The materials of the RF State Duma Commission for Studies of Practical Observance of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms, Supervision over their Observance in Foreign States

Unfortunately, the existence of Rusyns, a fairly numerous (numbering up to 1 mln people) nation partitioned by borders of various countries, on the ethnic map of Europe is known only among the expert community. Yet in Europe they are one of the oldest autochthonous peoples of the Slavic stock, which, according to chronicles, populated the territories from the High Tatres mountains in the west to the slopes of the Carpathians in the east and the Middle-Danube lowland in the south. Historians and philologists (V. O. Kliuchevskii, O. N. Trubachev) believed that the territories currently populated by Rusyns were the original homeland of all the Slavs, who subsequently dispersed in various

The publications and materials of M. Makara, President of the Rusyn Scholarly and Enlightenment Society; M. Sharga, Transcarpathian Regional Association "Znannia"; and Archpriest Dymytrii Sydor, President of the Soim of Subcarpathian Rusyns are used in the present paper.

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directions - beyond the Danube, to the Balkans, to the Baltic Sea coast and to the Dnieper River. Rusyns preferred not to leave their home "nest" despite the severe times they had to go through. They preserved their national identity even being a partitioned nation for centuries.

The issue of national survival became particularly acute for Rusyns in the late XX - early XXI centuries.

The Rusyns of the Austria-Hungarian Empire have known violations of their national rights including being transferred from territory to territory by force (this is how Rusyns found themselves in Vojvodina and Croatia). But only nowadays, when most of this nation lives within the territory of Ukraine, Rusyns feel a real danger to their very national existence. The new democratic Ukraine does not recognize Rusyns as a national minority and refuses to grant them an ethno-cultural autonomy. Due to this dramatic situation, the Rusyn debate rose to the pan-European level.

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Mykhail Luchkai (Pop), a prominent XIX century scientist, historian, and a patriot of his land, convincingly proved in his six-volume History of the Carpatho-Rusyns on the basis of a profound analysis of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sources and the works of medieval western European historians, that the present-day Rusyns are the indigenous people of the lands located between the Danube and the Tisza and the Carpathian Mountains. They are indigenous Slavic people with their own name and history, which is related to other Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

Classical, Byzantine, and medieval historians called the Slavic

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tribes to the east of the Danube "Ruthenians" which was the Latin term for Rusyns. The Eastern Slavs lost this name in the XII century. However, those Rusyns who lived on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains were not subject to princes beyond the Carpathians and they still preserve their historical name. Those Rusyns failed to prevent the seizure of their lands by more powerful Slavic and non-Slavic peoples. The Subcarpathian Rusyns had to survive many alien political regimes, every one of which tried to prove "scientifically" its own historical right to rule the land and presented Rusyns as its subethnos or a "relative branch".

According to the 1919 St. Germain Peace Treaty recognized by Ukraine, the territories inhabited by Rusyns were divided among neighboring central European states, and the present territory of the region was allocated to the Republic of Czechoslovakia under the name Subcarpathian Rus\ where it was granted broad autonomy. On March 15, 1939, the Rusyn autonomous region was proclaimed independent within the Czechoslovakian Federation under the name of Carpatho-Ukraine. The very next day it was invaded and occupied by Horthy's Hungary.

As the front of military operations against fascist Germany moved westwards, the Subcarpathian Rus', as a part of Czechoslovakia, was liberated by Soviet troops in October 1944. In June, 1945 the region joined the USSR with all the institutions of state autonomy by the Fierlinger-Molotov agreement, initially as the Transcarpathian Ukraine.

However, as early as in January 1946, the sovereignty of Transcarpathian Ukraine was abolished and its status was reduced to that of a Soviet region. The Congress of People's Committees issued a Manifesto on the Legal and Civilized Reunification of the

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Region with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was supported by a part of the population. Instead rough administrative measures were taken by the central authorities. The National Council (Narodna Radd) as "the only central authority acting on behalf of the will of the (Rusyn) people on the territory of Transcarpathian Ukraine" was disbanded.

