is the hallmark of every authentic national-liberation movement. An idea for whose sake nobody was ever willing to stake his or her life weighs as a negligible quantity on the scales of history.

The Russophile Orientation

The representative personality of the initial stage of the Subcarpathian Ruthenians' national revival, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the poet and educator Oleksander Dukhnovych (1803-65). In his writings he used a mixture of local dialect and traditional Church Slavonic. Dukhnovych had a strong sense of the national unity joining the Subcarpathian Ruthenians with their Galician brethren, and in a poem dedicated to the Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Galicia, Hryhorii Ia-khymovych, he made the famous and oft-quoted programmatic declaration: "Our own people, not strangers, live beyond the mountains. / One Rus', one common idea, is in the souls of us all." At the same time, he lacked a clear perception of the national differences between the Ruthenians/Ukrainians and the Russians. Ivan Franko aptly characterized Dukhnovych as "a man of unquestionable good will and no mean talent, but incurably confused in his linguistic and political doctrines.''

This undifferentiated Ruthenian patriotism, in the manner of Dukhnovych, assumed a decidedly Russophile colouring in the second half of the century. Two men were most instrumental in spreading the pro-Russian orientation in Subcarpathia: the editor and publicist Ivan Rakovsky (1815-85), and the political activist Adolf Dobriansky (1817-1901). Rakovsky laboured strenuously at making the Ruthenians adopt Russian as their literary language. Dobriansky, who had served as the Austrian liaison officer with the Russian army in Hungary in 1849, continued to maintain contacts with Russian governmental and Pan-Slavist circles. Russophiles controlled the first Ruthenian cultural association, the Society of St. Basil the Great, founded in 1866.

An incisive contemporary analysis of the Russophile phenomenon was provided by the Ukrainian scholar and political thinker Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-95), a professor at Kiev University and after 1876 an exile in Switzerland and Bulgaria. Drahomanov visited Subcarpathia twice in 1875 and 1876, and was shocked by the condition of the people whom he called "the wounded brother." In his interpretation Rus-sophilism represented a natural reaction against overwhelming Hungarian pressure, which made Ruthenian patriots look for outside help. Furthermore, the Ruthenian clerical intelligentsia were under the spell of the aristocratic mores of Hungarian society. Drahomanov wrote in his memoirs: "Hungarian Rus' is a land neglected in every respect, and its oppression by Magyarism is not only of a national, but also of a social, noble character. This [bias] lives in the heads of Ruthenian patriots most opposed to Magyarism."" Educated Ruthenians desired to match the "genteel" Hungarian language and culture with an equally prestigious one, namely the Russian. A local editor, Nykolai Homychkov, responded to Drahomanov's promptings with the following candid statement in his newspaper Karpat: "Mr. Drahomanov wants us to write in the language of the servants, but literature is everywhere being written for the masters." However, Drahomanov noted, with his own family Homychkov spoke only in Hungarian. "And rightly so, since the Russian 'masters' are far away, and the Magyars are nearby."12 Drahomanov concluded that Russophilism was self-defeating, because it deprived the Ruthenians of the ability to resist Magyarization effectively by alienating the intelligentsia from the common people and by denying the latter educational services, which could not be provided in an alien idiom. The Russophiles' infatuation with the mighty empire of the tsars by no means implied a close familiarity with things Russian. Quite to the contrary, it was nurtured by isolation from the outside world, including Russia, and went hand in hand with a profound ignorance of contemporary Russian conditions, including modern Russian literature. Subcarpathian Russophiles were only rarely capable of mastering the Russian language properly. The idiom they actually used in their publications was more often than not an artificial hybrid of Russian, Church Slavonic, and local Ukrainian dialect, interspersed with Hungarian and German phrases.

