Rusyns as Russians in Ljubljana

At the Ljubljana City Museum, the exhibit on the city's history includes mention of the Rusyns on a label for a jacket from an infantry uniform from the Austrian Empire in World War I:

"Of every 100 soldiers in Franz Josef's I army, 29 were Germans, 19 Hungarians, 15 Czechs, 9 Poles, 8 Russians, 7 Serbs and Croats, 5 Romanians, 5 Slovakians, 3 Slovenes and 1 Italian."

The English says "Russian" but the Slovene clearly says "Rusinov."

Philadephia display includes Rusyn skulls

Maria Silvestri reports from a fieldtrip to Philadelphia that the Mütter Museum at the Philadelphia College of Physicians has – really – four Rusyn skulls on display.

The skulls are part of a collection used by the Viennese anatomist Doctor Joseph (Jozef) Hyrtl to disprove phrenology, a pseudo-science that claimed that a person’s character and personality (and criminal impulses) could be discovered by feeling bumps on the person’s head.

All four of the Rusyn skulls date from before 1874. They are part of a collection of 139 skulls from around Central and Eastern Europe, and are on permanent display at the museum. Maria jotted down the captions from the four Rusyn skulls:

Ruthenian
Domarsk Fedko, age 12
Anomaly of dentition
Frontal grooves; defects in tooth enamel
1006.019

Ruthenian
Jakub Mandsink, age 62
suicide
1006.020

Rusniak (from Ruthenia, southern Carpathians)
Fejdku Tisany, age 52
Sharpshooter with the Greek unit from Unghvar.
Maxillary alveolar process recession
1006.100

Ruthenian
Romanov Prasczak, age 21
Died of Cholera in Kharkov, Ukraine
Accessory bone in anterior parieto-temporal
Suture near pterion (left-side), possibly some epipteric bone
1006.103

Slovak Spectator: Slovakia's Warhol museum hobbles to tenth anniversary

By Matthew J. Reynolds, 12 February 2001

As a travelling Andy Warhol exhibition hits Bratislava this month, a museum devoted to the pop artist in the opposite corner of Slovakia struggles towards its 10th anniversary.

Located in a crumbling city of 7,000 in north-east Slovakia, the Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce was a dream come true for local art enthusiasts and Rusyn patriots alike when it opened in 1991. Warhol's parents were Rusyn - an ethnic minority in Slovakia numbering between 60,000 and 100,000 - from the small village of Mikov� outside Medzilaborce. The museum was to be a source of pride for the town and a valuable tourist attraction.

But operating for nearly a decade on a shoestring budget, the Warhol Museum has never found solid ground: financing has been scant, and its home remains the town's former culture centre, a communist monolith that was intended to be a temporary solution in 1991.