**Who Are the Rusyns? By John Righetti (Part 2/4) - Immigration and settlement in the United States — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/rusyns-immigration-settlement-united-states/

Part 2 of John Righetti's series on Carpatho-Rusyns covers mass immigration to the US from the 1870s-1920s, chain migration, mutual aid societies, and the founding of Greek Catholic parishes.

## Key Takeaways

- Early Rusyn immigration was largely temporary labor migration driven by economic goals in the homeland.
- Chain migration and fraternal societies were central to building durable Rusyn communities in the US.
- The lack of a Greek Catholic clergy and the American nonprofit model of church ownership shaped distinctive church governance.
- Rusyn ethnic and religious identity was contested among competing national and ecclesiastical influences.

## What the video covers

- Carpatho-Rusyn immigration to the US surged from the mid-1870s, peaked around 1880-1915, and declined in the 1920s.
- Most early Rusyn immigrants were young men aged 18-19 who came to earn money in mines, mills, and factories, intending to return home.
- Industrial labor shortages in the US led some mills and mines to recruit workers directly from Rusyn villages, offering to pay their passage.
- Chain migration created concentrated Rusyn settlements in towns like Lyndora and Uniontown, Pennsylvania, linked to specific villages in Europe, which aids genealogical research.
- Dangerous working conditions made mutual support essential, leading to local fraternal societies named after religious figures (St. John, St. Basil, St. Michael).
- These societies federated into the Greek Catholic Union of Rusyn Brotherhoods, today the largest Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal organization in the US.
- Rusyns founded Greek Catholic parishes but initially lacked clergy, as European bishops did not send priests, making them the first immigrant group to arrive without its clergy.
- American Protestant attorneys advised congregations to incorporate as nonprofits, a governance model very different from Catholic church property administration under bishops.
- Later sections address political tensions between Russophile, Ukrainian, and Slovak orientations, and conflicts with Orthodox and Roman Catholic hierarchies.
- The narrative challenges the common American myth that immigrants arrived primarily for permanent settlement and religious freedom.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Mass immigration to the US begins
2. 01:21 Young Rusyn men as labor migrants
3. 02:48 Recruitment and chain migration
4. 04:29 Dangers of work and mutual aid societies
5. 06:47 Founding the Greek Catholic Union
6. 09:00 Establishing parishes without clergy
7. 13:20 Church governance and American legal structures
8. 18:20 Political and ecclesiastical tensions

Answers

## Questions about this video

Why did so many young Rusyn men immigrate to the US in the late 1800s?

They came mainly to earn wages in mines, mills, and factories so they could return home and buy property or achieve economic independence. Labor shortages in US industry and the economic depression in Europe made this migration especially attractive.

What is chain migration and why does it matter for genealogy?

Chain migration is when people from one village settle in a particular US town and then encourage friends and relatives to follow. Because of this pattern, researchers can often trace a family's origin by where they settled in America and target the matching European church records.

What was the Greek Catholic Union?

It was a federation of Rusyn fraternal societies formed in Eastern Pennsylvania that pooled members' funds for mutual aid. It remains the largest Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal organization in the United States.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

Carpatho-Rusyns began to immigrate to the United States in very large numbers starting in the mid-1870s.

00:08

Speaker A

The numbers just ballooned in the 1880s up through 1915, and then start to trail off in the 1920s.

00:22

Speaker A

And we'll talk a little bit about why that was and why that happened.

00:36

Speaker A

But this immigration piece of these young men coming is a really important part of the story, because one of the other misconceptions we have in the American context is that we often learn in American schools that immigrants came to the United States in droves for opportunity and freedom of religion.

00:52

Speaker A

And that's only partially true.

01:02

Speaker A

They paint this picture like large groups of immigrants were coming to stay in the United States.

01:13

Speaker A

And for the vast majority of immigrants, and especially for Rusyns, this was not the case.

01:21

Speaker A

Who came initially as immigrants to the United States from the Carpathian Mountains were these young 18- to 19-year-old Rusyn men.

01:35

Speaker A

They came here not to stay, not to build a house or churches, not to establish communities, but they came here to make money in mills, factories, and mines.

01:49

Speaker A

And they wanted to make that money to go home to buy property and to be economically independent in the homeland.

02:03

Speaker A

And that was the entire driving force in bringing much of Europe's immigration here at the turn of the century.

