The religious factor in the formation of the rusin ethnic identity in the Balkans

Стаття розкриває роль релігійного чинника в житті українсько-русинської діаспори на землях югослов’ян. З часів переселення в середині XVIII ст. і в даний час пе- реважна більшість українсько-русинської діаспори залишається вірною Української греко-католицької церкви. Для українців і русинів греко-католицька віра мала чітку національну орієнтованість. Релігійні обряди були тісно переплетені з національними традиціями, і тому церква виховувала не тільки релігійну, а й національну свідо- мість. Релігійне життя українців-русинів в Югославії до Другої світової війни знало і неприємні моменти. Вони були породжені протистоянням між греко-католиками і іншими конфесіями. Період 40-х – початок 90-х рр. ХХ ст. в життя релігійної грома- ди українців Югославії виявився досить складним. Однак більшість проблем було все-таки подолано: відновлені храми, відкриті нові парафії, налагоджено культурно- просвітницьку діяльність при церквах. Всі ці дії починалися з ініціативи невеликої групи активістів в тому чи іншому українсько-русинською центрі. Згодом такі ідеї знаходили підтримку всієї української спільноти, плекало національно-релігійну ідентичність, допомогло її зберегти і зміцнити.Статья раскрывает роль религиозного фактора в жизни украинско-русинской диаспоры на землях югославян. Со времен переселения в середине XVIII в. и до насто- ящего времени подавляющее большинство представителей украинско-русинской диаспоры остается верной Украинской греко-католической церкви. Для украинцев и русинов греко-католическая вера имела четкую национальную ориентированность. Религиозные обряды тесно переплетались с национальными традициями, и потому церковь воспитывала не только религиозное, но и национальное сознание. В ре- лигиозной жизни украинцев-русинов Югославии до Второй мировой войны были и неприятные моменты. Их породило противостояние между греко-католиками и другими конфессиями. Период 40-х – начала 90-х гг. ХХ в. в жизни религиозной общины украинцев Югославии оказался довольно сложным. Однако большинство проблем было все-таки решено: восстановлены храмы, открыты новые приходы, на- лажена культурно-просветительская деятельность при церквах. Все это произошло по инициативе небольшой группы активистов того или иного украинско-русинского центра. Впоследствии такие идеи находили поддержку всей украинской общности, что помогло ее сохранить и укрепить национально-религиозную идентичность.The article reveals the role of the religious factor in the life of the Ukrainian-Rusin diaspora in Yugoslavia. Since the relocation in the middle of the 18th century and up to now, the vast majority of the Ukrainian-Rusin diaspora has remained loyal to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. For Ukrainians and Rusins, the Greek Catholic faith has a clear national orientation. Religious rituals closely intertwound with national traditions; therefore the church raised not only religious, but also national consciousness. The religious life of Ukrainians-Rusins in Yugoslavia before World War II also knew unpleasant moments, generated by the opposition between the Greek Catholics and other confessions. The life of the religious community of Yugoslavian Ukrainians was quite difficult during the period from the 1940s to the early 1990s. However, most of the problems were fixed, with churches restored, new parishes opened, cultural and educational activities organised by churches. It was possible due to the initiative of a small group of activists in a particular Ukrainian-Rusinian center. Subsequently, such ideas were supported by the entire Ukrainian community, which helped to cherish and preserve the national-religious identity

The religious factor in the formation of the Rusin ethnic identity in the Balkans

Стаття розкриває роль релігійного чинника в житті українсько-русинської діаспори на землях югослов’ян. З часів переселення в середині XVIII ст. і в даний час переважна більшість українсько-русинської діаспори залишається вірною Української греко-католицької церкви. Для українців і русинів греко-католицька віра мала чітку національну орієнтованість. Релігійні обряди були тісно переплетені з національними традиціями, і тому церква виховувала не тільки релігійну, а й національну свідомість. Релігійне життя українців-русинів в Югославії до Другої світової війни знало і неприємні моменти. Вони були породжені протистоянням між греко-католиками і іншими конфесіями. Період 40-х – початок 90-х рр. ХХ ст. в життя релігійної громади українців Югославії виявився досить складним. Однак більшість проблем було все-таки подолано: відновлені храми, відкриті нові парафії, налагоджено культурно-просвітницьку діяльність при церквах. Всі ці дії починалися з ініціативи невеликої групи активістів в тому чи іншому українсько-русинською центрі. Згодом такі ідеї знаходили підтримку всієї української спільноти, плекало національно-релігійну ідентичність, допомогло її зберегти і зміцнити

