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 RutheniaZCarpatho- Ukraine is that he presents it in essentially static terms, and not as a dynamic process.

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).

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 (bom 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 Rusyno- philes 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.

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 Subcar- pathia but a little more closely than a tourist can have no doubt about that....

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.

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.

Notes

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 ofUkraine (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 OfNational 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.l. 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 î 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, avtobiohrafiia ³ 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 Ioupehik. Golet v udolι'. Hory a staletι (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 R epublic 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.