Baloha's career developed in his home region of Transcarpathia before he moved to Kyiv. Our sources in Transcarpathia have explained how his home town of Mukachevo is considered to be a “village of hicks,” a rough place by its nature and a backwater with an uncultured mentality. The town's rival and administrative center of the oblast - Uzhgorod - is a very different city, led by different kinds of politicians. Both cities are similar in size. Yet competition between them has always been intense. This historic rivalry has been intensified by personal rivalries between Uzhgorod's Mayor Serhiy Ratushniak and Mukachevo's Baloha. This rivalry is made worse by Baloha's inferiority complex towards Transcarpathia's more cultured and intellectual city. Unlike Mukachevo, Uzhgorod has a long history as a regional center, with a sometimes vibrant art, cultural, and intellectual life.
Mukachevo's rough-hewn nature integrated with a very non-Ukrainian character to the city. After World War II, there was an influx of Russian and other Soviet nationalities to the new military bases, adding to the city's rough edge. Theatre and cultural life in Uzhgorod is in Ukrainian, while in Mukachevo Russian is the predominant cultural lingua franca. Uzhgorod is the center of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Transcarpathia while Mukachevo is the centre of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. Uzhgorod always adapted to the ruling dominant culture, while Mukachevo was a center of rebellion with a rougher working class culture that contributed historically to the popularity of extreme left groups.
Mukachevo continues to have a high proportion of Hungarians, Russians and remnants of local ethnic Germans (Shvabs). The city includes major centers of Hungarian culture of great importance to Hungarian national identity and historical memory. Among these is the Mukachevo Castle, the largest castle in Eastern Europe. The castle was recently leased to a business owned by the Baloha family, together with close friends and business acquaintances. Like many Transcarpathians, Baloha's ethnic roots are mixed, with a surname that is typically Hungarian. It is therefore ironic that the presidential secretariat has launched a campaign claiming that Yulia Tymoshenko is not “pure Ukrainian.” Of course, ethnic origins should not have any place in a democratic society built on civic citizenship.
Mukachevo is also the center of Transcarpathia's Rusyn movement and especially of its minority pro-Russian extremist wing. In March 2007, the Transcarpathian Oblast Council voted to recognize Rusyns as a distinct east Slavic nationality, a move that the council could never have taken without the support of Yushchenko's “crisis manager.”
It is indeed ironic that a president denounced by Moscow and perceived by eastern Ukrainians as a “nationalist” has a chief of staff who is a supporter of separate Rusyn identity. Baloha is not seen by the Rusyn movement, however, as someone who genuinely supports them. In the very likely event that Yushchenko loses the December 2009 presidential elections returning to Transcarpathia and seeking a base of support in the Rusyn movement could be one of Baloha's future options. After Yushchenko leaves office, Baloha will find it difficult to find a place in Ukrainian politics. Ukraine's next parliamentary elections are in 2012, but it is unlikely that any political force will include him on their list.
Earlier this year, the World Congress of Rusyns based in Slovakia and headed by Professor Paul Robert Magocsi of the University of Toronto, condemned the activities of Dmitriy Sydor and the organization he leads, the Soim (Parliament) of Subcarpathian Rusyns. Sydor is a priest in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church within the framework of the Moscow Patriarchate. The church is the largest religious body in present-day Transcarpathia, which traditionally had been a stronghold of the Greek-Catholic Church, as in the three oblasts of Galicia.
The State Security Service of Ukraine, known by its Ukrainian SBU acronym, has investigated the aggressively pro-Russian wing of the Rusyn movement in Transcarpathia. The pro-Yushchenko Ukrayina Moloda (Nov. 10, 2008) published details of the funding given to Sydor from Ruski Mir, a Russian government-funded non-governmental organization in Moscow. “Political technologist” Vyacheslav Nikonov headed the Politika Fund in Moscow with which Sydor has been cooperating since 2005. In 2007, President Vladimir Putin appointed Nikonov head of the newly-established Ruski Mir organization which Ukrayina Moloda described as, “a sub-structure of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.”
Transcarpathia's Rusyns, particularly the pro-Russian extremist wing, exhibit a strong sense of hatred towards Galician Ukrainians. This animosity is based on the assumption that Galicians are arrogant, a trait they allegedly inherited from Polish rule, and that they exhibit a strong sense of hatred towards everything Russian.
Mukachevo's urban ethnic mix has produced a somewhat crude Homo Sovieticus mentality, whose representatives speak a Ukrainian-Russian patois (surzhyk) without any modicum of empathy for the local Ukrainian culture found in the surrounding villages of Transcarpathia. Those who arrived in Mukachevo from the surrounding countryside, such as Baloha, were looked down upon by the chauvinistic urban Homo Sovieticus culture.
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