Rusyns
Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns, Carpatho-Russians, Ruthenians, or Rusnaks, are an East Slavic ethnic group from the Eastern Carpathians in Central and Eastern Europe. They speak Rusyn, an East Slavic language variety, treated variously as either a distinct language or a dialect of the Ukrainian language. As traditional adherents of Eastern Christianity, the majority of Rusyns are Eastern Catholics, though a minority of Rusyns practice Eastern Orthodoxy.
Rusyns primarily self-identify as a distinct ethnic group and are recognized as such in all countries where they exist, with the exception of Ukraine, which officially classifies Rusyns as a sub-group of Ukrainians. In Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, Rusyns have official minority status. Some Rusyns identify more closely with their country of residence, while others self-identify as a branch of the Ukrainian people.
Rusyns are descended from an East Slavic population that inhabited the northeastern regions of the Eastern Carpathians. In those regions, there are several Rusyn groups, including Dolinyans, Boykos, Hutsuls and Lemkos. Since the Revolutions of 1989 toward the end of the 20th century, there has been a revival in Rusyn culture and identity. Of the estimated 1.7 million people of Rusyn origin, only around 110,000 have been officially identified as such in recent national censuses.
Ethnonyms
The term Rusyn originates from the archaic ethnonym "Rus". The respective endonymic adjective has traditionally been , though has also been used; even more so after 1989. In interwar Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia was called in Czech; sometimes rendered Rusinia or Rusynia in American-Rusyn publications.Regional Identifiers
Carpatho-Rusyn or Carpatho-Ruthenian is the main regional designation for Rusyns, especially in North America. The term refers to Carpathian Ruthenia, which is a historical cross-border region encompassing Subcarpathian Rus', Prešov Region, the Lemko Region, and Maramureş. In the Lemko region, the endonym Lemko became more common in the twentieth century, along with Lemko-Rusyn since the 1990s.The variant Rusnak was also used as an endonym; particularly by Rusyns outside the Carpathians in Vojvodina, Serbia and Slavonia, Croatia. However, they may also referred to as Vojvodinian Rusyns, Bachka-Srem Rusyns, or formerly as Yugoslav Rusyns.
Other terms such as Ruthene, Rusniak, Lemak, Lyshak, and Lemko are considered by some scholars to be historic, local, or synonymic names for these inhabitants of Transcarpathia. Others hold that the terms Lemko and Rusnak are simply regional variations for Rusyns or Ruthenes. Rusyns have at times also been referred to as Uhro-Rusyn in the regions of Prešov, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia.
Carpatho-Russian
From the mid 1800s and well into the mid 1900s, many Catholic and Orthodox Rusyns in Europe and the United States referred to themselves as Carpatho-Russians or sometimes as Carpathian Russians. This terminology was also popular with some foreign authors and was and is still being used within the Rusyn diaspora.For example, the popular newspaper of the Byzantine Catholic Church in the U.S. for decades known as the ‘’, used the term Carpatho-Russian up until the 1950s.
As well, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, with as of 2010 over 10,400 members and 79 parishes in the United States and Canada, still uses the term Carpatho-Russian on a regular basis.
Finally, as of the 21st Century, one can often hear Rusyn Americans within the OCA and ROCOR Orthodox churches self-identify as Carpatho-Russian, and indeed, literature of both these Orthodox bodies commonly uses the terminology Carpatho-Russian to describe Rusyns.
Ruthenian
Since the end of the 11th century, the exonymic term Rutheni was also used by some Latin sources of western provenance as an alternative term for all East Slavs. During the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the scope of Rutheni gradually narrowed to only refer to inhabitants of the East Slavic regions that now mostly belong to the states of Belarus and Ukraine.After the Partitions of Poland, Rutheni "came to be associated primarily with those who lived under the Habsburg monarchy". In the Kingdom of Hungary, Ruthene was used as the official term for the Rusyn people of Transcarpathia until 1945. During the early twentieth century the term "became even more restricted: it was generally used to refer to the inhabitants of Transcarpathia and to Transcarpathian emigrants in the United States", for whom the terms Rusyn and Carpatho-Rusyn are more commonly used since the 1970s.
In some non-Slavic languages, Rusyns may be referred to by exonymic or somewhat archaic terms such as Carpatho-Ruthenes or Carpatho-Ruthenians, but such terminology is not present in the Rusyn language. Exonymic Ruthenian designations are seen as less precise because they encompass various East Slavic groups and bear broader ethnic connotations as a result of varied historical usage.
