Mapping stateless peoples: The east Slavs of the Carpahtians

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Sep-Dec 1997 by Paul Robert Magocsi

MAPPING THE DATA

With regard to its visual impact, the C-R Settlement Map adopts what might be called the maximalist approach. Since it is meant to show chronological evolution, the map does not depict the status of the Carpatho-Rusyn population at a particular point in time, but rather all villages and towns that at any time were inhabited by 20-49 and 50 percent or more Carpatho-Rusyns. To achieve this result, the Hungarian census of 1910 and the Polish census of 1921 were used as the base, to which were added other villages that had 20 to 49 percent and 50 percent or more Rusyn inhabitants according to the 1921 Czechoslovak census and the 1900 and 1881 Hungarian censuses.52

Finally, to such governmental data was added a new source not available to scholars who had previously described or mapped the Carpatho-Rusyn areal. This is the census conducted in 1806 by the Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, which at the time covered the entire Rusyn areal south of the Carpathians in the historic Hungarian Kingdom.53 Of the twelve questions on the church census, one indicated which language-Rusyn, Magyar, Slovak, or Romanian-was used by the parish priest during the homily. In contrast to the liturgical part of the service which was in Church Slavonic, the homily was a personalized message given in a language which parishioners could readily understand. Although the church census was not intended as an inquiry about mother tongue or nationality, it is perhaps because of the indirect nature of the question that we are able to obtain an impartial insight into the linguistic and nationality composition of settlements south of the Carpathians as early as 1806.

Not every village where the Greek Catholic priest delivered his homily in Rusyn was included on the C-R Settlement Map, however, only those where 50 percent or more of the inhabitants understood (and likely spoke) Rusyn. In order to determine whether a village's inhabitants were at the time at least 50 percent Rusyn, the number of Greek Catholics listed in the 1806 census was compared to the total population of each village. Since the 1806 census did not include information on the total number of inhabitants in a given village, that data was derived from the next chronologically closest source, the comprehensive geographical dictionary for the entire Hungarian Kingdom published in 1851 by Elek Fenyes.54

There are 173 Carpatho-Rusyn villages from the 1806 census data (distinguished by a separate triangular symbol), most of which are in present-day southeastern Slovakia and northeastern Hungary. These regions were not shown on most previous maps depicting Carpatho-Rusyn settlement, and their appearance here supports the earlier views of Slavists like Pavel Safarik and Lubor Niederle that "all of eastern Slovakia is, in fact, slovakized Rus' territory (vlastne poslovenstena.nt Rus)."55

There is, of course, another way to depict the Carpatho-Rusyn areal; that is, to plot those villages and towns inhabited by Carpatho-Rusyns at a particular point in time. This is what Aleksei Petrov did for the year 1773 and Stepan Tomashivs'kyi for 1900 on large-scale maps with village by village statistics on the southern slopes of the Carpathians.56 As an example of what such an approach would yield over a longer period of time, it might be useful to depict sequentially that part of the Carpatho-Rusyn areal which has changed most dramatically; namely, the area of present-day northeastern Hungary and eastern Slovakia where Carpatho-Rusyn, Slovak, and Magyar settlement patterns interact.