Fedor Vico and Rusyn Cartooning

Rusyns have made quite an impact in the field of cartooning in the North America. Steve Ditko, one of the creators of Spiderman, was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Three of his four grandparents were Rusyns born in what is now Slovakia. Spiderman premiered in August 1962, and has since become an American cultural icon. Ditko recently collaborated on the screenplay for the 2002 blockbuster feature film, directed by Sam Raimi.

John Kricfalusi, a Canadian of Rusyn descent, created the cult classic cartoon series “Ren and Stimpy” for Nickelodeon in 1990. According to a Canadian Ukrainian publication, “John's grandparents Ivan and Halyna Kricfalusi were born in Carpatho-Ukraine [ed., Subcarpathian Rus].” Ivan Kricfalusi was an Orthodox priest, who led the building of a church in Sarnia, Ontario.

That same article states that “When John was contacted by the Windsor Viter first by email, he replied ‘I would be happy to give an interview for my fellow Ukrainians.’” However, when Esquire magazine profiled him in February 1997, he included the Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base (www.carpatho-rusyn.org) in a sidebar listing his favorite websites.

By far, however, the most important Rusyn cartoonist is Fedor Vico.

Political cartoons as we know them today can be traced to 17^th century English satirical artists who combined two previous traditions: the Dutch tradition of allegorical engravings which used crowds to represent political situations, and the Italian tradition of caricature as a political statement.

The basic underpinning of political cartoons is satire, and according to one scholar, “the cartoon… tends to be excessive and, in order to ensure its effectiveness, it must be joking, ironic, irreverent, iconoclastic, acidic, satirical, subversive and - when the subject merits it - even has to be heartless, cruel, violent, intolerant and rude.” The basic idea is to use fear of ridicule as a means of influencing those who possess power in society.

Analogously, the ridiculing of those who possess power can empower those who are powerless. “Cartooning, in effect, cuts the powerful down to the size of the rest of us mortals, converts them into human beings with all our defects and turpitude.”

Political cartoons do not have to be merely mirrors of society, however. They can take an active role in forming public opinion. “It is where the political imagination is created,” according to French historian Michel Vovelle.

Though they may be largely unaware of the magnitude of his significance, the Rusyns have among them an internationally prominent political cartoonist whose works have both influenced those in power and empowered the powerless; they have both reflected society and tried to influence it.

Fedor Vico was born in Šapinec, a village in northeastern Slovakia, but never spent much time there, since his parents moved around Czechoslovakia frequently. Vico studied at the School of Industrial Arts in Bratislava, at which time his first cartoons were published in a Slovak magazine, Rohač. In 1962, he settled in Prešov, and in the late 1960s his career as a political cartoonist began to take off. His works were published in a variety of Czech periodicals, which made him renowned throughout the country as “one of the most incisive critics of Czechoslovakia’s Communist system,” according to Paul Robert Magocsi.

Throughout the 1960s, Vico got caught up in the brewing social unrest, and once the Soviet army invaded in 1968, he fell out of favor with the authorities and had trouble getting his work published. As time passed, his work became published more and more, and his renown grew.

In 2001, a collection of his work called Il'ko Sova from Bajusovo: A Selection from a Series of Drawings, was published in Slovakia in a tri-lingual Slovak, English and Rusyn edition. The book documents two specific periods in Vico’s career, both of which relate to the Rusyn people.

The first period runs from 1974 to 1984. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Vico no longer had access to the wide range of publications he had enjoyed previously. He was fired from Družno vpered (Forward in Friendship), the monthly magazine of the Cultural Union of Ukrainian Workers in 1968 and went to work for the same group’s weekly newspaper Nove Žyttia (New Life). It was at this time that he began the “Il’ko Sova from Bajusovo” series.

The cartoons concentrated on political themes: censorship, work under the Soviet regime, dealings with the government (bribes were both a fact of life and a major theme for Vico), and state propaganda. Non-political themes in this group of cartoons include more basic, day-to-day issues such as lack of respect among young people for their elders, aging, alcoholism and nagging wives.

The newspaper was published in Ukrainian, in Cyrillic, which helped him evade censorship to a large degree. Few Czechoslovak censors knew Ukrainian, and the newspaper’s readership was not large enough to merit much attention. His cartoons were published in Rusyn even though the rest of the paper was in Ukrainian, which further confused the censors. From 1974 to 1984, Vico published over 400 cartoons in Nove Žyttia, but the censors finally did catch up with him; the “Il’ko Sova” series was banned in 1984.

