This essay is not the kind of traditional review of an entire book to which readers are accustomed. Nor is it the reaction of one reader to select passages in the book which might provoke some detailed commentary. Instead, this review has chosen to focus on only one part of the scholarly monograph by Paul Robert Magocsi (2015); namely, the interwar period of the twentieth century, which has the reputation among historians as being the most tragic era in the history of Carpatho-Rusyns.

The reason for choosing this period is not only because it begins and ends with two world wars, or because the period was marked by the dramatic collapse of empires in favor of national states whose existence provoked among enemies a border revisionist movement. Yet another reason is the following: during the struggle to construct new international borders out of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire several “small” nations attempted to expand their boundaries at the expense of Carpatho-Rusyns. That, in turn, contributed to the destruction of the Carpatho-Rusyn people, who in the New Europe were (with the exception of autonomous Subcarpathian Rus’) forced to live under the rule of seven states: the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and finally the United States where immigrants settled deciding for political and economic reasons not to return home.

The very end of the interwar period brought still another tragedy, and the greatest of them all. Because of the geopolitical ambitions of the Soviet Union, the Subcarpathian region not only was denied autonomy in the context of the new post-World War II Czechoslovakia, but worse still: it was annexed to the Soviet Union and the Rusyn nationality was outlawed.

At this point a few words seem appropriate concerning the logic and lack of alternatives to Magocsi’s scholarship, not to mention this book’s relevance for today’s world. Despite a long list of historians who today (after the fall of the Soviet Union which had declared the subject taboo) are interested in Carpatho-Rusyns matters, it is only those able to ignore the ideological imperatives of ruling states who might write a synthetic work that upholds the values of objectivity and historical truth. Hence, virtually no one among present-day historians from Ukraine, whether in Kyiv or Transcarpathia, could be considered able to undertake such a task.Footnote ¹ And for one simple reason.

Both before and after Ukraine’s 1991 independence, history as a discipline was and remains subordinate to ideological imperatives, whether they be the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism or the official ideology that propounds Transcarpathia’s 1945 “reunification” with Mother Ukraine. This situation applies also to the historical treatment of Carpatho-Rusyns in works by Russian historians.Footnote ² Nor is the situation much better in other central European states where Carpatho-Rusyns reside as a national minority. A partial exception is Slovakia, where historians writing about Carpatho-Rusyns have produced several useful scholarly works.Footnote ³ Historians of Carpatho-Rusyn orientation living in the Transcarpathian oblast of Ukraine (historic Subcarpathian Rus’) have also published in recent years several works about their native region.Footnote ⁴

In other words, whereas today there are many historians, some of whom have produced solid publications about a single region, or about certain events, or about a particular period, until now we have had no comprehensive history of Carpatho-Rusyns. There is simply no synthetic work which would provide a reader with a history of Carpatho-Rusyns in all regions: Subcarpathian Rus’, the Lemko Region, the Prešov Region, Maramureş, the Vojvodina, Banat, and the diasporas in the United States and Canada. Now, however, we have such a work presented to us by the American-Canadian Magocsi from the University of Toronto.

Freedom to create and scholarly objectivity are the essence of Magocsi’s academic credo, and this is reflected in the degree to which he is not subject to the dictates of an ideology. One should also remember that the broad scholarly interests of the author, who has systematically written about all the regions of Carpathian Rus’ (in many cases in the form of scholarly monographs), has made it possible for him to produce all-encompassing historical works about Carpatho-Rusyns.Footnote ⁵ Among these is the Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture, which appeared in 2002 and 2005 under his general editorship, as well as the monograph under discussion here, With Their Backs to the Mountains (2015). It is in this sense that Magocsi stands alone. He simply has no competitors.

The real value of With Their Backs to the Mountains is that it is a history of Carpatho-Rusyns that is not written from any state perspective, whether that of Budapest, Moscow, Kyiv, Prague, Warsaw, or Bratislava. It is not inappropriate to say that Magocsi’s history is written from the perspective of Carpatho-Rusyns, while at the time emphasizing that the book systematically analyzes historical events in an objective manner, a not unimportant characteristic of his research. Although a scholarly publication, the book has relevance in the context of present-day changes in Europe. The relevance factor applies to those states to whom the doors became open for membership in the European Union. Although not the sole reason (but nevertheless a reason) was the fact that all of those states recognized their Carpatho-Rusyn citizens to comprise a distinct ethnos. The book’s relevance factor also applies to other countries, first and foremost Ukraine, which is seeking a path to the European Union and which inevitably will be required to recognize that the 1945 annexation of historic Subcarpathian Rus’ and the abolition of the Carpatho-Rusyn nationality throughout central Europe were simply part of the expansionist ideology of the Soviet Union. Magocsi’s monograph, which outlines the above historical scenario, may therefore become a kind of road map for Ukraine’s future political elite.

The very title of the book suggests that the author has chosen a scholarly, yet at the same time popular and reader-friendly writing style accessible to a broad public. The narrative is not overburdened with long quotations or statistical data of secondary importance. Instead, the author has succeeded in presenting his ideas in a sparse easy-to-read manner. Rather original is the book’s structure, which was used by the author in some of his previous books. I have in mind the several text inserts (side-bars) which are filled with a wide-range of supplemental information that does not overburden the free flow of the narrative. Each chapter is further divided by sub-headings whose names reflect the text that follows. As for the interwar period, it is discussed in some detail in Chapters 12 to 21. In terms of chronology, the interwar period can be said to comprise the years 1914 to 1945, covered in 137 pages of text.

The author does not leave out any important issues, but discusses cultural, social, and economic developments during the interwar period. This balance is a reflection of the author’s deep knowledge and facility to write not only as a historian but also as a specialist in cultural matters, religion, diaspora studies, literary studies, and language. Such breadth allows him to provide the reader with a detailed account of many issues, such as the Rusyn written language, the ideological orientation toward Russia and the return-to-Orthodoxy phenomenon, the reasons for the World War I Thalerhof Tragedy, Hungary’s irredentist movement, the appearance of Ukrainianism and its ideological origins, the Slovak-Rusyn ethnic border, and the life of national minorities and émigré groups in the Carpathian region—Jews, Magyars, Germans, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Russians.

The author devotes perhaps too little attention to questions surrounding the 1939 Hungarian-Slovak “mini-war” that was played out in the western part of historic Ung county. He also does not elaborate on the reasons for the weakness of the Carpatho-Rusyn national movement during the interwar years. Among those reasons were the indecisive policies of the Czechoslovak central government in Prague on the nationality question, and the negative impact of that part of the great post-World War I emigration from Russia (after the Bolshevik Revolution) and from Polish-ruled Galicia who settled in Subcarpathian Rus’ where they instilled in Carpatho-Rusyn society their own “age-old” Russophile-Ukrainophile conflicts.

In summary, the scholarly vision of Magocsi to write a general history of Carpatho-Rusyns has resulted in an important innovative work which raises the field of Carpatho-Rusyn studies to a new and very high plateau.