Ioannykij Bazylovyč (1742-1821)

Ioannykij Bazylovyč (1742-1821)

The nineteenth century is generally considered the age of nationalism.  This was a time, most especially in Europe,  when numerous peoples - whether or not they had their own states - formed national communities whose members were gradually taught to be aware of their common history, language, and ethnographic characteristics.  Once peoples acquired a sense of common identity, their leaders usually attempted through political (and sometimes military) means to obtain autonomy and even independent statehood for the territory considered to comprise the national homeland.

In effect, not only were states or political societies "invented," they often emerged from conflict and were maintained by a combination of physical force and a carefully nurtured myth of national identity.  This process of nation-building began for some peoples even before the nineteenth century.  For instance, Britain came into being as an "invented community" in the eighteenth century following the union in 1707, when England and Wales united with Scotland.

Stateless peoples also began the process of nation-building in the eighteenth century, and this included the Carpatho-Rusyns living in the heart of the European continent.  The early stages of nation-building among stateless peoples usually focused on what might be called heritage-gathering, that is a period when a small group of leaders were engaged in writing histories, preparing grammars and dictionaries, publishing poetry and prose in the "new" literary language, and describing the folk customs that were distinctive for a given people.  History writing was particularly important, because a properly crafted historical text could teach readers that a given stateless people may have had a glorious past, even independence, and that therefore such a people would be deserving of no less in the future.

It is interesting to observe that some of the earliest "national" histories were motivated by rather limited interests, in particular a need to prove that a people or perhaps an institution should be given certain rights because they had been guaranteed such rights at some point in the past.  It became, therefore, the task of the historian to justify present-day legal needs by uncovering "proofs" from the past.  This was precisely how Carpatho-Rusyn historiography (history writing) began, and the person responsible was the monk, Ioannykij Bazylovyč.

Ioannykij Bazylovyč was born in 1742 into a peasant family living in the Carpatho-Rusyn inhabited village of Hlivištia (former Už county in the Hungarian Kingdom) in what is today eastern Slovakia.  Despite the poverty of his parents, they managed to send the young Ioannykij to study for the priesthood in nearby Užhorod and Košice.  He entered the Greek Catholic Basilian Order and the Monastery of St. Nicholas on Monk's Hill (Černeča Hora), near Mukačevo.  In 1779, he was as appointed head (protoihumen) of the monastery, a position he held for the next 38 years until his death.

The Monastery of St. Nicholas near Mukačevo was at the time the most important religious and cultural center for Rusyns living south of the Carpathians, but in 1785 its prestige and legal status were challeneged.  A book appeared in that year claiming that the founding charter of the monastery dating back to 1360 was a forgery.  Bazylovyč felt obliged to prove the authenticity of the charter, supposedly drawn up by Prince Fedir Koriatovyč in 1360.  In response to this "legal" challenge", he began to write a three-volume work in Latin that eventually appeared in six parts between 1799 and 1805 under the title, A Short Description of the Donation of Fedir Koriatovyč, Prince of Mukačevo, for the Ruthenian Religious Order of St. Basil the Great on Monk's Hill in Mukačevo in the Year 1360.


In the end, Bazylovyč's work turned out to be much more than a treatise on the Koriatovyč donation.  It became what could be called the first national history of the Carpatho-Rusyns, covering the period from the earliest times to the last decade of the eighteenth century.  In the tradition of other contemporary and later national ideologists, Bazylovyč constructed a historical framework - some would say he created "an imagined political community" - that allowed readers to conclude that Rusyns were a people with their own distinct past and potential future.  His framework was based on five premises: (1) that Rusyns were the indigenous population in the Carpathians, that is, they inhabited the region before the coming of the Magyars in 896; (2) that in the early medieval period they had an independent state called the Marchia Ruthenorum (the Rus' Land), ruled by Rusyn princes as well as by Emerich, the son of Hungary's first king, St. Stephen; (3) that Rusyns were converted to Christianity in the wake of the Cyril-Methodian mission of 863; (4) that Rusyns subsequently fought against the Hungarians for independence; and (5) that the last independent Rusyn ruler was Prince Fedir Koriatovyč, who arrived in Mukačevo with 40,000 new Rusyn settlers from beyond the Carpathians and who founded the St. Nicholas Monastery on Monk's Hill in 1360.

Bazylovyč's historical framework was to influence several generations of Rusyn historians.  While it is true that some of his conclusions were later challenged by more comprehensive research, nonetheless his views have continued to this day to determine the popular understanding of early Rusyn history.  It is, therefore quite appropriate that already at the end of the nineteenth century, one Rusyn writer, aware that the profession of history writing began in ancient Greece, dubbed Ioannykij Bazylovyč "the Herodotus of Carpatho-Rusyn historiography."

Philip Michaels

MLA Citation: Michaels, Philip. "Ioannykij Bazylovyč (1742-1821)." Carpatho-Rusyn American XV, no. 4 (1992): 3

Manifesto of the Carpatho-Rusyns in Czechoslovakia

The situation that prevailed in Czechoslovakia before November 1989 must never happen again!  With this motto Rusyns today stand side by side with Czechs, Slovaks, and other nationalities in our beloved fatherland - free Czechoslovakia.  Indeed, all honest Rusyns are standing up, those living in the Beskyd mountains in our unfortunate Makovyca that has been so cherished, praised and deplored by our national awakeners, as well as those dispersed by their Rusyn fate to live all over Czechoslovakia, from Aš in the far western tip of Bohemia to Čierna nad Tisou in the far southeastern corner of the country.