02:11

Speaker A

One of the things about the depression of the 1870s: Europe had this horrible depression, and there was no work.

02:19

Speaker A

But the Industrial Revolution was really on the mend here in the United States.

02:31

Speaker A

And so by the time you get to the 1880s, there are all these coal mines and all these steel mills and factories, and there's not enough American labor to be able to fill them.

02:48

Speaker A

And so not only did these people come, but actually some groups, like steel mills and coal mines, sent representatives to these Rusyn villages to find these young people, to bring them, and say, "We'll pay your way over, and you can pay that back once you get your job."

03:05

Speaker A

And so, in essence, entire pockets of Rusyns came.

03:15

Speaker A

This is important, again, for people who are trying to track their families, because the way Rusyns came then was a process called chain migration.

03:28

Speaker A

In chain migration, a pocket of young men from one village comes and settles in one little town in the United States, and then they write back to their friends, and more of them come.

03:43

Speaker A

This is really very helpful for genealogy amongst people of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry, because you can pretty much figure out where your family comes from by way of where they settled in the United States, and it helps you even with records, to know what kinds of church records to look for or where to begin, even in Europe.

04:03

Speaker A

Because let's say, for instance, in Lyndora, Pennsylvania, all of these people come from Hrabova and two or three villages around them in Zemplín County.

04:13

Speaker A

Or in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, you have this very large Spiš and Transcarpathian Turja Valley immigration to these areas.

04:29

Speaker A

So this chain migration is what builds the Rusyn community in the United States.

04:48

Speaker A

And they are largely, as I said, young men who are coming here to work.

05:03

Speaker A

Now they're working in very dangerous industries: coal mines, steel mills, factories, where they get injured and killed with some regularity.

05:20

Speaker A

You get hurt in the mine in Eastern Pennsylvania, in Shamokin or Wilkes-Barre, and you're 18 years old and your parents live in Europe. Who takes care of you when you're hurt?

05:34

Speaker A

Or, unfortunately, if you're killed, who absorbs your funeral expenses and buries you?

05:46

Speaker A

These young men needed to develop support mechanisms, and so they did.

06:03

Speaker A

They created local societies.

06:13

Speaker A

Amongst Rusyns, they were almost always named for religious organizations: St. John's Society, St. Basil Society, St. Michael Society.

06:28

Speaker A

And these were organizations where these men would put a certain part of their salary each month into a pot, and then if somebody were injured or died, they would take the money out of that and be able to pay for the expenses.

06:39

Speaker A

Over time, they began to invest those dollars as well, and they grew.

06:49

Speaker A

And these societies began to connect with one another.

07:02

Speaker A

And they did two things.

07:19

Speaker A

One, when they connected, they realized that for them to pool their resources was a very powerful economic thing.

07:34

Speaker A

And one of the first for Rusyns to do this were these individual societies in Eastern Pennsylvania, who came together and formed the Greek Catholic Union of Rusyn Brotherhoods.

07:41

Speaker A

So these Rusyn Brotherhoods came together, and they formed the Greek Catholic Union, which to this day is the largest Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal organization in the United States.

07:49

Speaker A

So the Greek Catholic Union, you'll hear me refer to it as the GCU, grows as more lodges come on and they invest the dollars.

08:09

Speaker A

The other thing that these individual societies do is they start to found churches.

08:20

Speaker A

Now, the Greek Catholic Church is not like the Roman Catholic Church.

08:34

Speaker A

It's Eastern in tone, its holidays are different, its liturgy is different.

08:50

Speaker A

And so they want to have their own spiritual homes here in the United States.

09:04

Speaker A

Now, these young Greek Catholic men, when they wanted to start these parishes, began to write to the Greek Catholic bishops in Europe asking them to send priests.

09:21

Speaker A

And initially, the bishops did not send them.

09:34

Speaker A

And to this day we don't know why they didn't, though my personal philosophy about that is that, given the fact that these young men were going to stay here, perhaps those bishops looked at it and said, "Why should we send resources there when they're going to be coming back shortly?"

09:46

Speaker A

But initially there was therefore no clergy for these young people to establish their new parishes.

09:56

Speaker A

And this is significant, because of all the ethnic groups coming to America, the Greek Catholic Carpatho-Rusyns become the first immigrant group in the United States to come here without its clergy.

10:11

Speaker A

Think about your history.

10:25

Speaker A

The Spanish land in Florida, and with them is the Spanish Roman Catholic priest.