Drahomanov preserved his concern for Carpatho-Ukraine to the end of his days. In the answer to the greetings received on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his public activity, written shortly before his death in 1895, and which may be considered his political testament, Drahomanov once again returned to this problem:

There is still another part of our common Fatherland which I can never forget, like a wounded brother. This is Hungarian Rus'. Having visited this land twice in 1875-6, I became convinced that nobody cares there about the common people, or [if somebody does care] it is being approached by methods which are doomed to failure in advance. There the most sincere Ruthenian patriots live in their thought and heart either with the princes and boyars of old, or with the Muscovite bishops and generals, but they do not see at all the living Ruthenian people with its distress right by their side. When they sometimes address the people, then always about dead topics only, and in a language which nobody speaks anywhere and which they themselves do not understand without a parallel Magyar translation. As I was the first Ukrainian to visit Hungarian Rus', and as I saw that it is farther separated even from Galicia than Australia is from Europe—I swore to myself an "oath of Hannibal" to work for the integration of Hungarian Rus' into our national democratic and progressive movement, in which lies its only salvation. Unfavourable circumstances nullified my early efforts.... Thus Hungarian Rus' remains without the propagation of progressive ideas to this day. I have not been able to fulfill my oath, but now, having received greetings from such a great number of my fellow countrymen, I dare to lay this oath upon their heads.13

Under Russophile leadership, Ruthenian national life continued to decline in Subcarpathia in the late nineteenth century, thus confirming the accuracy of Drahomanov's diagnosis. The business meetings of the St. Basil Society were conducted in Hungarian by that time, and the Society became almost completely inactive. Russophile newspapers failed because of the lack of contributors and subscribers. A local writer, Oleksander Mytrak (1837-1913), complained in 1885: "We are only five men left, who stand nearer to the grave than to the cradle." The mood of despair was voiced by another writer of the Russophile orientation, Iulii Stavrovsky-Popradov (1850-89), in a poem with the Dantesque title "Lasciate Ogni Speranza":

Deprived of feeling and strength,
You, my defenceless Helot,
You unfortunate Ugro-Russian people,
Die, descend into the darkness of the grave!
Slavs, intone a sorrowful dirge,
Kindle a funerary torch!

The situation of the Subcarpathian Ruthenians was indeed extremely bleak, but Stavrovsky-Popradov's exaggerated pessimism reflected the bankruptcy of the Russophile trend, whose partisans had reached a dead end: the hoped-for intervention of tsarist Russia was not forthcoming, while they did not know how to mobilize the resources of their own people against the ever-increasing pressures of Magyarization. Around the turn of the century, the older Russophile activists of the Dobriansky and Rakovsky generation had largely passed from the scene, and their successors could not be identified. This did not mean, however, that Russophilism disappeared completely. Rather, it went into a state of hibernation from which it was to re-emerge to some extent after 1918. Russophile sentiment persisted also on the popular level, as evidenced by the Orthodox religious movement, which spread spontaneously in several Subcarpathian villages in the early years of the twentieth century. Conversions to Orthodoxy expressed the peasants' social grievances and their dissatisfaction with the Magyarized Greek Catholic clergy. The authorities reacted by staging, in 1904 and 1913, trials of Orthodox agitators and believers charged with the disturbance of public peace and treason against the Hungarian state.

Subcarpathian Populism and the Origins of the Ukrainian Orientation

The emergence of the populist trend must be comprehended against the background of the dismal condition of the Carpatho-Ukrainian people at the turn of the century. The economic situation of the Ruthenian peasantry under the rule of Hungarian latifundialism deteriorated to the point of chronic famine in the mountain regions. Severe privations provided the impetus for a movement of emigration to the United States, which assumed mass proportions. The Budapest government itself became alarmed by this demographic catastrophe. Upon the request of the Greek Catholic bishop of Mukachiv, Iulii Firtsak (1836-1912, consecrated 1891), the government initiated, in 1897, the so-called Highland Action, which was meant to ameliorate the socio-economic condition of the Ruthenian peasantry. The practical results of the action, however, were insignificant.

