KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 2, 2022 \u2013 In preparing for nine months\u2019 study in Pre\u0161ov, the third-largest city in Slovakia, Fulbright scholar Jay Rumas \u201921 anticipated certain challenges: the language barrier, COVID-19 complications, finding members of the tiny Slavic ethnic group, the Rusyns, central to his research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
War was not on his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rumas\u2019 host university, the University of Pre\u0161ov, is about 428 miles from the Ukraine capital of Kyiv. 溏心vlog免费B站 45% of its students are Ukrainian, Rumas says. A student of history and political science and an activist, his relative proximity to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has altered the tenor of his days. He\u2019s comforting friends frantic about their families\u2019 safety and participating in anti-war vigils. He\u2019s collecting food, clothing, and other items for refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an undergraduate, Rumas, of North Smithfield, Rhode Island,<\/strong> served on 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Student Senate and was vice president of the College Democrats and president of the University\u2019s American Civil Liberties Union chapter. He says he is ready to do what he can for the Ukrainian people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is where I should be. This is where the help is needed,\u201d Rumas says from his dormitory room on fifth day of the war. \u201cThis is where the story is. I\u2019ve gotten many texts from friends and family asking me how I am. I am fine. I\u2019m lucky to be behind a NATO border and to be safe. And I am doing much better than people a hundred miles from me are doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve never had the experience of having bombs go off 600 kilometers away from me, though,\u201d Rumas says. \u201cI\u2019m not threatened, but, still, it\u2019s something I never expected I would experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rumas\u2019 Fulbright research and scholarship is, in a sense, about conflict. He came to Pre\u0161ov to study the effect of populism on the Rusyns<\/a>, a minority Slavic group that accounts for less than 1% of the country\u2019s population of 5.4 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy initial goal was to conduct a study and perhaps publish in the realm of political science, but I\u2019ve realized how much ethnographic and sociological work I\u2019ve drawn upon to make that possible,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, I\u2019ve thought about exploring that, but I\u2019m still going to make a study of how the history of these people and their experience influences how they view and interact with politics today. I\u2019m interested in how they vote, how they view the European Union, and how they view Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the moment, though, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is top of mind. More than 670,000 Ukrainians have fled their homeland. And the refugee\u2019s plight is personal for Rumas. His maternal grandmother fled Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation in 1939. She was 10 years old. She and her family ended up settling in Ecuador, one of the few countries willing to accept refugees at the time, Rumas says. The family emigrated to the United States around 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Old family stories and recent memories of conversations with James Mace Ward, senior lecturer in modern European history at 溏心vlog免费B站, provide Rumas with a framework or a lens with which to view volatile global events. \u201cWe talked so often about Vladimir Putin\u2019s agenda about Ukraine and about past Soviet interventions in this region. My history education has helped me understand what is happening and what, perhaps, needs to be done to stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat gives me comfort that this is not the first time this has happened. And, unfortunately, it\u2019s probably not the last time this will happen. But we have the lessons. We\u2019ve learned things that might be able to help us solve these things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rumas says his Slovak and Ukrainian friends and acquaintances are afraid not only of what\u2019s happening in their homeland but also that Russia might expand the scope of its invasion. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s likely to happen, but whenever you have a conflict like this, tensions are high; people are angry. There\u2019s always the chance that it\u2019ll spill over into other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many in Slovakia are sympathetic to Ukraine, Rumas says, because they remember the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of his feelings at the moment, Rumas says he feels a sense of responsibility which fuels a determination. \u201cI\u2019m aware I\u2019m documenting things that may be very significant to world history. I came here to study the Rusyns but I also think it\u2019s valuable to document what\u2019s happening with the Ukrainians here in Eastern Slovakia and at the border\u2014and, of course, to help where I can. I want to use my presence here to help people. I want my work to be used for the betterment of society. I don\u2019t want to be a neutral observer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n