ANALYSIS: Ukraine's Zakarpattia Rusyns want official recognition of Kyiv (10/01/06)

ANALYSIS

Ukraine's Zakarpattia Rusyns want official recognition of Kyiv

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

Earlier this month, the Zakarpattia Oblast Council appealed to Ukraine's president, prime minister and Verkhovna Rada chairman to grant Rusyns in the region an official status of ethnic minority (nationality).

Rusyns, who live in a more or less compact territory in Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland, are officially recognized as a minority by Bratislava and Warsaw, while Kyiv considers them to be a Ukrainian subgroup. Their struggle for official recognition in Ukraine has continued for more than 15 years now.

Similar appeals to grant official recognition to Rusyns in Ukraine were already issued by the Zakarpattia Oblast Council in 1992 and 2002. But officials in Kyiv ignored them.

Will the situation repeat itself this time too? Activists of the People's Council of Zakarpattia Rusyns (PCZR), an umbrella organization claiming to represent the interests of all Rusyns in the oblast, believe that it will not.

There are at least two reasons for their optimism. First, after President Viktor Yushchenko came to power and political life in Ukraine became more democratic, Rusyns in Zakarpattia managed to organize several cultural events with official support and to present their cause on local television, where they were allowed to speak in their mother tongue. This year Rusyns also opened 26 Sunday schools instructing in the Rusyn language and culture.

Second, the Rusyn movement now seems to have an advocate with meaningful political leverage in Kyiv: Viktor Baloha, a former chairman of the Zakarpattia Oblast Administration and a former emergency situations minister. Mr. Baloha, a councilor of the Zakarpattia Oblast Council, who backed the recent appeal for the official recognition of Rusyns, was recently appointed by President Yushchenko as head of the presidential staff.

Fedir Shandor, PCZR deputy head, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that nationality status for Ukraine's Rusyns would considerably boost their efforts toward developing their linguistic and cultural heritage, which they see as distinct from Ukrainian. "According to the census in December 2001, 10,069 people [in Zakarpattia Oblast] declared themselves to be Rusyn. Thus, despite the fact that such a nationality is not in the [official] register, there are people considering themselves to be of Rusyn nationality," Mr. Shandor said.

According to Mr. Shandor, the most urgent tasks for Zakarpattia Rusyns include launching a regular television program in the Rusyn vernacular, establishing a chair of Rusyn studies at a university in Uzhhorod, the capital of Zakarpattia Oblast, and working out a standardized version of the written Rusyn language.

Some estimates say there may be as many as 1.5 million people of Rusyn origin, first of all in Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, the United States and Canada. But their Rusyn identity is generally weak, primarily because Rusyns have never had their own state or political independence.

The history of Rusyns, Eastern Slavic inhabitants of the Carpathian Mountains, is quite convoluted and subject to many scholarly controversies.

Throughout the 19th century and until World War I, when overwhelmingly rural and agricultural Rusyns produced their own intelligentsia and articulated the idea of their ethnic distinctiveness, their fatherland, Zakarpattia (Carpathian Rus'), belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After World War I and the break-up of Austro-Hungary, most of Zakarpattia, a.k.a. Transcarpathia, found itself within the borders of Czechoslovakia, where Rusyns enjoyed a sort of self-rule with their own governor, schools, a national anthem and a national theater.

After World War II, most of Zakarpattia was annexed by the Soviet Union, which did away with the idea of Rusyn distinctiveness and declared all Rusyns to be Ukrainians. The Communist regimes in post-World War II Czechoslovakia and Poland adopted the Soviet line and also decreed that Rusyns within their borders were Ukrainians.

Rusyns re-emerged after the collapse of the Communist system in Poland and Slovakia and the break-up of the Soviet Union. A census in Slovakia in 2001 registered 24,000 Rusyns, up from 17,000 Rusyns registered in a census 10 years earlier.

The officially established numerical strength of Rusyns is not particularly impressive but the general trend seems to be propitious for them - having started from nil, Rusyns continue to gain in number.

Mr. Shandor said he believes that the official unwillingness to grant recognition to Rusyns tarnishes Ukraine's international image. "It is very important for Ukraine to register this nationality, in order to avoid various manipulations at the level of the European Union," he said. "There is a league of unrepresented peoples [the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization], which creates a negative image for Ukraine in connection with the fact that the Rusyn nationality is not recognized."

According to a final document of the meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Copenhagen in 1990, "to belong to a national minority is a matter of a person's individual choice." Moreover, the document says that "persons belonging to national minorities can exercise and enjoy their rights individually, as well as in community with other members of their group."

But many Ukrainians, including intellectuals and academics, would argue whether European standards could be applied to Rusyns in Ukraine. One of them is Mykola Zhulynskyi, director of the Institute of Literature at Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences. "I think that in this case the European experience is of no use. This is, simply, a big problem that arose in connection with the fact that Ukraine had not been united, that she had been torn apart by different empires. [The Rusyns are part of] the indivisible Ukrainian body," Dr. Zhulynskyi said.

However, historical arguments can also be used to question Dr. Zhulynskyi's reasoning, if not to discard it altogether. As little as a century ago, many Russians used to argue in almost the same way, asserting that Ukrainians ("Little Russians") and Belarusians ("White Russians") constituted "the indivisible Russian body."

Now that Ukrainians have an independent state, some are asking whether they really need to behave toward their own "younger brothers" - Zakarpattia's Rusyns - like their erstwhile oppressor, tsarist Russia, behaved toward them.

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service correspondent Nadiya Petriv contributed to this report.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus and Ukraine specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

| Home Page |