The development of Islamicate spaces in the Ottoman Balkans (1450-1600)

The military conquest of the Balkans by the Ottomans in the fourteenth century was followed by the establishment of a new administrative order that resulted in the initiation of a long process of Islamization in the region. This study analyzes this process through the timar-system, a military-administrative revenue collecting institution, implemented in the regions of the southwestern Rhodope Mountains and surrounding plains during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The period between 1455 and 1575 covers both the earlier periods of Ottoman rule in the Balkans after the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed II, into the Süleymanic period when the timar was at its most developed, and timar revenues were at their most complex. It traces the development of Islamicate spaces that emerged out of the experience of the timar-system within rural spaces. The impact of this system was the initiation and development of a process of Islamization that changed the existing space, and put Muslims and Christians together in a new way. This process is traced through a detailed study of the tax-revenue registers produced to keep track of income generated from the timar-system for the military-bureaucracy. Using quantitative and qualitative data found in a close reading of all available registers from this period, the dissertation traces the emergence of new groups, brought together by the state or through the timar-system at the rural level. The resulting space brought Christians and Muslims, military and peasant, together in a way that fundamentally changed the region through Islamization. Furthermore, I argue that a Muslim society emerged that was not dependent on a Muslim-majority demographic, yet still developed all the hallmarks of an Islamic civilization. This study begins with an overview of the Islamization process and its characteristics in the Ottoman Empire, from a comparative perspective to broadly understand how it developed under a state apparatus. It moves on to then focus on the timar-system itself, and how it re-organized the physical and socio-economic space for both the soldier and the peasant, resulting in a new-found way to use the land and put these classes into direct contact with each other. As the upper class was primarily of Muslim orientation, this resulted in a space where a primarily Christian peasantry became a part of a new agricultural space encroached upon by the Muslim military class. This space is then argued to have emerged out of a process of Islamization, and resulted in an Islamicate space for the peasant. Following the movement of the military class into the rural space, I then analyze the peasantry itself, through the timar-system. The state reorganized the peasantry, directly creating a new intermediary class based on exemptions provided in return for certain services. The very existence of this class was dependent on the state, and the resulting religious and socio-economic spaces were a result of an Islamization process initiated by the state’s involvement in the first place. Finally, questions regarding the role of conversion are addressed in the final part of this project, where an onomastic study of convert names once more argues that an Islamicate society can successfully develop without a majority Muslim population

Religious and demographic development in the South-Western Rhodope Mountains in the second half of the fifteenth century : a case study of the Tahrir register of 1478

Ankara : The Department of History, İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2012.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2012.Includes bibliographical references leaves 117-127.The spread of Islam into non-Muslim territories has always followed their conquest by some expanding Islamic polity. Ottoman military expansion into the Balkans was followed by the establishment of a new administrative and Islamic institutional order. Yet not all areas in the Peninsula were affected equally by the expansion of this new Muslim power, let alone impacted in the same manner by the introduction of their religious beliefs. This thesis focuses on the religious developments following the conquest of the kaza of Drama, located in eastern Thrace, in accordance with the Tapu Tahrir Defteri 07, which covers the year of 1478. A case study of 25 villages from various geographic regions of the area, as well as the town of Drama, has been chosen in order to analyze the religious situation found in that year. Through a focus on the geographic, economic and local religious characteristic of the region, an analysis concerning the conversion process to Islam will be provided. The representative value of the villages chosen will provide explanations as to the role of colonizers, urban town-dwellers and yürüks. This in turn will present an analysis concerning the preliminary stages of conversion and the various elements that either halted or motivated the process of Islamization.Chmiel, Agata AnnaM.S

Migrant Nation-Builders: The Development of Austria-Hungary\u27s National Projects in the United States, 1880S-1920S