10:37

Speaker A

The British land in Jamestown, and there's the Anglican vicar.

10:43

Speaker A

And even the other ethnic groups who come, the Slovaks, who are Roman Catholics, the Polish Roman Catholics, while they don't have their own bishops, there is already a Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States that exists.

10:59

Speaker A

There is already an Anglican hierarchy for Protestants.

11:06

Speaker A

There's already, for Slovak Lutherans, a German Lutheran establishment in this country, but there is no establishment for Greek Catholics.

11:17

Speaker A

So these young men go to local attorneys, because they want to found churches, and they go to these local attorneys, who are often Protestants, and say, "How do I found a church in America?"

11:31

Speaker A

And the Protestant attorney says, "Well, the way a church is founded in America is as a nonprofit organization. You have a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer. Everybody is a member and contributes to, in essence, the nonprofit corporation, and the people own that entity."

11:45

Speaker A

Now, if you know anything about the way Catholicism manages properties, that's the farthest thing you can get from Catholicism.

11:57

Speaker A

In Catholicism, the properties are established by and owned by the church itself. The administrator is the bishop.

12:12

Speaker A

So these young men go out and establish these American Greek Catholic congregations.

12:26

Speaker A

One here, one here, one here, all in that way.

12:40

Speaker A

And then they start to get priests coming from Europe.

12:57

Speaker A

And the priests begin to help them with the establishment of the communities.

13:16

Speaker A

Now they're starting to bring girlfriends to be wives, children are being baptized here, and there's more of an established community.

13:27

Speaker A

But the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in the United States is established administratively entirely differently from the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in Eastern Europe.

13:40

Speaker A

One of the most difficult pieces of this is that the Roman Catholic hierarchy has great difficulty in the United States with a Greek Catholic Church.

13:51

Speaker A

Why?

14:04

Speaker A

Because the Roman Catholic Church was not, until very recently, until the 1860s and 1870s, viewed as a legitimate Catholic, excuse me, legitimate Christian denomination for American

14:20

Speaker A

1892, there was only one Orthodox jurisdiction in the entire United States, and it was the Russian Orthodox Church. So, if you wanted to be Orthodox in America, then you were going to be under the Russian Orthodox bishop and be

14:34

Speaker A

a parish, regardless of what your ethnicity was. The other issue that people didn't realize was that at this point in time the Orthodox Church was very, very small. And in fact, at this moment in time where this issue is happening with

14:48

Speaker A

Toth, there were only four Russian Orthodox churches in the continental United States. One in New York City and three on the West Coast. So, Toth now approaches the bishop of San Francisco, Russian Orthodox bishop of San Francisco to be accepted into the his parish to be

15:07

Speaker A

accepted into the Orthodox Church. And the bishop gratefully accepts this congregation. Now, while this sounds like it's an entire really religious issue, here comes the political component of this.

15:21

Speaker A

Um at the same time this was happening here in the United States, let me explain what was happening in Europe.

15:27

Speaker A

Austria-Hungary wants to maintain its power in Europe. Russia has an expansionist philosophy, has already spread all the way to Siberia in the east, and wants to continue to spread in the west. Well, where Russia hit in the west hits up

15:46

Speaker A

against the west is guess where? Austria-Hungary. An even better guess where in Austria-Hungary? The Carpathian Mountains.

15:55

Speaker A

So, the Russian political strategy becomes is actually the Tsar's cousin um, says to him one day, he says, "You know, if we could convince these Rusyns who live in Austria-Hungary that they are a part of the great Russian nation

16:12

Speaker A

that they are Russians from the Carpathians, then we could invade Austria-Hungary saying we are liberating our own people.

16:21

Speaker A

We would have a legitimate reason to do this." And so, he starts an organization called the Russian Galician Benevolent Society, the purpose of which is to the Rusyns in Galicia, Rusyns and what are today Ukrainians in Galicia, to provide them

16:36

Speaker A

with external economic support from Russia. This is followed by an educational campaign where the Russian government in Galicia amongst both Rusyns and Ukrainians begins to develop this concept of teaching people these Rusyns that they are Russians. And so, in small

16:57

Speaker A

Rusyn villages in Lemkovyna, the Russian government helps um, by developing what you and I would call library, but a reading room. They open a little building and they fill it with books in Russian about Russians.

17:09

Speaker A

And now your children can get an education because there's a man there who can teach your children in Russian about how they are Russians.

