Rusyns versus the Ukrainian Nation-Building Process

Translated by Andrew Kopets

The ethnonym Rusyn historically functioned as an archaic self-designation of the Eastern Slavic population that contemporary scholarly and political practice identify as Ukrainians. For centuries, the term served as a broad label for Christians of the Eastern rite, particularly within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Habsburg Monarchy. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century, under the influence of modern nation-building processes and the emergence of parliamentary institutions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that Rusyn began to acquire distinct political and ideological connotations.

In the second half of the twentieth century—especially from the 1960s onward—Western academic literature increasingly introduced a concept that treats Rusyns as a distinct ethnic community. The most consistent advocate of this position has been Paul Robert Magocsi, a Canadian historian of Carpatho-Rusyn background. Magocsi frames the “Rusyn tradition” as an autonomous line of historical development within the Carpathian region. Within this framework, he introduces the term Carpatho-Rusyns, distinguishing them from Galician Ruthenians while simultaneously grouping together various Carpathian highland populations—such as the Boykos, Lemkos, and Hutsuls—on the basis of shared cultural features and a historical trajectory distinct from that of central and eastern Ukraine.

A similar logic underpins the work of Alexandra Wiktorek (Georgetown University), who describes Rusyns as a cohesive, self-aware ethnic community with nation-building potential. According to this view, Rusyn identity rests on a shared historical memory, origin myths, territorial attachment, and elements of a common culture.

Although this interpretation remains rare among mainstream historical scholars, related narratives have gradually entered the discourse of international organizations and institutions. Within this discourse, the Ukrainian state is sometimes portrayed in a negative light, accused of forced “Ukrainization” or of failing to uphold the rights of national minorities. These claims aim to inflict reputational damage and provide leverage for diplomatic pressure.

A recent example occurred during the 18th session of the UN Forum on Minority Issues that took place in November, 2025, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. At the session Gabriella Derepa, a blogger from Transcarpathia, addressed the assembly speaking about the environmental consequences of large-scale development in the Carpathians and the social tensions exacerbated by the influx of internally displaced persons following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Derepa introduced herself as a Carpatho-Rusyn and described her community as “stateless people.” She further claimed that national minorities in Transcarpathia are stigmatized for allegedly holding “alternative geopolitical views,” and argued that Carpatho-Rusyns—unlike Hungarian or Romanian minorities—lack institutional mechanisms to protect their language and cultural distinctiveness because they are not officially recognized in Ukraine.

This article seeks to trace the historical formation of Ukrainian national identity, analyze the origins of contemporary political Rusynism, and identify the factors that facilitate its growing visibility in the public discourse.

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Historical Background

Drawing on interdisciplinary research—including studies published in Nature on early Slavic settlement—scholars generally locate the core area of Slavic expansion between southern present-day Belarus and northern Ukraine. Beginning roughly in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, this expansion proceeded primarily westward and southwestward, with only partial movement toward the east and north. This pattern is crucial for understanding the cultural and linguistic proximity of Slavic groups that settled in Central Europe and the Carpathian region. Archaeological evidence and population genetics broadly support this model.

Over subsequent centuries, these territories witnessed the emergence of the proto-state and later state formation known as Rus’, whose political and cultural center was Kyiv until the Mongol invasion of 1240. Rus’ encompassed a wide range of geographically and culturally diverse regions, from the southern slopes of the Carpathians to the northern lands around Novgorod. In sources from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, the ethnonym Rusyn functioned primarily as a designation for the Slavic population of Rus’ and was not applied in reference to the Finno-Ugric ethnic groups incorporated into the state. To denote belonging to Rus’ in a broader political or territorial sense, medieval texts used the adjective Rus’ian (rus’kyi), which carried no ethnic meaning.

Whether Rusyn can be understood as a marker of a distinct ethnic group remains a matter of debate. In contemporary historiography, it is generally interpreted as a political, cultural and religious self-designation of the medieval population of Rus’, rather than as an ethnic identifier in the modern sense. In later centuries, as political borders shifted and new terms emerged to classify identity, for instance Malorosses, Velykorosses, or Lytvyns, the designation Rusyn gradually acquired a regional character. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was widely used to denote the Greek Catholic population of Ukrainian lands within the Habsburg Monarchy.

