National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library Slovo Summer 2016 by WDG Communications Inc.

SUMMER 2016

EVENT SNEAK PEEK Old World Christmas Market December 3 and 4

A Publication of the

VOLUME 17 b NUMBER 1 SUMMER 2016

FROM THE PUBLISHER

CONTRIBUTORS

FEATURES: Breaking Down Boundaries: A Brief Introduction to Carpatho-Rusyns

By Patricia A. Krafcik Learn about the rich and fascinating history of the Carpatho-Rusyn peoples.

The Lost World of Subcarpathian Rus’: The Searching Lens of Rudolf Hu° lka

From the National Library of the Czech Republic’s Slavonic Library Collection

Hand-colored slide, glass plate 8.5 x 8.5 cm, photograph by Rudolph Hu° lka.

Get a rare glimpse, in color photographs, of Carpatho-Rusyns during the 1920s.

Old Countrymen, New Neighbors: Early Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak Immigrant Relations in the United States

By Richard D. Custer Discover how the Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn communities in the United States experienced times of cooperation and conflict which helped lead them to defining their respective identities.

“No! We Won’t Die!”: Rediscovering Emil Kubek

By Nick Kupensky A case study of one Rusyn immigrant and the impact he had on his community and the Carpatho-Rusyn legacy.

The Woman Behind the Artist: Andy Warhol’s Mother

On the Cover: A young man and a girl from Kam’ianytsia in the local folk costume, 1921.

By Elaine Rusinko

Slovo is published biannually by the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. The editor welcomes research articles and essays written for a popular audience that address Czech & Slovak history and culture. Please address inquiries to Editor, Slovo, 1400 Inspiration Place SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404.

Publisher: Gail Naughton Editor: Katie Mills Giorgio Curator: Stefanie Kohn Librarian: David Muhlena Design: WDG Communications Inc.

Slovo = Word Slovo is available as a benefit to members

Take a look at how famed artist Andy Warhol was influenced by his Carpatho-Rusyn mother Julia Warhola.

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of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. Individual memberships: $35 for one year. For information, write to the NCSML, 1400 Inspiration Place SW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52404; call (319) 362-8500; or visit our website at www.NCSML.org.

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Or email to: gnaughton@NCSML.org

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Please send your letters to: Editor, Slovo 1400 Inspiration Place SW Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52404

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We encourage discussion of the issues and stories presented in Slovo.

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Letters to the Editor

On Friday evening, May 13 at the member’s opening of the Andy Warhol exhibit, Immortal: Warhol’s Last Works, a couple exclaimed, “This is a great exhibit. I’ve never seen these Warhol works before and I learned a lot about the artist. You can see soup cans at every museum but not these interesting and unique pieces.” Music to my ears! Our intent with every exhibit is to inform, educate and inspire visitors. With Andy Warhol, there are several unique opportunities to do just that, especially by highlighting the influence of his mother, Julia, the Greek Catholic Church and his Carpatho-Rusyn heritage. These details don’t immediately come to mind when one thinks of the icon of pop art but they are the essence of who he was and the inspiration behind his ground-breaking art. This issue of Slovo follows on that premise. We like to match the theme with the major exhibits and events happening at the museum and library if we can. It adds another layer of interpretation for you, our members, and we hope results in a richer experience. For those who can’t come to the museum as often as you’d like, it expands the content and brings you closer to the action. Two years ago when we began planning the Warhol exhibit, we talked about how Slovo could be part of the experience. From there, it was a short hop to focusing on his Carpatho-Rusyn roots. Even for Czechs and Slovaks and those of us who are connected, the complicated Subcarpathian Rus’ history is hard to remember. This issue of Slovo is intended to help refresh our memories and bring new attention to the Carpatho-Rusyn people and their impact on the world. Andy Warhol’s celebrity has helped raise awareness, as well as author and Renaissance man Emil Kubek and photographer Rudolf Hu° lka, who are also featured in this issue. Today there are groups devoted to the resurgence of this Central European ethnic minority, notably the National Congress of Rusyns, and growing recognition in the countries where they reside. It says a lot about the perseverance of Czechs, Slovaks and Carpatho-Rusyns that today their histories, languages and identities remain distinct and intact. That’s no small feat considering the upheavals they have endured. The evolution of Europe in the 20th Century was monumental, and the Czech, Slovak and Subcarpathian Rus’ lands were right at the crossroads. Just think of the change in the span of only 100 years, from an almost-thousand year monarchy to a World War that brought down the massive Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a Western-style democracy for 20 years, to dominance by the Nazis during the second World War, followed by oppression by the communists and the Cold War, to independence and entrance into the Western world. It’s a tale with all the elements of a docu-drama…and it happened in their own backyards. At the very heart of each of us is our connection to a people and a place. It’s who we are. It helps answer the question, why do I exist? It grounds us in our hectic and chaotic world. I hope you enjoy this issue of Slovo and appreciate anew our connections to the world and to each other. museum S CRAP B OOK

P RE VIE W President / CEO National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

INTE RVIE W

from the P U B L IS H E R

Gail Naughton

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Rich Custer (Old Countrymen, New Neighbors: Early Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak Immigrant Relations in the United States) was a founder of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society in 1994 in Pittsburgh and served as editor of its New Rusyn Times newsletter from that time until the end of 2015. He is the author of scholarly and popular articles on Rusyn history and culture and the blog The Carpatho-Rusyns of Pennsylvania (http://rusynsofpa.blogspot.com). He co-authored Príkra (Prešov, Slovakia, 2006), a history of his Rusyn maternal grandmother’s village in eastern Slovakia. He has master’s degrees in international business and Eastern Europe studies from the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Washington D.C. where he works as a website manager for the federal government. For more than 25 years, he has been doing research preparing to write a monograph on the history of Carpatho-Rusyns in Pennsylvania. Nick Kupensky ( “No! We Won’t Die!”: Rediscovering Emil Kubek) is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He is completing his dissertation, “The Soviet Industrial Sublime: The Art of Building Dneprostroi, 1927-1934,” which examines the cinema, literature, and photography about the construction of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station located in Zaporozh’e, Ukraine. A specialist in the aesthetics of industry, Kupensky turned from electricity to anthracite in his second project, which explores the influence of the coal town Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, on the poetry and prose of the Carpatho-Rusyn writer, Emil Kubek. In 2015, Kupensky launched The Emil Kubek Project, which includes a digital archive of Kubek’s work in translation

CO N T R IBUT O R S

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and a virtual tour of Mahanoy City. He is also preparing a book-length manuscript on Kubek’s life and work provisionally entitled The Mountains and the Mines: Emil Kubek in Mahanoy City. Editor’s Note:

R EVIEWS

Patricia A. Krafcik (A Brief Introduction to CarpathoRusyns) is an associate professor of Russian Language and Literature at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She earned her B.A. from Indiana University (Bloomington) and her M.A./Ph.D. at Columbia University in Russian Literature and Slavic Studies. She is co-founder and secretary of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center (C-RRC) and is presently serving as president of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association, both affiliates of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Pat was editor of the Carpatho-Rusyn American newsletter, the quarterly publication of the C-RRC from 1978 through 1998. She has lectured on folklore at the Studium CarpatoRuthenorum International Summer School for Rusyn Language and Culture at the University of Prešov in Slovakia. She is the granddaughter of pre-World War I Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak immigrants to the United States.

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CONTRIBUTORS

The NCSML would like to extend a special thank you to Nick for his insights and guidance as we put together this issue of Slovo. His passion for his heritage and his connections to the various contributors of this issue were a guiding light.

Elaine Rusinko ( The Woman Behind the Artist) is Associate Professor of Russian in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. After completing a Ph.D. at Brown University, she authored numerous articles on modernist Russian poetry. Upon the emergence of the Rusyn movement for identity in Eastern Europe in 1989, she turned her attention to Carpatho-Rusyn literature and published Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rus’ (2003), the first history of Carpatho-Rusyn literature in English. Her literary translations were published as “God is a Rusyn”: An Anthology of Contemporary Carpatho-Rusyn Literature (2011). Rusinko’s interest in Andy Warhol stems from their common Carpatho-Rusyn ethnic background. She explored the Rusyns’ reception of Warhol and the impact of Warhol’s Rusyn ethnicity on his art and persona in “We Are All Warhol’s Children:” Andy and the Rusyns (2012). She is currently working on a book about Andy Warhol’s mother.

YOU TOO CAN BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO SLOVO. The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library’s missionfocused publications and programs are made possible through generous support from our friends, members and donors world wide. The back cover of Slovo is often used to pay tribute and honor or memorialize friends and loved ones. If you are interested in honoring a friend or loved one by contributing to a future issue of Slovo, please contact a member of our NCSML Development Team at (319) 362-8500 today. Slovo | 3

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Breaking Down Boundaries:

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO CARPATHO-RUSYNS

By Patricia A. Krafcik

museum S CRAP B OOK

Author Patricia A. Krafcik

C A L E N DA R These are images taken on site in Transcarpathian Ukraine (Subcarpathian Rus’). The panoramas show the beauty of the countryside and the surrounding mountains. Photos by Karolina Kwiecien.

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Carpatho-Rusyns are an East Slavic people related to, but linguistically and culturally distinct from their Ukrainian neighbors to the east and from Slovaks, Czechs, and Poles to the west and north. Their historical territory, Carpathian Rus’, comprises approximately 7,000 square miles and stretches about 235 miles across northeastern Slovakia from the Poprad River in the west to the Tisa River in today’s Transcarpathia in Ukraine, spilling northward across the border into southeastern Poland along the way. This territory constituted the northern counties of the old Hungarian Empire for almost a thousand years. Pockets of Carpatho-Rusyns could also be found in what is today’s Hungary and Romania — and as far south as Serbia and Croatia where they had immigrated in the 18th century. Historically referred to as Rusnaks, Ruthenians, or in Poland as Lemkos, Carpatho-Rusyns are largely Eastern Christians, Orthodox in faith until the mid-17th century. Then the Union of Uzhhorod created the “Greek Catholic” Church. Eastern Christian in its traditions and rituals, but within the jurisdictional embrace of the Roman Catholic Church, this denomination came to represent large numbers of Carpatho-Rusyns and contributed to their distinct cultural identity. In the 19th century, Carpatho-Rusyns, like other peoples living in the great empires of Europe, participated in the “Springtime of Nations.” While the bulk of the population was rural and engaged in agriculture, representatives from the educated class took part in discussions along with Slovaks and Czechs about the future shape of central Europe and the potential creation of nation states. As a people living at the crossroads of cultures, between West and East, Carpatho-Rusyns were pulled in different directions in terms of their own national identity. Arguments swirled as to whether they should most appropriately self-identify as Ukrainians, as members of some larger “Pan-Russian” people, or as a distinct group.

