Three essays from the "Rusyns – Lost Homes" project (2006)

Between 1975 and 1986, seven Rusyn villages of the upper Cirocha valley
in northeastern Slovakia — Starina, Veľká Poľana, Smolník, Ruské,
Ostrožnica, Zvala, and Dara — were evacuated and drowned beneath the
waters of the Starina reservoir, built to supply drinking water to Prešov
and Košice. Their inhabitants, settled there since the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, scattered mainly to the towns of Snina and Humenné,
carrying with them a village world that no longer exists on any map.

In 2006, a team of young Rusyn photographers and researchers — children
and grandchildren of the evacuated villages — undertook a documentary
project called "Rusyns – Lost Homes" (Rusnaci – Stratené domovy),
gathering archival family photographs, documenting the destruction of the
villages and the construction of the dam, and photographing the present
generation's assimilation. The project's leaders sent these three short
essays directly to the Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base "for your
community," ahead of a planned 2006 book and exhibition. What follows is
a local historian's account of the villages' five hundred years and their
flooding, and two photographers' own reflections on inheriting a home
that exists now only in memory.

Štefan Koco — The History of Flooded Territory

The first settlers started to come to forested and almost inaccessible
valleys of upper Cirocha in the first half of the 15th century. After more
than half a millennium, which has passed since, we can follow with enormous
admiration the undefeated strength of people of this hidden corner of
present Slovakia, which helped them to overcome all obstacles of nature and
of the human being himself. They managed to cope with these difficulties
for 500 years, up to the time when they had to surrender to the general
interest of the majority and leave their laboriously constructed homes.

The beginnings of settling the territory of upper Cirocha date back to the
1460s to 1480s. This was the beginning of the villages Starina and Veľká
Poľana. In the following hundred years, five further villages appeared with
a similar destiny — Smolník, Ruské, Ostrožnica, Zvala, and, last, Dara in
the 1570s–80s. The first written mentions of these settlements are
connected with the first taxation of the population; the only exceptions
are Starina and Veľká Poľana, which are mentioned in texts in connection
with the activities of the robber gang of Fedor Hlavatý. All the mentioned
villages were built by peasants, mainly of Rusyn nationality. In that
period, all the territories belonged to the extensive estate of the Druget
family from Humenné.

The location of the territory on the border with Polish Halič and
Vladimír — on the periphery of any development — together with severe
natural conditions, ruled the uneasy destinies of local people for ages.
The inhabitants dealt with agriculture, mainly cattle breeding. The hilly
and rocky fields were little fertile, so mainly barley, oats, peas, and
hemp were grown there, and in the gardens some vegetables, mainly cabbage.
The total backwardness of the region is proved also by the fact that even
at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the two-field system
of cultivating land was still used there. The severe conditions were made
even worse by the landlords, who consistently increased the taxes. Already
in the seventeenth century, this unbearable situation caused the
desolation of some settlements and a decrease in the number of
inhabitants.

A significant change appeared after the Union of Uzhhorod in 1646, when the
inhabitants of the villages were converted to the Greek Catholic faith. One
hundred fifty years later, the older wooden churches were replaced by more
solid stone churches.

The catastrophic crop failure in northeast Slovakia in the 1850s caused the
population of northern Zemplín to decrease by half. Living conditions did
not improve even in the second half of the century, and it is no surprise
that there was significant emigration, also overseas.

World War I was the next hard stroke for the inhabitants. The unlucky
location of the whole region again manifested itself in its most terrible
form. These territories became part of the front line between the
Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies. The front passed through there twice,
at the end of 1914 and again half a year later, so the damage was
multiplied.

Neither did the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 mean a good turn
for the inhabitants of upper Cirocha. Agriculture remained the only source
of food, and the new border limited the chances of seasonal work for
people in the territories that became part of Hungary.

At the end of World War II, the location again badly influenced the life
of the villages. All villages were occupied by the Hungarian Army in April
1939. However, the region escaped the terrors of the war until the end of
1944. After severe battles for Ruské Pass, the Soviet Army liberated the
village of Ruské first, on October 12, 1944. The diverse terrain made the
battles hard and brought about enormous material damage; the destruction
of the villages approached 90 percent.

