Everything about Ruthenia totally explained
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:
Early Middle Ages
If the name
Ruthenia has any connection to the name Rus, it's in the west generally held to derive from the Varangians whom the early Slavic and Finnic tribes called Rus' and this name is derived from the
Old Norse root
roðs- or
roths- referring to the domain of rowing and still existing in the
Finnish and
Estonian names for
Sweden,
Ruotsi and
Rootsi. Later the name came to denote not only the Scandinavian aristocracy in Eastern Europe but also the ethnically mixed population of their domains.
Some modern scholars use the spelling
Ruthenia when discussing the
Middle Ages in English texts. However, the ancient state of Rus didn't have a proper name apart from the phrase
zemlya ruskaya (in Russian language that means the land of small rivers or rivlets, also in Lithuanian language that means to smoulder), and therefore there were
different spellings in different languages.
The term
Ruteni first appears in the form
rex Rutenorum in the 12th-century
Augsburg annals. It was most likely a reflex of the ancient tradition, when the barbaric people were called by the names found in Classical
Latin authors, for example
Danes were called
Daci and
Germans were called
Theutoni. Likewise, the Rus passed by the name of
Ruteni, the form being influenced by one of the
Gallic tribes mentioned by
Julius Caesar.
There is a 12th-century Latin geography from
France which says that "Russia is also called Ruthenia, as you may see from the following phrase of
Lucan…" The original Latin text:
Polonia in uno sui capite contingit Russiam, quae et Ruthenia, de qua Lucanus: Solvuntur flavi longa statione Rutheni. Earlier the Rus had been referred to as
Rugi (one of the foremost
Gothic tribes) and
Rutuli (an Italic tribe mentioned by
Virgil in the
Aeneid).
By the end of the
12th century, the word
Ruthenia was used, among the alternative spelling
Ruscia and
Russia, in
Latin papal documents to denote the lands formerly dominated by
Kiev. By the
13th century, the term became the dominant name for Rus' in Latin documents, particularly those written in
Hungary,
Bohemia, and
Poland.
Late Middle Ages
By the
14th century, the state of Rus had disintegrated into loosely united principalities.
Vladimir-Suzdal and the
Novgorod Republic in the north were kept from mongol domination. Later, one of the daughter-principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal, the Moscow principality (or
Muscovy) took control of most of the northern principalities of Rus, and started to use the word, "Rus'," to cover the expanded state. Natives used other
forms of the name Rus for their country, and some of these forms also passed into Latin and English.
The territories of
Halych-Volynia,
Kiev and other in the south were occupied by the mongols and were freed just in the XV century, and united with
Catholic Lithuania and Poland, and therefore were usually denoted by the
Latin Ruthenia. However, other spellings were used in Latin, English and other languages during this period as well.
These southern territories have corresponding names in
Polish:
Modern age
Belarusians
After
World War II, in relation to Belarusians from the so called
Kresy region of pre-WWII Poland who found themselves in
displaced persons camps in the Western occupation zones of the post-war
Germany. At that time the notion of a Belarusian nation met with little recognition in the
West. Therefore, to avoid confusion with the term "Russian" and hence "repatriation" to the
Soviet Union, the terms
White Ruthenian,
Whiteruthenian, and
Krivian were used. The last of these terms derives from the name of an old Eastern Slavic tribe called the
Krivichs, who used to inhabit the territory of Belarus.
Ukrainians
The name "Ruthenia" survived a bit longer as a name for Ukraine. When the
Austrian monarchy made Galicia a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the local East Slavic people were distinct from both Poles and Russians. Their own name for themselves,
Rusyny, sounded like the German word for Russians,
Russen. So the Austrians adopted the designation
Ruthenen (Ruthenians), and continued to use it officially until the empire fell apart in 1918.
From
1840 on, nationalists encouraged people to give up the name "
Little Rus" for
Ukrayina. In the
1880s and
1900s, due to the spread of the name "Ukraine" as a substitute for "Ruthenia" among the Ruthenian/Ukrainian population of the
Russian Empire, the name, "Ruthenian" was often restricted to mean western Ukraine, an area then part of the Austro-Hungarian state.
By the early
20th century, the name "Ukraine" had replaced "Ruthenia" in
Galicia/Halychyna.
Rusyns
The term
Rusyn is used to describe the ethnicity and language of Ruthenians who didn't embrace the Ukrainian national identity.
After
1918, the name "Ruthenia" became narrowed to the area south of the
Carpathian mountains in the
Kingdom of Hungary, named
Carpathian Ruthenia (It incorporated the cities of
Mukachevo,
Uzhhorod and
Prešov) and populated by
Carpatho-Ruthenians), a group of East Slavic highlanders. Galician Ruthenians considered themselves to be Ukrainians, and the Carpatho-Ruthenians were the last East Slavic people that kept the ancient historic name (
Ruthen is a Latin deformation of the Slavic
rusyn).
Carpatho-Ruthenia has been part of the Hungarian Kingdom since the late eleventh century, where it was known as
Kárpátalja. In May 1919, it was incorporated with nominal autonomy into
Czechoslovakia. After this date, Ruthenian people have been divided among three orientations. First, there were the
Russophiles, who saw Ruthenians as part of the Russian nation; second, there were the Ukrainophiles who, like their Galician counterparts across the Carpathian mountains, considered Ruthenians part of the Ukrainian nation; and, lastly, there were Ruthenophiles, who said that Carpatho-Ruthenians were a separate nation, and who wanted to develop a native
Rusyn language and culture. In 1939, the Ukrainophile president of Carpatho-Ruthenia,
Avhustyn Voloshyn, declared its independence as
Carpatho-Ukraine. On
15 March 1939, Hungarian Army regular troops again crossed into Czechoslovakia, now the state of Carpatho-Ukraine. The Hungarian occupation regime was pro-Ruthenophile. In 1944, the Soviet Army occupied Carpatho-Ruthenia, and in 1946, annexed it to the
Ukrainian SSR. Officially, there were no Rusyns in the USSR. In fact, Soviet and some modern Ukrainian politicians, as well as Ukrainian government claim that Rusyns are part of the Ukrainian nation. Nowadays the majority of the population in the
Zakarpattya oblast of
Ukraine consider themselves Ukrainians, however, a small Rusyn minority is still present.
A Rusyn minority also remained after
World War II in northeastern Czechoslovakia (now
Slovakia). The people of the region rapidly became Slovakicised, because their language is closely related to the
Slovak language and because most of them refused to identify themselves as
Ukrainians, as the
Communist government, after 1953, wished them to do
(External Link
).
The name "Ruthenia" became largely identical with
Carpathian Ruthenia, that's mostly the westernmost region of present-day Ukraine. It was sometimes referred to as Carpatho-Russia before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Cognate word
The element
ruthenium was isolated in 1844 from
platinum ore found in the Ural mountains. Ruthenia is the Latin word for ruthenium.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ruthenia'.
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