Even Alexander Dukhnovych (1803-65), a Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic priest, poet, and activist, seemed to suggest different paths forward as his own thinking evolved. Dukhnovych clearly recognized the distinctiveness of his people’s identity, though, and has been venerated for over a century as the Carpatho-Rusyn “national awakener.” Although no Carpatho-Rusyn nation state emerged, Carpatho-Rusyns continued to reside in the traditional Carpathian Rus’ territory and elsewhere in Europe. The twentieth century’s two world wars brought enormous changes to all of Europe and had a significant impact on Carpatho-Rusyns. With the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the close of World War I, the new country of Czechoslovakia emerged in 1918. It was comprised of three “lands” or “krajiny,” Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, and Slovakia, whose population in its eastern Prešov Region was strongly Carpatho-Rusyn. It also included a fourth “land” — the mountainous Subcarpathian Rus’ (in Czech: Podkarpatská Rus) which was part of the historical Carpathian Rus’. It was added to Czechoslovakia in 1919 based on a decision by the Rusyn National Council and supported by Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants to the United States. Three-quarters of the population of Subcarpathian Rus’ was Carpatho-Rusyn, the remainder a mix of Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, and Romanies. Subcarpathian Rus’ itself was a terra incognita for many urban dwellers to the west. Perhaps because of that, it proved an irresistible draw, particularly to the adventurous. These included photographers, journalists, writers, and artists, including Rudolf Hu° lka, Karel Plicka, Ivan Olbracht, Václav Fiala, and others. All of them left an abundance of photos, writings, and artistic works which documented daily life in Subcarpathian Rus’ in the 1920s and 1930s. Indigenous Carpatho-Rusyn artists also emerged during this period, and their work in landscapes and portraiture captured a moment in the region’s life which is now lost to time. Among these creative artists was Iosyf Bokshai, who along with Adal’bert Erdeli and others, founded a Public School of Painting in Uzhhorod (1927). They also established a Rusyn national school of painting and a new institution in Uzhhorod, the Society of Fine Arts in Subcarpathian Rus’. The first governor of Subcarpathian Rus’ was a young Carpatho-Rusyn, American lawyer, Gregory Zhatkovych. World War II, however, would soon radically alter this region, as it did all parts of the First Czechoslovak Republic. After Hitler dismantled Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Subcarpathian Rus’ was invaded and held by Hungary until the end of the war, while Carpatho-Rusyns over the border in Slovakia lived in the new Slovak state, closely allied to Hitler’s Germany. In June 1945, a few months before the end of the war, agitation by local communists in Subcarpathian Rus’, as well as Stalin’s direct pressure on the provisional Czechoslovak parliament, resulted in the annexation of Subcarpathian Rus’ to the Soviet Union. This was accomplished without any form of citizen plebiscite or Carpatho-Rusyn parliamentary representation and without any significant protest from Allied Powers, which had previously agreed that the territory ought to remain part of a rebuilt postwar Czechoslovakia. Torn from Czechoslovakia, Subcarpathian Rus’ was now one of the Soviet oblasts, renamed Transcarpathia or Transcarpathian Ukraine (in Ukrainian: Zakarpattia). Debates lingering from the 19th century about the national identity of Carpatho-Rusyns, each orientation touting its proponents, organizations, and publications, was now “resolved” in Transcarpathia. By official fiat, Stalin imposed Ukrainian identity on the Carpatho-Rusyns. The Greek Catholic Church was outlawed. Agriculture was forcibly collectivized, as it had been

A statue of the Carpatho-Rusyn National Awakener, Alexander Dukhnovych, by sculptor Olena Mandych, was created in 1933 and is presently located in the city of Pres˘ov, Slovakia, along the bank of the Torysa River near Pres˘ov University.

Gregory I. Zhatkovych (1886-1967) was a Carpatho-Rusyn-American lawyer, born in the Rusyn village of Holubyne in the former Bereg County (today, in Transcarpathia). He was brought to the U.S. at age five and was appointed by the interwar Czechoslovak government as the first governor of Subcarpathian Rus’ in April 1920.

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The coat-of-arms originally represented Subcarpathian Rus’ from the interwar period of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the flag of the Carpatho-Rusyns. Both symbols were approved by participants at the Ninth World Congress of Rusyns, June 23, 2007, in Sighetul Marmatiei, Romania.

A typical Carpathian wooden church (St. Nicholas) from the 17th century (reconstructed), in the village of Bodruz˘al, Pres˘ov Region, Slovakia. Wooden churches (tserkvas) that have been preserved in the territory of north-eastern Slovakia in locations where Rusyn population are strong, showcase their sense of beauty and harmony with the surrounding environment. They represent and show the reverence and love for God, fellow men and the pride of its old Slavonic-Rusyn traditions.

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elsewhere in the Soviet Union. The Rusyn language was banned from public use. Expressions of an indigenous Carpatho-Rusyn nationality were forbidden. In southeastern Poland in 1945 and 1946, large numbers of Lemko Rusyns were forced to resettle in western Ukraine according to an agreement between Poland and the Soviet Union. Other Lemkos, accused of being Ukrainians and supporting the anti-communist Ukrainian Insurgent Army, were punished with deportation to lands previously occupied by Germans in Silesia and northern Poland. During this so-called Vistula Operation in 1947, their homes and entire villages were demolished or taken over by Poles. In July 1946, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union agreed on the Volhynia Operation in which thousands of Carpatho-Rusyns living in the Prešov Region of eastern Slovakia were enticed to resettle in Ukraine. Dire conditions and a dismal fate awaited them there, and as a result, many claimed Slovak identity and were eventually permitted to return to Slovakia. The ancestral Carpathian Rus’ territory in postwar Poland and Czechoslovakia thus underwent enormous changes as these countries were compelled to follow the lead of the Soviet Union. By 1952, Czechoslovakia also introduced a policy of forced Ukrainianization of its Carpatho-Rusyns, banned the Greek Catholic Church, and imposed collectivization on an unwilling population. While some Carpatho-Rusyns accepted Ukrainian identity, thousands protested by adopting Slovak identity, a move which reduced their numbers from 85,000 in 1930 to 31,000 by 1980. In Czechoslovakia, the Prague Spring of 1968 brought renewed hope that self-identification as Carpatho-Rusyns might be possible. The Greek Catholic Church was no longer forbidden, but Carpatho-Rusyns were still identified officially as Ukrainians. Alongside other peoples in the former “eastern bloc” countries, CarpathoRusyns in Czechoslovakia welcomed the revolutions of 1989. Immediately, a small handful of Carpatho-Rusyns working for the Ukrainian-oriented newspaper Nove zhyttia (1951- ), acquired permission to include a special Rusyn-language section in that newspaper entitled “Holos rusyniv” (Voice of the Rusyns). Ironically, these were journalists who had university degrees in Ukrainian language and literature. Emboldened by what this token gesture allowed, they strengthened their stance by then denying Ukrainian identity and fully embracing their Carpatho-Rusyn identity. They were dismissed from the Ukrainian-language paper and established a journal, entitled Rusyn, and a newspaper for Rusyns and about Rusyns, called Narodny´ novynky´ (The People’s News) — both publications in the Rusyn language. On the heels of 1989, Carpatho-Rusyns began to establish specifically Carpatho-Rusyn organizations in all the countries in which they resided. By 1990 these groups came together to form the World Congress of Rusyns. Meetings of the World Congress began in 1991 and have taken place every other year since then. All of the organizations produced their own publications and worked toward official recognition of Carpatho-Rusyns as a national minority in their respective countries. That recognition has been achieved in all the countries in which they live, except Ukraine. There, Carpatho-Rusyns are officially recognized only by the Transcarpathian regional government and must continue to work toward recognition on

A mushroom harvest in Subcarpathian Rus’. Photo by Karolina Kwiecien.

the national level. In Czechoslovakia, the Rusinská obroda (Rusyn Renaissance Society) took the lead with a mission to reach out to Carpatho-Rusyns, many of whom had adopted Slovak identity publicly while continuing to speaking Rusyn at home, as well as worshiping in their Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches. It was a challenge — and continues to be — to convince people whose identity and language had been outlawed for so long that it was no longer dangerous or demeaning to reclaim their ancestral identity and to speak their language in public. Numerous articles published in Narodny´ novynky´ and letters to the editor around this subject testify to how painful it has been to overcome decades of forced Ukrainianization. Other publications online also testify to the vibrancy of Carpatho-Rusyn identity today. In the United States, descendants of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants established the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center in 1978 to help raise an awareness of the nearly lost ethnic and cultural connections with the European homeland. They published the newsletter, The Carpatho-Rusyn American, from 1978 to 1998, during the course of which the editors and contributors enlarged their focus to support Carpatho-Rusyns everywhere after the 1989 revolutions. The Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center subsequently became a member of the World Congress of Rusyns. Yet other organizations of descendants have been established, including the Carpatho-Rusyn Society in the Pittsburgh area which now has branches throughout the United States, the Rusin Association of Minnesota, the World Academy of Carpatho-Rusyn Culture, and an older group, the Lemko Association. The support proffered by all of these groups for both grassroots and academic efforts to define and develop Carpatho-Rusyn language and culture has had fruitful results. During the 1990s, Carpatho-Rusyn linguists in Slovakia stepped up to the plate and produced an orthography, a dictionary of Rusyn linguistic terminology, and a grammar, so that by 1995 they were able to announce the establishment of a standard literary Rusyn language. While Rusyn had been written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets in the past, these modern linguists chose Cyrillic as the official alphabet, a nod to the Carpatho-Rusyns’ East Slavic roots. A Rusyn literary language had existed among CarpathoRusyns for decades in the former Yugoslavia prior to this moment because of the encouraging atmosphere in that country toward the Carpatho-Rusyns as a national minority, but the establishment of a standard Rusyn language in Slovakia has been significant and symbolic for Carpatho-Rusyns elsewhere. Writers and poets have taken up the banner, and by now a significant body of literature exists in the Rusyn language. The famous Alexander Dukhnovych Theater in Prešov switched from Ukrainian almost entirely to productions in Rusyn, including plays written in Rusyn and plays translated into Rusyn from other languages. There are both radio and TV shows which now employ the Rusyn language.

Men sharpening scythes. Photo by Karolina Kwiecien.

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In Carpathian Rus’, almost every village has its own unique costume style, embroidery patterns and use of colors.