The first systematic conceptual divergence regarding “Rusyn identity” appears in the works of Paul Robert Magocsi. He contrasts the historical development of Subcarpathian Rus’ with that of the Galician-Volhynian principality, arguing that these regions, although populated by Rusyns, evolved under fundamentally different political, social and cultural conditions. This divergence, in Magocsi’s view, constitutes a key argument for separating Carpatho-Rusyns from the Ukrainian national project. At the same time, this approach tends to downplay the fact that Lemkos, Boykos, and Hutsuls historically inhabited not only Subcarpathia but also Galicia, which served as a central hub of the Ukrainian national movement.

The late modern period proved decisive for the emergence of divergent identification trajectories. Following the abolition of serfdom and the gradual expansion of parliamentary institutions in Galicia, a secular Ukrainian intelligentsia, largely of peasant origin, began to take shape in the context of the “Spring of Nations.” In contrast, Subcarpathian Rus’, which belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, experienced far more limited liberalization due to Hungarian national policies. As a result, intellectual and cultural leadership in the region remained almost entirely in the hands of the Greek Catholic clergy.

Under these conditions, Galician Rusyns increasingly integrated into the modern Ukrainian national project, recognizing their linguistic and cultural affinity with central and eastern Ukraine. Across the Carpathians, however, a significant segment of the Rusyn elite remained within a traditionalist framework and often oriented itself toward the cultural and religious authority of the Russian Empire as a counterbalance to Hungarian influence. It was at the intersection of these two ideological vectors, namely, the modern Ukrainian and the archaic “Rus’ian” (effectively imperial), that the identity conflict later reframed as the “Rusyn question” began to take shape.

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Competing Concepts

While most Ukrainian ethnic territories within the Russian Empire were subjected to systematic bans and repression targeting Ukrainian language and culture,  for example, the suppression of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1847), the Valuev Circular (1863), and the Ems Ukaz (1876), Galicia, Transcarpathia, and Bukovina became key arenas for competing national identity projects. Here, the political and cultural influences of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires intersected, creating a relatively pluralistic environment for a competitive national ideological discourse.

Within this context, two principal ideological currents crystallized: the Ukrainophile and the Russophile (or Moscophile). Each sought to answer a fundamental modern question: who were the local Ruthenian populations, and what is the future of their national identity?

Ukrainophiles conceived of  the Ukrainian nation as a distinct community with its own language, culture, and historical tradition. They promoted cultural development and political self-determination through education, publishing, the press in Ukrainian language, which resulted in highly functioning civic and political organizations. As Magocsi notes in The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism, Ukrainophiles viewed national awakening as a primary instrument of social modernization and as a defense against assimilation. These ideas gained particular traction in Galicia, where the Austrian administrative model allowed for a limited, but nevertheless real cultural autonomy.

By contrast, Russophiles emphasized cultural, historical, and spiritual unity with Russia. They regarded the local Ruthenian population as part of a broader “Russian” people and argued that local development was possible only within the framework of Great Russian cultural and political tradition. In Galicia and Transcarpathia, this current found support mainly among segments of the Greek Catholic clergy and conservative intelligentsia, for whom religious continuity and church tradition played a central role in self-identification.

A distinct position within this configuration was occupied by so-called traditionalists, or Old Ruthenians. Early efforts at Rusyn cultural self-assertion emerged primarily within the Greek Catholic clergy, especially in present-day eastern Slovakia. According to Alexandra Vykorek, a central figure of this stage was Alexander Duchnovich (1803–1865), a Greek Catholic priest from eastern Slovakia, often described in contemporary Rusyn historiography as the “father of the Rusyn language” and initiator of national awakening.

Drawing on Elaine Rusinko’s Straddling Borders, Vykorek outlines Duchnovich’s intellectual profile. He was educated at the Uzhhorod Gymnasium, where lecturing was conducted in Latin and Hungarian. Duchnovich continued his educational pursuit at a Greek Catholic seminary, where Latin predominated alongside courses in Church Slavonic. His earliest literary works were written in Hungarian. In 1833, he was appointed to parish service in Rusyn villages in Slovakia—an assignment he initially perceived as a professional setback. Yet this experience prompted his turn toward the “language of the people,” which he sought to align closely with the Church Slavonic tradition. Scholars portray him as a figure for whom Hungarian identity proved difficult to sustain, while Rusyn origin offered an alternative field of social and professional self-realization.

