Chronicler of Rusyn Life in America

Towards the centennial of the birth of American writer Thomas Bell (1903-1961)

Thomas Bell is considered to be the founder of Critical Realism in 20^th century American literature. Every Slovak and Czech encyclopedia and literature book presents him as an “American writer with Slovak roots.” But did he really have Slovak roots?

Bell himself wrote that his father Mikhajlo Belejčak came to Braddock PA in 1900 from the village of Vyšnij Tvarožec', Bardejov okres, Šariš county and considered himself to be a Rusyn. In 1902, he married a girl with roots in Vyšnij Tvarožec' named Marija Krakhunovska, who was born in America, and on 7 March 1903 she gave birth to a son, whose name church records have as being Thomas Adalbert Bejl. In 1914, Mikhajlo died in a furnace explosion in a Braddock steel mill, and Tom faced a difficult life: he sold newspapers, was a shoe-shine boy, helped out in shops, sold books and as a 15 year old, falsified his documents (making himself a year older) in order to get work in the steel mill where his father died. Those falsified documents followed him throughout his life, such that even serious investigators put the date of his birth as being 7 March 1902. Tom held several positions in various factories. For some time he worked on a ship and visited some foreign countries. Everywhere he went, he saw class antagonism between rich and poor, and, being a self-made man, he stood with the common folk.

In 1933, he married a Rusyn girl named Maria, who was to be his faithful companion throughout his life. They were married in the Greek Catholic Church.

Already in the 1920s, he began publishing articles and other materials on workers’ issues under the pseudonym Thomas Bell (which was an abbreviated form of his actual surname, Belejčak). In 1930, he published his first book, The Brood of Vasil (about emigrants from Prjašivska Rus’, Eastern Slovakia, in America).

In 1931, he moved to New York and became a professional writer. His novel All Brides are Beautiful (1936) earned him all-around praise (and money). The novel was turned into a film (From This Day Forward, 1946) by famous American director John Berry, with the no less famous actress Joan Fontaine in the main role. Bell wrote plays as well, which were performed in some of the most famous theatres in the world.

The apex of his literary work is his autobiographical novel Out of This Furnace, in which he describes the lives of three generations of immigrants from Eastern Slovakia in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania between 1881 and 1937. The first generation is made up of people who arrived in America before 1900, the generation of his grandfather. The main characters are Djuro Krecha of Zemplin and his friend Joe Dubik – “a Rusyn from Tvarožec’ in Šariš” (as the author himself characterizes Dubik). They work 12 hours a day, with no time for themselves and no social benefits (insurance, etc.). Their goal was to make enough money to return to eastern Slovakia and buy a parcel of land, to build a home and have a nice life there. Many of this generation perished (among them the Rusyn Dubik) from the difficult and unsafe working conditions.

The second generation –the generation of the author’s parents – is represented in the book by Mikhal (Mike) Belejčak and his dear wife Marči (Mary). They work ceaselessly, but always in conditions of “economic depression,” the result of which are frequent strikes which draw on their meager savings and ruin their dreams of making it big.

Michael dies in 1913 in an accident at the mill, and with three small children Mary has a rough time. She eventually gets tuberculosis and dies.

The final part takes up the third generation, which is already American-born. Dan-Dobie Belejčak, Mike’s son, and his wife Julka are the main characters here. They strike out on their own in the middle of the Great Depression. Dobie ends up a union leader against his will and fights with the director of the mill, whom he considers to be a total overlord who treats the workers as slaves. Dobie wins the battle, and earns great authority among the workers.

All three generations are united by Krecha, who came to America in 1881 and died in 1937 in the house of his grandson Dobie. Representatives of all three generations of immigrants attend his funeral.

Bell’s novel There Comes a Time (1946) found a great resonance in the press, and was translated into Slovak in 1951. The story takes place in a bank, and the main character is a Slovak emigrant named Joel Pane.