Another element of the situation was an intensified Magyarization drive, stimulated to a frenetic pitch by the celebrations of the millennium of Hungary in 1896. The notorious Apponyi school law of 1907 led to the suppression of the few remaining Ruthenian-language elementary schools; secondary education had been totally Magyarized for decades. The assimilationist policy was abetted by a coterie of Magyarone intellectuals of Ruthenian origin centred in Budapest. Their objective was the transformation of the Ruthenians of Hungary into "Greek Catholic Magyars" in the course of the next one or two generations. This was to be accomplished by the eradication of those features of the Greek Catholic Church which still visibly tied it to the East Slavic world: the introduction of the Gregorian instead of the Julian calendar, the replacement of the Cyrillic by the Latin alphabet (with Hungarian spelling) in Ruthenian publications, and finally the imposition of the Magyar liturgical language, instead of traditional Church Slavonic, in church services. Despite some feeble protests, appropriate measures were implemented by the government by the time of the war. To round out the picture, one must mention the atmosphere of intimidation, marked by administrative harassment and vicious denunciations in the Hungarian chauvinist press of all persons suspected of being insufficiently loyal to Hungary.

These were the unprepossessing circumstances under which a few young Ruthenian intellectuals began a search after new ways to assure the survival and the possible future regeneration of their people. They had become convinced of the sterility of the Russophile orientation, which they held responsible for the decline of Ruthenian national life. The decisive step was the abandonment of the would-be literary Russian advocated by the Russophiles and the choice of the vernacular as a vehicle of education and literature. The weekly Nauka, started in 1897, became the organ of the populist movement. From 1903, its editor was Avhustyn Voloshyn (1874-1946), a Greek Catholic priest, who also dis-tinguised himself as an educator and author of grammars and textbooks. Scholarly exponents of the populist orientation were the historian and ethnographer Iurii Zhatkovych (1855-1920) and the literary historian Hiiador Strypsky (1875-1949). The latter published a monograph, Starsha ruska pysmennost na Uhorshchyni (The Older Ruthenian Literature in Hungary, 1907), in which he argued that the fairly rich manuscript literature which circulated in Subcarpathia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was written in an idiom close to the vernacular; therefore, the Russifying linguistic tendency of the second half of the nineteenth century represented a deviation from the older native tradition.

The populist trend was stimulated by the example of and growing contacts with the Ukrainian national movement in Galicia, which was making great strides at that time. Zhatkovych and Strypsky contributed to the publications of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv, while several Galician scholars (Ivan Franko, Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Stepan Tomashiv-sky), following in Drahomanov's footsteps, produced studies on Carpatho-Ukrainian topics. The Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Galicia, Andrei Sheptytsky, created a sensation among the Subcarpathian clergy when, during a visit to Uzhhorod, he publicly spoke in Ukrainian.

The populists' turn to the vernacular implied a new national orientation. But how should this orientation be defined—in a Rusynophile or in a Ukrainian sense? Professor Magocsi asserts that Strypsky and Volo-shyn were Rusynophiles (328, 331); the latter allegedly "started out as a Rusynophile, then by the 1920s [that is, during the Czechoslovak era] began to express openly the belief that Subcarpathian Rusyns were part of one Little Russian or Ukrainian nationality" (331). The findings of the Hungarian specialist in Carpatho-Ukrainian history, Maria Mayer, differ from those of Magocsi: "At the turn of the century the Ukrainophile tendency also appeared in the 'nationalist' circles of the learned Ruthenes, who were strongly influenced by the achievements of the Ukrainian nationalist movements in Galicia and Russia." In this context, she specifically refers to Iu. Zhatkovych and "his followers," A. Voloshyn and la. Strypsky. Mayer provides an extensive summary of the debates conducted in 1897-9 in the pages of Kelet, the Hungarian-language organ of the Greek Catholic clergy, edited by Zhatkovych. Taking a stand against Russophile spokesmen, "Zsatkovics [Zhatkovych] asserted with weighty scholarly arguments that there was ample proof of the separate existence of the Ukrainian nation and a Ukrainian literary language absolutely distinct from the Russian nation and literary language. He also professed that the [Subcarpathian] Ruthenian and Ukrainian peoples were related with regard to language." The same position was defended by Strypsky. However, Zhatkovych and Strypsky left undecided, for the time being, the question whether the Subcarpathian Ruthenians should simply take over the Ukrainian literary language from Galicia or try to develop a literary language on the basis of local dialects; this was to be determined later by the natural course of events. Of greatest interest is Voloshyn's position in the debate. When an anonymous contributor advised that the Subcarpathian Ruthenians should dissociate themselves from both Russian literature and "the literature of Shevchenko," "Agoston Volosin [Avhustyn Voloshyn], a beginner in journalism, a Ukrainophile teacher signing his article 'X,' objected to this Ruthenophile tendency. ... At that time he was a Ukrainophile." This evidence, adduced by Maria Mayer, undermines the credibility of Magocsi's interpretation, which seems to be inspired by the wish to inflate the importance of the Rusynophile orientation.