This dissertation charts the ways in which migrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire crafted new forms of identification in the United States, complicating their relationships with their home and host states. Transatlantic migration and migrants’ heightened nationalism were, I argue, causative factors in the dismantling of the Habsburg Empire into ethnically-based states after Word War I. Rather than focusing on a single ethnic group, Migrant Nation-Builders looks broadly at early multilingual immigrant institutions, Austro-Hungarian and American perceptions of panslavism, and the splintering of immigrant institutions in the United States along linguistic lines. The project traces the long arm of homeland authorities, especially the Hungarian government, in trying to manage migrant loyalty in America, and follows return migrants from the United States back to East Central Europe to track their influence on domestic politics. Finally, it examines the dual effects on migration of new borders in Eastern Europe and restrictive immigration legislation in the United States

Les minorites dans les Balkans

Special Editions 111. Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art

TRANSNATIONAL CONVERSIONS: GREEK CATHOLIC MIGRANTS AND RUSSKY ORTHODOX CONVERSION MOVEMENTS IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, RUSSIA, AND THE AMERICAS (1890-1914)

Beginning in the 1890s, communities of migrants from Austria-Hungary, living and laboring in the United States, converted from one form of Eastern Christianity, known as Greek Catholicism, to another, called Russky (or Russian) Orthodoxy. In doing so, they also underwent ethnic, national, and racial conversions as “Rusyns,” “Russians,” “Ukrainians,” “Hungarians,” “Slavs,” and “Whites.” Soon, migrants also began converting en masse in Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Ultimately, the conversions, likely numbering 100,000 by 1914, spread to migrants’ villages of origin in the Austro-Hungarian regions of Galicia and Subcarpathia, through remigrations and correspondence. For twenty-five years, conversion and counter-conversion movements in each of these regions interacted with and mutually influenced one another, in the context of transnational migration. As a consequence of these transnational conversions, a great war broke out, and not only in a metaphorical sense. For in addition to the protracted, heated, and periodically violent battles erupting between converts and opponents of conversion in all affected regions, these multi-continental ethnoreligious shifts also cast sparks, which contributed substantially to the outburst of that great global conflagration, beginning in September 1914, called World War I. Diplomatic tensions arose as statesmen at the highest governmental levels in Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany, as well as the major Great Power presses, vied with one another to define the conversions: either as Russian political machinations among “Ruthenians,” justifying future annexation of Austro-Hungarian territories inhabited by presumed “Russians”—identifiable by Orthodox religion—or as mere religious movements among Russia’s innocent, co-national expatriates, persecuted by the Austro-Hungarian regime. The same statesmen in July 1914 engaged in diplomatic hostilities surrounding Serbia, but the preceding years, months, and weeks, devoted to the issue of converting Greek Catholics, had helped set the stage for the July Crisis. Because the “East European” conversions resulted primarily through transatlantic migration, this study argues for the “American” origins of the Great War. In its simplest, most reductive, and unqualified form, it suggests that, because a migrant coal miner in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania decided to attend a different church one day, World War I happened

Romanski Balkan

Special Editions 103. Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art

The Rise and Fall of the Green International: Stamboliiski and his Legacy in East European Agrarianism, 1919-1939

At the height of his power in 1923, the head of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU), Alexander Stamboliiski, summed up the significance of his politics for European history in the following way: "Today there are only two interesting social experiments: the experiment of Lenin and my own." Taking the aspirations reflected in the quotation above seriously and rescuing the agrarian project from the enormous condescension of posterity is the foundation of this dissertation. Briefly, it is about unpacking and restoring the significance of the Golden Age of the European Peasantry between the two world wars by focusing on the paradigmatic cases of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. The dissertation proposes a novel synoptic approach with regards to interwar agrarianism as a counterpoint to ideology driven classifications or structuralist synthesis. Its thematic chapters alternate between strategic probes of evocative micro histories and broader theoretically informed overviews in order to illustrate and clarify the analytical frame. The most radical expression of interwar agrarianism, that of Bulgaria, and the man responsible for it, Alexander Stamboliiski, serve as the center of this dissertation. The juxtaposition of this center to the development of agrarianism in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, as well as to various oppositional formations such as the Communist International Peasant Union allows this dissertation to overcome the national parochialism that has contributed to the sidelining of the study of agrarianism. The innovative structure of the dissertation is above all a demonstration of the rich possibilities still open to researchers in this field to reinsert the study of agrarianism into contemporary theoretical debates and developments in the historiography. The dissertation explicitly engages agrarianism with the theoretical literature on nationalism, corruption, the subaltern, as well as makes possible the connection to the problematics of modernity, politics as systemic change, transnational and global history