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Pronunciation Key
Inhabitants of the District of Rozstaje
Acknowledgments
I would also like to thank Jutta Turner for providing me with maps; Anja Neuner and Anett Kirchhof for library assistance; Elizabeth Arweck for a careful editing of my dissertation; Bettina Mann, Anke Meyer, Nadine Wagenbrett, Berit Westwood, and other members of the MPI for their multiple help during my stay at the Institute. I would like to thank all of them for making my stay in Halle a very rewarding and enjoyable phase of my academic journey. I would also like to thank Robyn Curtis, Mark Rinaldi, Erica Buchmann and Mara Berkoff for their help and patience with my frequent emails and questions.
I would like to thank the staff of the Institute of Humanities and the Institute of Slavic Studies for making me feel at home and facilitating my work on the book.
Introduction: Seven Ways to God
Although territorially one of the largest counties in the country, it is also one of the least populated. The events following World War II and its aftermath resulted in the end of the Ruthenian presence in the area. Every parish has a priest who lives next to the church, alone or with the Orthodox19 with his family.
By describing two types of village meetings, Chapter 6 returns to many of the issues discussed in previous sections.
Mapping Religious Pluralism
Poland: A History of Pluralism
Analyzing the period of the partitions requires special care, as the situation in the three regions differed significantly. The region's peripheral position and the dense network of parish churches promoted traditional, village-oriented. It was also in the interwar period that the question of the group's name became highly politicized and the
Dependent on the Polish state, the Administration pursued anti-Ukrainian policies and contributed to the Rusyns' assimilation in the last years of the Second Republic (Moklak 1997: 120).
Making Pluralism: The People and the Place
Although both Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism are considered "Lemko churches", the latter's position in Rozstaje is much weaker. In the next stage of the process, I brought the developed images to school, which in turn led to a discussion of their content. Circle where my grandfather used to work”) and expressed their feelings about the village's heritage.
Since then, the Harvest Festival has become one of the largest and happiest festivities in the village. The residents stand along the road leading to one of the churches and gradually join the procession. The Harvest and the Circle's other initiatives were one of the main topics of the Women's Day celebration (March 8).
On that occasion, the members of the circle (about twenty women, whose average age is forty) met in the village room to eat dinner, plan new activities, and gossip about current affairs. The fact that the members of the circle belong to different religious congregations makes their role in the integration of the village even more important. One of the members of the circle and a great enthusiast of Lemko songs had a leading role in it.
Greek Catholics are part of the same Church!” In the young people's view, the problem with Roman Catholics is not limited to their ignorance of "religious others". This attachment is related to the sacralization of the local space, evident in the material culture and in people's narratives.
Pluralizing the Past
Caroling History: Heteroglossic Narratives and Religious Boundaries
Upon my arrival, he leans on the shovel and indicates a parking space in the corner of the lot. Hela, the main organizer of the event, hands out sheets with the words to several carols. We have twenty houses to visit and we decide to start at the very end of the village.
Most of the inhabitants were of the Greek Catholic faith, and some Poles who lived in the village also attended Greek Catholic services. I remember their history through the words of one of the current pastors, Michał, who settled in this area only in the 1980s and learned local history from the oldest Pentecostals. Michał claims that even the outbreak of war did not prevent the development of Pentecostalism.
And suddenly, in the 1930s, in the midst of the Orthodox-Catholic battle, a vibrant and well-organized Protestant community arose, attacking both of these churches. Many of the people I spoke to claimed that the war was not particularly felt in the countryside. All of these relate to Bakhtin's findings of the interconnectedness of human relationships, which humans include—.
Wasyl's brother was forced to leave by the authorities; as a soldier of the Soviet army who fought in the war, he had to be a good example to the local population. Many locals considered their stories less important and unheard in the narrative of Polish history.
Religion and Memories of Socialism
The specificity of the "Polish postsocialist question" lies in the fact that no significant or dramatic changes have been identified there (Boguszewski 2009; Mariański 2006). Bordered by a series of gentle hills and located just a few kilometers from the Slovakian border, the village of Ciche is one of the most remote places in the district. Due to the proximity of a rich and well-maintained health resort, the post-war years were relatively easier for the residents of Ciche than for other residents of the district.
The stone Greek Catholic church was adapted to the needs of the Roman Catholic population and the chapel was used on special occasions. At the time of my fieldwork, there was no bus connecting the village with the center of the neighborhood or with any other place. As they tell the story of the 'siege' of the church in the 1980s, residents contrast this with an event from the 1950s, a memory that still upsets them.
The memory of that event was transmitted to the generations of the inhabitants of Cice (Lemkos and ethnic Poles), although the presence of the general and his soldiers in the village was not well remembered. Similar thoughts characterize people's memories of other aspects of social life, as shown by the residents of the district capital. He sat in the kitchen, doing crossword puzzles, while his wife waited for me in the next room, telling me the story of the Greek Catholic parish.
Yet the act of recreating the past often involves idealizing the past in the process of contrasting it with the present. This is not only because they perceive socialism as part of the village's history (Creed 1998), but also because of their experiences of "waning modernism", as described in the accounts of the inhabitants of Ciche.
Acting Upon Locality
The Different and the Common: About Multireligious Neighborhoods
In a short time he became one of the most active members of the local Orthodox parish. Gość w dom, Bóg w dom), which points to the importance of the guest (who is compared to God) and the fact that the house which knows how to respect others is blessed (it is visited by God). In the introduction to her ethnography, she shares with readers the difficulties surrounding the use of the grammatical tense.
I discuss the conflict in detail in the next chapter, presenting the voices of both supporters and opponents of the idea. The exchange quoted above captures this ambiguity perfectly, reflected in the idea of the village community as “one. The Orthodox and Greek Catholic residents of the district celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar.
Henek went to open it and found one of the Roman Catholic neighbors, the village drunk Rysiek, outside. Of the four Lemko families living in Ciche, only one is present in the social life of the village. One of the Greek Catholic men has Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses in his immediate family.
This is even more true in the case of Roman Catholicism and Greek Catholicism, which are, after all, part of the same church. In both cases, the dialogue should lead to the conversion of the non-witness.
Debating Pluralism
The following concluding reflections on the dynamics of religious pluralism in Rozstaje show what happens precisely at the moment when a subordinate group undertakes an initiative which, in Bourdieu's words, risks exposing the arbitrariness of the "taken for granted". The first point discussed at the meeting was the problem of waste separation, presented by a representative of the public enterprise. At the end] Mironi mentioned the request of a Lemko association, which proposed to enter the Lemko names of the villages - along with the Polish ones.
The meetings reflected the shape and characteristics of local leadership and its dependence on knowledge of the wider environment. Finally, they were very informative about people's perceptions of life in the district, common problems and concerns, as well as ideas on how best to address these. In the latter case, the second name can be entered if more than 50 percent of the residents are in favor of it.
Born in the region, the members of the association are now university students and most of them live outside Rozstaje. The residents were informed in advance about the date of the vote in their respective village. In several places, two female members of the association attended the meetings where the vote was held and together with the district secretary and a representative of the district council presented the issue to the residents.
In the case of the villages mainly inhabited by Lemkos, the decision in favor of the name was taken unanimously. Due to both the intensity of the meeting and the time that had passed since the vote, the conversation was on the one hand very revealing and on the other hand confirmed many of the questions I had heard in the previous months. .