17:17

Speaker A

Now, needless to say the Austrian government is not very crazy about this. So, the Austrian government backs a new movement coming out of Lviv, also in Galicia, a group of old Ruthenians who now call their new nationality Ukrainian.

17:33

Speaker A

And the Austrian government provides support, financial support for these people to also develop reading rooms in these little villages in Galicia, but now the teacher there speaks Ukrainian and the books are in Ukrainian.

17:46

Speaker A

And so, you can be in a little Rusyn village in the mountains on the northern slopes of the Carpathians, and in your village of 200 people there's a Russian reading room trying to convince you you're Russian, and there's a Ukrainian

17:59

Speaker A

reading room trying to convince you you're Ukrainian, and there seems to be a lot of, well, we don't know this for sure, it looks like whatever the orientation was of the priest who preached from that pulpit tended to be

18:10

Speaker A

the winner in that community. Um and by the way, that therefore comes here as well. So, now what you have is this issue in Europe, and now the Austrian government is going to get even tougher. It does not allow

18:26

Speaker A

imported Russian printed material into Austria. So, what the secret service in Russia led by the the um Tsar's cousin says "Hmm where are there now 100,000 of these Rusyns?

18:45

Speaker A

Where you can print anything you want and say anything you want. And oh, by the way, they're going to come back here. Remember?

18:54

Speaker A

The United States." And so, the Russian government begins to pour a lot of effort in the United States into convincing Rusyns that they are Russians. And how convenient that just at that moment where they need to do it, Rusyns are voluntarily entering

19:11

Speaker A

the Russian Orthodox Church. So, what happens for these Rusyns is that the Russian government then begins to use the church as a tool to bring Rusyns through Orthodoxy to Russian ethnicity to achieve their ends in Europe. And in

19:28

Speaker A

fact, this becomes such an issue that in a little Rusyn village in Transcarpathia called Iza, Rusyn Americans who have converted to converted to Orthodoxy go back.

19:40

Speaker A

Their priest in the village, Alexy Kabalyuk, converts has already converted to Orthodoxy. The people are converting to Orthodoxy. They convert the parish of Iza in Austria-Hungary to an Orthodox parish from a Greek Catholic church.

19:56

Speaker A

And what happens? The Hungarian government arrests the priest and 24 of the leaders for treason.

20:04

Speaker A

That to become Orthodox in Austria-Hungary was treasonous against the state because to in essence align oneself with anything that was Russian, and to Austrians Orthodoxy was Russian.

20:16

Speaker A

To do so, to align in that way, was to commit treason against Austria-Hungary. Now, that's going on in Europe, and that's you've heard it overflow here.

20:28

Speaker A

Both governments were sending representatives here to work alongside of these people to convince them that they were Russians or Ukrainians. Or in another instance, within the Greek Catholic Church itself, to convince these people that they were good Hungarian citizens. And in fact,

20:47

Speaker A

um around the turn of the century, the Greek Catholic Church sent two representatives to Pittsburgh um under the guise of trying to assess the needs of Greek Catholics in America, but they were actually sent from Rome, but inspired by the Hungarian government and

21:05

Speaker A

actually receiving paychecks from the Hungarian government to take Hungarian speaking Greek Catholics out of Rusyn parishes and create Hungarian speaking parishes because the Hungarian government had worked so hard to turn these Rusyns into Hungarians in Europe that they want them to convert back to

21:25

Speaker A

being Rusyns in the United States. And to this day, in the Greek Catholic Church, you have Hungarian Greek Catholic parishes made up largely of Rusyns who had been convinced that they were Hungarians at the turn of the century. So, all of this is going on

21:43

Speaker A

within the Rusyn community. How do we convince them they're Hungarians or keep them Hungarians? How do we convince them they are Russians? How do we convince them that they are Ukrainians?

21:53

Speaker A

You know, and in fact, the sadness of it is that it splits the Rusyn community not only religiously but ethnically, along ethnic lines. Now, I'll use a little case study here to show you the implementation of this amongst Rusyns um

22:07

Speaker A

in a small community in Western Pennsylvania called Manessen, Pennsylvania. Um Manessen by the 1920s was the largest Rusyn settlement in the state of Pennsylvania. An enormous Rusyn population. But, in this issue that we talked about with Father Toth, where

22:22

Speaker A

parishes were starting to go to the Orthodox Church, this didn't happen cleanly. And in fact, what began to happen was that parishes would split.

