Paul Robert Magocsi has been a familiar name ringing in my academic ears for more than three decades, more specifically ever since I had the privilege of reading and editing two of his splendid contributions (Magocsi Reference Magocsi1984a, Reference Magocsi1984b) to a two-volume work on the Slavic language question. It is important to note that one of these studies was devoted to the Rusyn language question during the period spanning from the 1600s to the second half of the 20th century (Magocsi Reference Magocsi1984b). As Professor Magocsi wrote about the Subcarpathian Rusyns in the early 1980s, “the historical development of [their] homeland led to the formation of a distinct society that had all the potential elements to be become a separate nationality” (1984b, 65). As one can see, more than three decades ago Professor Magocsi was already speaking of a distinct society, a term that has a peculiar Canadian ring to it. In other words, a distinct society which had the potential to achieve the status of belonging to a particular nation or to an ethnic group that might form one (or even more) political nations.

Let us not forget that in the many studies that have appeared since the 1980s and that have been devoted to what is usually termed the “Rusyn Question,” including studies by Professor Magocsi as well as other scholars, the question of the dignity or prestige of a language standard that is viewed as much more than a series of dialects has been of the utmost importance in justifying the existence of a Subcarpathian Rusyn group that is ethically distinct, in particular from the Ukrainian people. At this early point in my remarks, it is perhaps appropriate to ask what the qualifier ethnic really means. More specifically, what are the implications of the term ethnic and how precisely does it differ from the qualifier national in our conversations about the “Rusyn Question?” And what about the religious question? These queries implicitly lead us to a range of other problems and concepts which I wish to elaborate upon, if only briefly.

First, if we begin with a consideration of the medieval and even premodern period, we must ask ourselves what is the precise connection between the traditional concepts of natio and confessio; that is, on the one hand, the awareness of belonging to a larger (supranational) community and, on the other, identification with a more limited (national) entity. In some cases, during the Middle Ages, the dialectical relationship between larger and smaller units can be understood correctly only if we determine historically the specific functions of nationes and confessiones, and even their convergence in certain circumstances.

Second, when examining the 19th century with its exaltation of the notions of people and popular languages, we need to take into consideration an array of terms and concepts linked to the dignity of modern nations and national (re)awakenings. However, while it is legitimate to demonstrate excessive reliance on what we might call a national-patriotic approach in the period of post-Herderian romanticizing nationalism, that same approach turns out to be inappropriate for periods when notions such as nation and people had entirely different meanings.

And third, if we seek out conceptual coherence today when, as Professor Magocsi himself sadly concludes in the concluding chapter of his monograph, “at first glance there is nothing much left to Carpathian Rus’” (2015, 408), we seemingly are obliged to move beyond the issue of national survival and apparently become compelled to speak about an “imagined community” as an idea rather than as a reality. Indeed, in 2016, it would seem that we cannot talk about a rebirth of a Ruthenia restituta, but rather about a birth, an awakening, or even another awakening (but certainly not a reawakening!).

As you all know, Professor Magocsi is a distinguished and celebrated scholar who has produced many excellent historical and theoretical studies. Special mention should be given to his splendid 1996 contribution to Ukrainian historiography, where he exposes to view the actual occurrences belonging sensu stricto to the history of Ukraine against the backdrop of all events—regardless of their specific ethnic and cultural context—that have taken place within the territorial boundaries of an independent nation-state that did not fully come into being until the late 20th century (Magocsi Reference Magocsi1996). As we shall see, a similar approach is employed in the volume under discussion today.

In contrast to his contributions to Ukrainian history and historiography, Professor Magocsi’s many specific studies on the “Rusyn Question” have engendered (unfairly, in my humble estimation) some controversy and, according to certain scholars, even some perplexity. Above all, he has been criticized for not only producing academic writings but also engaging in what Taras Kuzio has termed the “media populistic field” (Kuzio Reference Kuzio2005, 4). Indeed, Martin Fedor Ziac has shown that “most Rusyns credit Professor Magocsi with giving them the self-confidence to act by providing the necessary historical framework of their people” (Ziac Reference Ziac2001, 214). “He has provided them with a history book,” Kuzio continues, and advanced “a language congress to promote what they speak as a language, rather than as a Ukrainian dialect” (2005, 5). Above all, Professor Magosci has been unjustly censured for actively transforming sets of collected myths into historical facts and groupings of diverse dialects into a fully-codified Rusyn language, as if everything he has done somehow runs counter to what has also often been carried out by the national-patriotic schools of Russia, Ukraine, and so forth.

In other words, what I want to stress is that the major issue of concern might not be the encounter between history and the interpretation of history but rather the clash between two different historiographic visions. What counts here above all are two things: first, the danger of relying exclusively on excessively narrow interpretations; and second, the fact that any historiographic formula—from the terms Russian nation or Russian language to the notions of Rusyn society or Rusyn language—possesses a high degree of conventionality. Furthermore, allegiance to one particular interpretative scheme reveals only one part of a larger truth. Thus, the validity of any viewpoint is dependent on the scholar’s awareness of its inherent functional limitations. Let us recall Professor Magocsi’s words in the final chapter of With Their Backs to the Mountains. When discussing the “other” Carpathian Rus’, that is, Carpathian Rus’ as an idea, he concludes: “It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that nationalities are themselves the result of an idea made real. In other words, they are the result of concepts about identity formulated by individual intellectuals or state authorities which are then accepted by a group of people as a legitimate mechanism for self-identity” (2015, 408).