Rus'
Several endonyms such as Rus' and Rusyn were used widely by the East Slavs of Kievan Rus' during the medieval period. Common endonymic use of those terms continued through the life of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Parallel, medieval Latin terms such as Rusi, Russi or Rusci are found in sources of the period and were commonly used as an exonym for the East Slavs.History
Origins
There are different theories to explain Rusyn origins. According to Paul Robert Magocsi, the origin of the present-day Carpatho-Rusyns is complex and not exclusively related to the Kievan Rus'. The ancestors were the early Slavs whose movement to the Danubian Basin was influenced by the Huns and Pannonian Avars between the 5th and 6th centuries, the White Croats who lived on both slopes of the Carpathians and built many hill-forts in the region including Uzhhorod ruled by the mythical ruler Laborec, the Rusyns of Galicia and Podolia, and Vlach shepherds of Transylvania. It is thought that the Croats were part of the Antes tribal polity who migrated to Galicia in the 3rd-4th century, under pressure by invading Huns and Goths. George Shevelov also considered a connection with East Slavic tribes, more specifically, the Hutsuls, and possibly Boykos, argued to be the descendants of the Ulichs who were not native in the region. As the region of the Ukrainian Carpathians, including Zakarpattia and Prykarpattia, has since the Early Middle Ages been inhabited by the tribes of Croats, in Ukrainian encyclopedias and dictionaries, and the Great Russian Encyclopedia, the Rusyns are generally considered to be the descendants of the White Croats.Anthropology
According to anthropological studies, the Eastern Carpathian population makes one of the sub-regional clines of the Ukrainian population, which can be regionally divided into Eastern and Western Carpathian variants. In the study by M. S. Velikanova, the skulls from a medieval necropolis near the village of Vasyliv in Zastavna Raion were very similar to the contemporary Carpathian population, and according to S. P. Segeda, V. Dyachenko and T. I. Alekseyeva this anthropological complex developed in the Middle Ages or earlier, as descendants of the medieval Slavs of Galicia and carriers of Chernyakhov culture along Prut-Dniester rivers, possibly with some Thracian component. According to the data, the population has the lowest admixture in Ukraine of Turkic speaking populations, like Volga Tatars and Bashkirs, while in comparison to other populations they have similarities with neighbouring Eastern Slovaks, Gorals of Poland, Romanians, some groups of Czechs and Hungarians, Northwestern Bulgarians, Central and Northern Serbians, and most Croatians.Population genetics
The 2006 mitochondrial DNA study of Carpathian Highlanders – Boykos, Hutsuls and Lemkos people – showed a common ancestry with other modern Europeans. A 2009 mitochondrial DNA study of 111 samples found that in comparison to eight other Central and Eastern European populations, the three Rusyn groups have a greater distance between themselves than these populations, with Boykos showing the greatest distance from all and did not cluster with anyone because have atypically low frequencies of haplogroup H and J for a European population, while Lemkos are closest to the Czech and Romanian population, and Hutsuls closest to the Croatian and Ukrainian population.The 2014 Y-DNA studies of 200 Pannonian Rusyns in the region of Vojvodina, Serbia, found they mostly belong to haplogroup R1a, I2, E-V13, and R1b, while I1, G2a, J2b, N1 between 2.5 and 4.5%, and J1, T, and H only in traces of less than 1%. They cluster closest to the Ukrainian and Slovakian population, "providing evidence for their genetic isolation from the Serbian majority population". The 2015 Y-DNA study of 150 men from Zakarpattia and Chernivtsi Oblast, found they mostly belong to R1a1a1*, I2a, R1a1a1 ranging around and less than 30%, with E1b1b1a1, R1b1b2, and I1 ranging between 4-14%. The sampled population is most similar to other Ukrainians, while the Bukovina population slightly "differs from the typical Ukrainian population" because it has the highest percentage of I2a and the lowest percentage of R1a in Ukraine. Bukovina's percentage of I2 is similar to near Moldovan and Romanian population, while the highest percentage is among South Slavs in Western Balkans. It was concluded that although bordered by diverse nations, the Carpathians seemingly were a barrier decreasing gene flow southward of N1c, R1a from the region, and northward of E1b, R1b, J and G to the region.
Early history
The general usage of 'Rusyn' by East Slavs dates back to over 11 centuries, its origin signifying the ethnic tie to the political entity of Kievan Rus', which existed from the late ninth to the early 13th century. The East Slavs mixed with other peoples over centuries, including in the south with Iranian and later with Germanic peoples, in the west with Baltic peoples, in the east with Finnish and Turkic peoples.Over the centuries these loosely affiliated peoples developed different political and economic centers as well as new names. By 18th century the official names used by Russian Empire were Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russians. So by the mid-20th century the original name Rus or Rusyn was retained only in the Carpathian Mountains.
Rusyns settled in the Carpathian Mountain region in various waves of immigration from the north between the eighth and 17th centuries. Weapons and skeletons found in tombs in Bereg County from the 10th century era suggest that Norman Vikings were there as well. Even so, as late as the 11th century, this mountainous area was still a sparsely inhabited 'No-Man's Land' border between the kingdoms of Kievan Rus' and Hungary.
In 1241, the Carpathians fell to Mongol invasions led by Genghis Khan's grandson, Batu Khan, with populations exterminated and villages torched. The Mongols entered the region via the Veretski Pass, just to the north of Mukachevo.
In 1396, exiled Prince Theodor Koriatovich, member of the Lithuanian House of Gediminas, purchased the city of Mukachevo, settling himself in the city's Palanok Castle. He might have facilitated the migration of up to 40,000 from Podolia but the number is disputed. The arrival of Koriatovich and his retinue was a milestone for the Rusyns, substantially improving the region's administrative, ecclesiastical and cultural aspects. This included building and fortifying Mukachevo Castle with cannons, a moat, workers and artisans, and the founding of an Orthodox monastery on the Latorytsia River.