Emília Psárová

“The east lacked drinking water, so they came up with the idea to demolish seven Ruthenian villages. Ruthenians were beaten again. Seven villages were flooded, all houses demolished, churches pulled down. Today there is a nice dam and a road. Behind the dam, however, there remained five villages. When their inhabitants wanted to get to town in winter, they could not, because chemical treatment of the roads was not possible due to the closeness of the dam. It is the Starinska dam. There was a village Starina. In the first village they did it, but they had to demolish six more villages. There is drinking water that supplies the whole Prešov region. The whole population of these villages had to move out, Snina was the closest. Now it is a district town. Some got money and built houses or left for a completely different district. They moved old people to blocks of flats and they died there because they could not live there. They had lived all of their lives in the village, they had their cottages, fields, animals, they had lived all of their lives in the village and suddenly they had to go.”

“The Skeyushan group usually performs customs from the village. It is similar to what I saw in my life. Weddings, baptisms, Easter, Christmas. The scenes we perform come from my childhood. I return to my memories, it ’s a hobby. (“How much different are Ruthenian traditions from the Czech ones?”) “Quite a lot. Weddings, for instance, are full of people, many relatives arrive, live music. The brides are given scarves, they change their dress, perform a folk dance, money is collected. If you dance, you contribute a coin. When I danced, the dance generated three and a half thousand, which was quite a lot. Whoever danced, paid. I was dressed in the folk costume.”

“Ruthenians in Eastern Slovakia inhabited the land up to Carpathian Ukraine. This was the land of the Ruthenians. After the war, this area was separated and Ruthenians, who were ours, had to take up the Ukrainian citizenship. In this way, Ruthenians in Ukraine were no longer recognized. And those who were here, could not apply for Ruthenian nationality, so they opted for Ukrainian or Slovak. People used to scratch in their IDs, writing in Ruthenian nationality, as they didn’t want the Slovak one. My brother was born in Děčín, but because both of his parents were Ruthenian, his nationality was stated as Ukrainian. My mum, father and brother were all of Ukrainian nationality. My brother had problems to get the Slovak nationality. (“And you had Slovak nationality?”) “Yes, I had Slovak nationality. There was no Ruthenian and we didn’t subscribed to Ukrainians. They would be happy to embrace us.”

(“How did you experience the move to Czechia in the 1970s? You had never travelled much, you lived in a small village, and suddenly you moved to the other side of the country…”) Then it was Czechoslovakia, so there were not big differences. I just learned Czech, this I started straight away. I wasn’t even fluent in Slovakian as we spoke Ruthenian at home. Ruthenian was my mother tongue. We spoke Slovak only at school, I wasn’t fluent in it, and here, there were all Czechs while we worked for the army. So I started learning Czech immediately and had no problems. I also learned Czech with my children — writing, poems, grammar. I get angry whenever a Czech makes mistakes in grammar. I also learned maths with them, everything. But first I had to cook. I came home from work, cooked a meal for my husband and spent evenings learning with children. When they went to bed, I learned to sew. I had an old sewing machine I got from the soldiers, they wanted to ditch it, so I took it and I still have it. In the evenings I used to sew clothes for the children. I even couldn’t cook when I arrived. We didn’t cook at home, as we were all elsewhere. My mum cooked and brought it to the field. When I was here, I even learned something from the Czech cuisine. At home we used to cook everything that was in the field. Beans, peas, cabbage, potatoes, I didn’t know what a tomato was. We came to Czechia and I only learned to eat tomatoes. I didn’t know cauliflower either. I have been for forty years here, the time is different, even peopla back home have their gardens, grow peppers, tomatoes. Then only peas, potatoes and beans were grown, nothing else.”

(“Did you wear your national costume in childhood?”) “No, I did not, not even during the festivities. This had been completely erased. All ladies still wore scarfs and dark dresses. Shirts and long skirts. Even my mother wore a scarf all of her life. The young ones then had their hair cut, got a perm. But brides wore scarves all the year. As soon as they were married, they were given a scarf and they had to wear it all the time” (“Still in your time? Do you remember it?” “I don’t really, but my mum and my aunt — their generation still dresses like this. Then it started to change. Those who are about seventy now had a perm, but the old ladies hated it, for them it was a sin to have one’s hair cut. It had to be hidden under a scarf.”