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.