Rusyns, too, too part in the monumental protests and manifestations that marked our "velvet" November revolution.  Rusyn voices were heard in Prague, Bratislava, Košice and Prešov.  Together with Slovaks and Czechs they proclaimed: "We want to return to Europe!"  For forty-one years we, together with the other nationalities of our fatherland, were cut off from Europe.  But our suffering began earlier in this century.

Actually, it began together with the Czechs immediately after the disintegration of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1938.  Our Rusyn homeland entered the limelight and interests of the world powers for whom the Rusyns were little more than small change in their mutual dealings.  The Carpatho-Rusyns, who had been the co-founders of the first Czechoslovak Republic, were now divided among several states.  Nor did the post-war carving up of the map of Europe change anything in the division of our people.  Hence, the present transition of our country in joining the ranks of the democratic states in Central Europe presents us with an opportunity to come to life again and to take up a respected place among the free nationalities of our fatherland - the new, democratic Czechoslovakia.  To be ready for this renaissance, after so many years of social deformation, we must look back to the past and into our history in order to know what we should do and how we should shape our future.

We, the Rusyns of Czechoslovakia, declare ourselves kin to our East Slavic brethren - the Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians - but we do not identify ourselves with them.  Our history is different because we were always geopolitically isolated from them.  We belong to Central Europe, where, alongside our West Slavic neighbors, the Slovaks, we survived a thousand years of Hungarian dominance.  Together with the Slovaks, we remained Slavs - specifically Rusyns.  We preserved our ancestral name, Rusyn, which we received from Kievan Rus'.  We realize with great pride how we are part of the heritage of Cyril and Methodius, the Apostles to the Slavs and co-patrons of Europe, from whom we received Christianity a hundred years before Kievan Rus' was baptized.  Christianity has spread among our ancestors from our neighbors the Daco-Romanians, who received it first from the Romans and in final form as part of Byzantine political and religious-cultural expansion.  The Byzantine character of Christianity from Romania spread among our ancestors through the Vlach migration and colonization through the entire Carpathian range.  Trances of this colonization are still found as far west as Valašké Meziříčí in Moravia.

Our ancestors provided refuge to their East Slavic brethren from the northern slopes of the Carpathians, from the principality of Galicia, when it was being oppressed and pillaged by the Tataro-Mongol hordes.  Considerable support for our ancestors came in the fourteenth century with the arrival into the Hungarian Kingdom of Prince Fedor Koriatovych of Podolia and his entire retinue.  The arrival from Podolia of our brethren, the Boikos, was a milestone in the history of our people, because in view of the circumstances prevailing in those times, the administrative, ecclesiastical, and cultural aspects of our ancestors' life was improved substantially.  Following the arrival of Prince Koriatovych south of the Carpathians, the Rusyns entered a centuries-long struggle for the preservation of their national identity.  For Rusyns, a great support in this struggle was their Christian faith according to the Byzantine rite, which, thanks to its Church Slavonic liturgical language, was understandable to the people.  The long-term proximity with the Catholic nations of Central Europe - the Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles - brought our ancestors into union with the Roman Church while at the same time preserving their Eastern rite and liturgical language.  The possibility to draw from the spiritual culture of the western church and from the cultural heritage of neighboring peoples brought our own national enlighteners to the fore - Duchnovyc, Stavrovs'kyj-Popradov, Luchkai, Mitrak, Dobrians'kyi.  And led by the best representatives of our people, we Rusyns made a truly correct decision in 1918: we established, together with the Czechs and Slovaks, the first Czechoslovak Republic.  The territory on which most of the Rusyns were living was designated by the Rusyn co-founders of this new Slavic state in the heart of Europe - Subcarpathian Rus'.  In this way, Rusyn revealed that they were East Slavs whose common cradle was Kievan Rus' of the grand duke Vladimir of the Rurykide dynasty.  Through their loyalty to the spiritual heritage of Cyril and Methodius, teh Apostles to all the Slavs, the Rusyns proved that even under difficult circumstances they were able to preserve their faith and rite in the form they had received it from the saintly brothers from Salonika.

By the time Subcarpathian Rus' came into being, the Rusyns had their own literary language which they had perfected and in which Rusyn linguists and belletrists like Luchkai, Dovhovych, Stavrovs'kyi-Popradov, and Mitrak wrote.  And so it seemed to all honest Rusyns that the words of challenge from the Rusyn national anthem would finally be realized: "Subcarpathian Rusyns, Arise from Your Deep Slumber..."  Although Rusyns never had the opportunity for independence within the Hungarian Kingdom, they now hoped to gain for Subcarpathian Rus' full autonomy, which would serve as a guarantee for the improvement of the social status of all classes.

The democratic character of the first Czechoslovak Republic offered a real hope that the yearning of Rusyns for life as a free distinct people would materialize.  Nobody would have thought at the time that history would grant only twenty years for this free life.  In retrospect, we must admit that in the first Czechoslovak Republic several error were committed by the leadership of the young state.  A short-sighted nationality policy was implemented concerning Rusyns.  Part of this was related to humanitarian concerns, which allowed vast numbers of Ukrainians and Russian emigrés to settle within the Czechoslovak republic.  These peoples sought ways to earn a living, and hence both groups were unleashed among the Rusyns whom they tried to attract to their respective sides.  However, instead of a peaceful

In Memorium: Andy Warhol (1928-1997)

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

In the 1960s, Andy Warhol gained virtually instant fame as one of America's most innovative artists.  Although he came to be a most public figure, his natural shyness served to obscure the fact that he was of Carpatho-Rusyn background.  Most of his work was done in New York City, but he never left his Pittsburgh roots or his Carpatho-Rusyn heritage far behind.  His unique sensibility was shaped by Pittsburgh influences, including ethnocultural ties, religious life, Byzantine iconography, art classes at Schenley High School, Hornes department store display windows, and the artist and teacher Robert Lepper at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University).

