Ruthenians

Ruthenians

The English term Ruthenian, also Ruthene, also Rusyns, (Russian: Русины, Ukrainian: Русини, Руські, Rusyn: Русины); Latin Ruthenia, is a well established if sometimes obsolete exonym originally used for the people of Rus, primarily the medieval kingdom of Kievan Rus', comprising parts of modern-day Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. The term is culturally loaded and has various meanings in different contexts. For example, in 2008 a controversy arose accusing Ruthenian (Zakarpattia Oblast) archpriest Dmytro Sidor of the Moscow Patriarchy of anti-Ukrainian separatist activities.

Historically, Ruthenian was the ethnonym used for the East Slavic peoples who lived in Rus'. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia the term was used predominantly to refer to East Slavs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or to Ukrainians or Little Russians of the Russian Empire as opposed to Great Russians centered on Moscow. With the emergence of Ukrainian nationalism in the mid nineteenth-century, the term went out of use in what is now eastern and central Ukraine, with modern-day western Ukraine (namely Carpathian Ruthenia) remaining part of Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. In the interbellum period the term was also used in the Second Polish Republic for people from the Kresy Wschodnie. Today it is predominantly used as autonym by the people of Zakarpattia Oblast and by some émigré populations outside of Ukraine. Its use has also been retained on a small scale for such groups as the Pannonian Rusyns and by Ruthenian Catholics using the Byzantine Rite under the Pope within the Catholic Church.