‘Stalin’s Mistake’ on the Carpathian Rusins Echoes to This Day, Khavich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – When Soviet forces drove the Germans out of Transcarpathia, the Rusins, who had been under Czechoslovak rule, declared they did not want to become part of Ukraine but instead sought to become either a separate Soviet union republic or part of the RSFSR in much the same way that Kaliningrad subsequently became.
    But Stalin blocked this and insisted that the Rusins and their land be absorbed into the Ukrainian SSR. This was “Stalin’s mistake,” Oleg Khavich, a pro-Moscow specialist on the western portions of Ukraine, argues in a Regnum commentary (regnum.ru/article/3931507). On Khavich’s background, see my.ua/persons/oleg-khavich.
    Khavich’s article is noteworthy both because suggesting that Stalin made mistakes is now a rarity among pro-Moscow writers and because current Russian discussions about a future partition of Ukraine again involve the Rusins, just as they have in the past (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/moscow-again-focusing-on-rusins-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/russia-must-partition-ukraine-to-ensure.html).
    What is especially disturbing about this commentator’s observations is that he concludes his article by observing that Stalin’s “mistake” has become ever more costly to Russia because the Rusin issue has not yet been resolved, “at least up to now.”