Thee Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine's Piedmont by Paul Robert Magocsi (review)

124 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 York. The Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture, the first major reference book in its field and a great scholarly achievement, has 1070 entries and 1400 cross references, covering a broad variety of topics. Most of these entries are not available anywhere else so that the book fills a gaping lacuna. Many entries include short bibliographies that are helpful for further study. The text is clearly written and presents a new interpretation of the history of Carpathian Rus=. It moves the Rusyns from the margins of history, where they have been put by most historical works on Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, or Slovakia, to the centre of historical events in the region. It shows Rusyns= achievements, vitality, and creativity but also their suffering and the unfair treatment they have frequently received from neighbouring peoples. The Encyclopedia has already provoked a fierce discussion among specialists in Ukrainian and Central European history. The Eighth Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, held in New York in April 2003, devoted an entire session to the book. Reviews have appeared in several journals. Some reviewers question the basic terms and definitions used by the authors and claim that they do not explain quite clearly who is a Rusyn. Is, for example, a >Lemko partisan and political activist in Poland of Ukrainian national orientation= still a Rusyn? Why are the Hutsuls living on the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains categorized as Rusyns while their brethren from the northern slopes, over two hundred thousand of them, are not? How many people living in Carpathian Rus? are Rusyns and how many are Ukrainians or Slovaks? An encyclopedia with a list of entries that would satisfy all readers probably does not exist, but an entry on the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) should definitely have been included in this book. Also Volodymyr Shukhevych, Stanis»aw Vincenz, Antoni Ossendowski, and Ludomir Sawicki, important scholars and writers linked to the region, should not be missing. Some bibliographies are too short or do not exist at all, though sometimes, as in the case of the famous ethnographer Oskar Kolberg, they would be easy to prepare. The book has no illustrations, no index, no chronological table, and no general bibliography. All these positive and negative aspects are good reasons to publish a new and bigger edition of the Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture. (PIOTR WROBEL) Paul Robert Magocsi. Thee Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine=s Piedmont University of Toronto Press. xviii, 214. $50.00 Paul Magocsi has devoted the better part of his career to Ukrainian studies B its language, bibliography, and history. This collection of his essays on the part of Ukraine known as Galicia goes to the centre of his interests. Most humanities 125 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 have appeared before, but two new pieces give coherence to the collection: a survey of Galicia=s history and an analytical framework for examining the rise of the Ukrainian national movement. Ukrainian nationalism developed differently from most others in eastern Europe. Unlike Poland and Hungary, Ukraine never had a >noble nation= to give its people definition and, unlike the Bulgarians and Serbs, Ukrainians had no independent state to promote a specific national sentiment. Furthermore, an educated class using literary Ukrainian was slow to form, politically divided, and little inclined to independence. Cossack traditions (now hyped as a national legacy) had been captured by imperialist Russia and in any case pertained only to the south and east, while the Galicians to the west were notoriously loyal to the Habsburg monarchy. The prospects for political independence were therefore distinctly unpromising. The tacit question at the volume=s core is how Ukrainian nationalism emerged from such unpropitious circumstances. Galicia played a decisive part in this. A frontier land within a frontier land (which is what ukraina means), Galicia=s borders have fluctuated ever since the Middle Ages, but it is culturally distinct. Predominately Greek Catholic (Uniate) rather than Eastern Orthodox like the rest of Ukraine, it fell to Austrian rather than Russian rule in the later...