Vykorek also highlights Duchnovich’s intellectual influences. He closely studied the works of pan-Slavic and national thinkers, including Vuk Karadžić, Ján Kollár, Pavel Jozef Šafárik, Adam Mickiewicz, and Russian authors including Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Karamzin, and Pushkin. Notably absent from this list are Rusyn or Ukrainian intellectuals. Even if Ukrainian figures like Skovoroda, Kotliarevsky, or Shevchenko had been included, it remains a question whether they would have shaped his worldview.

For Duchnovich, the concepts of Rus’, Rusyn, and the Russian Empire were effectively interchangeable. He imagined Rusyns as a single national identity sufficiently powerful to create and sustain a vast empire. This perspective became the ideological foundation of the subsequent Russophile cultural movement in the region.

By the mid-nineteenth century, a Russophile literary society had formed in Prešov under Duchnovich’s leadership. Initially, it employed iazychie, an artificial linguistic mixture of local dialects, Church Slavonic, and Russian, before later adopting standard Russian. From 1866 onward, the Society of St. Basil the Great played an active role in this milieu, positioning itself as an ideological counterweight to the Ukrainian Prosvita movement.

Explaining this persistent orientation toward Russia, Magocsi emphasizes that the core of Old Ruthenian identity lay primarily in religion. Magocsi specifically points to the Eastern rite, which offered imagined continuity with medieval Rus’ mediated through church tradition, liturgical language, and Church Slavonic literacy. It was this religious framework, rather than modern national consciousness, that defined the boundaries and direction of the Old Ruthenian self-identification project.

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Stakeholders and External Influences

From the mid-nineteenth century onward, a Russophile current can be observed both in Galicia and in Subcarpathian Rus’. One of its principal channels of dissemination was the Greek Catholic Church which, given the region’s religious specificity and the absence of a codified secular literary language, functioned as a key institutional intermediary between the peasant population and broader cultural influences. In the context of limited access to education, largely due to Hungarian being the dominant language of educational lecturing, early Russophiles, were often referred to in contemporary sources as Ruthenophiles or Old Ruthenians. This group envisioned a “national path” through the idea of unity with the so-called triune Rus’ people, encompassing Carpatho-rusyns, Malorosses, and Velykorosses.

It is crucial to emphasize that during this period the concept of a modern Ukrainian nation was itself still in the process of formation. Against this backdrop, an ideological confrontation unfolded that inevitably attracted the attention of imperial centers of power, states that politically divided the region and sought to instrumentalize local identities in accordance with their own strategic interests.

The population of Subcarpathian Rus’ was shaped under the influence of a church dependent on Budapest being institutionally integrated into the Hungarian system, while Galicia, administered by Austria, underwent gradual modernization. The Austrian state pursued a relatively liberal policy toward national movements, particularly through systems of ecclesiastical and educational self-governance, and permitted political representation in regional and imperial parliaments.

The situation in Subcarpathian Rus’, which formed part of the Kingdom of Hungary, was markedly different. Hungarian authorities implemented a consistent policy of assimilation while tolerating Rusyn identity only so long as it remained regional and depoliticized. In this context, the Greek Catholic Church served as an instrument for integrating the Rusyn population into the Hungarian state framework, promoting a form of “local patriotism” rather than modern national self-identification. Ukrainophile initiatives in seminaries and the press were systematically obstructed, while loyal clergy received institutional support. The Mukachevo Eparchy became embedded within Hungarian political loyalty, and Ukrainophile projects lacked any form of institutional backing.

Whereas in Galicia the Austrian administration’s partial support for the Ukrainian national movement was motivated by a desire to weaken Russian imperial influence and minimize the risk of territorial claims by the Romanov dynasty. Markedly, Hungarian authorities perceived Ukrainophilism in Subcarpathia as a direct threat to Hungary’s territorial integrity. Rusyns were viewed as potentially integrable into a broader Ukrainian national space encompassing Galicia and central Ukraine. The fundamental difference lay in governance models: the Austrian system allowed for the organic development of Galician society, while the Hungarian administration sought to engineer a controlled, artificially depoliticized regional identity.

An unexpected yet critically important arena of this ideological struggle emerged in North America. Following the abolition of serfdom in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, large-scale labor migration to the United States unfolded, peaking in the 1880s and 1890s. This migration was largely circular in nature: according to Magocsi, approximately one-third of migrant workers returned home after several years abroad.