The nature of the populists' national ideology has been correctly assessed by Ivan Zeguc. According to him, it is inappropriate to apply to the pre-World War I period the sharp distinctions derived from the experience of the 1920s and 30s. What mattered to the populists was the basic principle: the turn to the people and the people's living language. In this they saw the precondition of the lifting of Hungarian Ruthenia from the current deep crisis; the details could be worked out later.

Without identifying themselves unconditionally with the Ukrainian movement, particularly with the Ukrainian phonetic orthography, the Ruthenian [populist] leaders did not hide their sympathy for Ukrainian literature, which they attested by translating Ukrainian authors into Magyar.... It is undeniable that Voloshyn considered the Ukrainian movement the natural extension of the Ruthenian national idea, as he clearly stated in his programmatic contributions in Nauka.'4
Thus Mayer and Zeguc support the interpretation of the populist trend as the embryonic stage of Ukrainian nationalism in Subcarpathia.

Certain limitations of populism should not be overlooked. In the first place, it was quite non-political, restricting itself to questions of language, literature, and education. The populists were not separatists in regard to Hungary; they did not dream about the inclusion of their homeland in a future Ukrainian state. They did not even raise the issue of self-government of the Ruthenian territory within the framework of Hungary, which seemed quite unrealistic under prevailing conditions. On the other hand, they were not averse to the search for potential allies and patrons in the Hungarian political system. This lack of an independent political platform was an ostensible regression from the Russophiles of the 1860s, whose spokesman Adolf Dobriansky had advanced the program of the formation of an autonomous "Russian" province in the Austrian Empire, to consist of eastern Galicia, Bukovyna, and Subcarpathia, or, alternatively, the program of home rule for Hungarian Rus' alone. Secondly, the populist movement was weak in numbers, being composed of a handful of individuals. The bulk of the Ruthenian intelligentsia was more or less thoroughly Magyarized; the Magyar language dominated in the homes and families of the Greek Catholic clergy.

The Dynamics of Nation-building Processes in Inter-war Subcarpathian Ruthenia

My principal criticism of Professor Magocsi's interpretation of the "shaping of a national identity" in Subcarpathian Ruthenia/Carpatho-Ukraine is that he presents it in essentially static terms, and not as a dynamic process. In his account, the three national orientations which were present in Subcarpathia at the beginning of the Czechoslovak era survived without much change over the next quarter of a century. He asserts that "as late as 1945 the Russian and Rusyn orientations were still very much alive" (275). The balance of the three trends was allegedly broken only by the Soviet regime, "which gave exclusive support to one orientation, the Ukrainian" (272).

Against this, I maintain that the Russophile and Rusynophile orientations were moribund by the 1930s, and that the victory of the Ukrainian national movement resulted from the dynamics of the internal development of Subcarpathian society, and not from the intervention of an outside deus ex machina. The Soviet regime did not impose, after 1945, a Ukrainian identity on the people of the Transcarpathian oblast; it only ratified the outcome of a preceding spontaneous local development.

The above interpretation is supported by certain facts that are mentioned by Magocsi, but from which he fails to draw the proper conclusions. For instance, he acknowledges that "by 1934 the [pro-Ukrainian] Teachers' Assembly claimed 1,211 of the 1,874 'Rusyn' teachers throughout Subcarpathian Rus'" (173). In the field of adult education, "the [Russophile] Dukhnovych Society was the less dynamic of the two cultural organizations during the 1930s" (160); it was far outdistanced by its Ukrainian rival, the Prosvita (Enlightenment) Society. The Pros-vita congress, which took place in the province's capital in October 1937, was "one of the largest manifestations ever organized in Uzhhorod" (160). Plast (Ukrainian Scouts) had 3,000 members in 1935, as against 500 Russian Scouts in 1929-30 (161). Among Subcarpathian students attending Czechoslovak universities (no institution of higher learning existed in the province in the pre-Soviet era), "by the late 1930s... the Ukrainophile student movement was the more active and certainly the more vociferous of the two factions" (174). Nevertheless, Magocsi blunts the impact of these statements by various qualifications, and winds up with the erroneous conclusion: "at the end of the period in question, the Russophile, Ukrainophile, Rusynophile, and by force ot circumstance the Magyarone currents all seemed to be as well entrenched as ever" (167).

