The Subcarpathian Rusyns are an east Slavic people who live along the southern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains where the borders of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland meet. Through centuries of oppression under the Austro-Hungarian and Soviet empires, they have struggled to preserve their culture and identity. Rusyn literature, reflecting various national influences and written in several linguistic variants, has historically been a response to social conditions, an affirmation of identity and a strategy to ensure national survival. In this English-language study of Rusyn literature, Elaine Rusinko looks at the literary history of Subcarpathia from the perspective of cultural studies and postcolonial theory, presenting Rusyn literature as a process of continual negotiation among states, religions and languages, resulting in a characteristic hybridist that has made it difficult to classify Rusyn literature in traditional literary scholarship. Rusinko traces Rusyn literature from its emergence in the 16th century, through the national awakening of the mid 19th-century and its struggle for survival under Hungarian oppression, to its renaissance in inter-war Czechoslovakia.
She argues that Rusyn literature provides an acute illustration of the constructedness of national identity and has prefigured international post-modern culture with its emphasis on border-crossings, intersecting influences and liminal spaces. With extracts from Rusyn texts, Rusinko's study creates an entirely new perspective on Rusyn literature that rescues it from the cliches of Soviet dominated critical theory and makes an important contribution to Slavic studies in particular and post-colonial critical studies in general.