Rusin History in the Creative Legacy of Vladimir Vernadsky

The article focuses on the specificity of Academician Vladimir Vernadsky's approach to the problem of preserving the Rusin culture. The author analyses “Ugric Rus' since 1848”, “Notes, extracts and bibliography of Ugric Rus' and Urgic Rusins”, and “Diaries” to investigate the circumstances of Verndasky's addressing the topic beyond his professional interests. Vernadsky acts as a consistent defender of small ethnic groups, protesting against the assimilation of Transcarpathian Rusins with Austria-Hungary. When young, he began to study the history of the Rusins and carried this interest throughout his life. Advocating Pan-Slavism, Vernadsky the accession of Rusins to Russia to be the best option. However, the use of tendentious Moscophile sources resulted in internal contradictions in his texts, particularly in terms of toponyms, ethnonyms, the degree of identification of Rusins with Russians (Great Russians), the similarity of Rusin and Russian languages etc. These contradictions implied a certain political position of a scientist who is inclined to ethnosocial constructionism. He supported the Moscophile discourse of the Rusinian problem, encouraged others to do so, obviously trying to draw attention of the Russian society to the problems of the “outpost of the Russian tribe” in Europe.

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