Much has been accomplished in introducing the Rusyn language, history, and culture into the educational system. Most importantly, a Department of Rusyn Language and Culture now resides within the walls of Prešov University. It serves undergraduate students, and now supports high-level preparation toward the doctorate in Rusyn studies. Teachers trained at the university teach Rusyn in a handful of schools, and doctoral candidates are engaged in research and writing. Under the umbrella of the Slovak National Museum, a Rusyn Museum has been established in Prešov and is gradually developing its exhibits and outreach to the community. Since the summer of 2010, the Department of Rusyn Language and Culture at Prešov University has sponsored an annual Studium Carpato-Ruthenorum International Summer School of Rusyn Language and Culture, an intensive three-week immersion in the Rusyn language, along with lectures offered in English and Rusyn on Rusyn history and ethnography, excursions, and workshops. Over a hundred participants, both local and from abroad, have attended. Clearly by now the people “from nowhere,” to quote Andy Warhol, have definitely claimed a place for themselves.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON CARPATHO-RUSYN HISTORY

The Lost World of Subcarpathian Rus’ in the Photographs of Rudolf Hu° lka by Hana Opleštilová and Lukáš Babka

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Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture, Paul Robert Magocsi and Ivan Pop, eds.

With Their Backs to the Mountains: A History of Carpathian Rus’ and CarpathoRusyns, by Paul Robert Magocsi

Committing Community: Carpatho-Rusyn Studies as an Emerging Scholarly Discipline, Elaine Rusinko, ed.

THE SEARCHING LENS ° OF RUDOLF HULKA

photo FEAT UR E

The Lost World of Subcarthian Rus’:

Numbered among the Czech National Library’s collection are the recently discovered color slides, photographic prints and glass plate negatives (dating principally from the early 1920s) of Rudolf Hu° lka (l887-l961), a Czech economic official by profession. Hu° lka documented the extraordinary mixture of ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities, living amidst abject poverty, that characterized interwar Subcarpathian Rus’. This region would soon experience the wrenching changes associated with World War II, the onset of Soviet rule, and the consequent integration of this region with Ukraine.

Iasinia: sheep, in front of a cottage in “poloniny” (high-mountain pastures), 1921 hand-colored slide, glass plate, 8,5 x 8,5 cm

Rudolf Hu° lka (holding Olha Kobylianska’s book Zemlia [The Land], which he later translated into Czech), 1920s Black/white negative, glass plate, 21 x 27 cm.

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SUBCARPATHIAN RUS’

A. Roma: smiths, in front of a simple tent, 1921 B. Hutsuls: children, 1921 C. Oc˘ová: embroidered sleeves, 1921 Color slide (color layer damaged), glass plate, 9 x 12 cm

D. Iasinia – Lazeshchyna: Nikola Vasylchuk, Hutsul children, 1921 E. Lintsi: an old man in a “tepek”, a man from the Highlands wrapped in a woolen overcoat, 1921 Below: Iasinia – Chorna Tysa: fair, a procession to the Church, 1921 All images on this spread are hand-colored slides, glass plate 8.5 x 8.5 cm, unless individually noted.

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H. F. Iasinia: haymaking, lunch during a “toloka” (communal assistance), 1921 G. Iasinia – Chorna Tysa: beggars, the Hutsuls in front of the Church, 1921 H. Serednie: the Roma Tomesh, in front of a hut, 1921

J. I. Uz˘hhorod: a blind beggar at the marketplace on Masaryk (now Sándor Petöfi) Square, the early 1920s black/white film negative, 6,5 x 8,5 cm

J. Kostryna: a wooden church, early spring, March 20, 1921 Below: Iasinia – Lazeshchyna: in front of the “Pletovaty” church of SS. Peter and Paul built in 1780, the early 1920s

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MORAVIA

A. Dolní Lhota near Luhac˘ovice: a well with a winch in the foregournd, a cottage and a detached timbered storage hut, 1925 B. A group of youths from the Podluz˘í region in festive folk costumes in front of a painted porch (z˘udro), from an ethnographic festival – the exact place unknown, the 1920s C. Vlc˘nov: A. Mikulcová, a detail of a folk costume, 1925 Below: Velká nad Velic˘kou: children, two boys and a girl clad in festive folk costumes, the boy is holding a hymnal in his hand, the second half of the 1920s All images on this page are hand-colored color slides, glass plate, 9 x 12 cm.

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SLOVAKIA

RUDOLF HU° LKA COLLECTION The National Library of the Czech Republic D. D. Mirol’a: a wooden church built in 1770 with a cemetery, the 1920s E. An elderly inhabitant of Detva, a man smoking a pipe, September 25, 1921 F. Vaz˘ec: a mother holding her daughter in her arms, the 1920s black/white negative, glass plate, 9 x 11,5 cm

Below: Strihovce: children in front of the church, the 1920s All images on this page are hand-colored color slides, glass plate, 8.5 x 8.5 cm, unless individually noted.

These photographs by Rudolf Hu° lka are part of the special collection of the National Library of the Czech Republic — Slavonic Library collection in Prague. In all, they care for some 4,400 photographs and archival documents related to Hu° lka’s work. The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library would like to thank the Slavonic Library for allowing us to share these images with our readers. For more information about the collection visit http://sbirkysk.nkp.cz/ index. The images can also be found in a book titled The Lost World of Subcarpathian Rus’ in the Photographs of Rudolf Hu° lka (1861–1961) by Hana Opleštilová and Lukáš Babka, published by the National Library of the Czech Republic in 2014. A new edition is being published this year. It presents a selection of photographs from Rudolf Hu° lka’s collection deposited in the Slavonic Library. (Book cover is pictured on page 8.) Slovo | 13

Old Countrymen, New Neighbors:

By Richard D. Custer

Author Rich Custer

It is estimated that between the 1880s and 1914 some 225,000 Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants came to the United States.

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EARLY CARPATHO-RUSYN AND SLOVAK IMMIGRANT RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES The Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn communities in the United States today are for the most part distinct and separate. In the formative years of these communities, the lines between the two were not so firmly drawn, and these two Slavic peoples experienced times of cooperation and conflict that helped to firmly define their respective identities. Despite that, some of the immigrants’ descendants today still struggle with the question “who are we?” Historic “Upper Hungary” — specifically the counties of Abov, Spiš, Šariš, Zemplín, and Už — experienced the highest rate of poverty and thus the highest rate of emigration to the United States starting in the latter half of the 19th century. In these counties — for the most part present-day eastern Slovakia — Slovaks were the majority, and Rusyns were a substantial minority even though Rusyns were the majority population in more than 300 villages of the region.(1) In a larger number of villages, the residents were considered to be Rusyns at various points in the earlier parts of the century, but through various socioeconomic and religious factors, they became Slovakized, even if their self-identity was undetermined or in flux.(2) Religious affiliation is today one of the primary characteristics of the respective communities: the Carpatho-Rusyns are typically of Byzantine Catholic or Orthodox Christian faith, while the Slovaks are mainly Roman Catholic with a Protestant minority. Since the earliest days, these ecclesial

communities and their hierarchies in the United States have presented themselves as ethnically monolithic even though their histories and communities have at times been intertwined. At the time of this first and primary emigration, a firm sense of national identity was not yet in place among the Slavs in this region, particularly among the Rusyns:

In light of the lack of national institutions, publications, and schools in the Prešov Region, together with the attempts of the few local leaders to identify with Magyar or Russian culture, it is not surprising that the masses of the peasants did not have an opportunity to develop a national consciousness. If a person from the Prešov Region were asked his identity, he would respond that he was “from here,” from a particular village or county, or that he was a Rusnak, the local term for a Rusyn. Rusnak proved to be a deceivingly complex name, however, because historically it had come to designate all adherents of Greek Catholicism who, despite the ethnic origins of their ancestors, might by the nineteenth century be Slovak or Magyar as well as Rusyn. The situation was further confused when Rusnak/Rusyn came to be interpreted as an ethnolinguistic category, not a religious one. The realization of this semantic change came slowly among the masses, and when Hungarian census takers began to record the national composition of the region, it was not uncommon to find the inhabitants of the same village described as Slovak in one census and as Rusyn in the next. This identity problem was later to provoke bitter debate between Slovak and Rusyn polemicists.(3)

Listing for the First Rusyn-Slovak Greek Catholic Sick Support Society of St. Michael the Archangel, Passaic, N.J., in a 1902 edition of the Slovak newspaper “Slovák v Amerike”. The Society was founded in 1890 and joined the Greek Catholic Union as one of its 14 charter lodges, Lodge #12, in 1892. Listing for the Saint Nicholas Society of Kingston, Pa. (founded 1887), in a 1902 edition of the Slovak newspaper “Slovák v Amerike”. Several of the officers were born in the village of Slovinky, Spis˘ County, which had both Greek Catholic Rusyn and Roman Catholic Slovak residents, and most if not all the officers were members of St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church of Kingston. It’s not known what ultimately became of this society.

Early Settlement of Rusyns and Slovaks in the U.S. The first Slovak immigrants to the United States from Upper Hungary began to arrive in the late 1860s,(4) and Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from Upper Hungary and Austrian Galicia began to arrive in the later 1870s. The communities of both groups began to organize in the early 1880s. In general, Slovaks (particularly those from eastern Slovakia) and Carpatho-Rusyns settled in the same towns and cities in the U.S.: New York City, Passaic, Jersey City, and Bayonne, NJ, Bridgeport, CT, the anthracite coal mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, western Pennsylvania (esp. the Pittsburgh, Johnstown, and Uniontown areas), Cleveland, Chicago and northwestern Indiana, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Detroit.(5) A review of the location of Slovak parishes and other organizations shows them as fairly consistent with the location of Carpatho-Rusyn parishes (Byzantine/Greek Catholic and Orthodox) and fraternal lodges. Specifically Slovak Roman Catholic parishes were founded in Hazleton, PA. and Streator, IL. (1885), and a Lutheran parish was founded also in Streator (1884),(6) while the first Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic parish was founded in Shenandoah, PA., in 1884. Their respective mutual-aid “burial societies,” or fraternal insurance lodges, were also founded around the same time, the first such Slovak society being founded in New York City in 1883, while the first such Rusyn society was founded in Shenandoah in 1884.(7)

The undertaker Michael Nyahaj in Yonkers, N.Y., was a native of the Slovakized Rusyn village Ruská Nová Ves, S˘aris˘ County. In this eastern Slovak-dialect ad in the 1908 GCU almanac, he describes himself as a “Russko-Slovensky pohrabnik” (Rusyn-Slovak undertaker). Slovo | 15

The Saints Peter & Paul Brotherhood of New Salem, PA., Lodge 167 of the Pennsylvania Slovak Roman & Greek Catholic Union (PSJ), taken on the patronal feast of their brotherhood, July 13, 1923. Virtually all the members of the New Salem parish were from ethnolinguistically Rusyn villages. (Source: “Kalendár Bratstvo pre Rimsko a Grécko Katolíkov na obyc˘ajn y´ rok 1924”).