As an internationally recognized painter, photographic craftsman, film maker, and pop art celebrity, Warhol appeared reluctant to discuss his origins.  Once when asked about his background, he replied, "Why don't you make it up?"  In dealing with the media, he liked to be mysterious, provocative, and even something of a riddle.  Perhaps this is why a number of contradictory statements from reputable reference books and newspapers have appeared.

The facts of Andy Warhol's background were revealed through discussions between the Warhola family and Dr. Paul R. Magocsi who wrote: "Andy Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928.  Both his parents came from Miková, a tiny Carpatho-Rusyn mountain village just west of Medzilaborce in the Prešov Region of northeastern Slovakia." (Carpatho-Rusyn American, Vol. III, No. 2, 1980, p. 3)

Family ties were important, because brothers John, Paul and Andy had lived through some hard times.  Their family was always close to the church.  John Warhola commented on Andy: "When Andy was a boy, we thought he was going to be a priest.  Even under pressure, he never swore.  He believed in working hard." Paul and John Warhola vacationed with Andy nearly every year in New York City, where Andy attended church and was a supporting member of St. Mary's Byzantine Catholic parish on East 15th Street in Manhattan.  Among his New York staff it is common knowledge that at 1 p.m., for 15 minutes everyday, he stopped to pray at a nearby Roman Catholic Church, St. Vincent Ferrer.  Finally, we recall that in 1968, when Andy was shot, he called upon a Byzantine Catholic priest from Manhattan for annointing and the last rites.

After Andy Warhol died in a New York hospital on February 22, 1987, the older brothers, John and Paul Warhola, came to take his body home to Pittsburgh.

From listening to the family, one can easily gather that the Warhola clan would hope that Andy Warhol is rememebred as a creative sensibility whose art made a social commentary which was provocative and artistic enough to justify its existence.  They hope that his work will endure as a continuing influence.

As for being accused of indulgence in self flattery and being an elitist, Warhol had a sense of humor about the artist's image.  He gave an insight into his thinking when he said in a 1979 interview, "You can do anything you want, anytime."

A number of writers about contemporary art have used the fascinating expression "pop icon" to describe much of Warhol's art.  Perhaps Warhol's religious and ethnocultural roots can help to explain some of the energy behind the leap from Warhol's early commercial art to his pop iconography.  His idealization and interpretation of secular images from show biz selections, comic strips, ad pages, and television were prefigured in an ancient yet classic style of Eastern Christian art emanating from the Byzantine era.

Warhol was raised in a religious Carpatho-Rusyn family that practices Byzantine Rite Catholicism.  In his formative years from 1928 to 1949, he was exposed to the many icons which were so common in Rusyn-American homes, prayer-books and churches: icons depicting a matter-of-fact yet other worldly presence in just two dimensions de-emphasizing the flesh and pointing to the dominance of the spirit.  These were the images of Andy's youth.

On Thursday, February 26, 1987, Andy Warhol received a traditional Byzantine Catholic funeral service with a liturgy that hails back to the Christian centers of Byzantium.  The service was in English, but some Church Slavonic was also sung.  Internment was at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Castle Shannon, a suburb of Pittsburgh.  Andy was buried next to his parents.  There, at the gravesite, his associates from New York mourned together with family and friends over the passing of a great man whose personality, talent, energy and passion for work had inspired them.  The burial ended with the chanted prayer:
This grave is being sealed until the second coming of Christ, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.  Grant eternal memory, O Lord, and give him blessed repose.  Vičnaja pamjať, blažennyj pokoj, vičnaja jemu pamjať, Andreju.

Jerry Jumba

MLA Citation: Jumba, Jerry. "In Memorium: Andy Warhol (1928-1987)." Carpatho-Rusyn American X, no. 1 (1987): 4

The Warhol Story in Czechoslovakia

It is a paradox that here in Czechoslovakia we have begun to discover Andy Warhol, an artist with an international reputation, only after his death on February 22, 1987.  Nearly twenty years before, he had told a visiting relative from Czechoslovakia that he would make a trip to the homeland, but that was not to be.  Andy's ancestral homeland is the mountainous Rusyn lands of northeast Slovakia, the magnificent Carpathian region where to this day people speak his native language, Rusyn.  Surely his personal world was as mysterious as the solitary mountains, and only now after his death has he at last come home by means of his creative legacy and a few unique personal items.

Andy's brother, John Warhola, came to visit the homeland of his parents for the first time in September 1987.  He travelled to Miková, a village near Medzilaborce which was the birthplace of his parents.  On that occasion, Dr. Michal Bycko invited Warhola to a private viewing of an exhibition of paintings by a local artist, Zuzana Hapáková-Osavčuková, which he had organized in Medzilaborce.  In the course of their conversations, Bycko and Warhola discussed the possibility of the acquisition of some of Andy's works, at least two originals.  At the time, Warhola suggested that there ought to be a gallery near Miková bearing the name of Andy Warhol, and he promised his cooperation to achieve such a venture.  He was subsequently quoted in the newspaper Nove žyttja (October 16, 1987) as saying: "We would like to bequeath several artistic works of Andy Warhol to the Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Svidník in order that a gallery be organized there which would carry his name."  Warhola had already become the vice-president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.  But in those difficult days of Communist rule, neither the Svidník museum nor other institutions which Bycko contacted had any interest in what they described as the "bourgeois pseudo-artist Warhol and that dull pop art."  Bycko tried in vain to find officials who might grasp the significance of this unique possibility.  Although he found no understanding among the Communist functionaries, he did not give up.

