Summary:
Martica Tamas speaks to Rafail Ruskovski about the upcoming elections to the Rusyn National Council. Ruskovski is leading the list with the most candidates going in to the elections. Commenting on the question of whether the National Council should be just for the Rusyns, or for the Ukrainians as well, Ruskovski said, “The fact that the Ukrainians cannot form their own National Council themselves was for me a motive to form one together. I went to Ruski Kerestur and Djurdjevo for talks several times. Our people say: ‘we are for brotherhood, we respect them, but we do not want to form a joint national council with them.’” There are too few Ukrainians in Yugoslavia to merit a separate council.

Asked how he envisions the Rusyn National Council, Ruskovski says that the Council should not include “extreme Rusyns who propagate the idea of founding their state of Ruthenia, taking bits and pieces from Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland and Hungary.” He also states that “extreme Rusyn Ukrainophiles” should also be excluded, but does not elaborate. He goes on to say that his list will only include those Rusyn-Ukrainians who were not compromised in the previous (Milosevic) regime, including members of Milosevic’s SPS party, his wife’s JUL party, or the pro-Rusyn organization Ruska Matka.

His list will include “those people who are not from extremist sides but from the center, which means that they have a healthy and real relationship to their national community.”

Click here to read the article

Return to the 2002 News Archive index