Until the mid-1880s, Greek Catholic parishes for immigrants from Ukrainian ethnic lands were virtually nonexistent in the United States. Even after their gradual establishment, many migrant communities lacked their own clergy and church buildings, while questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction remained unresolved. Under these conditions, a mass conversion of segments of Greek Catholic communities to Orthodoxy began.

Entire parishes joined the North American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. The symbolic significance of this process is underscored by the fact that the bells for the first Rusyn parish to return to Orthodoxy were donated by Tsar Nicholas II. Migrants returning to their homeland, either temporarily or permanently, brought back not only financial resources but also new concepts of religious and national identity shaped within the American context.

By the early twentieth century, the movement toward Orthodoxy had spread within the Carpathian region, particularly in villages with high rates of return migration from the United States. Greek Catholic priests were incentivized  to convert to Orthodoxy with support from various stakeholders. A notable role was played by young Russophile secular activists from Bukovina—the brothers Oleksii and Heorhii Herovskyi, grandsons of the Subcarpathian Russophile politician Adolf Dobrianskyi, closely associated with the circle of Alexander Duchnovich. Herovskyi borthers facilitated training of Rusyn priests in Orthodox monasteries within the Russian Empire.

Financial and ideological support for new Orthodox communities also reached Carpathian Rus’ indirectly, through organizations such as the Galician Russian Benevolent Society in Saint Petersburg and the Carpatho-Rusyn Liberation Committee in Kyiv. These so-called “rolling rubles”, monetary transfers originating in the Russian Empire, were channeled to Orthodox activists in the United States, who then disseminated funds and printed materials upon returning to their home villages, along with related propaganda. Particularly influential were the pamphlet Where to Seek the Truth? (1894) by the Rusyn-American priest Alexis Toth, and the book A Brotherly Greeting to Brothers and Sisters, Carpatho-Rusyns Living in the Carpathian Mountains and in America (1893) by Russian Orthodox activist Mikhail Sarych.

Taken together, these processes allow contemporary observers to clearly trace both Hungarian and Russian influence in shaping what is often presented today as “Carpatho-Rusyn identity.”

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The Modern Era

To understand subsequent transformations of identity it is essential to consider the incorporation of Subcarpathian Rus’ into Czechoslovakia following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the end of the First World War, the Rusyn population of the region found itself in a state of political uncertainty. Development options included autonomy, independence, or incorporation into newly formed or reconstituted states. To articulate these positions, numerous political structures emerged, including so-called “national councils”, operating both within Carpathian Rus’ and in émigré environments.

A decisive role in shaping political direction was played by the Rusyn émigré community in the United States. In 1918, the Greek Catholic Union, together with other organizations such as the United Societies, established the American National Council of Uhro-Rusyns. Its resolution envisaged the creation of an independent Carpathian republic, potentially uniting Galicia, Bukovina, and Subcarpathian Rus’.

A key figure in this process was the Rusyn-American lawyer Gregory Zhatkovich. The Council authorized him to prepare a memorandum to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Initially, Zhatkovich advocated full independence for Subcarpathian Rus’, or, as a compromise, broad autonomy within another state. Following consultations with Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the U.S. administration, he concluded that the most realistic option was incorporation into Czechoslovakia with autonomous status, formalized in the Philadelphia Agreement of 26 October 1918.

In November 1918, this decision was submitted to a plebiscite among members of the Greek Catholic Union. The majority of participants supported union with Czechoslovakia. Zhatkovich communicated the results to the Czechoslovak government and representatives of the U.S. State Department. The incorporation of Subcarpathian Rus’ into Czechoslovakia was thus legitimized as an “expression of popular will” and embeded in international postwar agreements.

During the interwar period, Subcarpathian Rus’ enjoyed broader civil and cultural rights than at any previous time. The Czechoslovak authorities acknowledged the ethnocultural proximity of Rusyns to the Ukrainian people, while refraining from direct intervention in identity formation processes. The state formally endorsed the Rusyn right to self-determination, which in practice resulted in the coexistence of several competing cultural projects.

