Ruthenia

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There's an interesting history behind the territory that spanned the trail of the Carpathian Mountains!

I became interested in the country of Ruthenia and the history behind it's territory when I began my genealogical research into my Eastern European heritage. You see, all of my ancestors were of Eastern European descent. On my father's side, his ancestors traced from Ruthenia and Ukraine.

Ruthenia is a geographic and culturo-ethnic name applied to the parts of Eastern Europe populated by Eastern Slavic peoples, as well as to the past various states that existed in these territories. Today, the historical territory of Rus, in the broadest sense, is formed with parta of the lands of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, a small part of northeastern Slovakia and a narrow strip of eastern Poland.

Have you heard of Ruthenia and know where it is located? 

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Ruthenia at a glance 

Category: File - :Kievan Rus en.jpg|right|300px|thumb|10th century ancient Rus' region

Category: File - :Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Transcarpathian Rusyns in original goral folk-costumes from Maramure? ..jpg|250px|thumb|Rusyns from Transcarpathia in stage folk-costumes from Central Ukraine. Photo: Mokre, Sanok County (Poland). 2007

Category: File - :Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Sanok area Lemkos in original goral folk-costumes from Mokre (Poland) ..jpg|250px|thumb|Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Sanok area Lemkos in original goral folk-costumes from Mokre (Poland)

Category: File - :Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Przemy?l area Ukrainians in original goral folk-costumes..jpg|thumb|250px|Rusyn sub-groups - Przemy?l area Rusyns (Ukrainians) in original goral folk-costumes

Category: File - :Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Presov area Lemkos (left side) and Przemy?l area Ukrainians in original goral folk-costumes..jpg|250px|thumb|Carpatho-Rusyn sub-groups - Pre?ov area Lemkos (left side) and Przemy?l area Rusyns (Ukrainians) in original goral folk-costumes. Photo: Village Mokre near Sanok. 2007

Ruthenia is a geographic and culturo-ethnic name applied to the parts of Eastern Europe populated by Eastern Slavic peoples, as well as to the past various states that existed in these territories. Essentially, the word is a Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus. Today, the historical territory of Rus, in the broadest sense, is formed with part(s) of the lands of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, a small part of northeastern Slovakia and a narrow strip of eastern Poland.

The term "Ruthenia" may mean significantly different things, depending on to whom the term applies and the when, why, and to which period. It may refer to any of the following entities, appearing in rough chronological order:

Carpathian Ruthenia at a glance 

Carpathian Ruthenia, Category: List of acronyms and initialisms - : A#AK|aka Transcarpathian Ruthenia, Rusinko, Subcarpathian Rus, Subcarpathia (Rusyn and Ukrainian: ?????????? ????, romanised: Karpats'ka Rus'; Russian: ?????????? ????, romanised: Karpatskaya Rus'; Slovak and Czech: Podkarpatská Rus; ; ; ; ) is a small region in Central Europe, now mostly in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast (Ukrainian: Zakarpats'ka oblast'), easternmost Slovakia (largely in Pre?ov kraj and Ko?ice kraj), Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramure?. It is inhabited by Ukrainian, Rusyn, Lemko, Hungarian, Romanian, and Russian populations.

Rus, the country, at a glance 

:Name of Russia redirects here. See Name of Russia (Russia TV) for the television programme.

Originally, the name Rus (????, Rus') referred to the people, the region and the medieval states (9th to 12th centuries): Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' polities. The territories of the latter are today distributed among Belarus, Ukraine and a part of the European section of the Russian Federation. The name of Russia that came into use in the 17th century is derived from Rus.

To distinguish the medieval "Rus" state from other states that derived from it, modern historiography calls it "Kievan Rus'." Its predecessor, the 9th-century "Rus' Khaganate" is a somewhat hypothetical state whose existence is inferred from a handful of early medieval Byzantine and Persian/Arabic sources that mention that the Rus people were governed by a khagan.

"Rus" as a state had no proper name; by its inhabitants it was called "Ruskaya zemlya" (with Ruskaya alternatively spelled Rouskaya, Ruskaya, Rus'kaya, and Russkaya), which might be translated as "Rus land" or "Land of the Rus". In similar fashion, Poland is still called Polska by its inhabitants, and the Czech lands (?eské zem?) are sometimes called by the name ?esko.

