The Rusyns: Generational Trauma, Poverty, and Locus of Control

Locus of control can be internal or external. Those with an internal locus of control generally believe they control the outcomes in their life. They believe that their opinions and voices matter in the grand scheme of things. Those with an external locus of control essentially believe the opposite of these things, they believe that there are imposing forces that can impact the outcome of their lives, such as luck, or generational trauma caused by socio-political changes and poverty over many years.

The locus of control can be altered in persons to become more external when control is taken away from them, and they are not permitted to be individuals. This has been studied in a prison setting (Fontao, Ross 2018), but what if the results were looked at under a cultural context? In the case of the Carpatho-Rusyns, their national identity was suppressed for much of recent history.

Under the Austro-Hungarian empire in modern Slovakia they were subjected to Magyarization, that is, they were pressured to become fully Hungarian (mek.oszk.hu. Nd). After the fall of the Hungarian empire, many Rusyns were pressured to become Slovak (Magocsi, Pop 2002) Operation Vistula in Poland forcefully removed thousands of Lemko Rusyns from their home villages. The Soviet Union told Rusyns that they were not Rusyn, but Ukrainian. And often made children learn a foreign language and told them to identify it as their mother tongue (John and Helen Timo foundation, 2019). Rusyns who immigrated to the United States before the events of Operation Vistula and the reign of the Soviet Union were often met with disapproval from European Americans who immigrated earlier and were called things like “The garbage of Europe ‘’ (Greene, 1962). They also were treated as a different class in the mills in which they worked: the “Foreign” class of workers (Vivian, 2002). This meant they could not get promotions or raises. All of these factors deny the individual a sense of self and cause the individual to look at themselves as inferior: the perfect recipe for the loss of an internal locus of control.

One might argue that any presence of the external locus of control is the product of Epigenetic generational trauma — epigenetic meaning that the stress of historical events might have an impact on which genes turn on and off. The theory this author presents also relates to generational trauma, but rather than being printed on the genetic code, it is passed down through learned unconscious behaviors. Generational Trauma is behavioral, rather than genetic.

The chaos of living in an ever-changing borderland might lead one to have a view that the world is nothing but chaos and war, and one should be distrustful of it, simply trying to survive any way one can. If a group is culturally gaslighted for many years and is not allowed to practice their culture freely or call themselves by their true name, individuals in this group might begin to internalize this on a personal level. They might stress themselves out to an unhealthy extent. They may drink, smoke, or practice other unhealthy behaviors. When the larger world around someone tells them their culture does not matter, keeps them in poverty, constantly making it necessary to move to make ends meet, they may begin to internalize the dominant culture’s view. Making a good life for oneself seems out of reach with a past which disparaged their people. This way of life gets shown to children, who repeat the behavior in their own lives, showing it to their children. leading the behavior to continue throughout the generations until the present day.

Folk stories show an intimate look at the inner workings of the mindset of a group. They are used for entertainment as well as for communicating cultural archetypes. In Rusyn folk stories, a negative worldview is emphasized as well as luck, spite, and cleverness to trick the outside. In the folk story How the World Treats You for Doing Good, a man attempts to free a snake from a rock. The snake, in turn, bites him. When the man argues how unfair this is, many characters simply echo, “that is how the world treats you for doing good”(Hiryak, Krafcik 2015).

This folktale represents a mistrust of the outside world. It perceives it as unpredictable, chaotic, and harmful: out to “bite you”. This could be looked at as a mistrust formed by living under empires and countries which under every circumstance suppressed Carpatho-Rusyn Identity and tried to label it as something it was not.

American Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants may also experience mistrust due to these factors, depending on when these people’s ancestors immigrated. But added to this is the discrimination these people faced at the hands of many other groups in America. A 2nd Generation Rusyn-American woman interviewed by the author recalled witnessing and being the victim of harassment by German, Irish, and Anglo-American groups in the town she lived in. Growing up witnessing this type of violence unsurprisingly leads to a distrust of people in general and, as a result, the women in this family are very protective of their children. For example, mothers in this family do not allow their children to attend sleepovers at other children’s houses when the parents are not friends of the family for fear that some awful, violent thing will happen to them if they go.

The belief that luck or divine grace is in charge of one’s life rather than willpower is prevalent in the folktales of the Rusyns. In the folktale titled Ash boy, a child stays awake long enough to watch over his fathers’ field, but because of this, he gains magical help, which in the end allows him to climb the social ladder by marrying a princess (Hiryak, Krafcik 2015).

The entirety of the Rusyn-American family interviewed by the author were devoted lottery players and bingo attendees. If luck is not in one’s favor, getting ahead any way one can through spite and cleverness is also a prevalent theme in Rusyn folktales. Spite improving one’s luck is illustrated in Ash boy when he plays a game to stay awake and watch his father’s field to spite his family and their views of him as “lazy”.

Cleverness to get ahead and to spite the ruling classes is shown in Lord Dobriansky A folktale that illustrates a poor boy who lives in the woods who wished to marry a princess. He, with the help of his talking cat, tricks the king into believing he is a nobleman by stealing a castle from a dragon and even getting the king’s men to finish the dragon off for him. The Rusyn American family interviewed by the author emphasized achieving one’s goals in a very Lord Dobriansky fashion. Achieving the absolute most, by doing the least amount possible and using cleverness to their advantage. Most of the women of the family use this cleverness trait in their shopping habits. They take advantage of coupons and shopping sales in such a way they feel as if they are tricking the “man” out of his merchandise.