The second period covered in the book begins with the founding of the Rusyn-language newspaper Narodny Novynky in 1991, and continues through the present day. Vico’s cartoons have been published on the front page of virtually every issue of the paper since its founding. Though the cartoons continue the “Il’ko Sova” series begun in Nove Žyttia, the central feature of almost all of the cartoons from the second stage is the issue of Rusyn national identity. The national motto “Ja Rusyn Byl, Jesm i Budu” (I was, am and will be a Rusyn) appears over and over again in these cartoons, along with the controversial relationship between the Rusyns and Ukrainians, minority rights (particularly while Vladimir Mečiar was prime minister, from 1994 to 1998), and the question of the Rusyn language.

The cartoons attack one and all, from the chauvinistic Ukrainians to the condescending Slovaks to the bumbling Rusyns themselves. Special attention is placed on those Rusyns who identify as Ukrainians, and those Rusyns who are assimilated into the Slovak nation.

It is through this second “Il’ko Sova” period that Vico has become a driving force in the Rusyn movement in Slovakia. ”Not only has Vico participated in all Rusyn-related cultural events, he has also been an active member of the Rusyn Renaissance Society since its establishment in 1990 and an officer of its executive board since 1996,” Magocsi points out. Vico’s prominent place in Rusyn society ensures that his cartoons – certainly worthy of attention on the basis of their own value – reach a wide audience. So far, Vico’s cartoons are the closest thing the Rusyns have to a pop culture.

Throughout 2003, Vico entered a new phase in his “Il’ko Sova” series which is not covered by the scope of the book. These most recent cartoons, featured in Narodny Novynky, expand the scope of the series from a hard look at the local Rusyns, to an investigation of how national and international events affect the Rusyn people.

The cartoon published on 19 March 2003 shows Il’ko talking to a representative of Slovak national radio. He tells the man, “Aside from me, there’s no one else living here. Some went to Nato, others to the EU, and I’m just waiting to see if I’ll be moved to Košice like our radio.” Not only does the cartoon touch on the Slovak bids for membership in Nato and the EU which were highly topical on the international stage at the time, but it also includes criticism of Slovak radio. At that time, the ethnic broadcast division – which includes the Rusyn-language broadcast team – was transferred from Prešov to Košice, a move which the Rusyns loudly protested.

The next month, April 2003, saw the start of the United States-led war in Iraq, and even though there was no connection between the war and the Rusyns, Vico found he had something to say. His cartoon from 2 April dealt with the stirrings of war, and his cartoon from 30 April sees Il’ko telling a passer-by, “Why should we worry about some place in Iraq? And we can’t even win regular Rusyn broadcasts on Prešov radio.” Like the 19 March cartoon, this one easily blends events affecting the Rusyns, Slovakia and the world as a whole.

His cartoon from 6 August also brings the war in Iraq together with the Rusyn condition. In it, Il’ko tells a friend in the local bar, ”Here, these inspectors would search in vain for weapons of mass destruction. All they’d find are empty bottles.” Alcohol in a sense has in fact been a “weapon of mass destruction” among the Rusyns, given the traditionally high rate of alcoholism among the people.

Other cartoons from 2003 deal with Slovakia’s successful bid to join the EU and NATO. In the 14 May cartoon, Il’ko tells his son, who is leaving the village, “And if you can’t find a place for yourself in this European Union, you can always come home. Here, in our bar, you’ll always find a place.” In the 25 June cartoon, a Rusyn speeding past Il’ko on the street yells out his car window, “After this referendum, we’re already on the road to the European Union – no one will stop us!” In mid-May, Slovak voters, Rusyns among them, went to the polls and voted overwhelmingly in the referendum – nearly 93 percent of voters expressed their support for the country joining the EU.

The referendum also popped up in Vico’s 3 September cartoon. An interviewer asks Il’ko, “Can you tell us whether you voted for EU entry in the referendum?” Il’ko naively responds, “Is it that obvious?”

This move away from introspective insights into the Rusyn community towards more outward-looking themes is significant, not only in Vico’s work but also in the Rusyn community as a whole. On 1 May 2004, the Rusyns of Slovakia, along with those of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, will find themselves citizens of the European Union. They would be wise to follow Vico’s example, and prepare themselves for the major changes this will bring. On the one hand, these Rusyns will find themselves in a much more secure place as an official minority with the EU; on the other, they will be cut off from their cousins in Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine. Fedor Vico stands prepared to help show the Rusyns the way forward.