In evaluating the dynamics of Carpatho-Ukraine's nation-building processes, the generational factor is of outstanding importance. One of the book's appendices contains brief biographical sketches of eighty-one individuals who played prominent roles in Carpatho-Ukraine between 1918 and 1945. This interesting prosopographic study suggests that the three orientations were evenly matched: 24 Russophiles, 28 Rusynophiles, and 29 Ukrainophiles. The author comments: "Whereas among the older generation (born before 1905) there was an equal number representing each orientation, among the smaller sample from the second-generation, Russophiles and Ukrainophiles were equal and out-numbered Rusynophiles four to one" (19). This in fact indicates a rapid decline of the Rusynophile orientation during the inter-war period. But what if we were to extend the survey to the next generation, those born after 1918? The members of that generation were too young to have achieved distinction before 1945, and therefore they have not been included in Magocsi's comparative biographies. I am unable to offer hard statistical data, but I propose the following simple test. In his work Magocsi quotes from and refers to several scholars of Subcarpathian origin who, after World War II, settled in North America and who at the present are associated with American and Canadian institutions of higher learning. It is noteworthy that all of them, without exception, consider themselves Ukrainian.15 This fact cannot be explained by the impact of Soviet policy.

The thesis of the spontaneous and irrepressible rise of the Ukrainian national movement in inter-war Subcarpathian Ruthenia finds support in the testimonies of three well-qualified contemporary outside observers, one French and the others Czech; there is no reason to question their objectivity. The French Slavic scholar, Rene Martel, wrote in a book on the Subcarpathian Ruthenian problem published in 1935:

... the young people, by whom I mean those attending schools, no longer adhere to the Russians. They turn, en bloc, to the Ukrainians, joining their great national movement. This fact is recognized by all impartial observers. Hence the Great Russian movement has hardly any future in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. . . . A constructive dynamism, which brings forth ever more abundant fruit, is clearly visible in many details of the life of the [Ukrainian] party. One could say that the latter is lifted up and carried forward by a huge wave of national and popular faith, by a will, at once ardent and tenacious, which characterizes the Ukrainian national movement in Ruthenia as well as in Galicia.16
The comments of the Czech novelist Ivan Olbracht are equally illuminating. They are contained in a travelogue on "The Land Without a Name," written in 1931:
A struggle is going on in Subcarpathia whose object is to consolidate the ethnographic mass of the Ruthenian people and to give them a name. The linguistic confusion of the years 1919 and 1920 has become clarified and simplified at least to the extent that only two contestants remain at the centre of interest. . . . A great Russian-Ukrainian struggle is going on. . . . The contending forces of the Russians and the Ukrainians are equal: a half against a half. But the Ukrainian side will win. Whoever has observed Subcarpathia but a little more closely than a tourist can have no doubt about that.... Ukrainianism shall completely prevail in this land. While today a half stands against a half, the Russian half will gradually and steadily decrease. Because the Ukrainians are right: Rus-sianism is nothing but old Slavophilism, the desire of a powerless tribe to lean on a big brother. In present-day Subcarpathia, the Russian language is a dead, paper language, and the Great Russian trend is an archaism. . . . It is out of touch with reality and the people. The opposite is true of the Subcarpathian Ukrainians, whose contact with their people is constant and close.17
A Czech student of Subcarpathian literature, Frantisek Tichy, diagnosed the relative strength of the Russian and Ukrainian literary movements in the province in 1938 as follows:
[The Russian-language literature] has no influx of new forces, and, what weighs even more, has no public, no readers. It is a stranger at home, and even more of a stranger in Russia: nobody there has any knowledge of the Subcarpathian Ruthenian literature of the Russian orientation. Not a single Subcarpathian Ruthenian name has been admitted so far into the pages of the history of Russian literature. Russian literary criticism has not and does not preoccupy itself with Subcarpathian Ruthenian phenomena. Furthermore, a weakness of this faction is that by having adopted the Russian literary language it has, ipso facto, rejected the entire older Subcarpathian Ruthenian literary production, which was written in the local language. A literature without tradition is like a cut flower, a stream drying up.