Beginning in 1920, Rusyns were officially recognized as a national minority in Slovakia, and the use of the Rusyn language was permitted in education, press and publishing. By 1938, the number of Rusyn-language schools in operation was  168, while additional 43 institutions were teaching Rusyn for at least part of the curriculum. Lecturing followed methodological models developed after the 1920 Prešov Language Conference, which addressed the potential codification of a Rusyn language. Alongside Rusyn, lecturing was also conducted in Ukrainian, Czech, Hungarian, and Russian, depending on local community demand.

Despite these efforts, the Rusyn language was never codified into a single standardized form. One major reason was the territorial fragmentation of the Rusyn population among several states, namely Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Romania, which impeded the development of unified linguistic norms. Even within Czechoslovakia, the term “Rusyn language” remained ambiguous, encompassing local dialects as well as elements of Ukrainian or Russian. A lack of literature, competition from Slovak, Hungarian, Church Slavonic languages, and ideological pressure from both Russophile and Ukrainophile circles further complicated codification efforts.

The region’s sole Greek Catholic bishop, Pavol Peter Gojdič, attempted to introduce a standardized form of vernacular Rusyn for use in church schools and repeatedly sought support from Prague. These initiatives, however, were never implemented.

During this period, Subcarpathian Rus’ witnessed a distinctive “grammar war”. Proponents of Russian-based, vernacular RusynUkrainian linguistic models advancing competing written norms. Yevmenii Sabov sought to construct a Rusyn grammar modeled after Russian, while Ukrainophile circles promoted the adoption of standard literary Ukrainian. The most influential representative of the latter approach was the linguist Ivan Pankevych, whom the Czechoslovak authorities commissioned to prepare grammars for the Subcarpathian population. The successive editions of his grammars (1922, 1927, 1936) consistently brought the linguistic norm closer to standard Ukrainian.

A revealing culmination of this identity struggle occurred in March 1939. On the night of 15 March, the Soim of Carpathian Ukraine proclaimed the independence of a Ukrainian state in the city of Khust. Augustyn Voloshyn was elected president, Ukrainian was declared the state language, and the blue-and-yellow flag and trident were adopted as state symbols.

No Rusyn state, in a distinct modern ethno-political sense, was ever proclaimed. The Rusyn movement failed to produce a unified state-building project. Its elites oscillated between regional autonomy, loyalty to external political centers, and reliance on imperial patronage, standing in stark contrast to the consolidated Ukrainian national project.

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Hungarian Occupation

The regional autonomy strategy proved considerably more viable under the conditions of Hungarian occupation of Transcarpathia between 1939 and 1945. As early as 17 March 1939, Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki publicly declared the government’s intention to introduce autonomy on the newly annexed territory. These statements were supported by Carpatho-Rusyn figures Andrii Brodii and Štefan Fentsyk, who advocated convening a Subcarpathian National Assembly, as an initial step toward implementing political and cultural autonomy for the region.

In practice, however, the issue of autonomy was no longer raised in any systematic way. Instead, its initiators—Andrii Brodii together with eleven other Carpatho-Rusyn activists, among them Štefan Fentsyk, Oleksandr Ilnytskyi, Yosyp Kaminskyi and others, accepted appointments as deputies and senators in the parliament of the Kingdom of Hungary. In this way, autonomist rhetoric was absorbed into the framework of the Hungarian state system without the region being granted any real self-governing powers.

Although the Hungarian government did not implement any form of autonomy or territorial self-government for Subcarpathia, it permitted and partially encouraged cultural and educational activity within the Rusyn milieu. Hungarian and Rusyn were proclaimed the official languages of the region. At the beginning of 1941, with state support, the Subcarpathian Scholarly Society (Podkarpatskoe obshchestvo nauk) was established, its declared aim being “to promote the formation of a separate national identity among Rusyns.” As a result, after 1939 the Hungarian regime created an institutional foundation for a Rusynophile orientation in Subcarpathia, which had previously existed largely at the level of individual figures and small circles.

By contrast, the situation of the Ukrainophile milieu was radically different. Leaders, ideologues, and activists of the Ukrainian national movement, above all those associated with the Carpathian Sich and the Ukrainian National Party, were subjected to mass arrests, internment, and executions. The Carpathian Sich remained the key Ukrainian national liberation organization in the region and did not cease resistance after the occupation. As of March 1939, its membership was estimated at approximately 15,000 people, indicating its mass character.

