„THE DISCOVERY OF THE PEOPLE’S SOUL“. EAST EUROPEAN LINGUISTIC MINORITIES BETWEEN DEFENCE OF IDENTITY AND SEPARATISM. THE EXAMPLE OF THE CARPATHO RUSYNS / „DIE ENTDECKUNG DER VOLKSSELLE“: OSTEUROPÄISCHE SPRACHMINDERHEITEN ZWISCHEN IDENTITÄTSPFLEGE UND SE

Marc  STEGHERR

Authors

Marc STEGHERR Dozent für Politikwissenschaften, Fakultät für Europastudien, Universität Babeş-Bolyai, Klausenburg; Lehrbeauftragter für südslavische Landeskunde, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Deutschland. Email: marc.stegherr@netpol.at.

Keywords:

Regionalism, Autonomy, Standard Language, Carpatho Rusyns, Ukraine

Abstract

In spite of unfriendly remarks about provincialism and warnings of possible separatism attachment to Europe’s historical regions is rising, as the Catalan or Scottish examples show. A lesser known regionalist issue is the Rusyn/Ruthenian one in the Carpathian border region. While their situation regarding minority rights is quite favourable in Northern Serbia/Vojvodina, their demands to have their ethnicity and language recognized by the Ukrainian state were more than once ignored. The reason often mentioned in similiar cases is fear of separatism. The Rusyns‘ struggle with identity, the difficult task of keeping their language and culture alive in complex political circumstances, namely the present Ukrainian-Russian crisis, is being described in this article and compared to similar regional cases.

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