PhD. Topics

Between Magyarism and Pan-Slavism: Rusyn Society in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

World History

2026

Doc. Peter Šoltés, PhD.

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Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava

This dissertation project focuses on analysing the transformations of Rusyn society in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with particular emphasis on the processes of reconfessionalization in the Eastern rite environment. The research examines the position of the Rusyn population, and especially the Rusyn Greek Catholic clergy, within the context of modern nationalist ideologies, particularly the Magyarization policy of the Hungarian elites and various forms of Pan-Slavism and Russophilia. Greek Catholic priests played an important role in the Rusyn environment as mediators between state power, the church hierarchy, and local communities, while also being bearers, adapters, or opponents of modern political, national, and confessional ideas. The work, therefore, focuses on analysing the consequences of the Magyarization policy in the Greek Catholic church environment and its impact on the Rusyn (and partly also Slovak) Greek Catholic population. Special attention will be paid to the attitudes of the lower clergy, their activities within church structures, as well as their public activities and reception by higher church authorities and state bodies. An important part of the research will be the issue of the Orthodox and Russophile movement, the first manifestations of which appeared in the Rusyn environment as early as the mid-19th century, but which acquired a more significant social and political dimension especially at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The work will attempt to answer the question of whether these movements represented primarily an ideological-national alternative, a confessional reaction to Magyarization pressures, or whether they were an expression of social protest and local conflicts within the church and social order. In this context, the possibility of applying the concept of reconfessionalization to the Rusyn environment will be examined through an analysis of the role of the Greek Catholic clergy, committed lay people, and parish communities in the Orthodox and Russophile movements. At the same time, the research will focus on the reactions of state and church authorities, as well as on the repressive and disciplinary mechanisms they used to control or suppress these processes.
The dissertation project is part of a broader research project on the confessionalization of society in the long 19th century within the APVV project carried out at the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
Requirements: knowledge of the Slovak language, Russian language (reading texts in Cyrillic), at least passive knowledge of Hungarian, English language level min. B2.