Ruthenia info 

Ruthenia on Answers.com
A variety of information about Ruthenia from Answers.com.
Maps of Eastern Slovakia
An informative website of Eastern Slovakia Genealogy Research Strategies including many maps.
Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn Genealogy Research Pages
The Eastern Slovakia, Slovak and Carpatho-Rusyn Genealogical Research Page offers tools, resources, and information to help you search your Slovak or Carpatho-Rusyn family history and ancestry. You will also find links to a wealth of information on the area now known as Slovakia.
Carpatho-Rusyn Society
The Carpatho-Rusyn Society is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to manifesting Carpatho-Rusyn culture in the United States and supporting Rusyn culture in the Homeland in east central Europe. It works to educate Rusyns and non-Rusyns about Rusyn culture and history, and to support the development of Rusyn culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ruthenia factoids 

There is no ethnic or linguistic distinction between Ukrainians and Ruthenians.
  • The term was applied to Ukraine in the Middle Ages when the princes of Halych briefly assumed the title kings of Ruthenia.
  • Later, in Austria-Hungary, the term Ruthenians was used to designate the Ukrainian population of W. Ukraine, which included Galicia, Bukovina, and Carpathian Ukraine.
  • After 1918 the term Ruthenia was applied only to the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia, which was also known as Carpathian Ukraine, or by its Czech name, Podkarpatská Rus [Sub-Carpathian Russia]; for the history of this area from 1918, see Transcarpathian Region.
  • Culturally, however, the Ruthenians were distinct from the Ukrainians, especially after 1596, when the Orthodox Church of the Western Ukraine entered into union with the Roman Catholic Church, and after 1649, when a similar union was effected in Hungary.
  • The Ruthenian Uniate Church of the Byzantine (see Roman Catholic Church) thus included the majority of the Ruthenians in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while the Greek Orthodox Church was fully restored (17th cent.) in the Russian part of the Ukraine.
  • When all Ruthenians were united (1945) in Soviet Ukraine, government pressure resulted in the secession of the Ruthenian Uniate Church from Rome and its reunion with the Russian Orthodox Church.
  • In 1989 the Uniate Church broke with the Russian Orthodox Church and reestablished its ties with Rome.

Ruthenia in the news 

Art Kitchen by Ruthenia Alba - LJ Layout #011: Early Morning
Art Kitchen by Ruthenia Alba. Previous Entry · Next Entry · Recent Entries · Archive · Friends' Entries · User Info. LJ Layout #011: Early Morning. Links. Recent Entries · Previous 7 Entries · Friends Entries ...
Edward Lucas: Ruthenia
FOR connoisseurs of obscurity, the Republic of Carpatho-Ruthenia takes some beating. Seventy years ago, on March 15th, it enjoyed its sole day of independence?declared in the morning amid the Nazis' dismemberment of the then ...
ruthenia: Немзерески
ruthenia_mb ( [info] ruthenia_mb) wrote in [info] ruthenia, @ 2009-06-24 21:30:00. Previous Entry · Add to memories! Tell a Friend! Next Entry. ?????????? ???? ??????? ???????: http://www.ruthenia.ru/nemzer/saburov.html ...
When in Ruthenia . . .
But that doesn't seem to be the only place in the Ukraine with some ethnic nationalism issues, and a new report we've translated from Izvestiya after the jump tells the story of Moscow's possible assistance to the Ruthenians - an ethnic ...

Slavic peoples at a glance 

Category: Image - :Slavic europe.svg|thumb|Countries with majority Slavic ethnicities and at least one Slavic national language

The Slavic Peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern and central Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in Eastern Europe) to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans.Geography and ethnic geography of the Balkans to 1500 Many settled later in SiberiaFiona Hill, Russia ? Coming In From the Cold?, The Globalist, 23 February 2004 and Central AsiaRobert Greenall, Russians left behind in Central Asia, BBC News, 23 November 2005. or emigrated to other parts of the world.Terry Kirby, 750,000 and rising: how Polish workers have built a home in Britain, The Independent, 11 February 2006.Poles in the United States, Catholic Encyclopedia Over half of Europe is, territorially speaking, inhabited by Slavic-speaking communitiesThe Early Slavs. Culture and Society in Ealry Medieval Europe. P M barford. Cornell University Press. 2001. ISBN 0-9014-3977-9. Pg 1: In total, well over half of Europe is, in terms of territorial extent (if not demographically), inhabited by communities speaking one of the many Slav languages and dialects.

Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym "Slavs" are considerably genetically and culturally diverse and relations between them are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to feelings of mutual resentment. "Kundera emphasized that for a thousand years the Czechs never had any direct contact with Russia. In spite of their linguistic kinship, the Czechs and the Russians never shared a common world, neither a common history of common culture.(...) Joseph Conrad wrote that "nothing could be more alien to what is called in literary world "the Slavic spirit" than the Polish temperament with its chivalric devotion to moral constraints and its exaggerated respect for individual rights" History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. Robert Bideleux. Routledge 1998.(accentuation added. . From its beginning, Poland drew its primary inspiration from Western Europe and developed a closer affinity with the French and Italians, for example, than with nearer Slavic neighbours of Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine heritage. This westward orientation, which in some ways has made Poland the easternmost outpost of Latinate and Catholic tradition, helps to explain the Poles' tenacious sense of belonging to the "West" and their deeply rooted antagonism toward Russia as the representative of an essentially alien way of life.U.S. Library of Congress[http://countrystudies.us/poland/5.htm]accentuation added).

Slavic peoples are classified geographically into West Slavic (including Czechs, Kashubians, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks and Sorbs), East Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes). For a more comprehensive list, see Ethno-cultural subdivisions.

According to a 2007 genetic study[http://www.springerlink.com/content/c3ht013txp686v71/ Rebala K et al. (2007), Y-STR variation among Slavs: evidence for the Slavic homeland in the middle Dnieper basin'', Journal of Human Genetics, 52:406-14] based on Y-chromosome male haplogroups, Slavic men cluster into two main groups; one encompasses all Western-Slavic, Eastern-Slavic, and two Southern-Slavic male populations (western Croats, Slovenes), whilst the other group encompasses all remaining Southern Slavic men.

Rus, the people, at a glance 

Rus' (; , , ??????, ????) are the historic population of the medieval Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' whose name survives in the cognates Russians,at Encyclopedia Britannica Rusyns, and Ruthenians, and who are viewed by the modern Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians as the predecessors of their own peoples.

One of the earliest written sources mentioning the people called Rus in the form of Rhos dates back to year 839 AD in a Royal Frankish chronicle Annales Bertiniani, identified as a Germanic tribe called Swedes by the Frankish authorities.

According to the Kievan Rus' Primary Chronicle compiled in about 1113 the Rus were a group of Varangians, Norsemen, who had relocated from Scandinavia first to Northeastern Europe, then to south where they had created the medieval Kievan state.

Ruthenian woman 

Ruthenian woman from the former Kingdom of Ruthenia. By Augustus F. Sherman.

Throughout his tenure as a registry clerk with the Immigration Division of Ellis Island, Augustus F. Sherman systematically photographed more than 200 families, groups, and individuals while they were being held by customs for special investigations. This image was chosen in collaboration with Ellis Island and is from the book Ellis Island Portraits 1905-1920. It is one of Sherman's many striking portraits, which predate August Sander's cataloging efforts by several years.

Ruthenian wedding 

A large loaf, "wedding loaf," is prepared and baked by relations and friends invited for the purpose, who sing certain customary songs while the baking is in progress. Besides this "korowaj," smaller loaves of the same shape are made.

From "Customs of the World" by Walter Hutchinson 1931.

Ruthenian Spring Festival 

In spring, before sowing, the peasants say prayers on the field. Tapers are burnt in a three-branched candlestick between which and the dorn are placed two loaves of bread, the symbol of their hopes.

From "Customs of the World" by Walter Hutchinson 1931.

Ruthenia books 

The Carpathian Diaspora: The Jews of Subcarpathian Rus' and Mukachevo (East European Monograph)

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Litauen und Ruthenien; Lithuania and Ruthenia

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Our People: Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America

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Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture

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The Rusyn Name in History

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List Price: $29.95

Ruthenia collectibles 

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Drop me a note ... 

Are you researching your family's ancestry with Ruthenian origins? Had you heard of Ruthenia before?

dc64 wrote...

These lenses of yours are really going to come in handy since I'm researching people from that part of the world for my new castle lenses.

ReplyPosted July 08, 2009

lilkon wrote...

So wonderful to have a heritage to refer back to. I hope our ancestors never let their story die. I think about other countries whose peoples don't have this history....Pacific island, Africa to name a couple.

ReplyPosted June 14, 2009

 
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