[BRIEF NOTE] Update on the Ruthenians

[rfmcdonald]

Towards the end of this September, I blogged about the Ruthenians, the seemingly abortive fourth East Slavic nation. The Ruthenians' slow movement towards nationhood over the first half of the 20th century was abruptly halted by the Soviet annexation of their homeland in 1945 and their assimilation to the Ukrainian nation. At the time, I'd concluded that a revival of Ruthenian ethnicity in its homeland was unlikely, that Ruthenian identity would be a phenomenon of the Ruthenian diaspora. Writing today in Transitions Online, Brian Posun suggests that this is wrong ("A Minority in Waiting"), that thanks to the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine and Ukraine's new hopes for European integration there's a chance of official recognition.

Hopes that such examples of support from abroad would be less important rose with the Orange Revolution. Rusyns in Ukraine had grounds to be optimistic that the new administration in Kyiv would give them more of a chance than its predecessors. Rusyn leaders were active during the 2004 presidential election campaign and the crisis that erupted as millions of people took to the streets in the Orange Revolution. Three leading Rusyn organizations publicly supported the campaign of Viktor Yushchenko campaign and joined the groundswell of popular condemnation of electoral fraud.

After Yushchenko's victory, Rusyn leaders wasted no time before aiming their lobbying effort at the new authorities. They were soon disappointed. Yulia Tymoshenko, the co-leader of the revolution and subsequently prime minister, sent a handwritten reply to their letter, but its contents merely restated Kyiv's old view that Rusyns are Ukrainians and that they could expect no help from the authorities.

[. . .]

What activists have so far not accomplished, bureaucrats just might. Many Rusyn activists see Yushchenko's goal of European Union membership for Ukraine as their best hope. Although membership remains a distant prospect, many Ukrainians see a real chance of closer integration.

If Kyiv is to have a real shot at becoming an EU candidate country, it will have to satisfy Brussels that it takes minority rights seriously. The hope is that the carrot of EU membership will be sufficient incentive to the Ukrainian government to take recognize the Rusyns as a minority. Ever-hopeful, members of the World Council of Rusyns like to think it may happen before the congress next meets in 2007 – just over the border from Ukraine, in Romania.