Tucked away in the Northern Carpathians, there is an area historically known as Carpathian Ruthenia. This region mostly covers the southern slopes of the mountain chain, with a small area on the northern slopes called Lemkovyna. The Rusyns have lived in this ancestral homeland for over 1000 years, most of this time living under the Kingdom of Hungary or the Kingdom of Poland. We are an East Slavic people, not unlike Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians, although our history is much different from any of theirs. Shaped by the great Carpathians, Hungarian administration, mass Vlach migrations and Slovak influence overtime, Rusyns developed a unique culture, language and identity.
Many in the present day doubt the validity of such a presence. We can easily look to even the mid-1800s, with the great Rusyn activist and priest Alexander Dukhnoych and his poem “I was, I am, and will always be Rusyn,” published in 1851, to find proof of its existence. Though we have survived for so long, life has never been an easy thing for us as a people and in fact, one could call it a story of struggle. The land of the Rusyns has for much of its existence been considerably poorer than the areas around it, with many Rusyns working in shepherding or farming to get by.
Continue reading here: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2020/10/08/rusyns-the-forgotten-minority-of-ukraine/