Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
234 Maruška Svašek itants.8 By now, almost all the houses were privately owned, and being mostly small-holdings the villagers depended in part on subsistence farming. The state farm was in the process of decollectivisation. By the time we arrived, the majority of the villagers still consisted of Ruthenians and their children. Other inhabitants included Czechs and a Slovak. The Soviet officers and soldiers who had been based in the village during the Cold War had already been demobilised and returned home. A typically 1960s-style apartment block which had previously housed the officers and their families was now occupied by the villagers, and the barracks had been turned into a home for physically and mentally handicapped children. Nearby there was also a now unused military radar post which was owned by the Czech Ministry of Defence. The village also included a number of larger buildings which had been built by the Sudeten Germans. The church, originally Roman Catholic, was now used by the Orthodox Ruthenians, and was reasonably well looked after. By contrast, the school, the parsonage, and the shop had been empty for many years, and were in a state of disrepair. When I first visited Vesnice, I was working on another project which was totally unrelated to the history of the Czech borderland. Yet over the following period of five years, I became increasingly interested in the village and its post- 1989 transformation. Between September 1996 and August 1998, I used the village as a base for a research project which mainly dealt with identity formation in the Bohemian- Bavarian border area in the light of political, economic and social changes. I slowly realised that “ownership” was one of the key issues which occupied the villagers. Lost property: the politics of nostalgia From the perspective of changing ownership, it is interesting to examine the attempts by the expellees from Vesnice to maintain a connection with their “lost" village. Their case, however, was not an isolated one. Since their expulsion, many expellees