During the fighting and subsequent partisan resistance against Hungarian forces, at least around one thousand Sich members were killed, according to various estimates. This demonstrates that Ukrainian resistance was not limited to the brief period of the March 1939 battles but continued thereafter. The occupation administration systematically pursued investigative cases against so-called “undesirable elements,” primarily individuals and groups who associated their activities with the idea of restoring Ukrainian statehood.

Repression, persecution, execution and forced emigration together led to the near-complete destruction of the organizational capacity of the Ukrainian national movement in Transcarpathia during the years of Hungarian occupation.

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The Soviet Period

In Western scholarly literature, the Soviet period in Transcarpathia is often interpreted through the prism of so-called “Ukrainianization.” This approach is based on the thesis that after the end of the Second World War, the USSR, having incorporated Transcarpathia, implemented a policy of equating Rusyns with Ukrainians, thereby eliminating any institutional forms of a separate Rusyn identity.

At the same time, this narrative often ignores the fact that it was the Soviet authorities who completed the physical and symbolic destruction of the Ukrainian political elite of Transcarpathia. A telling example is the arrest and death of the president of Carpathian Ukraine, Avhustyn Voloshyn, who died in 1945 in the Butyrka prison of the NKVD in Moscow. This fits into the broader pattern of Soviet policy, being the elimination of any autonomous centers of political subjectivity, regardless of their ideological orientation.

Having gained full control over the region, the Soviet state no longer required the previously convenient foreign-policy myth of a “separate people.” On the contrary, any manifestations of a distinct national identity were regarded as a potential threat to the political stability and territorial integrity of the USSR. In this sense, the disappearance of Rusyn identity from official Soviet discourse was not the result of a “Ukrainian national project,” but a logical stage of imperial unification policy.

Despite this, in the interpretations of opportunistic researchers and in mass consciousness, responsibility for forced assimilation is often shifted onto Ukrainian identity itself. In particular, Alexandra Vitorrek notes: “The new communist governments introduced an official classification of Rusyns as Ukrainians within Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Schools where instruction had previously been conducted in Russian or local dialects were converted into Ukrainian-language schools, and Rusyn organizations were renamed. As a result, many people from the very beginning perceived Ukrainian identity as an element of the coercive policies of the communist regime—in a political context that was often brutal.”

At the same time, there is evidence that complicates such generalizations. Professor Mykola Mushynka, a native of the Prešov region, recalled that he grew up in a Russophile environment where the equation “Rusyn = Russian” was considered normal, and that his own education was shaped within a Russian-language cultural framework during the Hungarian and early Soviet periods. Yet it was the reading of Ukrainian literary works, above all Shevchenko’s Kateryna,  that elicited a deep emotional response from his parents and fellow villagers, becoming an important impulse for him to rethink his own identity.

Overall, the situation of Rusyn groups differed significantly across states. Lemkos from postwar Poland were forcibly resettled, partly to Soviet Ukraine and partly to Poland’s so-called “Recovered Territories”, as a result of mass deportation during Operation Vistula. This method deprived the resettled population of the possibility to preserve their traditional way of life and contributed to rapid assimilation. Certain radical circles justify this action as Polish retribution for the Volhynian tragedy.

For Rusyns in Slovakia, the Soviet model of “Ukrainianization” likewise failed to correspond to regional educational and cultural needs. The introduction of standard literary Ukrainian did not align with local linguistic practices, while closed borders made live communication with Soviet Ukraine as a cultural center impossible.

In Transcarpathia itself, the ethnic and social structure underwent profound changes as a result of the soviet assimilation policies, industrialization, migration, and administrative practices, which ultimately destroyed the prewar forms of local self-organization.

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Independence

Following the collapse of the Soviet system, the full spectrum of political identities and programs re-emerged in Transcarpathia almost immediately. Among the most active proponents of the idea of so-called political Rusynism were former members of the Communist Party nomenklatura, who rapidly adapted themselves to the new political environment. At the same time, the ideological groundwork for this process had been laid already during the late Soviet period, particularly during the era of the so-called “thaw”.