Even one of the famous Rusyns, Andy Warhol. acted in spite. He recalled an interaction with Donald Trump, in which they talked about a painting commission, but couldn’t agree on anything. Warhol painted the paintings anyway, out of spite, convinced he would win him over. When they still did not come to an agreement, Warhol held a lifelong grudge against the Trumps (Martson 2016).

Both the belief in luck/magic and the spiteful attitudes of the Rusyns probably emerge from a quite rigid class structure in the many places they lived, in which many Rusyns weren’t taken seriously because they were a small suppressed ethnic group who were generally limited to the peasant class in both Europe and later America. This distance from the higher classes and the seeming immovability between these classes, left the Rusyns aspiring for a seemingly impossible way to claw themselves out from their situations, which in the mindset could very well leave luck or spite as the only way to do so.

In Kristina Cantins 2012 doctoral thesis, she makes a note that Rusyns prioritize “health” as the primary component of a good life. However, many had chronic illnesses exacerbated by family-related stress among the women and stress and heavy drinking among the men. What This shows in a psychological context, is the want of health, but a belief that it is unattainable by one’s means. Health, to the Rusyns interviewed in Cantin’s paper, is a goal, yet, it seems somehow gated off to them by some unknown force. This is a commonly held belief among those with an external locus of control. With the Rusyns, it seems to be closely intertwined with the other standard of a good life: work.

The value of work is not in and of the work itself, but rather using it as a means of security in one’s finances and livelihood. In it lies a want simply for what one needs in life, not necessarily luxury. However, basic needs have also been gated off to Rusyns for much of their history. The immigration of Rusyns to the United States was sprung by the want of better jobs and Rusyns still often work abroad to make a basic living for themselves while sending money back to family members.

A goal of Rusyn women is often just to have the family live close together (Cantin, 2012). These women have probably lived through generations of absent family members, due to the poverty in the region they live, and feel as if they have no control over their family splitting apart, which could lead to the stress-related declines in health mentioned earlier due to it being the woman’s role to cultivate the “perfect family”. In Rusyn men, there is a want to be completely “self-sufficient” even if that means living a sustenance-based lifestyle.

While this want for family and freedom might seem dichotomous between the sexes, what it represents is a want for control. A handle on one’s own life is not prohibited by oppressive external forces, which through generational poverty seem to be everywhere even when they are not, blocking individuals from both good health and good work. This aspirational combination of filial collectivism and freedom also seems to have been carried on by the Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant family when they moved to the United States.

Family closeness is seen as integral to health in this family as well, demonstrated by the saying repeated by the widowed family matriarch: “Don’t move too far away or you’ll give me a heart attack”. This reflects the illness reported by Pani Gabriela in Cantin’s work. Indeed, in this family, there is a fear that the “other culture” or American culture will steal the younger generation away from their family duties — breaking the family apart in a similar way to the work abroad culture in the Rusyn homeland.

Yet there is also a belief in making it on your own, most of the men in the family are outdoorsmen who hunt and fish, reminiscing back to the sustenance-based, ideal lifestyle mentioned in Cantin’s work. However, this is mostly a distraction to the work they must do to earn money. The women in the family also set up small cash businesses from time to time, such as the matriarch’s annual plant stand. The women in this family see this as a means to truly make their own money without having to appease an oppressive boss even though these side jobs rarely make enough money to sustain themselves.

Although this family is not in poverty anymore, the generational effects still are prominent. While they do not buy many luxury items, they pride themselves on how much food or non-luxury clothing items they can afford. They often buy these in excess, especially if they have a coupon, saving them in the freezer for a rainy day that the poverty might return. Self-sufficiency among the Rusyn American immigrant family is also a mechanism of their inherent trust in the outside world, especially the elite. For example, the family did not trust western medicine and used to call meetings to debate if the child indeed should take the “risk” of going to the doctor. This practice was abandoned by the 3rd Generation, but there is still a view that teachers, bosses, and other “elite” groups are simply out to do members of the family wrong. Leading to individuals who speak out whenever they perceive these injustices to be happening.

Generational trauma does not have to be genetic. It is important to acknowledge how a culture can be impacted by its history, and how the history of a culture can impact the mindset of an individual. How what one notices in their environment, lives through, does not just go away even if their circumstances of life happen to change. We cannot be wiped clean of our history unless we are removed from our family lines and enculturation. But even then we are simply transplanted into the continuation of someone else’s. Enculturation is more than learning how to cook different foods or celebrate different holidays. It is a whole weight on one’s shoulders.

Resources

• Fontao, M. I., & Ross, T. (2018). Aggression, attributional style, and locus of control among imprisoned migrants from the former Soviet Union. Criminal Behaviour & Mental Health, 28(6), 466 — 475. https://doi-org.proxy-sru.klnpa.org/10.1002/cbm.2087
• “The Hungarian Liberal Opposition’s Approach to Nationalities and Social Reform”. mek.oszk.hu.
• https://youtu.be/I0g6cYw35Ik
• https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofru0000mago
• Vivian, C. (2002). Monessen (p. 23). Arcadia Pub.
• Greene, V. (1968). The Slavic community on strike (p. 30). University of Notre Dame Press
• https://www.warhol.org/andy-warhol-talks-about-donald-trump-throughout-the-mid-1980s/
• Cantin, K. M. (2012). PEAK EXPERIENCES AND HEGEMONY RESISTANCE: CULTURAL MODELS OF A GOOD LIFE AND GROUP IDENTITY IN CARPATHIAN RUS’ (pp. 69–100).