The situation of the writers of the Ukrainian orientation is quite different. A Subcarpathian Ruthenian writer who adheres to this trend can draw on the spoken language of his native land; he can rely on a small but steadily growing circle of readers at home; and

he finds reassurance in the awareness that his works also evoke an active interest among his kinsmen abroad, in Galicia, Bukovyna, and [Soviet] Ukraine.

18

Autonomous Carpatho-Ukraine, 1938-9: The End of the Search for a National Identity

The Subcarpathian Ruthenians' quest for national identity culminated in 1938-9, when their land, now officially renamed Carpatho-Ukraine, achieved autonomous statehood within a federalized Czechoslovakia.19 Autonomous status for Subcarpathia had been pledged in the Treaty of Saint Germain (10 September 1919), which awarded that territory to Czechoslovakia, and in the Czechoslovak constitution of 29 February 1920, but the Prague government delayed the discharge of this obligation for nearly two decades. The autonomy of Carpatho-Ukraine was implemented only in the wake of the international crisis which culminated in the Munich conference in September 1938. The period of Carpatho-Ukrainian autonomy was to last but a few months, and it ended in mid-March 1939 with the final disintegration of Czechoslovakia and the re-annexation of Carpatho-Ukraine by Hungary. The brief period of autonomy, however, had one lasting and irreversible effect: the mass of Subcarpathia's population became permeated with a Ukrainian national consciousness. It is noteworthy that while the Czechs passively submitted to the German occupation, tiny Carpatho-Ukraine met the Hungarian invasion with" a brave armed resistance. Magocsi barely mentions, in two scanty lines, the struggle of the Carpathian "Sich" militia. It is no exaggeration to say that this "baptism of fire" put the final seal on the Ukrainian national identity of the land.

Magocsi fails to appreciate the decisive importance of the 1938-9 events for "the shaping of a national identity." On the one hand, he states: "it must be admitted that the Ukrainophile orientation did increase its influence and prestige among large segments of the local population during the stormy months of autonomy" (245-6). On the other hand, he cancels out this admission by a rider: "this did not mean, as many Ukrainophile writers assert, that the local populace rejected the Russophile or Rusynophile national orientations" (245). A little later, however, he remarks that the old-time Russophile and Rusynophile leaders had compromised themselves by their collusion with "Hungarian and Polish intrigues against the homeland" (246). This misleading interpretation may be likened to an image reflected in a crooked mirror: all the objects are there, but the proportions have been distorted.

Carpatho-Ukraine attracted considerable international attention in 1938-9. Many foreign diplomats and political commentators speculated that this small land would serve as the stepping stone toward a future Greater Ukraine, to be created under German auspices; such plans were widely attributed to Hitler. Apprehensions of this kind also caused worry to Soviet leaders. "In a speech to the Eighteenth Congress of the CPSU on 10 March [1939], Stalin, while ridiculing the whole notion that a country of 30 million (Soviet Ukraine) could be annexed by a region of 700,000 (Carpatho-Ukraine), still devoted an unusually lengthy passage to this apparently ridiculous proposition of a 'merger of an elephant with a gnat.'"20 There are good reasons to assume that Carpatho-Ukraine served as a touchstone in German-Soviet relations. Hitler's authorization for the occupation of Carpatho-Ukraine by Hungary, which occurred only a few days after Stalin's speech, paved the way for the rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow and the German-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939. Magocsi does not mention Stalin's historic speech, and he generally shows little insight into the significance of the Carpatho-Ukrainian problem preceding the outbreak of World War II.

