Lemkovina: Map of Lemkovina or West Carpatho-Russia
Philadelphia: Lemko Press, 1929. Lithographed folding map, approximately 32 x 40 inches, printed in pink and black. Original red wrappers printed in black. Modest wear along folds, a couple of small separations at crossfolds, light marginal toning. Wrappers with minor spine and edge wear, some separation. Very good. Item #5372
An extremely rare map of "Lemkovina," the homeland of the Lemko, an Eastern Slavic people from the Central Carpathian Mountains (where Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine meet in the present day). From the late-19th century to the 1920s, tens of thousands of Lemkos immigrated to the United States and Canada -- fleeing war, oppression and seeking better economic opportunities. Once in the United States, Lemko intellectuals founded institutions to preserve and promote Lemko culture in the New World and to lobby for sovereignty of the Lemko homeland. The present large-format map is an intriguing artifact of the Lemko-American immigrant experience. The map was drafted by the Lemko-American activist Dmitriy Vislocky and published by the Lemko Press in Philadelphia in 1929; it showcases the areas where the Lemko population prevailed, as well as areas of mixed Lemko-Slovakian and Lemko-Polish demographics.
In the 1920s, Lemko intellectuals in America, largely based in Pennsylvania, formed a movement to preserve Lemko culture, while lobbying for the eventual resurrection of an autonomous (if not sovereign) Lemko homeland -- Lemkovina. Lemko culture flourished in the U.S. and Canada, centered around halls and churches, and beginning in the 1920s, a handful of small printing presses were established to serve and educate the community, issuing Lemko-language almanacs, primers, newspapers, and pamphlets. One of the most important of these houses was the Lemko Press of Philadelphia, which under the leadership of Dmitriy Vislocky, published the Lemko Gazette. As a major part of their campaign to define "Lemkovina" and call for its eventual nationhood (presumably as a pro-Ukrainian sovereign state in opposition to both the Soviets and Poland), Dmitriy Vislocky and the Lemko Press produced the present map. As best we are aware, it is the only large format map of the period to specifically show Lemkovina as a distinct entity, and being published in Philadelphia, it stands as a remarkable feat of Lemko-American immigrant cartography.
The large format map, executed to the ample scale of 1:200,000, with text in Cyrillic, and lithographed from a hand-drawn template, shows the Polish-Slovakian frontier region (which today extends east into Ukraine), along the Central Carpathian Mountains, an area traditionally sometimes known as "West Carpatho-Russia." A very rugged and rural area, it is roughly framed by the Dunajec River in the west, and the San and Uzh Rivers in the east, and with the cities of Nowy S cz, Poland, to the northwest, and Košice, Slovakia, to the southeast. The map delineates all major rivers, roads and railways and locates cities, towns and villages. The legend below the title explains the color-coding employed to define demographic areas. Territory shaded in bold pink are of majority ‘Russian’ [meaning Lemko and Rusyn] population (i.e., core Lemkovina), while the areas covered by southwest-northeast hashed lines are of mixed Lemko/Rusyn-Slovakian population and the areas with northwest-southeast hashed lines are of mixed Lemko/Rusyn-Polish population. Beyond are labeled the lands of Poland (to the north), Slovakia (to the south), Eastern Galicia (to the northeast) and Sub-Karpatsky Russia (Ukraine, to the southwest), while the map defines the Polish-Czechoslovak border as it was then internationally recognized. While the map does not explicitly state that Lemkovina is a country, Dmitriy Vislocky’s sovereigntist direction of travel is nevertheless clear.
The present map is extremely rare. It was likely issued in a small print run and the survival rate of such fragile American immigrant publications is very low. We can trace only a single institutional example of the map, held by the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford University. Beyond that we are aware of only a single other example as having appeared on the market in the last twenty-five years.
Price: $2,250.00