In his study Rusynism in Ukraine: Separatism or Political Manipulation? (2017), Doctor of Historical Sciences Stepan Vidnianskyi emphasizes that as early as the late 1980s, party-controlled media deliberately accentuated historical, mental, and cultural differences between Transcarpathia and neighboring Galicia. In parallel, the idea of creating a free economic zone in the region based on enterprises of all-Union subordination and foreign capital was actively promoted. At the same time, so-called “Rusyn seminars” were organized for local officials, intended to cultivate ideological cadres for a Rusyn separatist project. It is also telling that the regional party leadership placed no obstacles in the way of the founding assembly of the Cultural and Educational Society of Subcarpathian Rusyns on 17 February 1990, which was officially registered just two days later. By contrast, the registration of the regional branch of the People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) was delayed by local authorities for nearly six months.

Over the following decades, this development manifested itself in a series of marginal yet highly visible political actions, ranging from attempts to promote the idea of Transcarpathian autonomy in 1991 to the self-proclamation of the “independence of Carpathian Rus’” by the head of the so-called Sejm of Subcarpathian Rusyns, Orthodox priest Dmytro Sydor, which took place in 2008 during his stay in Minsk. None of these initiatives received broad support among the local population. Nevertheless, they proved sufficient to sustain interest in the issue among both domestic and external political actors.

The culmination of this process came with the publication of a large corpus of private correspondence belonging to Vladislav Surkov, an adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, the so-called Surkov Leaks, released by Ukrainian hacker collectives (“CyberHunta” and others) in October 2016. Among disclosed materials was a document titled Plan to Secure the Federal Status of Transcarpathia, which effectively outlined a scenario for transforming the Transcarpathian region into an autonomous entity under Moscow’s political and security control.

According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), this document, as well as a number of other materials from Surkov’s correspondence, fully matched documents previously seized by the SBU in criminal investigations related to Transcarpathian separatism. In particular, the text of the “federalization plan” almost verbatim reproduced materials found in the possession of one of the organizers of the Rusyn separatist movement, operating under the supervision of Russian special services. This refers to Petro Getsko, one of the key figures in this milieu, known for his open opposition to the Maidan since the Revolution of Dignity and for styling himself as the “Prime Minister of the Republic of Subcarpathian Rus’.”

In January 2014, Getsko publicly appealed to Vladimir Putin, calling for the deployment of “peacekeeping forces” and for the “neutralization of Galician Nazism in Transcarpathia,” while demanding recognition of the independence of the so-called Republic of Subcarpathian Rus’. From the spring of 2014 onward, he effectively operated in coordination with Kremlin-linked structures: he relocated to Moscow, regularly appeared on Russian state television, and visited occupied territories of Ukraine. In his public statements, Getsko claimed that his intent to proclaim a “republic” in autumn of 2014 did not exclude a violent scenario, while asserting that he possessed the necessary human and armed resources to seize power in the region. These claims conceptually coincide with the provisions of the “Plan to Secure the Federal Status of Transcarpathia” found in Surkov’s correspondence.

According to this plan, Russia considered the creation of a self-proclaimed autonomous entity in Transcarpathia, the so-called “Rusyn-Hungarian autonomy”, through the forcible seizure of regional branches of state power. The preparatory phase envisioned large-scale information and psychological escalation: through anonymous leaflets, graffiti, rumors, and social media disinformation, the plan sought to construct a narrative of a “genocide of Rusyns, Hungarians, and other national minorities” allegedly perpetrated by the Ukrainian state. Particular emphasis was placed on pressuring local officials, security personnel, and business actors through threats of “harsh sanctions” by neighboring states, namely Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, should they resist “autonomization.”

The next phase envisaged an open use of force, including simultaneous seizure of administrative buildings in Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, and Khust, including premises of regional state administration, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Security Service of Ukraine. This was to be followed by the proclamation of a Temporary Government of Rusyn-Hungarian autonomy. A telling detail is that the composition of this “government” had been formed in Moscow in advance.

Given Transcarpathia’s geographical isolation from Russia, the plan explicitly provided for the involvement of a third party, Hungary. The document contained a direct instruction to “work out the issue of involving Hungary in ensuring the protection of Transcarpathia and the Temporary Government through the introduction of Hungarian armed forces under the guise of peacekeepers.” To create a suitable pretext, media provocations were proposed, including the staging or instrumentalization of victims of violence as representatives of the Hungarian community, followed by attributing responsibility to “Banderites,” right-wing forces, and pro-Ukrainian security services. In this way, Moscow sought to construct a formal justification for external intervention under the pretext of “protecting national minorities.”

