This book may be read as a companion to Anthony J. Amato’s earlier study, The Carpathians, the Hutsuls, and Ukraine: An Environmental History (Lexington Books, 2021). In The Stark Carpathians, his target population is again largely the Hutsul residents in the “Corner Land” (Pokuttia) of today’s Ivano-Frankivs’k District of western Ukrainian Galicia, formerly belonging to Austria and then Poland—not Hutsuls residing elsewhere in Transcarpathia or Ukraine’s Chernivtsi district. His historical backdrop is 1848–1939 (the “end of manorial obligations” to the “Sovietizing” of the region, 11). Through the lens of a social scientist in The Stark Carpathians, Amato explores select social and cultural issues within that small segment of the Carpathian Hutsul population, peeling back layers of culture and tradition in search of factors governing the evolution of Hutsul identity. He ventures into the disciplinary territory of ethnography and folklore, but the book is not a traditional ethnographic or folklore study, as Amato makes clear. He is intrigued by the power of words in terms of texts in oral tradition (folktales, gossip) and formal documents (almanacs, kalendary, newspapers), as well as of rituals linked with work and celebrations. Up front he states his goal: To demystify how these elements (texts and rituals) operated to shape that sliver of Hutsul society as the people dealt with the challenges of fluctuating political environments and negotiated their location, identity, and authority vis-à-vis outside powers and even their closest neighbors.

Amato’s informative text is characterized by detail and nuanced reflection. Historians, cultural studies scholars, and even ethnographers and folklorists who use other analytical tools in their own disciplinary studies can benefit from his fifteen-chapter examination of Pokuttia Hutsul folk society. Amato highlights crucial factors he deems significant that both within their borders, as self-identifiers, and from outside came to define them: religious affiliation and clergy, village reading rooms and teachers, interest in astrology, folk medicine, beliefs and superstitions, a unique sense of freedom in the mountains, as well as Russophile, Ukrainophile, and Polish nationalizing pressures connected with cultural elements. Among specific topics in chapters with catchy titles are the ubiquitous Carpathian brigand (opryshky) tradition (“Don’t Cry, Satan”); witches, vampires, sorcerers, and games played at wakes (“Vampire Collusion and the Ungrateful Dead”); Christmas caroling and mumming (“Godless Carols”); and post-Easter customs (“It’s All over but the Splashing”), among others. Many elements Amato addresses are shared historically with Hutsuls elsewhere in the Carpathian highlands, as well as with Ukrainian peasants and Carpatho-Rusyn peasants in Transcarpathia, eastern Slovakia, and southeastern Poland. His contribution to our understanding of the significance of these phenomena among the Pokuttia Hutsuls is useful because they resonate with features of that wider Carpathian folk society and culture deserving of so much more attention than it has thus far received from Slavic scholars.

Amato’s research is meticulous, and his detailed analyses of the phenomena under scrutiny ultimately offer the reader a comfortable familiarity with what many have considered a terra incognita. Both his abundant informational notes and extensive bibliography are an invaluable source for future researchers who wish to pursue further the in-depth analyses that he models in this book. Throughout the book, two art works, one formal and one folk, a page from a folk kalendar, and sixteen archival photos convey what words sometimes cannot, the photos especially capturing fleeting moments in daily life (peasants at a market; musicians; children at school; trembita players; a funeral procession, and others).

One suggestion for any further publications: Amato offers the same three maps that he included in his previous Carpathian study indicating the location of the Hutsul territory under consideration. Maps are important for this subject because of frequent governance changes in the Carpathian region, and even many Slavists are unfamiliar with precise location and border fluidity there. Particularly for readers approaching this subject for the first time, Amato’s maps can be confusing. A helpful readjustment could be to superimpose the maps on traditional political maps of the region relevant to the time period on which he is focusing with each map. Such a readjustment would allow contemporary readers to get a far clearer handle on the exact location under consideration. Beyond this issue, Amato’s richly detailed and lively text make for educational and enjoyable reading.