Russian Publicist Yevgeny Matrosov and Rusyns in North America

Abstract

The article is devoted to the little-known Russian publicist Yevgeny Nikolaevich Matrosov (1860–?) who moved to North America in the 1890s. He is also known under the omnonym Graf Leliva, and has therefore, until recently, sometimes been mistakenly identified as Count Anton Tyshkevich from Lithuania. Matrosov is the author of a number of publicist and artistic works dedicated to “Russian” (Eastern Slavic) immigrants on American soil. At the turn of the twentieth century, Rusyns were the dominant ethnic group among the Eastern Slavs in the United States — such immigrants came from Austria-Hungary, particularly Galicia, Bukovina, and Hungarian Rus'. Little Russians, Belarussians, and especially Great Russians from the neighboring Russian Empire were in the minority. Matrosov’s views do not fit into black-and-white schemes, because, on the one hand, he advocated the national unity of all Eastern Slavs (“Rus'”), and, on the other, he was critical of ignoring the serious specifics of its individual branches. The author of the article makes an attempt to generalize the available information about Matrosov, introduces new sources and raises numerous questions. Both the personality and the literary and publicist heritage of Matrosov require further in-depth study