Bycko next initiated correspondence and telephone contact with the Andy Warhol Foundation and its vice-president, John Warhola.  He wrote several articles about Andy Warhol for the Czech and Slovak press, and he distributed a great deal of informational material in order to support the founding of a gallery.  Since there was no building to house a gallery and no one to whom to give the two promised paintings, he began working for the establishment of a new gallery in Medzilaborce, which is about 13 kilometers from the Warhola homestead in Miková.  This was a difficult and time-consuming task.

In 1988, a construction company in Prešov was hired to renovate the old post office building in Medzilaborce as the Andy Warhol Gallery under the guidance of architect Václav Kolmajer.  (See "Czechoslovakia Discovers Andy," Carpatho-Rusyn American, Vol. XII, No. 3, Fall 1989, pp. 4-7).  But this first plan failed.  Nor did the name take hold, because the word "gallery" connotes a less than permanent institution.  Thus, Bycko and others continued to talk and write about founding a genuine museum, and this project enjoyed the support of the new government that came to power in Czechoslovakia after the Revolution of November 1989.

In order to promote the idea of a museum, Dr. Bycko proposed to the residents of Medzilaborce that an Andy Warhol Society (Spoločnosť Andy Warhola) be established.  This, in fact, occurred on March 2, 1990.  Vladislav Grešlík, an art historian and instructor in the Department of Creative Arts at the Faculty of Pedagogy in Prešov, became the society's president.  The very next month, the Ministry of Finance allotted funds to finance the renovation of the old post office building in Medzilaborce as the Andy Warhol Museum according to revised plans by the architect Štefan Pacák.  The project received the substantial sum of 10 million crowns for this purpose.

In April 1990, at the invitation of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center and with the financial participation of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, a three-man delegation travelled to New York City and Pittsburgh.  Their visit was organized and subsidized largely by the Byzantine Catholic Church hierarchy and the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center.  The delegation included a Medzilaborce town official, Dr. Michal Turok-Heteš; a Warhola family member, Vladimír Protivňak; and a representative of the Rusyn Renaissance Soceity, Dr. Ivan Bicko.  (See the Carpatho-Rusyn American, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Spring 1990, p. 11).  Not included in the delegation was Dr. Michal Bycko, who was the driving force behind the museum idea.  The group did meet with the Andy Warhol Foundation, but as New York's Village Voice reported, the delegation came without concrete plans or any notion of how the museum should be organized and financed.  The foundation itself was patient and understanding, but not much was accomplished.  Meanwhile, several other cities in Czechoslovakia began to compete for the Warhol museum, among them Svidník, Humenné, Košice, Martin, Bratislava and Prague.

Meanwhile, activists in Medzilaborce were not about to give up on the idea that they had initiated, and led by Dr. Michal Bycko they established in 1990 the Andy Warhol Museum Society.  They planned to complete the museum by August 6 (the artist's birthday), but instead of a grand opening there appeared a published announcement that the Andy Warhol Museum would not be established because an institution with that same name had already been founded in Pittsburgh.  Bycko instead proposed a new name, "Art Studio of the Andy Warhol Society," and sent to the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York, Archibald Gillies, an eight-point project with the following goals:

1. to organize an annual international art exhibit (Biennale);
2. to provide young artists with scholarships to work in studios;
3. to organize symposia on modern art and on the life of Andy Warhol and other pop artists;
4. to set up an experimental video studio for the work of young film makers;
5. to establish a school for the creative arts;
6. to organize a permanent exhibit of the Ukrainian avant-garde painter and sculptor from Galicia who worked in Prague, Ivan Kulec';
7. to foster the exchange of art exhibits; and
8. to set up an art center employing at least five people.

In the spring of 1990, at a meeting of Medzilaborce's Andy Warhol Society, the head of the ATYPIK construction firm in Košice, Ján Oleksinčin, promised that the reconstruction work for the museum would be finished by September 1.  At the same time, the residents of Miková had their own plans.  On September 12, 1990, the Miková village council wrote to Minister of Culture Snopko and proposed that the Warhola family house be reconstructed and for this purpose requested 19 million crowns.  The author of the project was to be architect Sergej Choma.  Then, as now, opinions remain mixed as to whether or not this project should be realized.

Also in September 1990, John Warhola again visited Medzilaborce and Miková, this time with his son Mark.  Both attended the grand opening of an exhibit of Warhol originals at the Wallenstein Palace in Prague.  Warhola was sent by the New York foundation to look for a building appropriate for the museum.  He also reported that the foundation did not want the proposed museum to carry the name of Andy Warhol, because such a museum already existed in Andy's home town in the United States.  After considering several alternatives, the Medzilaborce activists decided on a new name: the Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce with an Exhibition by the Andy Warhol Family.  Medzilaborce citizens also wanted the street on which the museum was to be built renamed "Andy Warhol Street."  A new competion date was set for February 22, 1991, the anniversary of Warhol's death.

John Warhola took back to the United States the plans given him by Dr. Bycko and the Andy Warhol Society for the new museum.  They also included the following elements:

1. a permanent exhibition on the family of Andy Warhol;
2. a rotating display of avant-garde art by local artists;
3. an art school for children aged 7 to 15 years, with permanent teachers working in cooperation with creative artists from across Czechoslovakia;
4. a publishing house for promotional materials and other publications; and
5. a video studio and museum shop.

After returning home, Warhola telephoned to inform the Andy Warhol Society that the New York Foundation agreed with the plan and was willing to finance the art school for five or more years. In addition, the foundation would give the museum up to ten paintings.  All of this was offered on the condition that the building be completed by June 1991.

At the end of November 1991, however, work on the building was halted because of construction difficulties.  In such circumstances, the society and its vice-president, Dr. Bycko, feared that the conditions regarding the completion date would not be met.