In the larger Slavic world, one need think only of the 20th century history of the Republic of Macedonia, and the creation not only of a “separate” nationality but also an autochthonous Macedonian literary language during the difficult years of 1944–1945. In other words, if we place our investigation of Carpathian Rus’ and Carpatho-Rusyns within the East Slavic world specifically and in the Slavic world more generally, we will be in a better position to deal with the problems of diverse mythologies and the possibility of emerging new realities.

The basic premise of With Their Backs to the Mountains as stated in the introduction is to demonstrate the existence of a distinct Carpatho-Rusyn people and historic homeland, which “over the centuries spawned a distinct respectable culture” (Magocsi Reference Magocsi2015, xvii). Yet from the opening pages of the book we can sense the very fragility of this premise. Likening the fate of the Carpatho-Rusyns to the Kurds, we are told that “neither of these mountain-dwelling peoples has ever had their own state, and that the various states in which both have lived more often than not have had a negative impact on Carpatho-Rusyns or Kurdish society and culture” (xvii).

While a distinct Kurdish identity can be detected in late antiquity, one must express some doubts as to whether the same truly applies to the Carpatho-Rusyns. Indeed, while some historians might trace a Rusyn linguistic distinctiveness to the 17th century, most historians would begin their discussion of a truly distinct Rusyn identity with what Professor Magocsi has termed the “First Rusyn Awakening,” inspired as it was by the Revolution of 1848. Hence, the very existence of a “Rusyn Question” remains problematic throughout most of the historical periods discussed in the book. Even after 1848, strong political opposition and powerful propaganda hindered the acceptance of a Rusyn identity, if not the very existence of any kind of Rusyn national orientation.

Thus, many questions surrounding both the origins of Rusyn history and the precise nature of a national character remain difficult to define. Aware of such problems, Professor Magocsi is to be credited with references (2015, 24–25) to what he calls the “origin-of-peoples fetish” and to what Bernard Lewis has termed “the foundation of myth,” wherein we can detect the complex intersection of two other formulae: the “history of myth” and the “myth of history.” These formulae are especially important for our discussion of different groupings in the even larger Balto-Slavic world, with our focus on the contrast between, on the one hand, a historic nation, a unified nation-state and a complete culture, and on the other, a non-historic nation, an incomplete statehood, an interrupted nationhood, and an incomplete literature. In this regard, the metaphor ably couched in the title of the book (“with their backs to the mountains”) reminds us, of course, of another figure of speech: “their backs against the wall,” that is, Rusyns in a hard-pressed situation, perhaps without any way of escaping from their current plight.

As Professor Magocsi continues in his Introduction, “the book’s subtitle suggests two important elements: land and people;” in other words, “there is an historic territory in Europe called Carpathian Rus’, a concept known to some of its inhabitants, even though it is not to be found on most maps past or present” (2015, xviii). There are also Carpatho-Rusyns who have lived or live beyond the borders of Carpathian Rus’. For this and other reasons, therefore, some readers might be perplexed by (1) the excessive amount of space devoted to various other countries (Hungary, Poland, the Habsburg Empire, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union), (2) the constant efforts to hint at prestige for Carpathian Rus’ through the use of diverse mythologies, and (3) the consistent efforts to uncover any possible influences that may have been positive for the creation or development of a distinctiveness that is sufficient for us to speak of a Rusyn identity (sometimes, however, without any real documentary evidence that these influences ever took place). Yet certain perplexities on the part of readers in no way minimize the validity of the particular methodological approach used in Professor Magocsi’s book. As I noted above, any hagiographic vision is legitimate provided that we are aware of its inherent limitations as well as the need for considering other historiographic approaches.

Throughout the book, the narrative about the Carpatho-Rusyns and their struggle for survival is placed against the backdrop of opposing powers and enemy states, beginning with the competition between Rome and Byzantium in the 9th century (even before the Church Schism of 1054) and ending with the complex situation that confronts a Rusyn identity today. However, if we discuss, for example, the birth of a Cyrillo-Methodian cultural patrimony and its possible influence on Carpathian Rus’, it would be wrong to view the significance of that cultural heritage against the allegedly uncompromising conflicts between Greek and Latin Christianity. In fact, a careful examination of our sources brings us to an opposite conclusion: namely, that the earliest debates on the status and function of Cyril and Methodius’ Slavic language ought not be evaluated within the spirit of later confessional polemics. Those debates do not permit us to project back into the 9th century a later picture of an irreconcilable ecclesiastical and cultural split between East and West. Whatever differences between the Greek and Latin churches may have existed before the Church Schism of 1054, there is no question that the Cyrillo-Methodian mission as well as its immediate aftermath was guided by the idea of the basic unity of Christendom.

Likewise, if we analyze what took place in the territories of today’s Ukraine and Belarus during the age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, we can observe not only a climate of confrontation but also an area of mixed influences and competing trends between Orthodox and Latin culture, which involved not merely parallels with, but the direct influence of, Western European and late-humanistic intellectual trends and patterns of thought.

Let me conclude by saying that in the many historic periods, beginning with the birth of Slavic literary culture in the 9th century, it would behoove us to examine what took place and what was believed not only in terms of opposition but also in terms of the amalgams of seemingly conflicting trends that made possible the birth of new trends, from the Cyrillo-Methodian period to the equivocal encounters of “old” and “new” in the early 21st century.

In my view, Professor Magocsi’s remarkably comprehensive and thorough study devoted to the history of Carpathian Rus’ and Carpatho-Rusyns, even with (or perhaps because of) its solid national-patriotic interpretive orientation, is a highly useful step in defense of an envisioned complete Carpatho-Rusyn identity. With Their Backs to the Mountains is, indeed, a most nobly crafted study.