This is a history of a stateless people, the Carpatho-Rusyns, and their historic homeland, Carpathian Rus', located in the heart of central Europe. At the present, when it is fashionable to speak of nationalities as "e;imagined communities"e; or as transnational constructs "e;created"e; by intellectuals\ elites who may live in the historic "e;national"e; homeland or in the diaspora, Carpatho-Rusyns provide an ideal example of a people made-or some would say still being made-before our very eyes. The book traces the evolution of Carpathian Rus' from earliest pre-historic times to the present and the complex manner in which a distinct Carpatho-Rusyn people, since the mid-nineteenth century, came into being, disappeared, and then re-appeared in the wake of the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of Communist rule in central and eastern Europe.