Folklorica FULL 2025


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FOLKLORICA 2025, Vol. XXIX       

Amato, Anthony J. The Stark Carpathians: Ritual, Text, and Authority among 
Ukraine’s Hutsuls. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2024. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. 
Bibliography Index. xxvii+477 pp. $150 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-793 6-0838-3.  
 

With his second highly original book on the Hutsuls and their region, 
Anthony J. Amato is proving himself to be the most impressive American scholar 
of the subject. He already has authored a major work of environmental and 
economic history on the Hutsul region, The Carpathians, the Hutsuls, and 
Ukraine: An Environmental History (Lexington Books, 2021). These two hefty 
and learned volumes shed a penetrating light on the vagaries of the region as a 
physical and economic space and on the lifeworlds and dogged agency of the 
fascinating highland population of the Eastern Carpathians (today in Ukraine) 
known as the Hutsuls. The Hutsuls were for centuries a remote and relatively 
isolated pastoral and equestrian peasant folk dwelling in the frontier region that 
was the mountains, speaking an East Slavic dialect related to Ukrainian and 
professing the Greek Catholic faith. They also have a rich, compelling, if at times 
gruesome and raunchy, folklore. According to Amato, the Hutsul region, and not 
Transylvania, should be credited with supplying the vampires on which Bram 
Stoker’s Dracula was based. 

Amato’s work has been informed by his profound contact with the region 
and its people, already visible in his 1998 dissertation “In the Wild Mountains:  
Idiom, Economy, and Ideology among the Hutsuls, 1848 to 1939,” which was 
based on fieldwork in seven Hutsul villages: Dora, Holovy, Hryniava, Kosmach, 
Krasnoïlia, Kryvorivnia, and Sheshory. Instead of publishing that in lightly 
revised form, the author appears to have used what he learned, plus much 
additional reading and research, to write these two very different books. This one 
in particular gives evidence of a very close reading of his sources, be they archival 
or from the extant secondary literature, in at least seven languages and the Hutsul 
dialect. He also proves well read in the relevant anthropological literature. The 
notes amount to a hundred pages, suggesting—rightly—the learned nature of the 
book.   

The book’s title encapsulates its focus well. It is a study of Hutsul “culture 
as it was manifested in rituals and texts” in the period 1848 to 1939—that is, the 
period beginning with peasant emancipation under Habsburg rule through the 
interwar years under Polish rule (xiii).  Not easy to pigeonhole, the book is a work 
of ethnography, anthropology, history, and popular culture. The author de-
mythologizes the Hutsuls, claiming no particular special origins or nature for 
them, while still uncovering much that is novel and original. Already the 
introduction probes the application and use of the name “Hutsul” and the creation 
of the Hutsuls as an ethnographic group, as well as the highlanders’ relation to the 
authorities near and far, be they Habsburg or Polish officialdom, Greek Catholic 
clergy, or other non-Hutsuls. 

The first two chapters introduce the book’s thesis, the Hutsuls, and the 
region. Chapter 1 provides information on the range of sources utilized in The 
Stark Carpathians while highlighting the interplay of text and ritual to come. 



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FOLKLORICA 2025, Vol. XXIX       

Chapter 2 is a tour-de-force review of the history of the highland environment in 
which the Hutsuls functioned.  A veritable summary of Amato’s previous book of 
environmental history, the chapter could stand on its own for use in an 
environmental history course. 

With intriguingly cryptic and clever titles and penetrating, often unsettling, 
observations, the next thirteen substantive chapters shed light on various aspects 
of unexpurgated Hutsul life with all its rough and racy edges. The author takes an 
intertextual approach to the complexity of Hutsul texts and rituals, which he sets 
in context. Despite their relative isolation, as this book amply demonstrates, the 
Hutsuls were not so isolated as to lack contact with texts, that is, with the printed 
as well as spoken word. The former could come in the form of terse state 
documents, almanacs, scientific works, ethnographic studies, belles-lettres, and 
newspaper and travel accounts. These texts, together with Hutsul rituals, were 
creatively reconfigured or plumbed for new meanings by the Hutsuls, in a number 
of instances not in keeping with the purported purpose of a given text.  

