Ruthenians
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| Total population |
|---|
| 68 million est. (57.5 mln Ukrainians, 10.5 mln Belarusians) |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Previously Ruthenia; (currently Ukraine, Belarus, Maramureş) also: Russia, Canada |
| Languages |
|
Previously Ruthenian; |
| Religion |
|
Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Protestant |
| Related ethnic groups |
|
Ukrainians, Belarusians, Rusyns and various Slavic peoples |
The name Ruthenian (Ukrainian: Русини, Руські, Rusyns, Rus') is a culturally loaded term and has different meanings according to the context in which it is used. Initially, it was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. Later it was used predominantly for Ukrainians. With the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism in the mid nineteenth-century, the term went out of use, first in eastern and central Ukraine, and later in western Ukraine.[citation needed] In western Ukraine (namely Carpathian Ruthenia), and among some emigré populations outside of Ukraine, its use has been retained on a small scale (see Pannonian Rusyns).
Contents |
[edit] Etymology
Originally, the term Rusyn was an ethnonym applied to the eastern Slavic-speaking ethnic group who inhabited the cultural and ethnic region of Rus' (Русь); often written through its Latin variant Ruthenia.
The names "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" were the Latin terms referring to Slavic Orthodox people (those who spoke the Ruthenian dialect) who lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[1] They inhabited the area that is now Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia (area around Bryansk, Smolensk, Velizh and Vyazma). It was also the ethnonym used by the Ukrainian kozaks to describe themselves.
After the area of White Ruthenia (Belarus) became part of the Russian Empire, the people of the area were often seen as a sub-group of Russians, and were often referred to as "White Russians" due to a confusion of the terms "Russia" and "Ruthenia."
Later "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" were used as a generic term for Greek Catholic, who inhabited Galicia and adjoining territories until the early twentieth-century; this group spoke Western dialects of the Ukrainian language and called themselves Русины, Rusyns (Carpatho-Russians).
The language these "Ruthenians" or "Ruthenes" spoke was also called the "Ruthenian language"; the name Ukrajins’ka mova ("Ukrainian language") became accepted by much of the Ukrainian literary class only in the early twentieth-century in Austro-Hungarian Galicia. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 the term "Ukrainian" was usually applied to all Ukrainian-speaking inhabitants of Galicia.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
"Ruthenians". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.- Rusyn on the Internet