However, the severe wounds did not defeat the spirit of the people. In
spite of the possibility of moving into the free Czech borderland of the
Sudetenland, most people returned to their native region and started to
reconstruct their destroyed homes with all their strength. The
state-imposed collectivization of 1948 was not very successful in these
villages. In spite of new job opportunities, mainly in the nearby towns of
Snina and Humenné, the connection with the land, so laboriously cultivated,
could not be broken.

For five hundred years the local people managed to resist various
difficulties and the wounds of destiny; however, they had to surrender to
the last stroke. In 1975, due to the construction of the Starina water dam,
a plan for the gradual evacuation of the villages was prepared. Problems
with supplying East Slovakia with drinking water encouraged the decision
to construct a water reservoir, which would also supply the cities of
Prešov and Košice. The destiny of the seven villages was decided by their
location, environment, and only minimal devastation by the impacts of
civilization. The last inhabitants of the villages left their native land
in 1986. They found new homes mainly in Snina and Humenné, but the bonds
with the places where they had grown up were never torn.

Ivana Lempeľová — Rusyns

Rusyns? "Is it somewhere in the East of Slovakia, near the Ukrainian
border?" "More or less..." — this is my answer to the question I have been
asked many times. If I want to specify them more closely, I find it
difficult. However we — the offspring of the male and female Rusyns —
behave subconsciously in the same way. We can be obstinate and stubborn and
we are not happy to admit our fault. On the other hand, we are hot
tempered, noisy, and we like to enjoy ourselves.

The people of seven evacuated villages — Ruské, Dara, Starina, Poľana,
Smolník, Zvala, and Ostrožnica — who became the victims of the water dam,
have had for all these years a feeling of injustice. They nurture this
feeling inside. Sometimes I think it is their life style. Simply to be in
exile. It is in them and they did not manage to get rid of it. People
connected with nature and land since their birth suddenly had to give it
all up and leave, mainly for the town. Can anybody imagine the feeling of
helplessness and loss of identity our mothers or grandfathers carry in
them? And how much of this is circulating in our blood — in the blood of
their daughters and grandsons?

I feel sorry that our descendants will have even less of this. At least
our parents and grandparents constantly try to keep customs and
traditions. Not artificially or forcibly. They simply feel like that. The
question arises whether we will also feel like that. Whether we will be
willing to explain to our children why it is done like that, why we have
our Christmas dinner also at the beginning of January, whether we will
teach them to speak the language. Are we able to live like Rusyns? What
does it mean for us?

Memories have an enormous significance for the evacuated inhabitants of the
villages. They are both a source of their vital energy and a spring of
their life's tragedy. An abstract world where the forever-lost home
revives. From the material things, only a torso is left. Maybe only a
piece of land, overgrown with grass, where the parents' house once stood.
A patch of land where they took care of the garden or the field. And also
something else: the cemeteries, on their original place. Fortunately these
were preserved by the former regime. A tiny compensation for all this are
the urbariáts (commons associations) of the former villages and the
association of the evacuees. Once a year, in the summer, the
representatives of the former villages organize the so-called meetings of
the original inhabitants, connected with a church event. Apart from this,
the evacuees meet once again, on the occasion of All Saints' Day.

The project "Rusyns – Lost Homes," which included a collection of old
photographs, slides, and films, opened my eyes and widened my view of the
surrounding world — paradoxically, mainly the world which lies literally
"under my nose." It opened a door to understanding the unknown and enabled
me to see what had been hidden before. I would never have thought that I
would get to know "my" people through the lens of a camera — to come to my
own family and say: can I take a photo when you are doing this or that? I
took photographs of all this with a feeling that they would be looked at
by somebody for whom these things are strange and unknown, and that
through our photographs he would get to know and understand the people who
have lost everything, and also those who are part of a greater group — the
Rusyns.

Photography has an enormous testimonial value and an ability to grasp what
cannot be expressed in words. Therefore this project has an ambition to
depict the real life of the Rusyns and bring it to a wider public.

