Robert Magocsi (ed.), A new Slavic language is born: The Rusyn literary language of Slovakia / Zrodil sa nový slovanský jazyk: Rusínsky spisovný jazyk na Slovensku. (East European monographs, 184; Classics of Carpatho-Rusyn scholarship, 8.) New York: Columbia University Press, New York, NY, 1996. Pp. xv, 1–79 in English; 16 pp. of illustrations (unnumbered); pp. xiv, 1–68 in Slovak. Hb $28.00.

Abstract

This bilingual volume (in English and Slovak) opens with the text of the January 27, 1995 “Declaration on the occasion of the celebratory announcement of the codification of the Rusyn language in Slovakia” – printed in Rusyn, in Cyrillic, facing the English translation. Since the occasion had as much political as linguistic significance, a little background is in order. The Carpatho-Rusyns are ethnic East Slavs whose area of settlement since medieval times has been criss-crossed by shifting political boundaries. Until World War I, they lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire; today Rusyn populations are found mainly in western Ukraine (600,000 to 800,000) and in Slovakia (100,000), with smaller groups in Poland, Hungary, and Romania (much as the ethnic and linguistic community of Kurds straddles the national borders of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey). There is also a small Rusyn enclave in the former Yugoslavia, whose dialect is formally recognized as an official minority language (Bačka Rusyn, or Vojvodinian-Srem Rusyn), and part of this population now finds itself in still another country: Croatia. The Rusyn subgroups, from the Bačka Rusyns to the Lemkos of Polish Galicia or the Huculs who straddle the Romanian border, have distinct dialects, as well as their own religious and literary text traditions. After World War I, most Rusyns found themselves citizens of the new republic of Czechoslovakia; but after World War II, a large part of their area was ceded to the USSR, becoming the Transcarpathian Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR.