Brown, Geoffrey

Geoffrey Brown Abstract: In 1919 the Rusyns of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and Rusyn immigrants living in the United States decided that joining the newly-created Czechoslovak Republic offered them the best possible conditions for a stable future. They agreed to the union on the condition that the Rusyns would be granted the widest possible degree of political autonomy, and this autonomy was then guaranteed by the Treaty of Saint Germain signed in September 1919. Once the territory of Subcarpathian Ruthenia had joined Czechoslovakia, the Government in Prague decided that the Rusyn people were incapable of meeting the responsibilities of governing their own territory, since at the end of World War One they had been among the poorest and least culturally developed of all the nations of Austro-Hungary. The Rusyn leaders, particularly the territory's first Governor, Gregory Zhatkovich, protested to no avail against the Czechoslovak government's refusal to grant the Rusyns their legal right to political autonomy. Prior to the war the Czech public had practically no knowledge of Rusyns or their territory of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. During the first three years of the Czechoslovak state, the Czech media published many newspaper articles which highlighted or exaggerated the primitive nature of the Rusyn people,...

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