The New York Herald, New York, NY, January 5, 1920
To the Editor of the Herald : —
There is considerable confusion concerning the term “Carpatho-Russians,” and the facts are often still more beclouded by newspaper articles which put the Ukrainians and Carpatho-Russians together. Such an article appeared in the Herald on December 29, under the caption “Ukraine Congress Here to Protest Polish Mandate.”
In the first place, there is no such nation, race, language, country or religion known as Carpatho-Russian. The Carpatho-Russians are an insignificant political party — nothing more. Ever since East Galicia, peopled by Ukrainians formerly unwilling subjects of the Russian Empire, became a part of the Austrian Empire, the Russian Tsar sought to win the territory back to his domain. He sent into East Galicia many agents, some political, some of them Russian Orthodox priests, to try to convert the people into Russophiles. These Russian Tsarist agents, together with the few converts they made, were the Carpatho-Russians. In race and language they are Ukrainians; in religion and politics they are Russian. Out of a total Ukrainian population of more than four million in East Galicia the Carpatho-Russian party numbers less than fifty thousand.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are a nation of forty million people, occupying a well defined ethnographic territory of more than 300,000 square miles. About thirty-six million of them occupy the vast plain in the southern part of the former Russian Empire. About four million of them are in the adjoining territories of East Galicia, Bukovina and Hungarian Ruthenia, which was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In every respect save religion, they are one people. In religion the Ukrainians of former Russia are Russian Orthodox; the Ukrainians of former Austria-Hungary are Greek Catholics, recognizing the Pope at Rome as their head. The great majority of Ukrainians in the United States come from the Austro-Hungarian part of Ukraine.
The Ukrainians in all parts of Ukraine, with the exception of the infinitesimal portion of them who are of the Carpatho-Russian party, are intensely nationalistic. They desire a Ukrainian republic which shall embrace the entire Ukrainian nation and be separate and apart from Russia, Poland and every other Power.
Director Ukrainian National Committee of the United States
Editor’s note
Issues of ethnicity and national identity have always been complicated and sources of conflict. This letter to the editors reflects struggles over Ukrainian identity more than one hundred years ago, which is sadly still being fought over today.