In the Stalin USSR the Rusyns were persecuted, mostly by the Ukrainian authorities, which implemented Ukrainization in all the aspects of life from administration to instruction in Rusyn in schools and the language used in Church. This was done despite the fact that the Rusyn nationality was recognized as a particular category of citizenship with various national and cultural rights in two dozens of states where Rusyns had lived previously.

All the states of which Transcarpathia was a part in the past (Hungary, Austria, Austria-Hungary, the Hungarian Republic, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) not only recognized the Rusyn nationality but also registered it in population censuses. Thus, in the 1850 census, on the territory of present-day Transcarpathia and Slovakia there were 440,600 Rusyns. In 1900 they numbered 410,283 (the decrease was the result of emigration). In the first Czechoslovak census of 1921, in Subcarpathian Rus' (excluding the Rusyn-inhabited territory allocated to Slovakia) there were 320,648 Rusyns. According to the census of 1930, Czechoslovakia's population totaled 6,904,422, of which 374,163 were Rusyns (rus'ky).

Being aware of themselves as of a distinct ethnic community, Subcarpathian Rusyns kept demanding social and national rights. In 1848 a delegation of Rusyns, headed by the well-known Rusyn

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statesman Adol'f Dobrians'kyi, presented to the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph a twelve-point Program for Rusyn Autonomy (the recognition of the Rusyn nationality in Hungary on the state level; the creation of administrative districts in the Rusyn region, where government officials would be required to know the Rusyn language; the establishment of Rusyn elementary and high schools, a law academy, and the publication of a government-sponsored newspaper in Rusyn; rights equal to those of other nations, etc.). Rusyn's joining the Czechoslovakia with the rights of a broad autonomy and with an autonomous Soim was the culmination of the nation's ascension to the statehood status.

In October, 1938 the parliament of Czechoslovakia passed laws on the federative structure, according to which the Czech, Slovak, and Subcarpathian Rusyn regions were given the status of separate states.

However, already on March 14, 1939, after the Hitler's assault, Slovakia declared its sovereignty and seceded from the federation, thus separating Subcarpathian Rus' from the Czech lands. On March 15,1939, the Soim (the Rusyn parliament) of Subcarpathian Rus' declared the transfer from Rusyn autonomy to that of a sovereign republic under the name Carpatho-Ukraine (this name was chosen under pressure from Berlin and the Ukrainian Sich military organization members). The Soim announced the formation of Carpatho-Ukraine's government and chose Rev. Avhustyn Voloshyn as its president. Just one day later, the republic was occupied by Hungarian troops.

It seemed that World War II and the liberation from fascism, in which Rusyns took an active part, related the fate of Rusyns closely to Ukraine. However, the nation willed something different. On 18

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November, 1944, the Rusyn National Council submitted a petition to the Soviet Government requesting the incorporation of the region into the USSR as a Subcarpathian Union Republic. But Stalin's Government ruled otherwise - all the Rusyns were listed as Ukrainians. The very Rusyn nationality was banned. Thus a severe blow was dealt to Rusyns. At the same time the Autonomous Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Church voluntarily accepted the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) instead of that of the Serbian Patriarchate.

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The statuses and rights of Rusyns in various states and epochs varied, and currently they still do. For example, in Serbia Rusyns not only enjoy all the general civil rights but also have a broad national autonomy on the territory of Vojvodina, where a total of about 40,000 of them reside. They have their own schools, newspapers, a TV channel, a fine arts gallery, and a museum. Their national programs are funded by the Government. While preserving their national identity they are integrated into the life of the state of Serbia.

Rusyns are dubbed "the quiet minority" in the present-day Slovakia. In this country they are a predominantly rural population residing compactly in the Presov Rus'. Currently Rusyns in Slovakia enjoy the entire range of civil and ethno-cultural rights needed to preserve their identity. However, things were not always this way. Attempts at a cultural assimilation of Rusyns were made shortly before World War II. After 1945 the Rusyn national institutions started to be termed "Ukrainian" in Slovakia. Plays were staged in

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Ukrainian at the Rusyn national theatre, etc. Justice to Rusyns was restored in Slovakia only during the last decade.