Chapters 3 and 4 deal with the Greek Catholic clergy who ministered to the 
Hutsuls. The first of these, “Bisons and Lutherans,” focuses on the priests and 
their leanings, including the Russophiles (the titular “bisons”), and how the 
Hutsuls saw them. Chapter 4, “Pagans and Calvins,” presents the seemingly less-
than-orthodox beliefs of the lightly churched Hutsuls as well as their relations 
with the authority that was the clergy.  

Chapter 5, “Not in Our Club,” interestingly investigates peasant literacy. 
Amato debunks the myth that all Hutsuls were illiterate (literacy rates were 
rising), while also explaining what the challenges were—and how Hutsuls 
variously interpreted what they read. Also based on Hutsul readings, “Astrology 
and Folkhealing” as well as hydrotherapy—which became all the rage among 
tourists in the region—are the subject of chapter 6. Chapter 7, “Peasants, Priests, 
and the Plow” shows how conflicting messages about land cultivation were 
conveyed by Greek Catholic clergy to the Hutsuls, traditionally a pastoral people.  

The next three chapters deal with various aspects of Hutsul political life. 
Chapter 8, “Marching in the Hollows,” sheds light on internal village politics and 
shows how highlanders joined clubs and political organizations—the most 
noteworthy of these being the radical gymnastics and firefighting organization 
known as Sich. Dealing with the language of politics, “Don’t Cry, Satan” analyzes 
the Švejk-like stereotype of the “stupid Hutsul,” used by the highlanders to their 
advantage, as well as one of the most striking historical aspects of highland life, 
brigandry, which nineteenth-century Hutsuls came to romanticize as the 
quintessence of freedom. Chapter 10, “Cossacks and Heretics,” engages with 
various Hutsul narratives and considers how Hutsuls ultimately came to embrace 
the Cossack heritage.  

The final five substantive chapters provide insight into various aspects of 
Hutsul rituals and culture and the controversies surrounding them during this 
period. “Vampire Collusion and the Ungrateful Dead” covers how Hutsuls dealt 
with vampires and witches in their midst. A thoughtful chapter 12 considers the 
relationship between the titular “Belief and Superstition.”  Chapter 13, “Godless 



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FOLKLORICA 2025, Vol. XXIX       

Carols,” is a penetrating study of the Hutsul tradition of caroling from house to 
house at Christmastime. Chapter 14, “Playing Dead,” examines the seemingly 
frivolous games traditionally played at wakes. And “It’s All Over but the 
Splashing” deftly deals with the gendered and generational uses and abuses of 
water on “Drenched” or “Wet” Easter Monday.  

A succinct yet insightful conclusion ties the threads together. In sum, 
Hutsuls are shown to be the ultimate producers of their own Hutsul-ness. This 
identity can appear inconsistent or off-putting to readers and observers. In any 
case, it stood apart from the stereotypes or mythologized versions of Hutsuls 
propagated by outsiders. That said, Hutsuls did not create Hutsul-ness in a vacuum 
but rather interacted with ethnographic and other texts about them. Hutsul-ness 
increasingly became performative.  

The Stark Carpathians is a thorough and thought-provoking analysis of 
Hutsul lifeworlds. It should be noted that, in keeping with his field research, 
Amato focuses mainly on the experience of Hutsuls living within Austrian Galicia 
and the Second Polish Republic, not their brethren in 
Hungary/Czechoslovakia/Transcarpathia or Bukovyna/Romania. However, he 
does occasionally refer to texts that touch upon those regions. The reader 
interested in Hutsuls, ethnography, or popular culture will be amply rewarded.  
This reviewer’s one major beef is with Lexington Books: the binding is poorly 
done, resulting in the occasional loose page on first turn. The book deserves better. 

Patrice M. Dabrowski 
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute 
Boston, Massachusetts 
pmd639@g.harvard.edu