22:32

Speaker A

Some would So, a portion of the parish would say, "We're going to join the Orthodox Church." Another portion would say, "Oh, no, we're not. We're going to stay in the Greek Catholic Church." This ended up in enormous heartache amongst

22:42

Speaker A

families and parishes splitting, going to court to determine who gets the church. So, in most Rusyn communities, you had this discord. One side or the other wins depending on how the bylaws were written for that church or how it

22:57

Speaker A

was established. And uh if a Greek if the Greek Catholics win the court decision, then they keep the church and the Orthodox have to go and build a church. If Orthodox win the decision because the bylaws were broader, then

23:09

Speaker A

Greek Catholics have to leave and found their own Greek Catholic Church. The city of Manessen that I'm talking about had a very large Greek Catholic Church, the Mission of the Mother of God, St.

23:19

Speaker A

Mary's, and they went into this turmoil, and by 1914, 1915, the um [snorts] the church split because the Orthodox faction lost the court case. So, the Greek Catholics get to keep the original church, the Orthodox have to found

23:37

Speaker A

another church. And so, here is a picture of the founding of that church, and this gives us some sense as to what this meant for Rusyns. And for those of you who come out of particularly Russian Orthodox churches in America, raising

23:51

Speaker A

the question, are you really Russian? Here are people, and you can see the banner up there says, I'll translate it for you, it says, um for God and for the Uho Rusyn or the Hungarian Rusyn people.

24:03

Speaker A

Vitayte Vladyka, welcome Bishop, and welcome Brata Pravoslavny Rusyna. Brother Orthodox, what's the last word?

24:13

Speaker A

Rusyna. Ru- Rusyns. Not Russians, Rusyns. Now, how do we know these people aren't Russians? Well, they have just declared themselves to be Rusyns, but the other issue is too, look at the alphabet of the banner. The alphabet on the banner is Latinica,

24:29

Speaker A

not Cyrillic, which means that Russians would never create a banner in the in the Latin alphabet. They would only use a Cyrillic alphabet. This is telling us these are people who come out of what was the Hungarian portion of uh of the

24:43

Speaker A

empire. So, these people now found their Rusyn, they're all Rusyns founding a parish in the Russian Orthodox Church in America in 1915. Let's look at this next picture. By the time time get to the early 1920s, they've built their church,

24:58

Speaker A

and this is the ladies guild with the priest in front of the church. And what do we see here? We see an American flag, and what else? A Russian flag.

25:07

Speaker A

So, already the process has begun about you are part of the Russian nation. This next picture shows the first generation born in America. These are their children doing plays. Now, plays in Rusyn churches were a standard part of of the existence. They raised money

25:22

Speaker A

for parishes. They were entertainment. They were called predstalenia, and they were usually about weddings in Europe, or stories about what happened in the old country. But, look what we have here is already by the 1920s, these young people are dressed in not Rusyn

25:37

Speaker A

costumes, but Russian costumes to conduct their plays. And this next slide shows what was the Slavonic Society, uniting all of the men of Greek Catholic heritage, all of the Rusyns in Manassas. Um, here it is, but it has now

25:52

Speaker A

been renamed the Russian organization, the Russian Society. And so, we see this continued Russianization. Carpathian These parishes, in many instances, lose their distinctive Rusyn Carpathian plain chant to be replaced by four-voice four-part voice choirs.

26:10

Speaker A

Um, the priest turns gives up his Rusyn style of vestments for high-backed Russian vestments. Russian practices are put into place.

26:19

Speaker A

Um, Ruska shkola, or Rusyn school, gets replaced by Ruska shkola, Russian school, to teach the Russian language with books printed in Russia. And this entire process goes on trying to convert Rusyns who join the Orthodox Church to a Russian

26:35

Speaker A

nationality. Now, that having been said, this heartache, as you heard me talk about, goes beyond just their conversion uh because you have families who are split.

26:46

Speaker A

I can use my own family. My family is split between the Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic Church.