Notes

* This paper was left unfinished by the author at the time of his death. It has been edited under the supervision of Peter L. Rudnytsky.

1. H.L. Roberts, "Eastern Europe and the Historian," Slavic Review 20, no. 3 (October 1961 ):515.

2. To be precise, 1,134,100, as of 1 January 1977. V. Kubijovyc and A. Zukovsky, Map of Ukraine (Munich and Paris 1978), attached brochure, 5.

3. The fundamental work on the early history of Carpatho-Ukraine, to the middle of the nineteenth century, is O. Mytsiuk, Narysy z sotsiialno-hospodarskoi istorii Pidkar-patskoi Rusy, 2 vols. (Prague 1936-8).

4. Attention should be called to P R. Magocsi's "An Historical Guide to Subcarpathian Rus'," Austrian History Yearbook 9- 10 (1973—4):201-56. This useful study may be considered a supplement to the books under review.

5. P. R. Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus', 1848-1948 (Cambridge, Mass. and London 1978). P.R. Magocsi, The Rusyn-Ukrainians of Czechoslovakia: An Historical Survey (Vienna 1983).

6. I. Zeguc, Die nationalpolitischen Bestrebungen der Karpato-Ruthenen 1848-1914 (Wiesbaden 1965). Cf. my review in Austrian History Yearbook 6-7 (1970- 71):406- 9.

7. This criticism was previously voiced in the review article of John-Paul Himka, "The Formation of National Identity in Subcarpathian Rus': Some Questions of Methodology," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 3 (September 1978):374-80.

8. Cf. Paul R. Magocsi, "The Ruthenian Decision to Unite with Czechoslovakia," Slavic Review 34, no. 2 (June 1975):360-81. It is worth noting that the title of this article has been changed in Magocsi's book (no. 1742 of the bibliographical section) to "The Subcarpathian Decision ..." (emphasis added). One would like to know whether this inconsistency is due to oversight or to a deliberate cosmetic alteration.

9. H. I. Bidermann, Die ungarischen Ruthenen, ihr Wohngebiet, ihr Erwerb und ihre Geschichte (Innsbruck 1867), 2:22, n.

10. H. Trevor-Roper, "History and Imagination," Times Literary Supplement, no 4035 (25 July 1980):835.

11. M. P. Drahomanov, "Avstro-ruski spomyny (1867-1877)," Literaturno-publitsystychni pratsi (Kiev 1970), 2:281. Cf. the editorial supplement, "M. P. Dragomanov o vengerskoi Ukraine-Rusi," in Sobranie politicheskikh sochinenii M.P. Dragomanova, ed. B. A. Kistiakovsky, 2 vols. (Paris 1905-6), 2:642-7.

12. "Avstro-ruski spomyny (1867-1877)," ibid., 278.

13. "Vidpovid Mykhaila Petrovycha Drahomanova" in Mykhailo Petrovych Drahomanov 1841-1895: Ieho iubylei, smert, avtobiohraflia i spys tvoriv, ed. M. Pavlyk (Lviv 1896), 109-10.

14. Zeguc, op. cit., 94-6.

15. The names of these scholars are (in alphabetical order): Alexander Baran, Joseph Danko, John Fizer, Vasyl Markus, Athanasius Pekar, and Peter G. Stercho.

16. R. Martel, La Ruthenie Subcarpathique (Paris 1935), 133-4.

17. I. Olbracht, Nikola Suhaj loupenfk. Golet v udolf. Hory a staleri (Prague 1959), 482, 485.

18. F. Tichy, Vyvoj soucasneho spisovneho jazyka na Podkarpatske Rusi (Prague 1938), 125.

19. A history of the Carpatho-Ukrainian state is to be found in P. G. Stercho, Diplomacy of Double Morality: Europe's Crossroads in Carpatho-Ukraine, 1919-1939 (New York 1971). Despite its pretentious title, this is a useful study. Unfortunately, while concentrating on constitutional and international issues, the author largely neglects the territory's internal development prior to and during the period of autonomy. Peter Winch's Republic for a Day (London 1939) may be recommended as a colourful eyewitness account by an English journalist.

20. A. B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67 (New York and Washington 1968), 262.