Rusyns enjoy all the civil and ethno-cultural rights envisioned by the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages in Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic. The Czech scientists implemented an extensive research project in the 1920ies - 1930ies to study the Subcarpathian Rus' with its language, ethnography, culture, and nature. The Czech scholars discovered for the entire Europe the treasures of this region. The Rusyns do justice to them admitting that the Czech scholars have done a lot more for their nation than the government which impeded the autonomization of the region. Nowadays the Czechs visiting places which they used to know in Ukraine are stunned by the dramatic deterioration of life quality and the legal situation in which people find themselves. F. Bernhardt wrote that the Subcarpathian Rus' is all scarred desperately by Ukrainized toponims and spends endless time with a lethargic submissiveness in lines in the reception rooms where bureaucrats steadfastly continue the Soviet red tape tradition.

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A profound religiousness is typical for the Rusyn ethnos.

Rusyns accepted Christianity more than a century earlier than the Kievan Rus'. The Christian Apostles to the Slavs St. Cyril and St. Methodius spent over two years preaching in Rusyn-inhabited lands. Close economic ties with neighboring Slavic lands and the belonging of large parts of the Rusyn territories to the Moravian and Bulgarian states were among the factors which contributed to Rusyns' opting for Christianity. In the 1930 census in

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Transcarpathia, 359,191 people identified as Greek Catholics and 11,234 as Orthodox; together those numbers accounted for almost 70% of the inhabitants who identified themselves as Rusyns. Until 1947 the Rusyn Orthodox were subordinate to the Serbian patriarchate, while Greek Catholics in the Mukachevo eparchy were directly subordinate to Rome.

At present s of the Orthodox in Transcarpathia (a total of about 600,000) belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Rusyns who emigrated to the United States established the Greek Catholic Metropolitanate of Pittsburgh and an Orthodox Metropolitanate in Johnstown (Pensilvania).

Both the Orthodox and the Greek Catholic churches have played an important role in the national identity of Rusyns. In all official documents of the Czechoslovak era, adherence to these confessions was a synonym of the Rusyn identity. In the first years after Subcarpathia's unification with the Soviet Union, these confessions were subjected to administrative pressure. In today's independent Ukraine, the rights of the faithful continue to be violated, now by the faithful themselves. The Church Slavonic language (which is close to the Rusyn one) is being removed from church service. "Ukrainianization" is being imposed in the liturgy for the convenience of the believers coming from the neighboring Ukrainian regions, especially from Galicia. Moreover, many of these recent newcomers would like the Greek Catholic communities of Transcarpathia to be subordinate to the Greek Catholic Archeparchy of L'viv, a move which would largely diminish the significance of the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo.

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Currently, there is an entire range of problems in the Rusyn situation in Ukraine, which cannot be resolved without a revision of the status of this nation.

The collapse of the USSR aggravated the Rusyn situation - remaining within Ukraine they have no national autonomy status whatsoever. The following question appeared on the ballot of a 1991 regional referendum: "Do you believe that in the [new] constitution of Ukraine Transcarpathia should be given the status of a special self-governing territory within the structure of independent Ukraine and that it should not be included in any other administrative or territorial formation?" Seventy-eight percent of referendum participants voted for this proposition. However, Kiev has not officially recognized the results of the referendum. The will of the people has been ignored. The hopes of Rusyns that democratic Ukraine would assist them in recovering what had been taken from them by Stalin's government have not come true. The state authorities accepted a secret "Plan of Measures for the Resolution of the Problem of Rusyn-Ukrainians," which was directed at the accelerated assimilation of Rusyns and turning them into "ethnic Ukrainians". It is this friction that is a source of danger for the integrity of Ukraine, not Rusyns.

The first and most important problem is that the national minority status of Rusyns is not recognized in Ukraine and that the entire spectrum of ethno-cultural autonomy rights of the Subcarpathian region is violated. These rights pertain to the language, culture, social status, freedom of religion, and freedom of economic and business activities. A related issue is the illegal and barbarian exploitation of

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the region's natural resources paralleled by the civilian and cultural discrimination against Rusyns as the native population. The Rusyn folk culture is being suppressed, the term "Rusyn" is being replaced by the "Ukrainian", and their history is being falsified.

