My father's father was a Rusyn, from a village near Mukachevo, just southwest of Uzhgorod.
Our heritage is very complicated, because we never had our own country, and were constantly dominated by larger, more aggressive, neighbors. I grew up not really knowing what we were, and mostly told people I was Slovak, which was true of my mother's family. The isolation and poverty of the Rusyn homeland was a blessing to some extent, in that it allowed them to maintain their own culture and religious traditions without too much outside interference from the Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Russians and others who from time to time ruled all or part of Carpathian Ruthenia. In the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Rusyns came under increased pressure from the "Magyarization" policies of Hungary, and may fled to the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Although most had been peasant farmers, they usually found work in the mines that no one else would accept. Those that remained behind were often forcibly assimilated into the Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian societies that dominated their fractured homeland. Rusyns were treated better in Czechoslovakia than elsewhere, but during WW II, the Soviet Union cut off the tail of Slovakia, and integrated it into the Soviet Union. That area is now in Ukraine, and again coming under pressure to assimilate. As a result, there are probably more people in the US that identify themselves as ethnic Rusyns than there are in Europe. That saddens me greatly. I take comfort in the fact that we may be a small and obscure ethnic group, but we have managed nonetheless to make a contribution to the American Melting Pot. The most famous Rusyn-American is, of course, Andy Warhol (Adrei Warhola), and we also count Sandra Dee (nee Zuck), Tom Sellick, and Robert Urich among our number. My personal hero, however, is Sgt Mike Strank, leader of the Marineswho raised the flag on Iwo Jima. In 30 years, the Rusyn identity will be entirely forgotten. Dan Matyola http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Igor Roshchin <[email protected]> wrote: > > Some 20 years ago, I visited the area of where Rusyns (Carpatho-Rusyns, > Ruthenes) live near Uzhgorod (Transcarpathian Region of Ukraine), - > in one of the valleys away from big cities. > > They were affected by many major European wars (that territory was > changing hands many times and _practically_ never had its own statehood), > but, surprisingly, not wiped away. > I think absence of natural resources and being somewhat hidden away from > the major army routes helped their survival and the survival of their > ethnical characteristics, including their language. (At least in the part > I visited) Their language consists of a wild mixuter of Ukrainian (~50%), > Hungarian, Chech or/and Slovakian, Polish and Russian. > > A lot of questions related to the ethnicity of Rusyns is highly > political (even with some separatists movement(s)), and thus, - > some are contraversial. > E.g. Rusyn language (or dialect) was formally recognized only in 1990s. > The same happened with the formal recognition of the ethnicity in > different European countries that have Rusyns. > I suspect that some might even about some details of the short description > I wrote here. > > > Igor > > > > > Thu Aug 2 05:35:30 EDT 2012 > mike wilson wrote: > >> I know a few folks here are of this background. A friend of mine >> (excellent English, dry sense of humour) in Central Europe is thinking >> of starting a company to help people research and provide guidance to >> visit ancestral homes. >> >> If anyone would be interested in such a service, please contact me >> offlist. You can also pass my email address to other interested parties. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
