The International scientific and practical conference “Christian values and intercultural interaction”, June 17–18, 2022.

The book includes fragments from previously published texts by ten Russian officers – participants of the Hungarian campaign of 1849, who personally came into contact with the Ruthenian population of the Austrian Empire (the ancestors of modern Western Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyns). It is intended for researchers and a wide range of readers interested in the history and culture of Western Ukraine and Carpathian Rus’.

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The article is devoted to the publication published in 1855 by Mikhail Mikhailovich Levchenko (1830–1891 or 1892) “Memories of the campaign in Hungary in 1849. (Notes of an infantryman)”. A member of the Hungarian campaign, infantry officer M. M. Levchenko (a little Russian patriot, later a well-known lexicographer and ethnographer) personally got acquainted with the life of various peoples of the Austrian Empire. The officer paid considerable attention to the East Slavic population of Hungary and Galicia — Ruthenians. Unlike other participants of the Hungarian campaign, whose diaries and memoirs were published, Levchenko was initially keenly interested in Slavs, so he clearly characterized the Ruthenians as “tribesmen of our Little Russians”. At the same time, despite certain knowledge in the field of Slavic studies, Levchenko’s text also contains obvious inaccuracies, which are analyzed in this article. Levchenko was greatly impressed by the nascent national and cultural life of Ruthenians, especially Galicians, and the development of literature and education. Apparently, Levchenko’s stay in 1849 in the lands of the Habsburg monarchy with an East Slavic population had a noticeable impact on all his further activities. Thus, it is noteworthy that Levchenko popularized in Russia the ethnonym Rusyn as a national name for all Little Russians and Ruthenians.

The review is dedicated to the recent monograph by the Slovak historian Peter Švorc on Jurij Lažo (1867–1929). The book is a meticulously researched biography of the Rusyn national political activist set against the background of the history of the Carpathian Rusyns, Austria-Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The author pays increased attention to the issues of national and confessional identity of the Rusyn population of the Prešov region and Subcarpathian Rus’. J. Lažo went down in history primarily as a Senator who represented the interests of Rusyn villagers in the Czechoslovak Parliament, and as a fi ghter for the conversion of Greek Catholics to the Orthodox Church. Leger acted as a consistent proponent of the “all-Russian” (all-Eastern Slavic) national-language trend and a critic of the Magyarization and later Slovakization of the Rusyns. All six chapters of the monograph differ in their originality, and are based on documents from various archives in the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Despite the remain- ing gaps in the biography of Jurij Lažo, Peter Švorc’s book is a valuable contribution to the historiography of this topic.