The underdevelopment of the region caused by the economic malpractice and the discrimination against the local population is now declared to be the innate quality of the Rusyn nation. Contemporary falsifiers of the history of the region even refer to the promoter of Rusyns and author of the above-mentioned six-volume history of Carpatho-Rusyns Mykhail Luchkai and the great national awakener of the Rusyns Aleksander Dukhnovych as Ukrainians, although that ethnonym did not even exist at the time of their life and work.

During the "incorporation" of Transcarpathia into the USSR, questions regarding the ethnicity of the Rusyns were decided in an administrative way - the Rusyns were automatically declared to be Ukrainians. In the same way, the nationality designation Rusyn, which had for centuries been a shield against the complete assimilation of the Subcarpathian Rusyn people, was eliminated. Also neglected was a rich heritage of culture, popular education, language, customs, and traditions that were formed over the course of centuries. The Rusyn language was subjected to a particularly strong pressure. It was removed from education, the press, radio, and official usage. A discriminatory term denoting the Rusyn language as a language mixed with impurities and various offensive slurs were widely applied in schools and other educational institutions. This is one of the reasons why Transcarpathia is at the bottom of the list in Ukraine in terms of the number of specialists with degrees and college and university students.

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At present the forces opposing the Rusyn movement for ethno-cultural autonomy attach to it the label of a "political Rusynism"; they accuse Rusyns of anti-Ukrainianism and charge Rusyns of attempting to leave Ukraine and to join Hungary, the Czech Republic, or Russia. All of these charges are false. No Rusyn organization has ever discussed these issues or referred to them in any documents. The aim of such provocations is to disorient the society and to eliminate any reference to Rusyns as the traditionally dominant ethnic entirety in the Transcarpathia, who preserved their land and language and who joined Ukraine with this wealth.

In the long term, the above attempts to convert Rusyns artificially into ethnic Ukrainians are harmful for the coherence of the society and the formation of the multiethnic Ukraine.

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One of the worst aspects of the human and national rights violation in Transcarpathia is the business and economic practice of the Ukrainian authorities in the region.

The climatic and topographical features of Transcarpathia have determined the socioeconomic life of the region. For several centuries, both in the mountainous areas that occupy 80 percent of the territory and in the lowlands, the inhabitants have developed specific land-use techniques in agriculture, animal husbandry, food processing, and consumption. There were three clearly defined branches of the local economy: 1) village agriculture on privately owned land; 2) small-scale artisanship; and 3) industry. The first two elements were liquidated with the establishment of the Soviet rule. Agriculture was made collective, and the majority of

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traditional landowners, which included hundreds of thousands of people, lost their rights to the lands that they had acquired by their own labor. The struggle against privatized cottage industry eliminated the small-scale artisanship. Industry was based exclusively on local natural resources. In 1945 the region was home to 173 factories, including 31 lumber and wood-processing plants, 18 construction material plants, and 94 food-processing factories. The majority of the population, depending on the season, worked alternatively in both agriculture and the lumber industry. The proposal of the local authorities to preserve this combination of employment niches was not accepted by the central governing authorities. The collective farms created in the mountainous regions survived with great difficulty and only thanks to the forest, and later, to subsidiary industries.

It is well known that until the 1960s, the forests were cut down in a barbarous fashion. During the last decade this ill practice has been renewed and restored to terrifying proportions.

The absence of a differentiated regional policy on the part of the central government has created a situation whereby impoverished Transcarpathia is a donor of the budgets of neighboring regions -Rivne and Ivano-Frankivs'k. The L'viv-based branch of the state-owned railroad company has left only train stations and toilets to the Uzhhorod branch. At the same time, seven transit gas and oil pipelines (17% of their total length in Ukraine), contribute no income to the local budget. Transcarpathia's sanatoria transfer their revenues to the Kiev-based Ukrainian Trade Union Company.

Transcarpathia's famous mineral waters today produce profits for oligarchic clans and their partners in Kiev.

This is the third plunder of the region after the destruction of the

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forest and the expropriation of land from the native population.