Ad for Joann (Jan) Fajdel’s grocery in Homestead, Pa., from the GCU’s 1903 “Amerikánsky Russko-Slovensk´y Kalendár”. “Who wouldn’t know him? If not, every Rusyn and Slovak should know that our beloved brother, a faithful Rusyn and Slav, a native of Zemplín... has a most beautifully furnished grocery store in Homestead... Countrymen and brothers: Rusyns and Slovaks, support your own and not some kind of foreigners or Jews.”

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Earliest Fraternal Societies with Slovak and Rusyn Members Fraternal organizations were usually the first community institutions established in the Rusyn and Slovak immigrant settlements. These were built on the model of similar organizations in the homeland, in part as a replacement for the American insurance that was not usually available to Slavic immigrants, and out of a need for an organization to rally the immigrants on an ethnic basis. The first of these societies began to pop up in pioneer Slovak and Rusyn settlements through the 1890s. Some or most of these organizations would likely have joined the national Slovak organizations founded around that time: the National Slavonic Society of the United States (NSS), or the First Catholic Slovak Union (FCSU), both founded in 1890. Rusyns would not have their own comparable organization until 1892. The First Catholic Slovak Union — a specifically Catholic alternative to the secular NSS — had Rusyns among its membership as well. Some lodges were entirely Rusyn, such as the Ss. Peter & Paul Brotherhood of Mount Carmel, PA., and St. Vladimir Society of Pleasant Hill (today McAdoo), PA., but they eventually transferred to other fraternal organizations. One of the founders of the lodge in Shamokin, PA., was Štefan Petrisko, from the Rusyn village Torysky, Spiš County, and other lodges had Rusyn members along with Slovak majorities, such as the St. John the Baptist lodge of Olyphant, PA.(8) While the FCSU’s Catholic nature made it a more logical affiliation for the generally devout Greek Catholic immigrants, it was not always a welcoming organization for those whose Rusyn identity was more resolute. For example, a mostly Galician, Lemko Rusyn lodge was founded in Ansonia, CT., in 1892, the Brotherhood of St. Basil the Great, under the leadership of Osyf Varcholyk. Three months after its founding Varcholyk spent some time

in the hospital. For three months no meetings were held, and upon returning home he found that many of the members had transferred to a lodge of the FCSU, whose members by and large, as Varcholyk wrote, “didn’t want Rusyns to have their own organization.”(9) Rusyns from Hungary and Galicia finally established their own national fraternal, the Greek Catholic Union of Russian Brotherhoods (“Sojedinenije”/ GCU), in Wilkes-Barre, PA., in 1892. It published the newspaper Amerikánsky Russky Viestnik (American Russian Messenger, later the Greek Catholic Union Messenger), which for several decades appeared in a Cyrillic-alphabet “Russian” edition and a Latin-alphabet “Slavonian” edition that was essentially written in the Eastern Slovak Zemplín dialect. Dissatisfied with the influence the Greek Catholic clergy from Hungary held over the GCU, a number of lodges and members founded another fraternal society in Shamokin, PA., in 1894. The Ruskij Narodnyˇj Sojuz (RNS), or in English, Russian National Union, counted as members Rusyns from Hungary and Galicia who had a strong sense of national identity, whether “Rusyn,” “Russian,” or “Ruthenian.” The RNS, through its newspaper Svoboda, would soon be critical not only of those in the GCU who were insufficiently “Rusyn” in outlook, but especially those Rusyns who belonged to Slovak organizations such as FCSU:

...The call for ethno-national unity was echoed again in a plea to all “patriotic Rusyns” to leave Jednota and join the RNS: “In Slovak newspapers we have discovered that many Rusyns in Pennsylvania belong to the Catholic Jednota. We call attention to all patriotic Rusyns to find these lost people and ask them to join Soiuz.” A week later, Svoboda printed an article titled “A Lack of Patriotism,” commenting that it was “very sad” to find Rusyns in Jednota because “it shows that such a Rusyn has lost his national consciousness.” (10)

Rusyn and Slovak Americans Share in Community Activities From the earliest days, Rusyn and Slovak lodges and bands could be found marching together in parades celebrating the dedication of new churches or lodge anniversaries. And as we can see, businesses may have styled themselves “Rusyn-Slovak” in an attempt to appeal to the largest audience. But for the most part, their social clubs were established strictly along ethnic lines. The social/recreational/political “Slovak Clubs” (taverns with meeting/dance halls) were more numerous than comparable businesses established by Rusyns, but many of them were affiliated with parishes and served primarily that membership, largely an ethnically homogeneous one. It was at the “independent clubs” or “citizen’s clubs” with their own buildings owned by laypeople where the blurring of ethnic lines happened in several directions. Actually, the Rusyn-founded clubs were usually called some variation of “Russian Club” or “Ukrainian Club,” with only a handful of them named “Carpatho-Russian Club” or “Rusin Club.” Some of the clubs with names like “Slavonic Citizen’s Club,” though founded by Slovaks and/or Rusyns, attracted customers of many Slavic or even non-Slavic backgrounds. But if we investigate the founding membership among certain Slovak clubs, we find not only Greek Catholic (or Orthodox) members, but also ethnic Rusyns among the founders and charter members.

The firm of Slovak-American businessman and community activist Peter V. Rovnianek took out an advertisement in the 1903 GCU almanac, though in the literary Slovak language rather than the eastern Slovak dialect used throughout the rest of the publication. It did not specifically address Rusyns except for the remark “Preto russky rodaci, drz˘te sa ho.” Peter Farkaly (in Rusyn, Petro Firkal’), an early settler of Allegheny/Woods Run, now part of Pittsburgh’s North Side, was born in the Rusyn village Vys˘ná Jablonka, Zemplín County. His hotel was located in a neighborhood of heavy Slovak and Rusyn immigrant population. This ad in the 1910 GCU almanac is for his “Slovensky a Russky hostinec” — Slovak and Rusyn tavern.

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The GCU’s 1908 almanac contained this eastern Slovak-dialect ad for the Julius Egreczky Co. of Homestead, a “Russko-Slovensky Bankovy Obchod” [Rusyn-Slovak Banking Store], selling primarily s˘ifkarty (shipping line tickets), money transfers, and Greek Catholic religious books and catechisms, although “in addition to these books we also sell Roman Catholic prayerbooks, and leisure and educational books.” Egreczky, a native of the partially Rusyn village Vel’aty, Zemplín County, served as Supreme Secretary and Supreme Recording Secretary of the Greek Catholic Union, and his business was at the same intersection, or in the same building, as what became the GCU’s National Headquarters.

The Andrejovich Brothers’ market in Beaverdale, PA., while advertising in the 1925 almanac of the United Societies of the Greek Catholic Religion (Sobranije), acknowledged its customer base among Rusyns as well as Slovaks: “First and largest Rusyn butcher shop and grocery. Here everyone, whether Rusyn or Slovak, can get freshly home-cut meat, as well as old-country-style kolbasa... The brothers are United Societies Sokols. Patronize your own.”

The Remnants and the Legacy Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant communities in the U.S. set up similar and largely parallel religious and social institutions. Blurring of lines between language, religion, and identity helped to keep these groups, while largely separate on an official basis, somewhat intertwined. At the same time, polemics and political issues between them, particularly over the identity of Greek Catholics from Upper Hungary and the fate of that territory after World War I, served to drive a wedge between the nationally-conscious portions of each group. Nevermind that the average member of either group was more concerned about achieving the “American dream” and caring for their family to worry about such lofty issues of “who are we.” Today, remnants of the polemical attitudes that furthered the separation between the groups 100 years ago are rarely found, except in the anecdotes 18 | National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

The GCU’s 1905 Rusyn-Slovak almanac contained this ad for George Galya’s “Russky Slovensky Hotel” in Braddock, PA. Galya was “our brother, a head controller of the Sojedinenije [GCU].”

The GCU’s 1905 Rusyn-Slovak almanac contained this eastern Slovak-dialect ad for John Smoley, a “russky slovensky mesár-buc˘e˘r” [meat seller/butcher] in Allegheny (now North Side of Pittsburgh), PA. Smoley was a native of the Slovakized Rusyn village Pos˘a, Zemplín County.

of “old-timers.” While officially the institutions of each group that survive do not frequently engage in inter-group joint projects or social affairs, some grassroots activity goes on with the goal of promoting knowledge and understanding about the Slovak Republic, its peoples, and their history in their shared ancestral lands. Deeper study and awareness of our mutual history in the United States will help to further this progress. And learning about the issues that created “Rusyn Americans” and “Slovak Americans” will help us individually come to a better understanding of the question “who are we.”

Slovak businesses would also advertise in Rusyn periodicals, for example this one in the 1925 almanac of the United Societies of the Greek Catholic Religion (Sobranije). “The known-to-many Slovak undertaker & embalmer... He serves the Slovak as well as the Rusyn in a brotherly manner, and for a low price.”

Interested in reading more? For the complete, unedited version of Old Comuntrymen, New Neighbors: Early Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak Relations in the United States by Richard D. Custer, please log onto http://www.ncsml.org/publications/.

Notes 1. Paul R. Magocsi, The Rusyns of Slovakia: An Historical Survey, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993; Paul R. Magocsi, Our People: Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America, Wauconda, Ill: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2005. About 325 villages in Austrian Galicia, the so-called Lemko Region, had a Carpatho-Rusyn majority; emigrants from these villages typically left Austria-Hungary about the same time as their ethnic compatriots in Hungary, and for the most part settled in the same places in the U.S. However, their interaction with Slovaks was much less, and so their activities will not be given much attention in this article. 2. Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center and Paul Robert Magocsi, Carpatho-Rusyn Settlement at the Outset of the 20th Century with Additional Data from 1881 and 1806: Map and Placename Index by Paul Robert Magocsi, Toronto: Cartography Office, University of Toronto, 1998. 3. Magocsi, The Rusyns of Slovakia, p. 55. 4. Konštantín Cˇulen, History of Slovaks in America, St. Paul, Minn.: Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International, 2007, p. 69. 5. Magocsi, Our People. 6. Cˇulen, pp. 78-81. 7. Ibid., p.146; Štefan Veselý, “Prvé slovenské spolky v Spojených štátoch amerických” in Slováci v zahranicˇí 4-5, Vols 4-5, Martin: Matica slovenská, 1979, pp. 9-57; Richard D. Custer, “The Influence of Clergy and Fraternal Organizations on the Development of Ethnonational Identity among Rusyn Immigrants to Pennsylvania,” in Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Neighbors: Essays in Honor of Paul Robert Magocsi edited by Bogdan Horbal, Patricia A. Krafcik, and Elaine Rusinko, Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2006. 8. Ibid.; Custer; Jozef Paucˇo, 75 rokov Prvej katolíckej Slovenskej Jednoty: 1890-1965, Cleveland, Ohio: Prvá Katolícká Slovenská Jednota, 1965. 9. Iosif Varcholik, “Bratstvo i prichod v Anzonija, Konn.” in Pravoslavnyi russko-amerikanskii kalendar’ na 1902 g., Bridgeport: Svit, 1901, pp. 63-71. 10. Myron B. Kuropas, Ukrainian-American Citadel: The first one hundred years of the Ukrainian National Association (1996), p. 34; Svoboda, Oct. 3/Oct. 10, 1894, cited in Kuropas, p. 93. Slovo | 19

“No! We Won’t Die!”:

REDISCOVERING EMIL KUBEK By Nick Kupensky

Author Nick Kupensky Emil Kubek

View of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania (c. 1930). Photo courtesy of the Mahanoy Area Historical Society.

