Summary:
“Re-optanty” remembered and get a chance to get together for the first time.

In the midst of various celebrations/newspaper and other writings in commemoration of the 55th anniversary of Operation “Vistula” that sent Lemkos (and Ukrainians) to the western and northern regions of Poland – the same anniversary of the much smaller resettlement of Rusyns from the former Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Ukraine will be remembered in the Slovak city of Prešov, where “re-optanty” from 45 regions of Slovakia will meet.

Between January 20 and April 20 of 1947 some 12,500 so-called “optanty” (those who opted to move to the Soviet Union) were resettled in Volyn’. Although close to three quarters of them later opted (“re-optanty”) to return home to what is now Slovakia, some remained in Ukraine permanently.

A scholarly conference, with the participation of Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian scholars (including Mykola Mushynka, who in 1964 was the first and only citizen of Czechoslovakia to visit them), will be held in the city. President of Slovakia Rudolf Schuster has accepted an invitation to participate. The conference will also be the place to present archival documents concerning the resettlement as well as a 900 entries dictionary called: Presídlenie od A po Z [Resettlement from A to Z]. It was already last year (2001) that Ivan Vanat published a detailed study with documents: Volyns’ka aktsiia. The exhibition will eventually move to Svidník and Stropkov.

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