The situation of the "Warhol Museum" also disturbed artists.  The Prague painter, Michal Cihlář, together with the photographer Rudo Prekop said that the fate of the museum hung on a thread.  The situation had become critical, especially since the Andy Warhol Foundation, which had originally offered two paintings for free, now spoke of making available fifteen originals (which would be exchanged for new ones approximately every five years) and about providing funds for various stipends and museum operational expenses.  Cihlář and Prekop complained about the construction problems and bemoaned the lax approach of the Medzilaborce town authorities.

On January 21, 1991, in a televised discussion following a documentary on Andy Warhol, Dr. Michal Turok-Heteš, director of the Medzilaborce cultural center and Andrej Čerevka, the town official responsible for the construction, tried to convince viewers they were doing all they could in order to meet the June construction deadline.  The following day, Dr. Bycko received a letter in which the New York foundation announced that in March or April it would send an architect to inspect the exhibition space.  However, it was now clear that the construction firm, ATYPIK from Košice, would be unable to complete the reconstruction of the old post office even with the sufficient finances and substantial amount of time it had been allotted.

Then, on February 14, news of an alternative decision was announced.  The Museum of Modern Art would be housed in the newly-built Cultural Center in Medzilaborce.  Three days later, the architects Kríž and Pacák met with the Andy Warhol Society, proposed designing the plaza in front of the Cultural Center in an "Andy Warhol style," and announced June 6 as the completion date for the whole project.  In early March, Dr. Bycko announced the changes to the public, stating in the press that it was the decision of the Medzilaborce city council to offer the Cultural Center for the use of the museum.  With this new plan, the Andy Warhol Society wrote the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York, asking that an architect be sent to determine what preparations needed to be made to house the Warhol originals.

In the meantime, on March 23, the Cultural Center in Medzilaborce opened its doors for the first time to host representatives from five countries (Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the United States) at the First World Congress of Rusyns.  At that gathering, Henrieta Blumenfeldová, manager of the Andy Warhol Society, proposed a bold and magnificent plan for broadening the activity of the Medzilaborce museum.  To realize her plan, fifty million crowns would be necessary from the Slovak or Czechoslovak federal government, or from private sponsors.  The plan included construction of a new hotel in Medzilaborce; a house of culture with a movie theatre, casino, nightclub, Rusyn restaurant, and sauna; access to hunting reserves in the nearby countryside; a golf course; a baseball team from Medzilaborce; the creation of an incorporated company; and connections with travel agents to organize excursions from the United States.

In late March, the foundation sent to Medzilaborce Helena Fierlinger, an American of Czech origin and a member of Charter 77, in order to check on the state of preparations for the museum.  She was impressed with the new Cultural Center, built with extensive funding from teh former Communist regime in what became known as the style of "socialist megalomania."  The Medzilaborce authorities again promised they would do everything necessary, and she said that if all went well the Andy Warhol Foundation would give to the museum ten Warhol paintings.  During her visit Fierlinger also went to Miková where she saw the eighteenth-century church in which Andy's parents, Andrej Varchola and Júlia Závacká, were married in 1909, and which some Americans had promised to help renovate with a monetary donation.

It was also at this time that Slovakia's Minister of Culture, Ladislav Snopko, noted that the Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce did not fall under the jurisdiction of his ministry, but that it was the responsibility of the town of Medzilaborce and possibly the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York.  Before it could become the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture, there would need to be a new legislative agreement between the ministry and the foundation, and that this would probably entail a long and complicated process.  In the view of the ministry, the Medzilaborce citizens had taken on a project which they were incapable of completing.  The ministry's proposal was that there simply be a memorial plaque or monument in the village of Miková; that in Medzilaborce there be a museum containing perhaps some Warhol memorabilia; and that farther south in the large city of Košice there might be an Andy Warhol Gallery which would be dedicated, in particular, to avant-garde art.

Despite the various proposals and counterproposals, at last on Sunday, June 30, 1991, the long-awaited opening of the Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce took place.  It featured an exposition about the Andy Warhol family.  At this important event, minister Snopko stated in a television broadcast that it was his hope that by the end of the year the museum would come under the care of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic.  The guest of honor was Andy's oldest brother, Paul Warhola, whose own paintings were widely displayed as part of the new museum's permanent collection.  Also present was Dr. Paul R. Magocsi, president of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center in New Jersey.  In an opening speech, Magocsi said that it was not by chance that the new museum was in Medzilaborce, because to this day the town is inhabited by Rusyns and Andy Warhol's background is Rusyn.  The date June 30 was also not an accident, since it was chosen to coincide with the 29th annual Rusyn Festival of Culture and Sports in Medzilaborce in which many local and foreign ensembles participated.

Now that a Museum actually existed, it was easier for the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York to make available the long-awaited Andy Warhol originals.  With the foundation's vice-president, John Warhola, acting as an intermediary, a grand opening was set for October 5, 1991.  Nearly 2,000 visitors from across Czechoslovakia and from abroad attended.  These included artists, dramatists, and 300 journalists.  Many came to Medzilaborce on a special fourteen-car Warhol Tour train from Prague, including Andy's brother John Warhola and Paul's son, the graphic artist John Warhola.  The event received wide press coverage and was broadcast on Czechoslovak national television.  Warhol posters and other memorabilia were offered for sale, and a lively cultural program created by artists, actors, and musicians was presented.  Rusyn folk ensembles sang and danced their way around the large round kiosks in front of the museum which were decorated like Warhol's Campbell Soup can.s.  Actors dressed and coiffed in the style of Andy ciruclated through the crowd, while several avant-garde, rock, and punk bands performed late into the night, creating an atmosphere that led one observer to note: "This is the biggest shock to Medzilaborce since World War II!"

The Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce is now an established entity.  All year (except Mondays) visitors can see originals and reproductions of the works of Andy Warhol, Paul Warhola, and unique personal items, documents, and photographs of the Warhola family.  Exhibits of other avant-garde and Pop artists from Czechoslovakia and abroad are also on display.

Thanks to the enormous effort of those affiliated with the Andy Warhol Society, much has been accomplished in a short time.  Most deserving of praise is Dr. Michal Bycko, without whose efforts the museum and related activity surrounding Warhol would be impossible.  The preparation and design of the museum's interior and exterior was carried out gratis by Michal Cihlář and Rudo Prekop. The museum also contains an exhibit of works by both Cihlář and Prekop which relate to Warhol - Cihlář his graphics and Prekop his photographs.  They also created unique posters for all the exhibits in the museum.  Helping further to prepare the interior and surrounding grounds were numerous enthusiastic volunteers and students from Medzilaborce high schools.

And thus has returned the son of simple, poor Rusyn peasants,
Who went into the world to swim in bigger waters, to look for work, to secure a crust of bread
And to find a better life.
Their son, who rose to international fame
And who made his mark in the world,
Became a glorious and renown artist in many spheres of art.
And as a millionare, he became a glowing example of the fulfillment of the American Dream.

Andy Warhol will live on by means of the spiritual and material wealth which he has left not only in America and in the world at large, but laso to us in the homeland of his parents - the Rusyn-inhabited region of Czechoslovakia.

Jozef Keselica

Svidník, Slovakia

MLA Citation: Keselica, Jozef. "The Warhol Story in Czechoslovakia." Carpatho-Rusyn American XIV, no. 4 (1991): 8-10.

Adoľf Dobrianskij (1817-1901)

Adoľf I. Dobrianskij (1817-1901)

Adoľf Dobrianskij was the most important Carpatho-Rusyn political leader in the nineteenth century.  He was born in the Rusyn village of Rudlov (Zemplyn County) in the Prešov Region of what is today eastern Slovakia.  Trained as a civil engineer, he worked in the mining industry in Banská Štiavnica (central Slovakia) until 1848.

Dobrianskij's political activity is distinguished by two distinct phases.  Like many other contemporary Slavic leaders, he began as a supporter of the Austrian Hapsburg Monarchy.  When this policy proved unsuccessful, he set his sights on tsarist Russia, which he believed could provide the only salvation for his people.

Dobrianskij's Austrian phase is related to the revolutionary events which rocked Europe in 1848-1849.  All the national minorities in the Hapsburg Empire put forth demands for political and cultural autonomy, and Dobrianskij became the spokesman for the Carpatho-Rusyns.  He met several times with the highest government officials in Vienna, and in April 1849 was appointed liaison to the Russian army which Emperor Franz Joseph had invited to help the Austrians in their struggle against the Hungarian revolutionaries.  Dobrianskij also managed to gain a few concessions for his own people, including some amount of administrative and cultural autonomy for the "Rusyn" Užhorod District, which functioned from November 1848 to March 1849.  Dobrianskij was not successful, however, in achieving his other goal: unification of Carpatho-Rusyns in Galicia, Bukovina, and Subcarpathian Rus' into one political and administrative unit.

After the demise of the "Rusyn" District, Dobrianskij tried to push his idea for Rusyn autonomy in the Hungarian parliament to which he was elected in 1861 and again in 1865.  But Hungarian leaders were very suspicious of this "Pan-Slav agitator" who had helped the Austrian and Russian armies crush their own revolution.  Dobrianskij's project for dividing Hungary into five national districts came to nought.

He was somewhat more successful in the cultural realm.  After the death of Alexander Duchnovyč in 1865, Dobrianskij headed the first official Carpatho-Rusyn cultural society, the Society of St. Basil the Great, founded in Užhorod in 1866.  It was also during these years that Dobrianskij, in cooperation with other Rusyn leaders, succeeded in having Russian (or attempts to write in Russian) used as the literary language for Carpatho-Rusyn publications.  Because of his increasingly pro-Russian cultural and political stance, Dobrianskij's days in his homeland were numbered.  In 1871, he was forced to emigrate to Ľviv in neighboring Austrian Galicia, then in 1875 he went to live in Russia's capital, St. Petersburg, where he was greeted by tsarist officials as a friend and political ally.  When he finally returned to Austria and settled in Galicia in 1881, he was promptly put on trial for treason.  Although he was acquitted, Dobrianskij was forced to live in the farthest western part of Austria, in Innsbruck, until his death in 1901.  Only then could he return home to be buried in the family estate in the Prešov Region village of Čertižné (Zemplyn county).

Dobrianskij's political orientations caused him great personal difficulties.  Because of his early support of the Austrians, he alienated the Hungarians who ruled Subcarpathian Rus'.  Later, his pro-Russian stance not only complicated cultural developments in the homeland, but it also forced him to spend the last decades of his life in exile, far from the Carpathian Mountains he loved.  Nonetheless, in 1848-1849 he did gain political recognition for the Carpatho-Rusyn people who still remember the achievements of their countryman and their first brief experiment in political and cultural autonomy.