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As you travel east on Pennsylvania Route 54, it is impossible to ignore the sublime ruins of the abandoned St. Nicholas Coal Breaker, once the largest of its kind when it opened in 1931. Located just outside the town of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, St. Nicholas had been the home to anthracite mines since the 1860s, and a large contingent of its miners were Slavic immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was also the home of the Carpatho-Rusyn priest Emil Kubek, who arrived in Mahanoy City to serve as the pastor of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in the early 1900s. For nearly 40 years, Kubek would work tirelessly to represent the lives of his working-class parishioners in poetry and prose and arguably became the most significant Rusyn-American writer of his generation. Despite his considerable literary output, the residents of Kubek’s adoptive hometown remember him primarily as the priest of St. Mary’s rather than as a writer, largely because the vast majority of his work, written in Carpatho-Rusyn, has yet to be translated into English. In the summer of 2015, I spent three months in the Coal Region researching Kubek’s career in order to reconnect Mahanoy City with its most accomplished writer. With the help of Erin Frey, an undergraduate student at Bucknell University, and Paul Coombe and Peg Grigalonis from the Mahanoy Area Historical Society, I launched the Emil Kubek Project, which includes a digital archive of his work in my translation and a virtual tour of the areas of Mahanoy City that inspired his poetry and prose. What makes Kubek’s story worth telling is that he was someone who made significant contributions to the Carpatho-Rusyn literary canon and is a unique example of an American writer who represented the hopes and dreams of Slavic miners during the first half of the 20th century. Emilii Anton Kubek was born on November 23, 1857 in the village of Štefurov, Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia), where his father, Anton, served as a Greek Catholic priest. The young Emil began reading the works of the great Carpatho-Rusyn poet Aleksander Dukhnovych at the age of five, and by the age of six he was able to recite the entire Greek Catholic liturgy by heart.

He was ordained a Greek Catholic priest in 1881. Before his ordination, he married Maria Shirilla, the daughter of a Greek Catholic priest from Ruzsóly, Kingdom of Hungary (now Kružlová, Slovakia), and the young couple would go on to have four children: Maria, Anton (Anthony), Anna, and Alžbeta. After serving in a number of villages in the Prešov Region, Kubek and his family ultimately settled in the village of Snakov, where he established himself as a Carpatho-Rusyn Renaissance man. He developed the village infrastructure by leading the renovation of the old chapel, building a new parish building, opening a school, and prompting the construction of a new road into town. He became an amateur agronomist, introduced fruit trees and beekeeping, and taught the impoverished villagers about new farming methods.(1) Finally, he began to develop his talents as a writer and scholar and published an extensive comparative dictionary, Church Slavonic-Hungarian-Russian-German Dictionary for Holy Writing, which was published in 1906. His considerable talents caught the attention of the Greek Catholic Church, which gave him a new challenge and reassigned him to St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Mahanoy City in 1904. After Kubek arrived in Mahanoy City, St. Mary’s grew rapidly under his leadership. Like in Snakov, he immediately opened a reading room and parish school, which taught first through eighth grades six days a week. The opening of the school drew praise from the newspaper Svoboda, which called for all Carpatho-Rusyn priests “to follow the example of Father Kubek” in tending to the spiritual and cultural enlightenment of their parishioners.(2) The arts also flourished during Kubek’s tenure at the church, as St. Mary’s produced numerous concerts, dances, and plays. Amidst all of his commitments as a priest, community leader, husband, and father, he nonetheless found time to establish himself as one of the most powerful literary voices in the Carpatho-Rusyn diaspora. What distinguishes Kubek’s literary production is its generic, tonal, and thematic diversity. Kubek is at once a 19th-century epigone and a 20th-century modernist, and his work straddles the border between being traditional and experimental, nostalgic and forward-looking, romantic and realistic, rural and urban, serious and satirical, highbrow and lowbrow, European and American. First of all, Kubek viewed himself as a Rusyn writer, one who was strongly influenced by the titans of the 19th-century Carpatho-Rusyn Renaissance. The Rusyn Kubek strove to make his fellow countrymen proud of their heritage, and we can feel his nationalist orientation most strongly in his lyric poetry, such as his “On the Anniversary of the Death of Dukhnovych” (1915), a tribute to the great Rusyn awakener, or his nostalgic farewell poem to the Carpathians “My Native Land” (1916). Kubek the nationalist also turned to large, ceremonial forms as well, such as his wide-ranging novel, Marko Šoltys (1915) about Rusyn village life at the end of the 19th century, his New Year’s

Emil Kubek trading cards published by the V. Padiak Publishing House.

Left: Kubek served as the priest in Snakov, Slovakia from 1885 to 1904 before emigrating to the United States. Below: Oldest known photograph of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church, Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, constructed in 1891.

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Kubek died on July 17, 1940, and was buried alongside his wife, Maria, in St. Mary’s Cemetery on July 20.

A shrine to Our Lady of Mahanoy City is located in the back of St. Mary’s. The icon was enthroned in 1991 to commemorate the parish’s 100th anniversary. The icon depicts Mary seated on her heavenly throne in front of the iconostasis of St. Mary’s church. On her lap, Christ holds a bucket of anthracite coal as “a sign of the principle industry of the area and the great sacrifices of its inhabitants to unearth the coal for the benefit of others,” and he blesses the people “to indicate his continued loving concern and his presence among his people.”

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ode “Last Year’s Night” (1916) about those suffering during the First World War, or his “March of the Sokols” (1930), the theme song of the Rusyn youth organization. At the same time, as a Greek Catholic priest, Kubek did not shy away from addressing religious issues, and the Catholic Kubek revealed himself in different genres. While he did write religious poetry about the Eastern Rite (“Three-Bar Cross!”, 1922) and miraculous power of prayer (“A Mother’s Love,” 1930), Kubek the moralist most frequently appeared in didactic non-fiction, such as children’s literature, editorials, and epistles. Perhaps the most interesting of his religious texts is a long exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father (1917), which he wrote as a commentary to a painting produced by his son Anthony. Finally, his immigration to Mahanoy City forced Kubek to grapple with the realities of life in a mining town. This third identity — the American Kubek — was primarily a realist and gravitated towards the short story. He parodied the discourse of local newspapers, incorporated Rusyn-American speech patterns, and drew upon the individuals and institutions of Mahanoy City to dramatize the difficulties of assimilating into American life. Although Kubek invested a great deal of energy into his writing, he encountered a number of difficulties in bringing his literary output to a general public. A large portion of the Rusyn-American community was illiterate, and many of those who could read had difficulty with the Cyrillic alphabet, which forced him, much to his chagrin, to write in Latin script. Furthermore, the readership that did exist generally lacked an appreciation (and the time) for literature. Since money was hard to come by for the publication of his longer works, he often had to resort to publishing them for free as detachable sections within Rusyn-American newspapers, which were easily damaged and quickly decayed. As a result, Kubek speculated that one third of his works ended up in the fireplace, another third existed only in manuscript form, and the rest were published but almost immediately lost.(3) Nonetheless, those who knew his work immediately acknowledged its quality, and by the end of his life, his reputation as an author was well enough established that the sentiments expressed in his poetry and prose, he wryly joked, even “were endorsed by many who had never read my writings.”(4) The best known corpus of Kubek’s writing appeared in his four-volume collected works, People’s Tales and Verses (Narodny povísti i stichi, 1922-1923). The first volume features a selection of his lyric poetry and short stories, and the final three volumes are dedicated to his most significant literary accomplishment, the first novel written in Carpatho-Rusyn, Marko Šoltys. Set in Subcarpathian Rus’, Marko Šoltys tells the story of the trials and tribulations of Marko Furman against the backdrop of Central European history from the 1860s until World War I. Orphaned at a young age, Marko is forced to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army and make his own way in life as a farmer. Through hard work and perseverance, he manages to become a successful landowner and by the end of the novel comes to “believe firmly that this poor nation of mine will come to life, will be raised by their national spirit towards a happy future!”(5) While Marko Šoltys occupies a central place in the canon of Carpatho-Rusyn literature, its publication took a significant emotional and financial toll on Kubek. Although he had completed the novel in 1915, he had trouble finding a publishing house that was willing to incur the substantial cost of producing a lengthy saga for a Carpatho-Rusyn community that was not at all inclined to read — let alone purchase — belles lettres. The literary committee of the

Greek Catholic Union, the largest Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal organization, accepted the novel in 1916, but only prepared 100 pages before they pulled out of the project. A few years later, Kubek gave the manuscript to Peter J. Maczkov, the head of the GCU youth organization “Sokol” (The Falcon), who distributed parts of the novel to its members. The Rusyn-American youth responded so positively to Marko Šoltys that they pleaded with Kubek to publish it in its entirety, so he decided to finance its publication himself. Kubek spent $4,000 of his own money to print 3,000 copies of the four-volume People’s Tales and Verses, which would turn out to be the only commercial print run of his work during his lifetime. The publication turned out to be a family affair, for all four volumes were illustrated by his son Anthony, who was a classically trained painter, and edited by his son-in-law, Nikolai E. Petrik. In the preface, Kubek proudly announces that Marko Šoltys is “the first long tale (novel) of a writer from Subcarpathia in the Rusyn language,” but the fact that Kubek felt the need to explain that a “novel” was “a long tale” (povíst’ dol’ša) reveals that the Carpatho-Rusyn readership was largely unprepared for this pioneering work. Indeed, People’s Tales and Verses did not sell nearly as well as Kubek had hoped, and the poor sales were exacerbated by his principled refusal to pay for advertising in Rusyn-American newspapers after he had worked as a contributor for free for nearly twenty years. To add injury to insult, Kubek soon developed respiratory problems, which left him broken in body as well as in spirit. In December 1925, his daughter Mary urged him to take some time off from his duties as a priest and writer and spend a few months with her in Florida. After some initial resistance, Kubek decided that he deserved a vacation, his first after forty-five years in the priesthood. Kubek’s trip to Florida was a transformative one, and he published an account of his adventures called “My Journey to Florida” (1926). Kubek’s travelogue is a fascinating look at America in the 1920s through the eyes of a man who feels liberated from the burden of his familial, literary, and pastoral duties, if but for a few weeks. He drinks wine on the side of the road in Pennsylvania during Prohibition, investigates Southern Baptist churches, talks with the homeless, smokes in line at the post office in Fort Meyers, is deeply moved by the terrible living conditions of Southern blacks, and reaches a level of profound joy and deep sadness at the thought that he could have bought a plot of fertile land in the south — if only he hadn’t just spent his life’s savings on the publication of Marko Šoltys! As a result, Kubek’s “My Journey to Florida” begins with a scathing critique of the Rusyn-American reading public, which he excoriates for wasting the money and time of Rusyn artists. “We have writers, poets, composers, actors, on the level of the most educated, magnificent peoples,” Kubek writes: “And their work is in vain — there’s nobody to write for, to compose for, to paint for, to work for.”(6) With great frustration and bitterness, he revealed that “My Journey to Florida” will be his “last appeal to the Rusyns” and announced his retirement from writing. As the years went by, Kubek’s silence in the Carpatho-Rusyn press was noticed by a number of readers who missed seeing his articles, poems, and stories. The most effusive testimonial to Kubek’s career may be that of Michael Yuhasz, the president of the GCU, who in 1929 called Kubek “the lamp” of the Rusyn people. Yuhasz urged Rusyn-Americans to appreciate the unique gift of having an author of Kubek’s caliber and to acknowledge the regrettable consequences this has had on his fame and fortune. “If he wasn’t born a Rusyn, if he would have been the son of a different people, then he

Author and scholar Nick Kupensky and his colleague Erin Frey (Bucknell University) who contributed to the Emil Kubek Project.