26:52

Speaker A

And um and some of the the interesting and colorful stories of people I have a very good friend in a town called McKeesport, Pennsylvania, who's very active in the Byzantine Catholic or the Greek Catholic Church. And he said, "You

27:02

Speaker A

know, when the church is split," he said, "we were told that we couldn't go into the Orthodox Church because our ears would fall off." He said, "This was very difficult for me." He said, "because I was a Greek Catholic, but my

27:14

Speaker A

uncle was an Orthodox priest." Um and this was the kind kind of heartache that was dividing the Rusyn community all the way up till about the 1920s. Now, you heard me talk about how it divided on the Russian side. We also talked about

27:27

Speaker A

the Ukrainization of these people. And one of the most difficult pieces was had to do with the fact that the way the Greek Catholic Church was administered at the turn of the century. By the time we get to about 1906, for the first time

27:41

Speaker A

now, after many requests, the Greek Catholics do indeed receive their first bishop for the United States. He is subservient to the Roman Catholic bishops, but they have one, and they're so happy that they have their own bishop who will understand their own ways. But,

27:56

Speaker A

Bishop the bishop is Bishop Soter Ortynsky. And Bishop Ortynsky is from Eastern Galicia. And because of what you've heard me talk about here in Europe about the split between Russian and Ukrainian, or the Ukrainization of Rusyns, um those who

28:11

Speaker A

consider themselves to be Rusyns, uh particularly those from Hungary, were very threatened by the fact that their new bishop came from {quote} Ukrainian territory. And they feared that he would Ukrainianize them. And in fact, the news the Amerikansky Russky

28:26

Speaker A

Viestnik newspaper, the largest Rusyn newspaper in America, wrote lots of articles speaking against Bishop Ortynsky and saying, "We won't tolerate Ukrainization. We won't tolerate We have not We're not tolerating Latinization.

28:39

Speaker A

We won't tolerate Ukrainization, as well." Um for better or worse, and perhaps for him for better, Bishop Ortynsky died.

28:47

Speaker A

And when he died, Rome decided not to replace him in the United States with a Greek Catholic bishop, but to divide the Greek Catholic Church because of its ethnic divisions going on, into two components. A Ruthenian church for

29:02

Speaker A

Rusyns and a Ukrainian church for Ukrainians. The only issue is that Rome divides them not by people's ethnic orientation, but by geography.

29:13

Speaker A

So, the way the division happens is this. If you're in a Greek Catholic parish in America and it's 1919, if 51% of people in your parish are Rusyns, then your parish is in the {quote} Rusyn or Ruthenian diocese.

29:31

Speaker A

If 51% of your parish is from Galicia, regardless of whether they call themselves Ukrainian or not. So, if they're Lemkos from Galicia who consider themselves Rusyns, but they're 51% of the parish, they are now in the Ukrainian diocese.

29:47

Speaker A

This again creates challenges and entire This time entire parishes do not leave, but what you have is Rusyn families from Galicia in parishes who have the luxury, who can do it, pick up and leave those parishes because they

30:01

Speaker A

don't want to be in a Ukrainian parish to join Russian Orthodox parishes as well. But, what you have are even to this day entire parishes of Rusyns from Galicia who are in the Ukrainian diocese and over the last 100 years have simply

30:16

Speaker A

been taught that they were ethnically Ukrainians. So, what we're starting to see is this continual division of a Rusyn community that was completely united. If you'd gone to 1870 and said to every Rusyn, as few as they were, in

30:30

Speaker A

America, "What are you?" they would say, "I'm a Rusyn. Ya Rusnak." And what religion are you? "Ya Greco-Catholic." Now, we have Rusyns in multiple jurisdictions and we in multiple religious camps. And in fact, not only does it happen here, but because of

30:48

Speaker A

Hungary's ethnicity policy and people going back from here, you can see it here on this next image showing up in Europe. This map shows the denationalization of Rusyns even in the European context. So, the gray area is the same gray area we've looked at as

31:05

Speaker A

Rusyn ethnographic territory, but if you look here, the dotted areas are Rusyn communities that begin to identify as Hungarian communities. Or the darker areas in Eastern Slovakia are Rusyn communities that begin to identify as Slovak communities. And then there are

31:23

Speaker A

some in the south that are identifying as Romanian communities. It gives you a real sense as to how this concept of taking people away from their Rusyn ethnicity was developing. Uh this had was such an issue that by 1902, the

31:37

Speaker A

Greek Catholic Union here in the United States had written a scathing editorial about the Slovakization of Rusyns both in Europe and here in the United States.

Topics: Carpatho-Rusyn immigration history chain migration Greek Catholic Union fraternal societies Greek Catholic Church Pennsylvania coal mining genealogy Rusyn identity ethnic history

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