Salt, tseolit, wool, and other resources are also exported for a ridiculously low price. The region receives nothing from the gold deposits in Muzhiievo, which have been given the status of the Ukrainian property. The so-called privatization of retail, small-scale, industrial, and other enterprises, created by labor collectives, has given practically nothing to the working people. Intermediary firms located outside of Transcarpathia have profited from the poverty of the population. They have bought up shares and certificates to control land and enterprises, acquired property, provided jobs to their own personnel, and violated existing labor laws.

The demographic and social balance in the region has also been destroyed. In the course of the last half-century, the population has doubled, reaching 1.3 million. The population density on territories other than those covered by forests has reached 200 persons per square kilometer. This is the highest figure in Ukraine and all former Soviet republics, and translates into 0.15 hectares of land per person. Of 746,000 people in the work force, only 280,000 have permanent jobs, and this includes the employees of the official-administrative and government apparatus and the law-enforcement agencies. All others are unemployed. By comparison, the number of unemployed in Transcarpathia in 1930 was only 60,000. At that time the world community sounded an alarm about this situation, describing the region as the "Africa" of Central Europe. Somehow, at present the global community is not so vocal on this occasion.

History is repeating itself, and for Rusyns it does so in a yet more unfortunate way. The situation in which Rusyn find themselves can be characterized with the words of Ede Egon, an economist

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employed in Hungary's Ministry of Agriculture, who studied the economic situation of the Subcarpathian Rusyns and concluded in 1899: "It is dreadful to look at this dying people. It is already possible to predict the day when the last Rusyn will leave the region." And further: "This farming people has fallen into the hands of the strongest and most devious commercial element in Europe..."

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The time has come to fulfill the will of Transcarpathia's inhabitants as expressed lawfully in the referendum of 1991. It is also essential to include the Rusyn nationality in the "Official List of Nationalities of Ukraine." The rubric should have its own distinct identity code, which would have to be taken into account in the census of Ukraine and in other official documents. Conditions should also be created for a realization of the legal rights of the indigenous people of Transcarpathia.

The Rusyn nationality wishes to become and can become an integral part of the multi-ethnic Ukrainian nation, and in that way it will contribute to the rise and development of the Ukrainian state as a whole. There are clear historical, ethnic, religious, legal, political, economic, and social justifications for the official recognition of Rusyns as a distinct nationality.

On the one hand, the Rusyn case constitutes an outrageous violation of human and national rights by the Ukranian authority. On the other hand, it is a case of double standards in the assessment of the legislation and practices of a country which is a member of the Council of Europe. What we witness is not even a nation being denied the right to autonomy - the Rusyn people do

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not even have the rights that other nations enjoy in Ukraine. It is a national discrimination of an ethnos!

The European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages adopted by the Council of Europe in November, 1992, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities affirm a polyphonic approach to the protection of cultural and language rights of populations and a respect for the diversity of languages, views, and positions. These documents interpret a language not merely as a means of communication, but also as an integral part of the culture and the mentality of an individual language speaker. Proclaiming a European orientation, Ukraine ratified these documents. One might think that thus a solid legal foundation is established for the rights of Rusyns, at least in what concerns language and education. However Rusyns are not mentioned in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada bill ratifying the above Council of Europe documents at all. The national minorities in Ukraine included in the bill are the Tatars of Crimea, Gypsies, the Gagauz people, Russians, Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Moldavians, Byelorussians, but not Rusyns! The Ukrainian authorities seem to follow the Stalinist principle: whenever there is a nation there is a problem, but if there is no nation there is no problem!

The Rusyns are alleged to seek a secession from Ukraine and to hate Ukrainians. The propaganda calls them "an evil force opposing Ukraine and its statehood". The very existence of the movement for Rusyns' rights disproves the convenient and habitual view of the national issue as that of a struggle for the Ukrainian cause and against the "Russian Empire". Even the fact

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that Rusyns are recognized as a national minority in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other countries of the EU is ignored in Ukraine. The essence of the Rusyn issue is the absence of any status of the Rusyn nation in Ukraine.

At present the recognition of the right of Rusyns to an ethno-cultural autonomy is a necessary step towards the harmonization of national relations in Ukraine.

RA

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