A large group gathered on November 22, 2015 for Kupensky’s West End Walking Tour. The group photograph here replicates the group photo taken in November 1931 (bottom) when St. Mary’s was renovated and Kubek celebrated his birthday and 50th anniversary as a priest.

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The beautiful interior of St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church, which underwent a major reconstruction under Kubek in 1931.

The ruins of the St. Nicholas Coal Breaker. Henry Cake and Henry Geist began to mine coal on this site, known as the St. Nicholas Colliery, which was active from 1860 to 1928. In 1905, at the height of its production, it employed 863 men and produced 345,106 tons of coal. As the anthracite industry developed more efficient — and less hazardous — methods for producing coal, the St. Nicholas Colliery was dismantled to make way for a coal breaker capable of processing large chunks of anthracite into smaller pieces better suited for home heating. The St. Nicholas Coal Breaker was built in 1930 on the site of the former colliery. When it became operational in 1932, it was the largest of its kind in the world and seemed to signify the promise of a better, safer future for an industry that exacted extraordinary human costs. In 1972, the St. Nicholas breaker ceased operations and was left abandoned. The company that owns the site transformed a defunct mining operation into a successful shopping center (May 28, 2015).

would have had great worldly glory, his name would have been written in golden letters in the book of hymns, our dear poet-writer would have had worldly riches,” Yuhasz writes: “But God gave him to us, the poor Subcarpathian-Rusyn people, and although we value him higher than anything else, although with sweet and bitter tears we read the work of this creative genius of ours, nevertheless we’re not in the position to honor or materially compensate Father Kubek for the work he has done for us.”(7) A year later in 1930, the Rusyn-American literary magazine, Vozhd’ (The Leader), also ran a tribute to Kubek. Josif Perovicˇ, who wrote the preface to the issue, paints a sweeping and heartfelt portrait of the writer. He calls Kubek “a joyful” man “full of amusing jokes and stories,” a “highly educated” priest who “passionately loves his flock”, and a writer who is “a rigorous expert on the soul of his people, a sharp critic of all sorts of sins and vices that are prevalent among the populace, and abundantly reveals his noble qualities and thoughts for the sake of praising and cultivating virtue to raise up his poor, downtrodden people.”(8) For these reasons, Perovicˇ calls on the Rusyn-American community to collect and publish all of Kubek’s works in time for his golden jubilee, which would be held the following year. While this particular appeal wasn’t answered, Kubek did celebrate his 50th year as a priest in style. In 1931, Kubek launched a wide-reaching expansion of St. Mary’s, which included a complete reconstruction of both the exterior and interior of the church and the building of a new rectory. On Thanksgiving Day, the parish held an extravagant day of festivities to give thanks for the completion of the new church and its dedicated priest. The day began with a street parade led by two local marching bands, and the procession led into the church for the first liturgy in the new building. The crowd proved to be so large that an amplification system had to be installed to broadcast the service to those left standing in the street. After the liturgy, the party continued into the evening, where a dinner was held at the Mahanoy City Elks Club to celebrate Kubek’s 50th year as a priest and his 74th birthday. It was Kubek, naturally, who stole the show. The Mahanoy City Record American describes the culmination of the banquet:

The most amazing address of the afternoon was given by the beloved Fr. Kubek himself, who addressed the assemblage fluently in six languages, namely, Latin, Rusyn, English, German, Slovak, and Magyar. In Latin he addressed the reverend clergy, in Rusyn his beloved parish, in English the guests, in German and Magyar several distinguished guests. As Father Kubek rose to speak he was given a rising ovation, the approximately four hundred guests joining as one in according tumultuous acclaim to the veteran of Christ and the church.(9)

While the broader Rusyn-American community did not always appreciate his poetry and prose in the way that he felt he deserved, it was overwhelmingly evident that, after twenty-seven years in Mahanoy City, Kubek had earned the respect, admiration, and love of his friends and neighbors. In 1938, Kubek wrote his final work, a brief autobiography, in which he reflected on his life and career. In his characteristic playfulness, he summarizes his current state of affairs as consisting of “swatting flies” and “reading on the porch” with breaks to “feed the sparrows,” “cough” and “play solitaire.” “Now I live like the field lilies,” he concludes: “I like homemade chicken soup with noodles and Florida. That’s all I remember about myself. Signed E. A. Kubek, Great Grandfather.”(10) 24 | National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

Two years later, on July 17, 1940, Emil Kubek died at the age of 82. In lieu of an obituary, The American Rusyn Messenger announced his death by republishing one of his poems, “No! We Won’t Die!” (1922), a lyric which reprises all of the qualities Kubek valued most: an unwavering belief in Christ, a robust dedication to the Carpatho-Rusyn people, and a powerful call for the preservation and development of their cultural heritage. In “No! We Won’t Die!”, Kubek sees the triumph of life over death in the changing of the seasons, as winter’s “blizzards and storms” give way to “spring showers.” In Kubek’s lifetime, Carpatho-Rusyn culture came back from near death twice — during the first Rusyn Renaissance of the mid-19th century and again during the second interwar period in the First Czechoslovak Republic. Kubek was acutely aware that the fight for political freedom is a hard one and calls upon future generations of Carpatho-Rusyns “to ensure that this freedom survives.” What Kubek could not have predicted, however, was the resurrection of his own legacy fifty years after his death. Today, courses are taught about Marko Šoltys in the Institute of Rusyn Language and Culture at the University of Prešov, the city where he was ordained a priest. The school he helped found in Snakov, Slovakia, was named in his honor in 2008. The Slovak government funded the production of a documentary film about his life, and dozens of books and articles about his work have begun to appear in Europe and the United States. And on November 22, 2015, the Kubek Project, in conjunction with a dozen partners from Bucknell University and the local community, organized a day-long celebration of his career in the town where he made his name. Over 100 guests from throughout the country — including Kubek’s great-grandson — descended upon Mahanoy City to tour the places connected to Kubek’s life. Guests heard a musical performance of “My Native Land!” by Drew Skitko of Opera Philadelphia, took shots of moonshine while reading “The Good Dad” in Mahanoy City’s oldest barroom, explored the sights that inspired Kubek’s short stories, and recited “No! We Won’t Die!” at his grave in St. Mary’s Cemetery. Indeed, while he was born during the first Rusyn Renaissance in the 19th century and flourished during the 20th, Kubek’s work, after being forgotten for decades, is now finding new life in the third rebirth of Rusyn culture taking place today.

Interested in reading more? For the complete, unedited version of “No We Won’t Die!”: Rediscovering Emil Kubek by Nick Kupensky please log onto http://www.ncsml.org/publications/.

Notes 1. František Dancák, Emil Kubek, 1857-1940 (Prešov: Vydavatel’stvo Petra v Prešove, 2004), 4-7. 2. Svoboda (December 22, 1904): 1. 3. Josif Perovicˇ, “Predislovie,” Vozhd’ | The Leader (February 1930): 4. 4. Emil Kubek, “Autobiography,” The Emil Kubek Project (2015), www.kubekproject.wordpress.com. 5. Emilij A. Kubek, “Marko Šoltys,” Narodny povísti i stichi, tom 4 (Scranton: Obrana, 1923), 177. 6. Emil Kubek, “My Journey to Florida,” trans. Nick Kupensky, The Emil Kubek Project (2015), www.kubekproject.wordpress.com. 7. Michail Yuhasz, “Holos odnoho iz najl’ipšich narodotružennikov našich,” Amerikansky russky viestnik (January 17, 1929): 4. 8. Josif Perovicˇ, “Predislovie,” Vozhd’ | The Leader (February 1930): 4. 9. “Dual Celebration Was Held by Members of St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church,” Record American (November 27, 1931): 1. The original newspaper article says “Russian” — not “Rusyn” — but Kubek would have obviously spoken to his parish in their native language. 10. Emil Kubek, “Autobiography,” The Emil Kubek Project (2015), www.kubekproject.wordpress.com.

Page from Kubek’s Church SlavonicHungarian-Russian-German Dictionary for Holy Writing (1906).

An excerpt from

“NO! WE WON’T DIE!”  By Emil Kubek

Emil Kubek (1857-1940)

No! We won’t die! As a free people, in the land of the free, We cherish our freedom on this side of the sea. And so that our children will honor our lives, We have to ensure that this freedom survives. Together, in chorus, again we express: Christos voskres! Christos voskres! You can read more of Kupensky’s traslations of Kubek’s poetry and prose at www.kubekproject.wordpress.com. Slovo | 25

The Woman Behind the Artist:

ANDY WARHOL’S MOTHER By Elaine Rusinko

Author Elaine Rusinko Top: Andy Warhol’s portrait of his mother, 1974. Andy Warhol, Julia Warhola, 1974 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

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Andy Warhol reportedly said, “I come from nowhere,” and for decades, that seemed to be true. Carpatho-Rusyns, who never had their own state and had been denied their identity by unfriendly governments, were the quintessential “people from nowhere.” Like Andy, almost no one in the first generation of Rusyn-Americans had a name for their ethnic background, referring to themselves as “our people” or identifying with their religion or the country from which their parents emigrated. So when Andy was asked about his ethnicity, he said he was Czechoslovakian or Czech. He even referred to his mother’s “thick Czechoslovakian accent” and the “Czech ghetto” where he lived.(1) However, in time Warhol came to question his life-long ethnic identification. In 1986, Andy met the Czech model Pavlína Porˇ ízková and her mother. He commented in his diary, “I guess maybe I’m not really Czech, because I didn’t understand it when they were talking.” (2) Since the Warholas’ village is located in present-day Slovakia, Warhol’s Rusyn ethnicity is often confused with Slovak nationality. In 2007, president of Slovakia Ivan Gašparovicˇ opened an exhibit of Warhol’s works in Ireland under the ambiguous title “Andy Warhol — His Slovak Roots.” (3) The same year, the Slovak National Theater staged a ballet promoting the “Slovak cultural heritage” inspired by Warhol’s life and work.(4) Advertisements and reviews referred to Warhol’s “Slovak origins” and “Slovak grandparents.” While Carpatho-Rusyns were still fighting to assert their identity, other Slavic groups were glad to claim the “king of pop-art.”

