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Ruthenia[a] is anexonym, originally used inMedieval Latin, as one of several terms forRus'.[1] Originally, the termRus' land referred to a triangular area, which mainly corresponds to the tribe ofPolans inDnieper Ukraine.[2]Ruthenia was used to refer to theEast Slavic andEastern Orthodox people of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania and theKingdom of Poland, and later thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth andAustria-Hungary, mainly toUkrainians and sometimesBelarusians, corresponding to the territories of modernBelarus,Ukraine,Eastern Poland and some of westernRussia.[3][4][5][6]
Historically, in a broader sense, the term was used to refer to all the territories underKievan dominion (mostly East Slavs).[7][8]
TheKingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts ofWestern Ukraine, was referred to asRuthenia and its people asRuthenians.[5] As a result of aUkrainian national identity gradually dominating over much of present-day Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the endonymRusyn is now mostly used among a minority of peoples on the territory of theCarpathian Mountains, includingCarpathian Ruthenia.[9]
The wordRuthenia originated as aLatin designation of the region its people calledRus'. During the Middle Ages, writers in English and other Western European languages applied the term to lands inhabited byEastern Slavs.[10][11]Rusia orRuthenia appears in the 1520 Latin treatiseMores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti byJohann Boemus. In the chapterDe Rusia sive Ruthenia, et recentibus Rusianorum moribus ("About Rus', or Ruthenia, and modern customs of the Rus'"), Boemus tells of a country extending from theBaltic Sea to theCaspian Sea and from theDon River to the northern ocean. It is a source ofbeeswax, itsforests harbor many animals with valuablefur, and the capital cityMoscow (Moscovia), named after theMoskva River (Moscum amnem), is 14 miles in circumference.[12][13]Danish diplomatJacob Ulfeldt, who traveled toMuscovy in 1578 to meet withTsar Ivan IV, titled his posthumously (1608) published memoirHodoeporicon Ruthenicum[14]("Voyage to Ruthenia").[15]
In Kievan Rus', the nameRus', orRus'ka zemlia (land of Rus'), described the lands betweenKiev,Chernihiv andPereyaslav, corresponding to the tribe ofPolanians, which started to identify themself as Rus' (Ukrainian:Русь, Русини) approximately in 9th century.[16]
In a broader sense, this name also referred to all territories under control ofKievan princes, and the initial area of Rus' land served as theirmetropole, yet this wider meaning declined when Kiev lost its power over majority of principalities.[17] After theMongol Invasion of Kievan Rus' and a massive devastation of the core territory, the nameRus' was succeeded byGalician-Volhynian principality, which declared itself asKingdom of Rus'.
European manuscripts dating from the 11th century used the nameRuthenia to describeRus',[citation needed] the wider area occupied by the early Rus' (commonly referred to asKievan Rus'). This term was also used to refer to the Slavs of the island ofRügen[18] or to other Baltic Slavs, whom 12th-century chroniclers portrayed as fierce pirate pagans—even thoughKievan Rus' had converted to Christianity by the 10th century:[19][need quotation to verify]Eupraxia, the daughter ofRutenorum rexVsevolod I of Kiev, had married the Holy Roman EmperorHenry IV in 1089.[20] After the devastatingMongolianoccupation of the main part of Ruthenia which began in the 13th century, western Ruthenian principalities became incorporated into theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, after which the state became called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia.[21][22] ThePolish Kingdom also took the title King of Ruthenia[23] when it annexed Galicia. These titles were merged when thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed. A small part of Rus' (Transcarpathia, now mainly a part ofZakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine), became subordinated to theKingdom of Hungary in the 11th century.[24] The Kings of Hungary continued using the title "King of Galicia and Lodomeria" until 1918.[25]
By the 15th century, theMoscow principality had established its sovereignty over a large portion of former Kievan territory and began to fight Lithuania over Ruthenian lands.[26][27] In 1547, the Moscow principality adopted the title ofThe Great Principat of Moscow and Tsardom of the Whole Rus and claimed sovereignty over"all the Rus'" — acts not recognized by its neighbour Poland.[28] The Muscovy population wasEastern Orthodox and preferred to use the Greek transliterationRossiya (Ῥωσία)[29] rather than the Latin "Ruthenia".
In the 14th century, the southern territories of Rus', including the principalities ofGalicia–Volhynia andKiev, became part of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, which in 1384 united withCatholicPoland in a union which became thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Due to their usage of theLatin script rather than theCyrillic script, they were usually denoted by theLatin nameRuthenia. Other spellings were also used in Latin,English, and other languages during this period.[citation needed] Contemporaneously, theRuthenian Voivodeship was established in the territory ofGalicia-Volhynia and existed until the 18th century.