MLA Citation: "Adoľf I. Dobrianskij (1817-1901)." Carpatho-Rusyn American I, no. 2 (1978): 3

Every language needs poets and novelists

Upon his recent return from Toronto, where he held a research scholarship from the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center, the Lemko-Rusyn poet from Poland, Petro Trochanovskij (Murjanka), wrote to the Reverend František Krajnjak of Mezilaborce, Czechoslovakia, explaining his work on an anthology of Lemko-Rusyn literature.  Trochanovskij asked for examples of present day younger writers who used the Rusyn language.  "I must admit," responded Krajnjak in the Voice of Rusyns column of the newspaper Nove žyttja (May 11, 1990), "that I am ashamed.  Ashamed of whom? Of those who for 46 years worked only in Ukrainian so that our literary field produced nothing.  We have no Rusyn poetry nor prose among present-day writers... If we want to raise up our people, we must create new literary works in the Rusyn language!"
Among the Rusyn-language literary works sent by the Reverend Krajnjak to Petro Trochanovskij for his literary anthology, the most recent was written nearly four decades ago, in 1954, by Anna Vladŷkova.

Mamko moja, ne bijsja
Jak ja bŷla iši mala
moja mamja povidala:
'Divko moja, ljub tŷ svoje,
ne zabŷvaj slovo moje.
Chran' rusyns'kŷj narod smilo,
to je moje, tvoje dilo.'
....
Ne bijtesja, mamko moja,
ne zrečus' vašoho slova,
svojich predkiv, ljuba, ljublju,
inakšov ne bŷla-m, ne budu!
Rokŷ u nas tjažkŷ bŷly,
ukrajins'kŷ slova vsjadŷ 'byly'
Tŷm slovam mŷ ne rozumily,
lem naspamjať jich učily.
Oj, probuďtesja rusynŷ,
štobŷ na vas bŷly pŷšnŷ - divkŷ, sŷnŷ.
Štobŷ plodŷ nasŷch otciv ne propaly,
štobŷ hrobŷ nasŷch predkiv ne plakaly.


Mother, Don't Worry
When I was still young
My mother told me:
'Daughter, love what is yours,
And don't forget my words.
Defend with courage our Rusyn people,
That is both your task and mine.'
....
Don't worry mother,
I will not betray your language,
I love my ancestors,
I have not and will not act otherwise!
These years have been hard on us,
Everywhere the Ukrainian language was forced on us,
Even though we did not understand that language,
Which we have learned only by rote.
Oh, wake up Rusyns,
So that you - our sons and daughters - will have pride,
So that the efforts of our fore-fathers will not be forgotten,
So that the graves of our ancestors will not weep.


MLA Citation: Michaels, Philip trans. "Every Language Needs Poets and Novelists." Carpatho-Rusyn American XIII, no. 3 (1990): 10

Fedor Vico (1944- )

Fedor Vico in 2007.  Photo: Michal Maňas

Since the Revolution of 1989, the Carpatho-Rusyns have experienced a veritable national revival in their European homeland.  Within less than two years, they have been officially recognized as a nationality in Czechoslovakia, and they have created organizations in that country as well as in Ukrainian Transcarpathia and the Lemko Region in Poland, where new organizations are working to improve the cultural and political status of Rusyns wherever they may live.  Not surprisingly, all this "political" activity has been carried out by self-appointed leaders who, perhaps more often than is necesssary, take themselves too seriously.  Fortunately, the Rusyn movement, most especially in Czechoslovakia, includes activists who know how to laugh at themselves and at others aroudn them.

Among the best-known of the present-day Rusyn cultural activists in Czechoslovakia is the artist and caricaturist Fedor Vico.  Vico was born in 1955 in Šapinec, a Carpatho-Rusyn village in the Prešov Region of northeastern Slovakia where both his parents functioned as village school teachers.  Although his paternal and maternal parents both came from Rusyn villages (Vyšné Čabiny and Krajná Bystra), their profession as teachers required that they move often.  Thus, Fedor and his older brother began their lives and schooling first in Rusyn villages, but they later moved to western Slovakia (Bratislava and Zvolen) and farther still to Prague.

As a young boy, Vico was always interested in drawing, and to perfect his natural talents he was trained at the School of Industrial Arts in Bratislava.  Another of his talents was a sense of irony and the ability to poke satirical fun at the contradictions between the claims of Communist propaganda and the harsh realities of life in Czechoslovakia.  His first political cartoons began to appear already in the early 1960s, and from 1965 through 1970, Vico became extremely popular through his series, "Dereš," which appeared in the Slovak magazine, Roháč.  This series featured the legendary Slovak Robin Hood figure, Janošík.  In Vico's hands, Janošík became an instrument to criticize the foibles of life in Slovakia.

Vico became best known among Rusyns through his series of political cartoons under the title "Iľko Sova z Bajusova" (Iľko the Owl from Bajusov - an imaginary Rusyn village), which appeared weekly from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s in Nove žyttja, the Ukrainian-language weekly newspaper published in Prešov.  In fact, Vico's cartoons were form many years the only texts in that newspaper which appeared in the Rusyn language.

After an early life of "wandering" with his teacher-parents, since the mid-1960s Vico has made his home in Prešov, where he works out of a modest ground-level studio located opposite the Rusyn Aleksander Duchnovyč Theatre.  From this base, Vico is known by his cartoons throughout Czechoslovakia and abroad.  Since the 1960s, his work has been exhibited in all the major cities of Czechoslovakia as well as several times abroad, in Turkey, Greece, Canada, Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands.  He has also won several awards at art competitons in Yugoslavia.  Since the Revolution of 1989, he has drawn political cartoons for the best Czech-language newspaper in the country, Prague's Lidové noviny, and in 1991 he founded with his brother a satirical magazine, Bumerang, published in Slovak by the Rusyn Renaissance Society (Русиньска Оброда) and distributed throughout the country in over 40,000 copies.