The fall of communism in east-central Europe followed shortly upon the unexpected death of Andy Warhol in 1987 at age 58 after routine gallbladder surgery. Under communism, which viewed avant-garde Western art as decadent rubbish, Warhol was largely unknown. Given the limited access to information and restrictions on communication across borders, the existence of an international superstar who had connections to a small village in northeastern Slovakia easily went unnoticed. Therefore, it was only after Andy’s death that he was discovered by the CarpathoRusyns, who were then just embarking on their own quest for identity and self-determination. The facts demonstrate that Warhol unquestionably had Rusyn roots. Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928, Andy was the third son of Andrii Warhola (1888-1942) and Julia Zavacka Warhola (1892-1972), emigrants from the small village of Miková. Andrii left in 1912 to escape being drafted into the army of the AustroHungarian Empire, of which he was then a citizen. Detained by World War I, Julia joined her husband in Pittsburgh nine years later, by which time Miková was part of the newly formed state of Czechoslovakia. In fact, however, Miková was first mentioned in historical records in 1390 and it has been the site of a Greek Catholic church since 1752. Its people, their language, and their culture have always been unmistakably and indisputably Rusyn. A few years ago, I began to study the influence of Warhol’s Carpatho-Rusyn background on his art and persona in the jealously guarded archive at The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where the 610 boxes that Warhol called Time Capsules are stored. In these boxes, Andy deposited much of his mail, along with receipts, invitations, scribbled notes, and the ephemera of daily life. The correspondence, videos, and documents I found in the archives revealed that the window into the Rusyn side of Warhol is his mother. But even more important, I found that Julia Warhola is an object of study in her own right, as a representative of the many able and talented Slavic immigrant women who endured pain and hardship through a lifetime of sacrifice for their children. The American Andy Warhol owes much of his success to his Rusyn mother. Julia was born in 1892 to Andrii Zavacky and Justina Mrocˇko, the sixth of fourteen children, five of whom died in childhood. The Zavacky family belonged to the upper middle class of the village, working 12 to 14 acres of land and supplementing their income with seasonal work in lower Hungary. The older villagers remember Julia for her musical and artistic talent. Friends recall her creative painting of household utensils and the walls of the family cottage. She had a lovely singing voice and knew the entire Greek Catholic liturgy. In the 1960s, Andy made records of his mother singing the Rusyn folk songs and religious hymns that he and his brothers grew up with.

Julia Warhola’s passport(Ulya Varhola), for departure between Oct. 12, 1920, and Oct. 12, 1921. Passport (Julia Warhola), 1920 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Julia Warhola with sons John (left), and Andrew (right), 1931.

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A note from Julia to Andy, written in a mix of Rusyn and English.

In 1909, Julia met Andrii Warhola, who returned to Miková after some time in America. For an article on the mothers of famous men in Esquire magazine, Julia told a reporter:

Andy Warhol as a young boy.

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He was good-looking. Blonde. … He came back to village and every girl want him. Fathers would give him lots of money, lots of land, to marry daughter. He no want. He want me. … I was seventeen. I know nothing. … I no think of no man. … The priest — oh, a nice priest — come. “This Andy,” he says, “a very nice boy. Marry him.” … Andy visit again. He brings me candy, wonderful candy. And for this candy, I marry him.(5)

They had a three-day wedding celebration with “eating, drinking, barrels of whiskey,” “wonderful food,” and “seven gypsies playing music.” As Julia describes the details, one can feel the pleasure she felt indulging in happy memories: “I had hair like gold. Hair down shoulder, oh, beautiful hair.” Unfortunately, the wedding photos were lost in the war. On November 12, 1912, a daughter was born, and four days later Andrii sailed from Bremen, arriving in New York on November 25. Julia says, “My husband leaves and then everything bad.” The Warholas’ first child, Maria, lived just 33 days. In tears, Julia told the interviewer, “She catch cold. … We need doctor, but no doctor in town. Oh, I cry. Oh, I go crazy when baby died. I open windows and yell, ‘My baby dies.’ … My baby dead. My little girl.” Julia never completely recovered from this loss, which she had to endure without her husband, who was by then back in America. It was left to Julia to take care of the elderly, as well as her younger siblings: “I work like horse. … I carried sack of potatoes on my back. … I was very strong lady.” Two years later the Rusyn homeland was crisscrossed by the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies, and battles raged throughout the region. Andy’s older brother John remembered his mother’s expressive description: “Dead bodies were scattered in the forest and on meadows. Skulls of soldiers shined like large white mushrooms long after the war was over.”(6) He attributes Andy’s obsession with death, and specifically his Skull series, to Julia’s stories of the war. Finally, in June 1921 Julia emigrated to America, with $25 and a ticket to Pittsburgh. In the next seven years, three sons were born, and until he was six, Andy, the youngest, lived with his family in tenements with no indoor plumbing. In depression-era Pittsburgh, Julia cleaned houses and took in boarders, as did most Rusyn immigrant women. But unlike them, she also made flower

The primitive drawing style of Julia Warhola which had a large influence on Andy at an early age. Julia Warhola, Two Campbell’s Soup Cans and Two Cats, ca. 1953 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

sculptures out of paper and tin cans and sold them for a quarter. Her oldest son Paul remembers: “We’d walk a mile and a half into the better sections of town, and while she sold door to door, I’d hide behind the tree, embarrassed.” (7) This was four-year-old Andy’s introduction to what he later called “business art.” Andy was a sickly child, and Julia kept him entertained with comics, coloring books, and paper dolls. She taught him to decorate Easter eggs in the Rusyn style, using wax, applying color, and then removing the wax to create a negative image — a method similar to the silkscreen technique that became Andy’s trademark. Asked in 1981 if his mother understood art, Andy answered, “More than that. She did a lot for me. She was a really good artist, in the primitivist style.” (8) Andy’s father’s influence is less often noted, but Andy inherited his industrious work ethic from Andrii Warhola, who did manual labor for a house-moving company. In 1942 at age 55, Andrii died from a gastrointestinal bacterial infection contracted from drinking tainted water on a job. He left his wife a death benefit of $600 from an insurance policy he had purchased through the Russian Brotherhood, and most importantly, he left enough savings in postal bonds to pay for Andy’s first two years in college. John Warhola recalls his father’s words, “You’re going to be real proud of him, he’s going to be highly educated, he’s going to college.” (9) But just two years after his father’s death, sixteen-year old Andy suffered another trauma when his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent a colostomy. John remembers: “When she come home she had a hard time recuperating, but she come round. Andy did a lot of praying with my mother. … Everybody talks about how important his mother was to Andy but he was equally important to her. … Andy really kept her company. He spent most of the time with my mother. He was very close with her.” (10) With a degree in design from Carnegie Institute of Technology, Andy left Pittsburgh for New York in 1949. It’s uncertain whether he invited her or whether she just showed up on his doorstep, but two years later, his mother came to live with him and stayed for twenty years. At first they shared a bedroom in a sparsely furnished apartment, which they cohabited with dozens of cats. Later, Julia had her own garden apartment in Andy’s Lexington Avenue brownstone. When Andy worked as a commercial artist, Julia became his collaborator, copying text and coloring pictures. Warhol issued limitededition portfolios that paralleled some of his own commercial work on shoes and cookbooks. The lettering in these books was done by Julia in her ornate, old-world calligraphy. Andy would write out the words and Julia copied them

This cake recipe is from a book published by Andy featuring Julia’s hand lettering. Wild Raspberries, 1959 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

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Above: Another piece featuring Julia’s hand lettering. Andy Warhol, “See a Shoe and Pick It Up and All Day Long You’ll Have Good Luck,” ca. 1955 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Below: Julia Warhola’s book “Holy Cats,” which was published by her son Andy in 1957. Holy Cats by Andy Warhol’s Mother, 1960 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

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letter for letter, without actually understanding much of what she was writing, which often resulted in creative misspellings. Her drawings of cats and angels bear a distinct similarity to Warhol’s pre-pop work, and some of her angels resemble the distinctive primitive style of Rusyn icons. Warhol published her drawings under the title Holy Cats by Andy Warhols’ Mother. And while the origin of the idea for Warhol’s soup cans is still a matter of debate, recent evidence suggests that Julia may have been an influence. In 2012, the Warhol Museum exhibited a sketch of a Campbell’s soup can drawn by Julia in 1952, ten years before Warhol’s ground-breaking show of thirty-two Campbell’s soup cans. The Warhola family worshipped regularly at St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church, where the iconostasis was Andy’s first exposure to art, and some scholars see the icon screen as the source of his characteristic serial imagery and icon-like prints of movie stars and Coke bottles. After his death it became known that Andy was exceedingly devout, regularly dropping into St. Vincent Ferrar Roman Catholic Church for a quick prayer. Julia described Andy as “a good religious boy,” and Andy’s nephews confirm that before going out for a night on the town, Andy would say a prayer in Slavonic with his mother and receive her blessing.(11) Warhol’s diaries contain abundant references to prayer and church attendance, as well as evidence of down-to-earth practicality and peasant superstition reminiscent of Rusyn folkways. Beyond his explicitly religious works, such as the Last Supper series, numerous critics have found Warhol’s spiritual sense expressed throughout his art — in the memento mori theme of his Death and Disaster paintings, the iconic features of his portraits, and his transfiguration of ordinary objects into transcendental relics. By elevating commonplace items to the level of artistic awareness, Warhol expressed his mother’s view of the world that recognized the intrinsic value of even the most humble objects, as well as a democratic Rusyn view of art, created by and for the people and accessible to all. By 1971, Julia had suffered a series of strokes and was placed in a nursing home in Pittsburgh, where she returned in her mind to Miková. According to relatives, Andy called her from New York and from his travels, but never visited. She died in 1972 at the age of eighty. Although Andy paid the expenses, he did not attend her funeral, telling his brothers that he wanted to remember her as she had been. While family accounts describe his extreme emotional distress, he hid it from friends and associates, deflecting questions about his mother, saying, “Oh, she’s great. But she doesn’t get out of bed much.” (12) Julia’s last words to her son Paul were reportedly: “Promise me you’ll take care of Andy. I want you to look after him because sometimes I wonder if he don’t have a childish mind.” (13) Unreleased videos in the museum archives shed light on the mother/son relationship. Julia speaks to Andy as to a child, in Rusyn, with diminutives and endearing terminology. Her comments and persistent questions are laced generously with Andik, Andriiko, synok and synochko. Andy answers her mostly in English, sometimes impatiently