Maybe we can confute some attitudes and confirm others. It all depends on
the people who will look at the photographs.

Lucia Nimcová — Do You Want to Sing?

My whole family are Rusyns. I was born into this project, although it was
not initially a choice. These seven villages I had never focused on, not
intentionally. Yet, as I am trying to solve the problems of the whole
world, I always end up at myself. I think that until the end of my days
this project will remain unfinished. A lot of people told me it was
useless. Well, in the end, I am an obstinate Rusyn.

The most beautiful part of my childhood I spent in Starina. The place no
longer exists, and this absence has become the essence of my way of being
in the world. I still search for the lost home. I try to reunite my
family, who argue about property. The spirit of my ancestors is in my
blood and I owe them something. My home is where my parents, friends, and
loved ones live — or it is the place where I wake up in the morning,
wherever that is. But this strange feeling of loss remains. Maybe my mother
mixed it with her tears into the Sunday soup while she listened to Rusyn
songs from an untuned radio. Hard to say.

I am one of the last generations of this minority of upper Cirocha who can
still remember fragments of everyday life and spirituality. But I do not
feel I belong to them anymore. I know the language, but I no longer use it
with my parents or friends. It does not fit, somehow. It does not come
naturally to my mind, though I amuse friends when I use Rusyn words. I do
things differently. I cannot accept what they perceive as culture. For
sure, it is partly a clash of generations, of different life experience,
but in the case of the Rusyns it is even worse. The vibrancy is gone. It
is as though we are dying while we are alive. It is a terrible feeling.

And so I decided to give space to six young people who are also from
displaced families. My conditions were: parents from Dara, Ruské, Smolník,
Ostrožnica, Zvala, Veľká Poľana, or Starina, and a drive to work with
photography. This is the field in which I could guide them. I was also
interested in their expatriate stories and personal experiences, which I
could compare to mine.

The project has three parts:

1. Collection of archival family photos, films, and songs from the era
   when the villages existed.
2. Collection of the work of amateur regional artists who photographed and
   filmed the destruction of the villages and the construction of the
   Starina water dam.
3. Documentation of the present assimilation through photographs taken by
   the young Rusyns here.

The exhibition and book, Rusyns – Lost Homes, are both a picture of a
dying minority and our discussions about it. It is a small story of
memories that we would like to keep for those coming up after us. Daniela
Kápralová, who was our "angel guardian," led us to many rare materials.
Roman Babjak was the only Slovak in this "battle" between Rusyns; he
helped this project far more than he expected at the start. I would also
like to thank the urbariát Ruské for their small financial contribution;
it was a nice gesture. Other urbariáts of the expatriated villages did
not acknowledge our activities — but that is a subject for another
project.

We would like to invite passers-by to this family visit, one accompanied
by authentic Rusyn songs and photographs of a disappearing world. As my
grandmother used to say: "Guest to the house — God to the house." After
all, I think the view from the outside can bring fresh and vital ideas.

Colophon

Three essays from the 2006 documentary project Rusyny — Straténe domovy
("Rusyns – Lost Homes," rusnaci.sittcomm.sk), sent by the project's leaders
to Greg Gressa's Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base for his community, ahead of
a planned book and exhibition. Captured 2026-08-05 from
http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/starina.html (introductory note and project
credits) and the three linked PDFs
(ivana_rusnaci_en.pdf, luco_rusnaci_en.pdf, stevo_rusnaci_en.pdf),
each headed "rusnaci.sittcomm.sk." No restrictive copyright notice
accompanied any of the three texts; they were shared by their authors
specifically for community use. English titles and section order follow
the source; light paragraph and diacritic cleanup only (e.g. "Cirocha,"
"urbariát," Slovak place names), no content added, removed, or condensed.
Project leaders named on the introductory page: Lucia Nimcová, Dana
Kápralová, Lucia Danková, Silvia Hulagová, Ivana Lempeľová, Jarek Bašo,
Jozef Fundák, Štefan Koco, and Roman Babjak.

Prepared for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, with
AI-assisted research and preservation.

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