Despite his fame throughout Czechoslovakia and his widespread popularity in Prešov (there has even been talk that he should run in local elections because he would probably be elected mayor of the city), Vico remains a Rusyn patriot committed to the current national revival.  In a recent interview with a leading Czech magazine (MF Dnes Vikénd), Vico responded to a question about his Rusyn origins: "A lot of people in Slovakia don't even know what the word Rusyn means.  Until now it was thought that we were Ukrainians... however, there is a difference between Rusyns and Ukrainians.  They are by no means the same."

When in the summer of 1991, it was decided to publish a newspaper, Narodnŷ Novinkŷ (Народны Новинкы - The People's News), in the Rusyn language of the Prešov Region, it came as no surprise that the publisher, the Rusyn Renaissance Society, turned to Fedor Vico for the masthead design.  Nor did he disappoint them.  The Rusyn-language Narodnŷ Novinkŷ is one of the most attractive newspapers on stands in Czechoslovakia.  And, of course, each issue is graced with a cartoon that pokes fun at current problems that face Rusyns: inflation, unemployment, displeasure with post-Communist political life, and conflict with the local Ukrainian intelligentsia.  Through it all, Fedor Vico makes his readers laugh at themselves and thereby helps them get through another day.

Philip Michaels

MLA Citation: Michaels, Philip. "Fedor Vico (1944- )." Carpatho-Rusyn American XIV, no. 4 (1991): 3

Alexander Duchnovyč (1803-1865)

Alexander Duchnovyč (1803-1865)

Every nationality has some great leader that is considered the father of his people.  Among Carpatho-Rusyns that person is Alexander Duchnovyč.  Because of his dominant role in the nineteenth-century Subcarpathian national renaissance, Duchnovyč has been remembered as the "national awakener of the Carpatho-Rusyns."

Duchnovyč was born in 1803 in the village of Topoľa (Zemplyn county) within the Rusyn-inhabited Prešov Region of present-day eastern Slovakia.  He attended the Greek Catholic seminary in Užhorod and was soon after ordained into the priesthood.  Like other students at the time, Duchnovyč was educated in the Magyar and Latin languages and was expected to be a Hungarian patriot.  The young clergyman realized, however, that his Rusyn people were linguistically and culturally related to other eastern Slavs and that they were in dire need of enlightenment.  He frequently stated that "a people without an education cannot call itself a people."  To help change this situation, he published a Reader for Beginners (1847), the first school textbook published in the local Rusyn vernacular (i.e., spoken speech).

The revolutionary years of 1848-1849 really allowed for the development of Duchnovyč's national activity.  He set up the first cultural organization for Carpatho-Rusyns (the Prešov Literary Society, 1850), published the first annual literary almanacs (Greetings for the Rusyns, 1850-1856), and wrote a popular poem ("Subcarpathian Rusyns, Arise from your Deep Slumber") which was to become the national anthem.  He also composed a grammar, a book on pedagogy, a history of the Prešov Diocese, and a history of the Carpatho-Rusyn people.

Duchnovyč wrote these influential works in different languages, depending on for whom they were intended.  In his poetry, plays, and school textbooks meant for the people, he used the Rusyn vernacular of his native region.  For his histories, critical essays, and sermons, he used either Latin or a language called Slaveno-Rusyn, which was Church-Slavonic mixed with some Carpatho-Rusyn vernacular and sometimes Great Russian words.

The Carpatho-Rusyn people have not forgotten the father of their nation.  After 1919, when Subcarpathia Rus' became a semiautonomous province of Czechoslovakia, statues to Duchnovyč were erected in Sevljuš (1925), Užhorod (1929), Chust (1931), and the largest in Prešov (1933), which still stands on the main square of that city.  Even Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants erected a statue to Duchnovyč in the nationalities park in Cleveland, Ohio.  Finally, at the one-hundredth anniversary of his death (1965), a three-day scholarly conference was held in Prešov, and one of his plays was revived for the repertoire of the local professional Carpatho-Rusyn theater.  Duchnovyč would have been pleased by such developments.  And he would have felt his life-long work was really worth the effort if his people and their descendants both in Europe and America could always really the opening lines to his most famous poem, "Vručanie" (Dedication, 1851):

I was, am, and will be a Rusyn

I will not forget my honorable lineage,

And will remain its son.

MLA Citation: "Alexander Duchnovyč (1803-1851)." Carpatho-Rusyn American 1, no. 1 (1976): 3

Welcome / Вiтайте

This blog is being launched on 26 October, coinciding with the day designated by the Carpatho-Rusyn Consortium of North America as Carpatho-Rusyn Day in North America.  The journal Carpatho-Rusyn American was published quarterly from 1976 to 1996 by the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center, Inc. as a forum on Carpatho-Rusyn ethnic heritage.

When it was first published, the Carpatho-Rusyn American had a great impact on the development of Rusyn scholarship in the English language, and was the main communication vehicle for the revival of a Carpatho-Rusyn cultural movement in North America.  Later, it brought news of the post-communist Rusyn cultural revival in Central Europe -- all the while bringing together American Rusyns separated by not only geographic distance, but also the forces of history that were described in its pages.

This project, to reprint Carpatho-Rusyn American as a blog and to give it new audiences, is guided by the first editorial, by Patricia Krafcik in 1976:

"But our interest in ethnicity is not limited to dreaming.  Now we can explore Rusyn ethnicity in academic surroundings, by observing and recording those traditions to which our people still cling in this country and in the old country, and by studying the language of our parents and grandparents.  The Rusyn cultural heritage is rich and varied.  It is a precious possession which we can preserve by sharing it with each other.  Let us, the young people, together with our parents and our grandparents dedicate this newsletter to that endeavor."

Carpatho-Rusyn American will post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, until the original content runs out.  To facilitate easy use of these texts in academic work, each post will be accompanied by an MLA citation from the original printed form.