These southern territories include:
TheRussian Tsardom was officially calledVelikoye Knyazhestvo Moskovskoye (Великое Княжество Московское), theGrand Duchy of Moscow, until 1547, althoughIvan III (1440–1505,r. 1462–1505) had earlier borne the title "Great Tsar of All Russia".[30]
During the early modern period, the termRuthenia started to be mostly associated with theRuthenian lands of the Polish Crown and theCossack Hetmanate.Bohdan Khmelnytsky declared himself the ruler ofthe Ruthenian state to the Polish representativeAdam Kysil in February 1649.[31][failed verification]
TheGrand Principality of Ruthenia was the project name of the Cossack Hetmanate integrated into thePolish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth.[citation needed]
The use of the termRus/Russia in the lands of Rus' survived longer as a name used byUkrainians for Ukraine.[citation needed] When theAustrian monarchy made the vassal state ofGalicia–Lodomeria into a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the localEast Slavic people were distinct from bothPoles andRussians and still called themselvesRus. This was true until the empire fell in 1918.[32]
In the 1880s through the first decade of the 20th century, the popularity of theethnonymUkrainian spread, and the termUkraine became a substitute forMalaya Rus' among the Ukrainian population of the empire. In the course of time, the termRus became restricted to western parts of present-day Ukraine (Galicia/Halych,Carpathian Ruthenia), an area where Ukrainian nationalism competed withGalician Russophilia.[33] By the early 20th century, the termUkraine had mostly replacedMalorussia in those lands, and by the mid-1920s in the Ukrainian diaspora inNorth America as well.[citation needed]
Rusyn (the Ruthenian) has been an official self-identification of the Rus' population in Poland (and also inCzechoslovakia). Until 1939, for many Ruthenians and Poles, the wordUkrainiec (Ukrainian) meant a person involved in or friendly to a nationalist movement.[34]
After 1918, the nameRuthenia became narrowed to the area south of theCarpathian Mountains in theKingdom of Hungary, also calledCarpathian Ruthenia (Ukrainian:карпатська Русь,romanized: karpatska Rus, including the cities ofMukachevo,Uzhhorod, andPrešov) and populated byCarpatho-Ruthenians, a group of East Slavic highlanders. While Galician Ruthenians considered themselves Ukrainians, the Carpatho-Ruthenians were the last East Slavic people who kept the historical name (Ruthen is a Latin form of the Slavicrusyn). Today, the termRusyn is used to describe the ethnicity and language ofRuthenians, who are not compelled to adopt theUkrainian national identity.
Carpathian Ruthenia (Hungarian:Kárpátalja,Ukrainian:Закарпаття,romanized: Zakarpattia) becamepart of the newly founded Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919, it was incorporated with nominal autonomy intoCzechoslovakia asSubcarpathian Rus'. Since then, Ruthenian people have been divided into three orientations:Russophiles, who saw Ruthenians as part of the Russian nation;Ukrainophiles, who like their Galician counterparts across the Carpathian Mountains considered Ruthenians part of the Ukrainian nation; and Ruthenophiles, who claimed that Carpatho-Ruthenians were a separate nation and who wanted to develop a nativeRusyn language and culture.[35][verification needed]
In 1938, under the Nazi regime in Germany, there were calls in the German press for the independence of a greater Ukraine, which would include Ruthenia, parts of Hungary, the Polish Southeast including Lviv, the Crimea, and Ukraine, including Kyiv and Kharkiv. (These calls were described in the French and Spanish press as "troublemaking".)[36]
On 15 March 1939, the Ukrainophile president of Carpatho-Ruthenia,Avhustyn Voloshyn, declared its independence asCarpatho-Ukraine. On the same day, regular troops of the Royal Hungarian Army occupied and annexed the region. In 1944 theSoviet Army occupied theterritory, and in 1945 it was annexed to theUkrainian SSR. Rusyns were not an officially recognized ethnic group in theUSSR, as the Soviet government considered them to be Ukrainian.
A Rusyn minority remained, after World War II, in easternCzechoslovakia (nowSlovakia). According to critics, the Ruthenians rapidly becameSlovakized.[37] In 1995 the Ruthenian written language became standardized.[38]
FollowingUkrainian independence and dissolution of the Soviet Union (1990–91), the official position of the government and some Ukrainian politicians has been that the Rusyns are an integral part of the Ukrainian nation. Some of the population ofZakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine have identified as Rusyn (or Boyko, Hutsul, Lemko etc.) first and foremost; a subset of this second group has, nevertheless, considered Rusyns to be part of a broader Ukrainian national identity.
In 1844,Karl Ernst Claus, Russian naturalist and chemist ofBaltic German origin, isolated the elementruthenium fromplatinum ore found in theUral Mountains. Claus named the element afterRuthenia to honorRussia.[39]
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Besides the Greco-Byzantine termRosia to describe Rus', Latin documents used several related terms –Ruscia,Russia,Ruzzia – for Kievan Rus' as a whole. Subsequently, the termsRuteni andRutheni were used to describe Ukrainian and Belarusan Eastern Christians (especially members of the Uniate, later Greek Catholic, Church) residing in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The German, French, and English versions of those terms –Ruthenen,Ruthène,Ruthenian – generally were applied only to the inhabitants of Austrian Galicia and Bukovina of Hungarian Transcarpathia.
Rvcia hatte Rutenia and is a prouynce of Messia (J. Trevisa, 1398).
From the linguistic standpoint, the results of this catastrophe [the Mongol invasion] somewhat resemble the collapse of the Roman empire for the latin-speaking peoples. Like the great 'Romania' of the Western Middle Ages, there was a great 'Ruthenia' in which common linguistic origin and some measure of mutual comprehensibility was assumed.
[...] [Jacob Ulfeldt's]Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum ['Ruthenian Journey'] (Frankfurt, 1608 [...]) [...].
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)«Le Figaro» [...] la creación de una Ucraina independiente [...] un mapa de los territorios de raza ucrainiana en que se incluye a la Rutenia, una parte de Hungría, el sureste de Polonia con la ciudad de Lwow, y toda la Ucraina soviética, con Crimea y las ciudades de Kiev y Jarkov
