Kercha, Igor

Kercha, Igor (pseudonyms: Igor Diurych, Ivan Hutnyk, Slavko Slobodan) (b. February 20, 1943, Goronda [Karpatalja, Hungary], Ukraine) — cultural activist and poet of Rusyn national orientation in Subcarpathian Rus’. Kercha is the son of the poet Ivan *Kercha. After finishing high school (serednia shkola) in Uzhhorod Igor Kercha studied physics at Uzhhorod State University (1960-1965) and computer science at the Engineering and Construction Institute/Inzhynerno-budivel’nyi institut in Kiev (1971-1973). For nearly three decades he worked as a technical specialist (1967-1995) at the Computer Center/Mekhanychnyi zavod in Uzhhorod.

Despite his technical training, Kercha has devoted much effort toward codifying a Rusyn literary language for Subcarpathian Rus’. He is the co-author of the first modern grammar of the Subcarpathian variant of Rusyn, Materyns’kyi iazyk: pysemnytsia rusyns’koho iazyka (1999), has compiled a reader for Rusyn “Sunday schools” (Uttsiuznyna: chytanka pro nedil’ni shkoly, 2001), and is working on Rusyn-Russian and Russian-Rusyn dictionaries, each containing nearly 30,000 words. He has also begun a series of translations of world literature into Rusyn, including the poetry of the Hungarian Sandor Petofi (1998) and the prose of the Czech Ivan *Olbracht (2001). Kercha’s own Rusyn-language poetry, published mostly in Subcarpathian newspapers, appears under the pseudonym Slavko Slobodan.

Paul Robert Magocsi

Entry courtesy of Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture.
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