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Security Risks

Despite the seemingly fantastical nature of these plans, the materials of the Surkov Leaks demonstrate convincingly that such scenarios have been systematically developed at the highest levels of the Russian political leadership, in cooperation with Hungary, and the effort is ongoing. These are not marginal initiatives of isolated activists, but elements of a broader strategy aimed at destabilizing Ukraine’s border regions.

This logic aligns closely with the conclusions of Taras Kuzio, who as early as 2005 emphasized that Russia consistently reproduces the Soviet practice of creating and sustaining potential “hot spots” in zones of ethnic or regional sensitivity. He compares cases such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Transnistria with post-Soviet attempts to politicize identities in Ukraine’s border regions. The core mechanism involves the deliberate construction or radicalization of a sense of “separateness”, which can later be used as a pretext for external intervention or pressure on central authorities.

Viewed in this light, developments surrounding Transcarpathia appear as a potential continuation of a familiar model. Several provisions of the Plan to Secure the Federal Status of Transcarpathia effectively replicate the toolkit Russia has employed elsewhere in the post-Soviet space, including media provocations, artificial escalation of interethnic tensions, the construction of narratives about the “oppression of national minorities”, and the preparation of a military intervention scenario under the cover of a “peacekeeping mission”.

Significantly, certain elements of these plans found practical expression in subsequent years. In February 2018, for example, an arson attack was attempted against the office of the Society of Hungarians of Transcarpathia in Uzhhorod. According to investigators, the attack was carried out by mercenaries from Polish far-right circles acting under the coordination of individuals linked to pro-Russian organizations. The aim was to incite interethnic hostility and create an media pretext for international pressure on Ukraine.

Of particular importance in this context is recent information regarding the exposure of a Hungarian espionage network in Transcarpathia in May 2025. According to Ukraine’s SBU, the agents’ activities focused on collecting intelligence on the region’s defense capabilities, identifying vulnerabilities in security systems, and assessing the socio-political sentiments of the local population, especially its potential reaction to a hypothetical deployment of Hungarian “peacekeepers” or military units.

Taken together, these facts confirm that Transcarpathia remains within the sphere of interest of expansionist regimes as a potential arena for hybrid pressure or open aggression. Viewed from this perspective, political Rusynism appears not as a self-sufficient social movement, but as an instrumental narrative capable, under favorable conditions, of performing a familiar function of “protecting compatriots” or “restoring historical justice”. It is precisely this continuity of Soviet and Russian practices that positions Transcarpathia within the broader geopolitical expansionist logic of Moscow and Budapest, in which political Rusynism is intended to serve as a convenient tool for legitimizing intervention.

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Political Rusynism as an ideological project failed not because of “external pressure”, but due to its own evolutionary dead-end. Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has definitively deprived Rusynism of social vitality, as any declared or implicit solidarity with Moscow, including the idea of a “triune people,” which many actors now are hastily distancing from, has become politically toxic and morally unacceptable. The movement has been further discredited by the cooperation of certain Rusyn structures with Hungarian intelligence services, which shifted the issue of identity from the cultural sphere into the realm of instrumental geopolitics.

At the same time, the collapse of political Rusynism does not entail a denial of Transcarpathia’s regional distinctiveness. On the contrary, the full acceptance of local characteristics, everyday practices, oral traditions, and regional modes of self-description constitutes a necessary component of a healthy process of identity formation. Historical experience shows that the transition from regional to national identity is a natural trajectory of community development rather than an act of coercion or a “renunciation of oneself”.

Rusyn identity in diaspora environments follows a different logic than in the region of origin. Detachment from everyday linguistic practice, social networks, and the local cultural context precludes its organic development. Under such conditions, identity either becomes frozen in archaic forms or acquires an ideological character, rendering it particularly vulnerable to external political influence.

Thus, the question of Transcarpathia’s future cannot be reduced to a binary opposition between the “regional” and the “national.” What is at stake is the gradual integration of regional specificity into a broader Ukrainian identificational space, in which local distinctiveness is not denied, and therefore loses its function as a geopolitical instrument of being a pretext to aggressive military expansion. Therefore, it is precisely  the process of acceptance of regional identity, rather than denial that encourages reproduction of artificial and geopolitically dependent identity projects, that determines the real trajectory of future regional and community development.