www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News EWTN program on the Ruthenians today, but I didn't know it until we saw it on there

Oh also one other thing. I have cousins in Ternopol and somewhere else nearby the Soviets would not allow us to visit. They were there as a result of Operation Vistla. I know that my Grandfather's nephew's children all believe they are Ukranian...again, forgotten history.

Go Nonna! They even changed their last name like ten years after being here, just one letter at the end. No one has a clue why. I miss my great aunts and uncles that talked with that accent. My one aunt made pascha bread and pierogies year-round. We had pascha bread muffins, I miss those.

At least Nonna you exist, the previous Ukrainian Catholic bishop RIP told Rome there were none here when they raised the Exarchate to an Eparchy. Previously it was an Exarchate for both but the Bishops told Rome there were none here. So they created an Eparchy for the Ukrainians only. This is what happens when ethnic nationalism takes pride of place. The Russian Catholics used to go to their Liturgies but were made to feel very unwelcome and in time had their own separate centre and Priests to look after them.

Dear Nonna,

There is absolutely no need to be offensive regarding the name "Ukrainian."

"Ruthenian" is actually a Latin version for a "citizen of Rus'" and was used by the Roman Catholic Church to describe Ukrainians/Belarusyans et al. for years, and especially since the Union of Brest in 1596.

St Volodymyr the Great is termed, by ancient Roman documents as the "Rex Ruthenorum" or the "King of the Ruthenians."

Today, "Ruthenian" refers to the Carpatho-Rusyn nation, but it is hardly specific to them and it is not a Slavic name at all, but Latin (an "ethnic Latinization?").

The word "Ukraine" is mentioned in the Chronicle of 1169 and in the next five after that.

Although some scholars contend it means "borderland" on the basis of the Slavonic "Okrayina" (which truly does mean "borderland"), other historians, usually those who don't share the imperialist historical perspectives of the former, (including the Rusyn scholar, Paul Magosci) show that "U" is the vowel used historically and that "Ukrayina" can mean either simply "land" or "land that has been parcelled." Today, Ukrainian historical textbooks in Ukraine accept the latter explanation as normative.

Both ideas that the Austro-Hungarian empire developed the terms "Ukrainian" and "Greek-Catholic" are false. The latter term was used in the form of "Greco-Uniate" by our early Greek-Catholic forefathers, as Met. Ilarion Ohienko has shown by his analysis of liturgical publications.

There are also Carpatho-Rusyns who truly do see themselves as a subculture of Ukraine and the Ukrainian nationality. Others say differently.

Symbolically in terms of culture and language, I must say that I have the greatest of difficulty seeing the Carpatho-Rusyns as being all that dissimilar from mainstream Ukrainians. There are subcultural groups in Ukraine and surrounding countries that have much greater cultural dissimilarities with "mainstream Ukies" than the Carpatho-Rusyns (Lemkos and Hutsuls - and this poses a problem for Carpatho-Rusyns who wish to affirm their cultural/national independence.

Carpatho-Rusyns have been culturally and spiritually crushed by other countries for centuries. Hopefully, they will now be allowed to live in peace and be who they are as they wish. And it is very true, as you show, that it was a policy of the USSR to "Ukrainianize" the Rusyns. Ultimately, this was also part of their plan to create the "Soviet man" whose cultural identity would be Russian.

But there is no need to repeat the tired phrases of Russian/Soviet (and also Polish, Hungarian and Roumanian) colonialism with respect to "Ukraine."

Ciao,

Alex

Dear Pavel,

Yes, there always were problems between the Ukies and the Russkies, both in the Orthodox Church and in the GC Church.

It was due less to "nationalism" (a political ideology) than to "cultural ghettoism" where the church was seen as "only mine and you go to yours."

Ukrainian Orthodox were made to feel unwelcome in a Great Russian Church, unless they "behaved" and accepted their identity as a subgroup of the Great Russian one.

Russian Catholics were made to feel unwelcome in a UGCC because they were not Ukrainian, despite the fact that the two great patriarchs of the UGCC, Met. Andrew and Patriarch Josyf, were quite open and pastorally inclined toward the Russian Catholic Church.

Ultimately, this is not so much a problem of ethnic nationalism, but of the Eastern Christian experience of the Church as the defender and promoter of one's cultural identity - and an embodiment of it, in fact. The Russian Church is quite "Russian" precisely because of the experience of persecution under the Soviets and other factors. The same is true for the UGCC, the Belarusyans and the Carpatho-Rusyns.

There are UGCC parishes that are exceptions to the norm.

Our Eastern Canadian Eparchy has Hungarian and Roumanian parishes and continues to enjoy an excellent relationship with our Slovak GC brothers and sisters.

And I've met Russian Catholics who attend our more "Orthodox in communion with Rome" parishes and who feel entirely at home there.

Again, it takes time for everyone to climb out of the ethnic ghettos they created out of their parishes.

Alex

The majority of those 'Slavs' who identified themselves as either 'Lemko', 'Rusyn', or 'Ukrainian' (or any combination of these) who found themselves in an area in the Southeastern Carpathian mountains of Poland known as Lemkivshchyna (or Lemkovyna in Polish) were deported to Ukraine in 1947 under 'Operation Vistula'. Most were relocated under duress and even brutal conditions to the 'Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast' (hmmmm... that Oblast has a familiar 'ring' to it ). The majority are now members of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church which does not distinguish between the three identities.