After the Second World War, Bell advocated locally for the political group “Warriors for Peace,” headed by the Soviet Union. Although he was on the political left, he was not a Communist. However, he did appreciate Soviet literature, and considered the prominent Soviet writer Maksim Gorkyj a role model. He traveled to Europe for a “Warriors for Peace” conference.

Bell’s final work, In the Midst of Life, appeared posthumously. He died on 17 January 1961 in New York, and is buried in a cemetery in Santa Cruz California. The book contains the sensitive notes of man sick with cancer, who describes his feelings, experiences and pain over the course of two years. The book has since appeared in many languages.

Thomas Bell was, indisputably, an American writer. But he never forgot the land of his forefathers. He remembered that at least his father and wife were Rusyns. No writer has described the life of Rusyns in America so clearly, with such a deep understanding of their psyche, mentality, pain and suffering, their spiritual and family life, as Thomas Bell. He can rightfully be held up as the chronicler of the first three generations of our immigrants on the American continent.

Thomas Bell as a Rusyn American

After reading Dr. Mušynka’s article, I went to the Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture to see what it had to say about Thomas Bell. Surprisingly, Bell was not there! After asking around, it turned out that some-one somewhere had decided that Bell had not made a significant enough contribution to Rusyn culture to merit inclusion in the encyclopedia. So I figured it was time to take a look at exactly what Bell’s contribution to Rusyn culture was.

It is true that throughout his life, Thomas Bell consistently maintained he was an ethnic Slovak. However, his family’s native village, Vyšnij Tvarožec’, was predominantly inhabited by Rusyns, and he was a Greek Catholic. These two facts cast doubt on whether Bell in fact was Slovak, and not Rusyn. According to Dr. Mušynka, Bell himself said that his father and wife were Rusyns, which means if nothing else Bell was at least partially of Rusyn descent.

What is indisputable are the facts that Bell was a son of immigrants, and a son of Western Pennsylvania. His work – Out of This Furnace in particular – explored the immigrant experience common to many in the region, which is home to the largest ethnic Rusyn population in North America. The description of the working-class Slavic immigrants’ struggle to survive in the United States is remarkably full, tackling not only their living and working conditions, but also the discrimination they faced from non-Slavic groups. The fact that the book deals with three distinct generations of a single family means that the reader gets a solid feel for the way im-migrant families grew and adapted to their new country.

The characters, however, are identified as Slovak. Only one is called a “Rusnak.” But they all are Greek Catholic, which can imply that they are assimilated Rusyns. A profile of Bell appeared in Carpatho-Rusyn American in the summer of 1991, and the Rusyn content in the book was enough to have it included in an over-view of Carpatho-Rusyn literature prepared by Bogdan Horbal in 1996.

As far as Bell’s contribution to Rusyn culture, I would argue that he has contributed as much as anyone else, if not more. Out of This Furnace is certainly the highest-profile book ever, bar none, which deals however tangentially with Rusyns. No other book with Rusyn content has ever had the impact on American – and international – literature that Out of This Furnace has had.

The book was originally published in 1941, and it remains in print today. A google search shows that it's taught in high schools and colleges all over the country, in American history, literature, regional history and even English-as-a-second-language courses. In 1990, Dave Demarest and Steffi Domike filmed a 20-minute video based on the novel, Out of This Furnace: A Walking Tour of Thomas Bell’s Novel.

While books written by Aleksander Duchnovyč or by Paul Robert Magocsi are more important to Rusyn culture as a whole, they cannot claim the renown that Out of This Furnace enjoys.

Andy Warhol appears in the encyclopedia, but he never acknowledged his Rusyn roots. Bell at least acknowledged his father’s (and thereby his own) Rusyn roots in his lifetime. Also, Bell’s work serves to illuminate many aspects of the Rusyn experience in North America, while Warhol’s work hardly shows any influence of Rusyn culture at all. In December 1999, Pittsburgh magazine declared Thomas Bell one of the “Pittsburghers of the Century.” It’s high time we all acknowledged him as one of the “Rusyns of the Century” as well.