KULTÚRNE ASPEKTY VÝVOJA RUSÍNSKEJ A UKRAJINSKEJ MENŠINY NA SLOVENSKU V POVOJNOVOM DECÉNIU

In the last centuries the cultural development of the Ruthenian population in Slovakia was markedly influenced not only by its geographic position on the crossroads between East and West, by its traditional socio-economic backwardness and political immaturity of its representation, but also by its creative intelligentsia's inclination toward romanticism and their naive reaction for actual problems of the period. From the 19th century the cultural life of South Carpathian Ruthenians was evidently marked by certain conservatism, isolation and disability to join democratizing and liberating movements of that time. This situation was even worse in the Northeast Slovakia. For those reasons the first impulses of modernisation could be applied better in the period of the first Czechoslovak Republic, even if in a considerably more complicated social and political situation. On the other hand, there was a certain advantage against foretime, that particularly after 1948, the protection of culture and art became the subject of the state. The expansion of culture among the population of Northeast Slovakia was ensured by the four Ukrainian speaking cultural inspectorates in Bardejov, Snina, Stara Lubovna and Svidnik. In villages with Ruthenian and Ukrainian population libraries with Ruthenian and Ukrainian literature were created and the groups of artistic creativity began to work more strongly and deliberately.