The Unknown Rusins And The Third Millennium

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The Unknown Rusins And The Third Millennium

The author of this article, Fr Dimitry Sidor, is Carpatho-Russian,
that is Rusin, and a spiritual leader of contemporary Carpatho-Russia.
Born in 1955, he studied Physics at the University of the Rusin
Capital Uzhgorod, at present in the Ukrainian ‘Transcarpathian
Region’. After this he studied at the Moscow Theological Academy.
Since 1990 he has been the rector of the Orthodox Cathedral in the
Rusin capital of Uzhgorod and is also the architect of the new
Cathedral there.

He chairs the Sts Cyril and Methodius Society, runs the main Rusin
Orthodox website, as well as taking a very active role in Rusin media
and political life and translating the Gospels into Rusin. He is a
keen advocate of Slav Orthodox unity, especially of what we would call
the ‘four Russias’: Great Russia, Little Russia (at present called the
‘Ukraine’), White Russia (Belarus) and Carpatho-Russia, under the
leadership of the Patriarch of All Rus, His Holiness Alexis II.

Fr Dimitry is of the new generation which is fighting for the renewal
of Orthodoxy, after the compromises of the tragic Soviet era. He is
therefore like us. For, as part of the ‘Western Rus outside Russia’,
we too are fighting for the restoration of the thousand-year old
Orthodox heritage of our ‘Rus of the Isles’, after the compromises of
the tragic Heterodox era. Like him, we too are struggling for Holy
Orthodoxy against the powers of secularism and atheism. Like him, we
too are struggling for the spiritual purity of Holy Orthodoxy against
an older generation of Orthodox representatives, who largely fell into
compromise with the powers that be, and so thwarted the growth of
authentic Orthodoxy.

Below we have translated a slightly abbreviated version of the recent
interview with him, which first appeared at the end of July 2006 on
the excellent website www.pravoslavie.ru.
Fr Dimitry Sidor
Fr Dimitry Sidor

As we know, God gives each people its own mission in this world. One
of the most ancient peoples of Central Europe, the Rusins, have by no
coincidence been preserved by the Lord for a very important mission in
the third millennium.

What is the mission that the Rusin people is to accomplish at the
beginning of the third millennium and who is this people which remains
unknown to many, even to ‘qualified’ academics? Why has this ancient
Slav Orthodox people had to endure so much sorrow and oppression at
the hands of nomadic peoples, so frequently changing places with one
another, then occupiers, then the usual ‘liberators’, then some other
‘benefactors’? Looking at the past millennium, we can boldly assert
that the Rusin people has borne and undergone a great trial in its
faithfulness to Slavdom and Holy Orthodoxy!

Settled in the cradle of the Slav peoples between the Danube and the
Tisa, the Rusins are the descendants of the Subcarpathian White
Croats. (Not to be confused with the Croats who lived near the
Carpathians, as were later mentioned by St Nestor the Chronicler in
his story of the campaign of Prince Vladimir against the Croats). As
early as the mid-seventh century Subcarpathian White Croats had been
invited by the Roman Emperor Heraclius to settle both on the territory
of present-day Croatia, and on Greek territory around Thessalonika, on
the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Establishing Slav settlements, they
remained there right up until the first half of the twentieth century.

It was probably in this very setting, among the White Croat Old
Rusins, that Sts Cyril and Methodius were born, brought up and
mastered the Slavonic tongue. Their parents may possibly have been of
White Croat extraction. This hypothesis, that the Old Rusin Slavonic
tongue was spoken around Thessalonika, is supported even now by the
fact that Rusins today have (and in the future will still have) their
own original, living Rusin language, almost 70% of which coincides
with Old Slavonic. This demonstrates the possibility that it is Old
Rusin, so similar to Old Bulgarian, which could have been taken as the
basis of the Slavonic language, codified by the peers of the Apostles,
Sts Cyril and Methodius.