as he coaxes her to take her medicine. But we also hear him address her tenderly, mixing Rusyn with English: “You want something to eat, mom? eat? ïsty? What ïsty you want?” Two years after her death, Andy did a series of portraits of his mother, which are among his most intimate works. Wearing glasses, an elderly Julia smiles kindly at the viewer out of a background of reds and blues, her face surrounded by a halo of brush strokes and finger-painted flourishes that give the impression of lace. A little known co-produced “portrait” of Julia is in Time Capsule 27, where Andy preserved her prayer books, correspondence, and articles of her clothing. The tremendous influence Julia had on Andy, both personally and professionally, is undisputed. Sympathetic American commentators agree that Julia was a source of tenacity, gentleness, resilience, devout faith, and peasant whimsicality, and that she was the “greatest passion of Andy’s life.” (14) Rusyn commentators dissolve whatever doubts they may have about Warhol’s sexuality and lifestyle in a celebration of his bond with Julia which they credit for his personal and artistic success: “And so this American with European blood, with Rusyn genes from Slovakia combined with the New York world of hopes became the symbol of success, fame, wealth, and influence.” (15)

Parts of this article were previously published in Elaine Rusinko, “We Are All Warhol’s Children”: Andy and the Rusyns.” The Carl Beck Papers No. 2204. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2012.

Notes 1. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 21-22. 2. The Andy Warhol Diaries. Ed. Pat Hackett (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 744. ˇ

3. Iveta Rusynkova, “Ivan Gašparovicˇ — peršyi president na vernisaži vystavky tvoriv Endi Varhola,” Narodny novynky 17.13-16 (18 Apr. 2007): 1. ˇ

4. Kerry Skyring, “Slovak Dancers Have a Role for Andy Warhol.” Radio Praha. 26 Jan. 2007. <http://www.radio.cz/en/section/ice_special/slovak-dancers-have-a-role-for-andy-warhol>. (Accessed 21 March 2016). 5. Bernard Weinraub, “Andy Warhol’s Mother,” Esquire (November 1966): 99+ 6. Quoted in Michal Bycko, “Andy Warhol.” Rusíni Slovenska. n.d. <http://www.rusin.sk/data/files/18.pdf >. (Accessed 7 Aug. 2011). 7. Richard Leiby, “Their Brother’s Keepers,” The Washington Post 15 May 1994, Final ed. Sunday Show: G1. 8. Eva Windmöller, “Ich liebe altes Geld und neue Schecks,” Stern 8 Oct. 1981:190 –200. 9. Victor Bockris, Warhol: The Biography. Cambridge, MA and New York: Da Capo Press, 2003, 44. 10. Ibid., 48

Above: Julia’s prayer book, and a St. Mary’s Catholic Church calendar, which were preserved in Time Capsule 27. Heavenly Manna and scapular, a practical prayer book of devotions for Greek Rite Catholics, 1954 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Calendar illustration (Mary and Jesus icon, courtesy St. Mary’s Catholic Church of the Byzantine-Slavonic Rite) Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Andy Warhol, with his dog Archie, 1973. Photograph by Jack Mitchell

11. Paul Warhola, “Influence of Andy Warhol’s Carpatho-Rusyn Heritage.” Public lecture. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. 28 July 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvdrwlPvPlo. (Accessed 30 Mar 2016). 12. David Bourdon, Warhol (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), 322. 13. Bockris, 369. 14. John Richardson, “The Secret Warhol. At Home with the Silver Shadow,” Vanity Fair, July 1987: 125. ˇ

15. Keselica, “Endi Varhol — Genialnyi rusyn svitovoho mena.” Rusin’skyj literaturnyj almanakh na 2005-yi rik (Prešov: Spolok rusyn’skykh pysateliv Sloven’ska, 2006), 27. ˇ

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CAL E ND AR

MUSEUM EVENTS Free First Saturdays for Students Students of all ages (preschool through college) are invited to visit the NCSML’s exhibits for free on the first Saturday of each month. College students must bring a current school ID card.

Czech and Slovak Heritage Garden Programs

Hours:

RE VIE WS

MUSEUM INFORMATION Monday through Saturday 9:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. Sunday Noon – 4 p.m.

Holidays (Closed): b Easter b Fourth of July b Thanksgiving b Christmas Day b New Year’s Day

Holidays (Open): b Memorial Day b Labor Day

Regular Admission: Members . . . . . . . . . . . . FREE Adults. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10 Seniors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9 Active Military (with ID). . . . $5 Students (with ID) 14+ . . . . $5 Youth 6-13. . . . . . . . . . . . . $3 Children 5 & Under. . . . . FREE

MORE FOR FAMILIES! We’ve added several fun and family-friendly programs throughout the year, from craft workshops to summer camps. Check NCSML.org for details. For up-to-date information on these and all programs and events, check the NCSML website often: www.NCSML.org.

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Through September

Celebrate summer in our brand new Czech and Slovak Heritage Garden. Family-friendly programming will be offered outdoors through the summer months, and will include hands-on learning about compost, gardening for beginners, garden-related crafts and activities, healthy living, and more. The garden will also help tell the real stories of Czech and Slovak immigrants to Cedar Rapids and their food traditions.

Wonderful Warhol Family Art Workshops Through September

Workshops for families will offer opportunities to create Warhol-inspired pop art. Visit NCSML.org to view the event calendar.

Family Free Day: An Andy Warhol Birthday Celebration August 6

Everyone is invited to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in honor of Andy Warhol’s 88th birthday! Join us for a day of pop art-inspired activities for all, games, edibles, and live music at the museum. Also enjoy free admission to all of the NCSML’s galleries, including the spectacular Warhol exhibition. The Family Free Day event is generously sponsored by Wells Fargo. Presenting Sponsor for the Andy Warhol exhibition, Immortal: Warhol’s Last Works, is CRST International.

Think Globally, Act Locally October through November

This trio of events will inspire attendees to become more engaged in their communities. First, Šimon Pánek, the executive director of the Czech humanitarian organization People in Need, will be speaking. In November, a survivor from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Survivor Speakers Bureau will speak about personal experiences during the Holocaust. Following the talk, a panel of scholars will begin a dialogue about the impact of genocide worldwide. The series will end with a local action summit in Cedar Rapids that will bring together a wide variety of community organizations from the Cedar Rapids area to develop collaborative strategies on providing services to area refugee and immigrant communities.

Old World Christmas Market December 3 and 4

Experience the magic of the holiday season at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library at the 7th annual Old World Christmas Market! Shop for specialty imports and handmade gifts by select artisans. Stop for seasonal treats. Listen to live music and watch dance performances, and enjoy free family activities all weekend long. Admission to museum exhibition galleries will also be free on December 3rd and 4th! Bring the whole family for one of Cedar Rapids’ best-loved winter events. Old World Christmas Market is part of Deck the District, a neighborhood holiday celebration!

BOHEMIAN BOUDOIR: CZECH VANITY GLASS

MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS Bohemian Boudoir: Czech Vanity Glass Through July 17, Smith Gallery

Bohemian Boudoir showcases glass crystal perfume bottles and bedroom accessories, hand-crafted in the Bohemia region of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) in the 1920s and 1930s. Czechoslovakia, considered to be one of the most important historic centers of glass production, was the home to over 600 companies creating glass items for the boudoir. Objects in the exhibition exemplify the creativity and technical prowess of Czech craftsmen which was shattered during World War II.

IMMORTAL: WARHOL’S LAST WORKS

Immortal: Warhol’s Last Works Through October 2, Petrik Gallery

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), an American artist who was the son of Rusyn immigrants, is probably the most documented artist of the 20th century. Andy is best known for his reputation as a leading figure in the American pop art movement. Most of the large-scale prints featured in the exhibition are from two series: Myths, created in 1981, and Cowboys and Indians, created in 1986. Cowboys and Indians was the last series made before his death in 1987. Myths includes Warhol’s take on such popular figures as the Wicked Witch of the West, Superman, and Mickey Mouse. Cowboys and Indians pays homage to the likes of John Wayne, Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull. The show, which is on loan from private collectors Wesley and Missy Cochran, also includes two pieces from Flash Suite, a series made in 1968 that documents the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Amadeus: Costumes for the Obsessed and Vengeful August 13 to December 31, Smith Gallery

This multimedia exhibition features elaborate costumes and props from the Miloš Forman film Amadeus. The 1985 film won eight Academy Awards, including best director, best costume design for Czech designer Theodor Pišteˇk, best picture, and best actor. Original sketches from the designer, film clips, scripts and photographs complement the over-the-top costumes on loan from Barrandov Studios, Prague.

AMADEUS: COSTUMES FOR THE OBSESSED AND VENGEFUL

The story of this movie is important not only because it was directed by Miloš Forman — the greatest Czech director of all time — but also because it was filmed in Prague in the early 1980s, when Czechoslovakia was still under communist rule. Behind the scenes stories from the cast and crew are included in the exhibit, peppered with tales of secret police, culture clashes and impressions of Prague through eyes that had never seen it before.

Travel Posters from the Lowry Collection

November 2016 to February 2017, Petrik Gallery For a small country, the former Czechoslovakia produced a large number of posters, owing to a combination of the country’s rich artistic legacy and strong economic climate. Even Czech fine artists, in the addition to commercial designers, contributed work to the category. The travel posters showcase the beauty, intrigue, and architecture of the Czech lands, urging foreigners to travel to Czechoslovakia. The Lowry family has built their collection of Czech posters over the past 25 years, amassing more than 1,000 pieces — making it the largest Czech travel poster collection in the world outside the Czech Republic. George S. and Nicholas D. Lowry (father and son), have selected more than 30 striking travel posters for this first ever organized exhibition of Czech travel posters.

TRAVEL POSTERS FROM THE LOWRY COLLECTION

MISSION We inspire people from every background to connect to Czech and Slovak history and culture.

VISION We are a museum that celebrates life. Czech life. Slovak life. American life. We are a museum that encourages self-discovery, a museum that asks what it means to be free. Through extraordinary exhibitions and experiences, we tell stories of freedom and identity, family and community, human rights and dignity. Our stories connect yesterday with today and tomorrow.