by Roman Rokytka, Korzár (Prešov, Slovakia), 21 September 2004
translated by Bohuslav Harvil’ak (C-RS, Bratislava, Slovakia)
Published as “Expelled Residents of Staryna Valley Still Returning to Their Native Villages After Many Years”, New Rusyn Times 2005, Vol. 12, No. 2
Prepared from the original by Peter Simkins Sluk (C-RS, Cleveland, OH)

Modern social development sometimes requires in­dividuals to conform to the so-called public interest. Such a situation occurred in Slovakia with the construction of factories, huge water works, highways, etc. Such projects brought thousands of jobs, brought fresh drinking water to dozens of villages and cities, and improved infrastruc­ture. On the other hand, these projects changed the lives of people who, though compensated, were forced to aban­don their homes. One of the greatest forced resettle­ments in Slovakia’s history occurred during the construc­tion of the Staryna Dam in the Snina district.

Seven villages were destroyed

From 1980 to 1986, seven Rusyn villages were re­moved from the area around the Bukovsky Highlands (Bukovsky Verchy). According to official data, 3,500 resi­dents were displaced. The Staryna reservoir was then constructed and is now the largest source of drinking water in Slovakia and in all of central Europe, supply­ing drinking water to all of eastern Slovakia. Those who were displaced now live in other places, most in the cit­ies of Snina and Humenne, the rest scattered through­out eastern Slovakia. New housing tracts were created for the displaced upon their arrival, and the people built their houses or moved into apartments allotted to them. In the city of Snina, the tract is called “Brehy”; the one in Humenne is called “Dubnik.” Although the people adjusted to their new surroundings and have associa­tions and folklore ensembles, to this day they continue to remember their lost homes with a heavy heart.

They still come back

The abandoned vil­lages come alive on sum­mer weekends. Not wish­ing to forget their lost homes, the displaced people return to the area of their birth. About a hundred cars come
through the gate every day, according to a secu­rity guard. People visit the places where their
houses stood; they show their children who lived where, where the school was, a pub, a church… In over­ grown gardens they get their bearings from surviving fruit trees and the remains of building foundations. They visit the cemeteries where their close relatives are bur­ied. The cemeteries did not have to be destroyed, except for the cemetery in the village of Staryna, which now lies under water. They used to meet each other in their fields, which remained untouched and where they have now built new wooden shelters. Every year the natives of each destroyed village hold meetings, espe­cially on the day when kermeš (the feast day of the vil­lage church) used to be held. “At the beginning there is a church service, then a group lunch, sports, and cul­tural activities,” says František Kirnjak, the head of the Snina-based Association of Expelled Persons from Staryna Dam Region.

Some men remained there until their death

Inhabitants of the villages first learned of their im­pending resettlement in the 1970s when state firms began digging exploratory tunnels where the dam would be built. Some did not wait and already started to leave the villages at that time. “Most of the families under­stood the displacement was necessary and they cooper­ated with the state authorities, even if with heavy hearts,” Kirnjak remembers. The evacuation was carried out in phases, as the new apartments were readied in Snina and Humenné.

Of course, a certain number of the village residents did not want to believe, and refused to believe, that they would have to move. But when bus services to the vil­lages was suspended, and the shops were closed and the power turned off, almost everyone left. A few hold­outs remained. “With the passage of time, I con­sider it fortunate that the evacuation succeeded to the extent that it did. And thanks to that, east­ern Slovakia will have fresh drinking water for decades. But there were a few troublesome cases,” remembers František Onderko, who at the time was an agent of the Council of ONV in Humenne for the building of the Staryna Dam.

People still remember Marija Krisko from the village of Rus’kyj, or Mr. Fencik from Struznica-they both stayed in their villages even two or three years after the rest had left, and finally they died in the houses of their birth. “It wasn’t possible to come to an agreement with them. In the end we just let them remain in the village be­cause they didn’t represent a biologi­cal danger to the water supply,” Onderko says.One of the last to leave was the Skircak family from Velyky Poljany. When the electricity was turned off, they got by with a generator. “We didn’t have a place to move to. Our house in Snina was not yet finished and the money we received as compensation was not enough. Finally, one day, policemen with gypsies came and took us to the unfinished house,” Marija Skircak recalls. “Even after twenty years we miss our village. We will never feel at home here,” she says.

The churches were destroyed by dynamite

The expellees’ worst memories are of the destruction of their houses. The Vodohospodárska výstavba firm of Bratislava, who financed the dam, purchased the houses from them. Some bought their houses back for a token fee and dismantled and moved them in pieces to use the material for building their new houses. Most people moved into the new apartments assigned to them. “Their houses were destroyed by state-owned firms, the roofs were burned and the walls destroyed by bulldozer,” František Kirnjak remembers the churches, called cerkvy, were blown up with dy­namite. “They could have left them as historical land­marks,” Kirnjak states. The old-timers from the villages believe that the demolition workers were punished. “It is said that everyone who worked on it died very early of an unnatural death,” according to Maria Karbač, a na­tive of Rus’kyj. Only the church in the village of Dara was left standing. The people from the village of Pryslup, about 30 kilometers away, protected it by promising to use it. Meanwhile, they have built their own church and they go to Dara to have just one service per year.

The exquisite pristine natural surroundings of the emptied villages is visited today by tourists. The tourist’s pass on Ruské sedlo includes an international bicycle­ tourism route into neighboring Poland. Near the village of Rus’kyj, Slovak environmentalists using Dutch money built a wildlife preserve, where bison are acclimatized before being released into open spaces. For the displaced villagers, this land will always remain their only home, even after more than twenty years living somewhere else.

Learn more about the history of the Staryna Valley:

• Documentary project about past and present life of displaced people of Rusyn minority from the region of water dam Starina: https://rusnaci.sittcomm.sk/
• Slovakia Genealogy Research Strategies: https://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/settlements/starina_reservoir.htm