The White Croats or Old Rusins, living on the southern slopes of the
Carpathians, kept their ancient name for themselves – Rusins. They
were part of Greater Moravia (and some part of the Old Bulgarian
Kingdom), long before the foundation of Kievan Rus. At that time a
salt road led from Bulgaria to the present-day Rusin town of Solotvin
(now in Transcarpathian Ukraine) and therefore this was one of the
most convenient routes into Moravia for Sts Cyril and Methodius.
Moreover, at that time Transcarpathia was part of the Moravian State.
In the same way, this was also the quickest route for the disciples of
the brothers and peers of the Apostles, when they were forced to flee
from Moravia to Bulgaria. It is little known that at that time all one
had to do to get from Moravia to Bulgaria was simply to cross the
little River Tisa in the area of present-day Rusin Tiachevo-Solutvin
in Transcarpathia.

Nomadic Hungarian tribes have left stories about the local population
of Subcarpathia. At the end of the ninth century they crossed the
Carpathians highlands with difficulty and there found a local people
called Rusins. And 100 years after their baptism it was Rusins who,
together with Bulgarians, went to baptize Kievan Rus. After the
arrival of the Hungarians, towards the beginning of the twelfth
century, the newcomers gradually forced the Rusins out of their
lowlands into the hills. For long they became an unknown people, cut
off from Europe by the Hungarian State and cut off from the east by
the Carpathian highlands and forests some 100 miles deep.

The Subcarpathian Rusins were for long little noticed by historians.
But none of this was by chance. God was keeping the ancient Slavic
Rusin people from assimilation with neighbouring peoples, who often
became like elder brothers for the Rusins. It is a curious fact of
history that, without lifting a finger, the Transcarpathian Rusin has
been the citizen of more or less six States, each in turn attempting
to pass itself off as the legitimate age-old occupier of the Rusin
territory.

In 1917 the Bolsheviks mounted an anti-Orthodox coup d’etat in Russia.
Overt anti-Christians came to power. They were in no hurry to give the
land to the people, but set about the systematic destruction of
churches, monasteries, the clergy and even the language. At the same
time, in Central Europe amid the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
there appeared small Slav states, among them the Rusin, with the
strange but hallowed name of ‘Subcarpathian Rus’. The Rusins of the
age of ‘the springtime of the peoples’ sang the songs of O. Dukhnovich
(later they became Rusin anthems): ‘O Rusins from beneath the
Carpathians, forsake your slumber deep…’ and ‘I was, am and will be a
Rusin, I was born a Rusin’.

In the twentieth century, Rusins living on the southern slopes of the
Carpathians saw their native identity guaranteed and enshrined in the
Saint Germain peace agreement of 1919. They became part of the new
democratic European State of Czechoslovakia with the right to self-
government. In 1921 the Carpatho-Russian Autonomous Orthodox Church
was formed under the Patriarchate of Serbia. In 1938 Subcarpathian Rus
officially received autonomous status within the now Federal Republic
of Czechoslovakia. In November 1938 and at the beginning of 1939, on
orders from Berlin, Galician nationalists, as former Polish citizens,
crossed the border in Austrian military uniform and carried out a coup
d’etat on part of the territory of Subcarpathian Rus. They unlawfully
renamed it Carpathian Ukraine with a centre in Khust. The main part of
Subcarpathian Rus, with its historic capital in Uzhgorod, was occupied
by Hungarian troops.

All Subcarpathian Rus territory was liberated by Soviet forces only in
November 1944. After the War, the independent status of Subcarpathian
Rus within Czechoslovakia was renewed automatically. However, on the
advice of Mekhlis and Khushchev, Stalin decided to annex the territory
of Subcarpathian Rus to the Soviet Union, seeing it as a suitable
bridgehead for expansion into Europe. As for the Rusins, they were not
against joining a large Slav State, as long as they could keep their
status as an independent republic with the support of their East Slav
brothers. Authorized Rusin delegates, both ecclesiastical
(Archimandrite Alexis (Kabaliuk), now canonized as a Carpatho-Russian
saint) and secular, visited Moscow in November 1944, where they left a
written memorandum with the senior leadership of the Soviet Union.
Understanding that they would inevitably become part of the Soviet
Union, they still set out the Rusin position, asking for Subcarpathian
Rus to become an independent Carpatho-Russian Republic. This document
has now officially been published in the Ukraine.

