Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rus' by Elaine Rusinko (review)

MLRy 100.3, 2005 893 Unusually for a scholarly collection, the reader gets the impression that all the contributors enjoyed writing their pieces. Even more unusually, the volume does not sufferfrom that bane of many conference collections, looseness or incoherence. This is a very tight and well-edited volume, perhaps because it does not result from an academic conference but from a meeting of like minds, or 'webmates', as the editors call them. Woe betide us, though, if those who fund our conferences find out that '@style' can produce such valuable scholarly work. Swansea University Richard Taylor Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rusf. By Elaine Rusinko . Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press. 2003. xiv + 560 pp. ?80. ISBN 0-8020-3711-9. Elaine Rusinko has set herself the task of describing how Rusyn ethnicity was con? structed in literature. She claims that she does not want to write 'a comprehensive literary history' (p. 20), but in fact she has provided such a detailed history of the literature that it will long serve as a reference work. Her method is to apply postcolo? nial theory to the development of Rusyn literature and nationality. Rusinko quotes Roman Jakobson on the fact that 'in the whole East Slavic world, there is hardly any other marginal area whose past has been examined with such affectionate meticulousness and scholarliness as Subcarpathian Rus" (p. 4). Rusinko's work, although very affectionate, does not adopt an impartial standpoint. This is partly because she relies so heavily on postcolonial theory, which leads her to state emotionally that the re-emergence of Rusyn nationalism was a 'positive' result of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc (p. 3). It is not so much reliance on postcolonial theory as her predilection for nationalist tropes that leads her to give one chapter the title 'Strategies of Survival under the Magyar Yoke', although in the extensive material quoted only one awakener actually uses the word 'yoke' (p. 241). Her use of the word in propria persona, like the frequent use of 'oppression' (without inverted commas), and the portrayal of the Magyars as colonizers demonstrate that Rusinko herself is influenced by and accepts nineteenth-century nationalist ideology as a valid interpretative approach to literature. One of the main problems attending the application of postcolonial theory to relations between Rusyns and Hungarians is that the two ethnicities have been living together since the tenth century; labelling the Magyars as colonizers constitutes a submission to awakener jargon. Although well read in postcolonial theory, Rusinko does not draw sufficientlyon theories of nationalism (for example, on p. 63 Rusinko uses Ernest Gellner's Na? tions and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) only at second hand, from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nation? alism (London: Verso, 1991)). Rusinko also employs confusing classifications of na? tionalism, such as 'cultural nationalism' (p. 6) or 'national patriotism' (p. 394). For some reason she believes that linguistic nationalism is a postmodern phenomenon (p. 451), which would put medieval Czech or English writers, let alone Fichte and his nineteenth-century followers, in the postmodern era. In addition, she believes that the Soviet Bloc suppressed nationalism (pp. 15, 394); in fact, while it is true that the Soviet Bloc officiallyconsidered nationalism to be a contemptible residual bourgeois value, most Communist regimes fostered it. Thus, Rusinko does not discuss why the Soviets supported Ukrainian against Rusyn nationalism, even after the Rusyn area became part of the Soviet Bloc. Furthermore, Rusinko seems to be a disciple of Herderian organicist national ideology, with its belief in the existence of a 'national spirit' (p. 388). 894 Reviews In an attempt to present the superiority of Rusyn literature over Ukrainian, Rusinko tries to disguise a clear case of anti-Semitic stereotyping as a description of exploita? tion. In defence ofthe author Aleksander Pavlovych (1818-1900), she correctly states that the stereotyping of Jews was ubiquitous in East European literature, but main? tains that Pavlovych did not 'refer to religious beliefs or national traits, as did much of Ukrainian literature' (p. 198). She makes no reference to the concept of economic anti-Semitism (developed, for example, by Peter Pulzer, in The Rise...

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