I.F.

Dear Alex:

I apologize if my post in anyway came across as offensive. That was not my intent in the least. And I take back those comments that anyone might take offense at. I was being playful and lighthearted. I know nothing about Soviet/Russian colonialist-speak. I know only what my grandparents have said on the topic -- Lemkos and Galitsianis

I know that Ukrayina means borderland. Thanks's for the information on the word's origin. It was careless of me to say that the Austrians invented the word. What I read is that the Austro-Hungarians are the ones that stirred up Ukranian nationalism in order to drive a wedge between the Eastern and the Western Rus.

The thing about the history of that region is that so many goverments were persecuting so many different peoples that it really does make one's head spin. And to understand the trends of it all I think historical descriptions of these events including why some Rusyn consider themselves Ukrainian while others are adamantly not have to be tied to specific geography.

You write:
There are subcultural groups in Ukraine and surrounding countries that have much greater cultural dissimilarities with "mainstream Ukies" than the Carpatho-Rusyns (Lemkos and Hutsuls - and this poses a problem for Carpatho-Rusyns who wish to affirm their cultural/national independence.

I ask:
are you saying the Lemkos and Hutsuls see themselves as dissimilar from Ukranians or Rusyns?
I was always told that the Rusyns are comprised of a number of tribes: the Lemkos, the Boykos, the Hutsuli, the Galitsiani...


oops, I'm late for class, more later
Nonna

Alex,

To be completely open with you on this whole topic. I guess one thing that gets my back up, is that the Ukranian Ukranians also have denied the Rusnaks their unique identity. So when I hear of instances where people have forgotten their origins, I find it painful, and why I feel compelled to clarify who the Carpathian Rus are.

If they struggle with what label to give themselves, I see it as akin to what the American Blacks go through, searching for a name for themselves in a country to which they are born and of which they are a part, but a people whose history and ethnicity has been lost.

The fundamental question to me is how can we acknowledge our diversity and differences and celebrate them without having them become an instrument of divisiveness.

Dear Nonna,

There is absolutely nothing for you to apologise for and your two posts above are of such intellectual depth and perspicacity that I must say how honoured I am to make your acquaintance here and receive the benefit of your penetrating thoughtfulness!

My position is that people's cultural identity is what they themselves say it is.

My father was a Boyko and my mother from Bucovina. People from both places would, in the past, have referred to themselves as Boyko's and Bucovinians in the first instance. Today, they would not. There are other East Slavs who would and don't see themselves as "Ukrainian."

In fact, in the West, "Ukrainian" has indeed taken on a kind of nationalist identity that was formerly located in Galicia.

The Austro-Hungarians promoted, in fact, a kind of "Austrophilism" or Western-looking Ukrainian identity (they were all afraid of Ukrainian nationalism, even some Ukrainians were too ).

They preferred to see Ukrainians as Latinized and Westernized as possible, along the Austrian model of course.

They ordered the UGCC Metropolitans of their day to actually drop a number of Saints from the Greek-Catholic Calendar, including some miracle-working Icons of the Mother of God, as these were too "Eastern" and suggested Russophilism that the Austrians were afraid of etc.

That Austrian identity was felt by me right in my own family and I grew up hearing nothing but great things about the Emperor Franz Joseph - as did Incognitus, it would seem . . .

But cultural identity is dynamic, it doesn't fit into any neat symbolic pigeon-holes and it changes over time.

I met a person who told he was a "German-Ukrainian."

He was born in Ukraine in the German colony there and spoke both languages fluently.

Variety is the spice of life, no?

By the way, what courses are you taking?

Alex

According to this comprehensive and very colorful study, Ruthenians are a 'sub-group' of the Ukrainians.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN [images.google.com]

Happy reading.

I.F.

Dear Jean,

There are also lots of similar studies that say Ukrainians are really just "Little Russians . . ."

Alex

Watch this:

Then there are others that claim Ukrainians are the sons and daughters of KievanRus [re: St. Volodymyr's Baptism in 988] while the Russians are the stepchildren.

Slava Ukrayeena!

Dear Alex,

thank you for the kind words!

Yes variety is the spice of life.

(Since you asked, I had to run off to *embarassed* yoga class. My classes are nothing esoteric.
I'm also taking metalworking, stained glass and poetry.)

Dear Pavel and Jean Francois:

Yes a lot of people say a lot of things. I find I have to look at as many websites as possible to find the errors in any given page. Without peer review, that which is published on the 'net is of varied quality.

The whole debate kind of reminds me of the "ethnic" struggles in the area we know know as France. The dominant society sought to eliminate the regional languages (like the language of Oc) there were literally hundreds of tribes and hundreds of languages. Most were exterminated or assimilated into the culture we know as France today. But Jean Francois, if you are French perhaps you have a better grasp of the details there?

with love,
Nonna

I have to make a correction to something I posted earlier. The Hammonds Maps do not show a region called Ruthenia. I was getting confused. They show Galicia as it existed over the centuries. The only other map I can find right now that shows Carpatho-Rusyn settlements is the one done by Dr. Magosci (I can't for the life of me remember how to spell his name!).

Incognitus: regarding the book. I've had the best luck with the public library tracking things down and getting them through interlibrary loan.