The viewpoint of Mekhlis and Khrushchev won the day. The greater part
of Subcarpathian Rus (lacking Presov Rus in northern and eastern
Slovakia, the south-east Lemko corner of Poland, the Rusin town of
Sighet (which had already been occupied by Romania in 1918) and the
territory up to Debrecen, was joined to Soviet Socialist Ukraine. Its
inhabitants, Rusins from time immemorial, were by force renamed
indigenous Ukrainians. The Bolsheviks simply renamed Subcarpathian Rus
the Transcarpathian Region of the Ukraine. And the Carpatho-Russian
Autonomous Orthodox Church of the Patriarchate of Serbia entered the
Russian Orthodox Church, not as an autonomous part, but as a diocese
of the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 1991 the inhabitants of ‘Transcarpathia’, tired of the atheist
Soviet regime, took a difficult decision and voted for the
independence of the Ukraine. At the same time 78% of them voted to
become a self-governing territory within the Ukraine. Once again the
Rusins conscientiously accomplished their historic mission – to remain
faithful to eastern Slavdom. True, the collapse of the Soviet Union
showed that once three Slav brother peoples had formed their own
States, their economies began to disintegrate. The canonical Ukrainian
Orthodox Church was subject to attacks on the part of Ukrainian
nationalists and politicians of a pro-Bolshevik mentality, who set up
for themselves pocket autocephalous groups, that the Church of Christ
might be torn apart all the more easily. The Rusins in Transcarpathia
bravely took the side of Holy Orthodoxy and to this day they have not
let schismatics into their ancient Rusin land.

At the IX All-Slav Council in Uzhgorod on 8 and 9 May 2002, that is,
at the beginning of the third millennium, Rusins demanded that the
Ukrainian government restore the historic truth and return their
lawful ethnic name ‘Rusins’ and their right to be recognized as an
indigenous people on their own territory.

At the same time, we Rusins are accomplishing our God-given mission,
in other words: Again and again we remind the three Slav brother
peoples (Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians) that the dismemberment
of the spiritual and historic entity of Ancient Rus into separate
parts is unacceptable. And it is vital to keep our millennial Slav
Orthodox civilization for mankind, as a counterweight to Western
civilization, which is secular and also, in the very near future,
occult and atheistic. May God on High bless all the Slav peoples,
among whom is our peaceful, God-fearing Orthodox Rusin people.

Today, God has allowed that Rusins live in the Ukraine. Over half a
million Rusins live in the USA, Canada, Australia, Serbia, Slovakia,
Poland, the Czech Lands, Romania and Hungary. Everywhere they are
openly recognized as an independent nationality, except in the
Ukraine, where, without basis and unlawfully, the Ukrainian
authorities silence this issue. But here too Rusins are accomplishing
their mission: none of us Rusins is a separatist or an enemy of the
Ukraine. We Rusins are only too happy to be in the Ukraine, together
with Ukrainians and others, that is as a people which is able to form
its own State, with the right to live as equals in that State, to do
good, to keep faith with the Orthodox Church and to look with
confidence to the future.

However, at the same time we are reminded that, unfortunately, the
word ‘Ukrainian’ does not contain in it the ancient root ‘rus’. This
means that Ukraine in itself cannot be considered to be the lawful
heir to Kievan Rus. The barbaric hatred of certain Ukrainian officials
for the very word ‘Rusin’ is therefore all the more incomprehen-sible.
Or, perhaps, Ukrainian powerbrokers have set themselves the aim of
eradicating not only the word ‘Rusin’, but also the very mention of
Kievan Rus. Meanwhile, they also cloud the minds of their own citizens
regarding the ‘great antiquity’ of the Ukrainian nation and
provocatively reckon that Slovak, Polish and Serbian territory is
ethnic Ukrainian, since there live ethnic Rusins, whom Kiev would
recognize only as indigenous Ukrainians. I say that the mission of the
Rusins of Transcarpthia is not yet finished. I think that it will
continue further, in order to cool the fantasies of the Ukrainian
nationalist hotheads of the third millennium.

Spiritually, while awaiting the Second Coming of Christ, we Rusins
wish to live and work in the Orthodox Faith, with love and hope. At
the same time, we know full well that at the Last Judgement the Lord
will address us Rusins in our own Rusin mother tongue. And woe to us
Rusins, if we do not understand the Lord, if we do not recognize our
own Rusin tongue. For our mission, accomplished conscientiously, we
hope that God will grant us the salvation of our souls and the Kingdom
of Heaven.

Protopriest Dimitry Sidor,
Head of the Subcarpatho-Rusin Orthodox
Society of Sts Cyril and Methodius