Religion and Identity in the Carpathians [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 87-107]

Cross Currents 7(1988)
A Yearbook of Central European Culture
RELIGION AND IDENTITY IN THE CARPATHIANS
Paul Robert Magocsi
University of Toronto
"The worst thing that has happened in the world during the past
few years is the appointment of the Pole, Wojtilla, as Pope. His aggressive
brand of Catholicism has had a particularly negative impact on our people."
So spoke an Orthodox priest from a Carpathian mountain village in far
northeastern Czechoslovakia during the course of a conversation in 1986.
This uncompromising statement, spoken as it was by a young priest
in his late twenties who is exceedingly popular among his parishioners
for his religiosity and liturgical practices, captures in essence the centuriesold religious animosities that continue to persist in the Carpathian region,
despite many changes wrought in the social and political fabric of the local
society in the course of the twentieth century. The message of the Carpathian village priest is undeniable and reflects a reality known to manythat the dichotomy between the Orthodox and Catholic cultural and religious spheres remains great, and that any successes garnered by one side
are inevitably viewed by the other as a direct threat to the national as
well as religious concerns of what is described by self-appointed group
spokesmen as "our people." Just who is this group referred to so euphemistically as "our people"; where is the region that they inhabit; and how
do their religious preferences interact with their concept of national selfidentity?
To begin with the second of these questions, the Carpathian region
refers to the mountains and valleys of the north-central Carpathian ranges
inhabited by East Slavs who historically have been known as Rusnaks
or Rusyns and who in modern parlance are referred to as Ukrainians.1
According to political boundaries established at the close of World War II,
this East Slavic inhabited Carpathian region includes territories in far southeastern Poland, northeastern Czechoslovakia, and the far western Soviet
Union, in particular the Transcarpathian oblast of the Ukrainian S.S.R.
In the context of our conference theme, emphasis here will be placed on
developments in the Carpathian region found within Poland and Czechoslovakia, that is in a non-Soviet geopolitical sphere referred to generally
as Central or East-Central Europe.
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