There's an interesting shift in language associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine - a type of pierogi which used to be called ruskie (from the region of Red Rus, where they originate) are now commonly named ukraińskie (Ukrainian) instead.
The reason is that the adjective ruskie is typically understood as "Russian" in general parlance.
Even the Ukrainian state’s non-recognition of the Rusyn people isn’t so simple: in Slovakia you can meet minority East Slavic speakers who insist that what they speak is “Ukrainian” (when it’s obviously not), and that “Rusyn” is a weird label outsiders keep trying to pin on them.
There is a long history of states denying and repressing the Rusyn identity. I’m sure many modern people aren’t bothered to learn their history and just adopt whatever label has been given to them. It’s not significantly different from any other minority group that has been subsumed into a larger group.
There are historical cultural differences between the groups as well. Lemkos, for example, are Greek Catholics, which is a minority group in Ukraine and has a different history (tracing themselves to Croats.)
Which villages does your family descend from specifically? Although it wouldn’t be surprising if a person of Rusyn descent has never heard of this, since one of the most frequent remarks in histories of the Rusyn people is that the identity has sometimes flourished more in the diaspora than in situ.
My experience is from mid 2019 in communities around Medzilaborce where I was collecting microtoponymic data. I was obviously inclined to think of this minority East Slavic material as Rusyn, but my informants insisted that it was “Ukrainian”. Considering that these communities have produced figures who went on to be famous in wider “Ukrainian” movements, it is no surprise that the two ethnonyms have competed in that region.
EDIT: So I went searching to read more about this using "Čertižné" (one of the supposedly “Ukrainian” villages) as a search term. In this essay[0] where a writer of Čertižné descent is mostly busy criticizing Timothy Snyder, he briefly sketches the phenomenon I witnessed:
"The end of WW2 saw the annexation of Subcarpathian Rus’, renamed Transcarpathia, into the USSR. To legitimize seizure of this territory, Stalin brought the debate over the ethnic identity to a close and deemed all Rusyns Ukrainian. Rusyn became a bourgeoise term placed outside of law and all those who identified as such were now forcefully Ukrainianized. Some Rusyns in Czechoslovakia, given the choice of complete assimilation or at least a partial preservation of their culture, accepted the Ukrainian label. For example, the current director of the Rusyn Museum in Prešov, Ľuba Kráľová, identified as a Ukrainian during the communist regime even though she doesn’t speak Ukrainian. Other Rusyns felt closer to the Slovak ethnic identity than to the Ukrainian one."
I was born in Humenne but my grandparents are from along Cirocha river to the east.
There's many flavors to rusyns/ruthenians, they can't even agree on the same language so it's possible that they don't relate to other rusyns or they are afraid to admit they are rusyns because they used to be oppressed for it in the past.
If you understand the language I recommend the website rusyn.sk, especially the jokes[0], they are a bit different flavor, sometimes not politically correct and my friends love it.
PS: looking for the link to the jokes I found [1] that specifically talks about rusyn vs ukrainian identity - it's in standard Slovak language so google translate should deal with it fine if you can't read Slovak.
Both me and the other poster in this thread have posted links on the overlap between Rusyn and Ukranian identities in Eastern Slovakia. The Magyar identity is centered around the Hungarian language and Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, while any history of the Rusyn people will emphasize how they are East Slavic-speaking Greek Catholics, so why you feel that the Magyars are relevant here is beyond me. Some of the Rusyn-speaking world was under Austrian administration in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so they weren’t even under Hungarians politically.
No, not to any significant extent. I speak Hungarian and have very frequently passed through that small part of Transcarpathia where Hungarian is still spoken, and I have rarely encountered an ethnic Slav who learned Hungarian to proficiency. The language of interethnic communication in Transcarpatia was generally Russian during the Soviet era, and even remained such into the post-Soviet era, though Ukrainian has naturally gained ground.
And again, most of the Rusyn population in Ukraine is living far enough to the north or northeast that they have no contact whatsoever with the Hungarian language. I don’t think you have any actual knowledge of this part of the world.
Yeah my wife’s granddad was stationed in a Ukrainian village as a doctor and had to learn some Hungarian to communicate with locals, so… Let’s fight who anecdotes are better.
> they have no contact whatsoever with the Hungarian language.
Yet loads of them pass Hungarian nationality test which involves speaking Hungarian.
Again, the Hungarian-speaking part of Transcarpatia is a fairly small area, see the convenient map[0] on Wikipedia. Most Rusyns in Ukraine live to the north or northeast of that small area in green. These are statistics that you can consult for yourself, no need for anecdotal evidence. Congratulations, your wife’s granddad must have got stationed in one of those very few communities in Transcarpatia where Hungarian is spoken. That means nothing for categorizing a people spread over Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland as “akin to Magyars”.
You do realize that the vast majority of people from Ukraine passing the Hungarian nationality test are ethnic Hungarians, not Rusyns?
Indeed. “Rus” is an ethnonym, of famously Scandinavian origin, used across the entire East Slavic area and was never something limited to people in now-Ukraine that people in now-Russia could “steal”. The Uralic- and Turkic-speaking peoples of the Middle Volga, for example, already called the neighboring Slavic-speaking populations “Rus” in the medieval era.
Actually no. "Rus" was meant to describe "all" East Slavic people, but Russians took it for themselves "only" and started to call Ukrainians "Little Russians" in sense of "Lesser Russians".
While what you say is true, it is irrelevant in the context of the discussion here about the popular misunderstanding of pierogi ruskie. This confusion is due to multiple factors than just “Russia stole”, including that the Ukrainian-language literary canon is centered around “Ukrainian” as the ethnonym, instead of making any attempt to preserve or revive the ethnonym “Rus”. While some Rusyns did maintain the ethnonym, other Rusyn speakers have preferred to identify with another ethnonym instead. If East Slavs other than Russians and Belarussians did not stand up for the ethnonym en masse, no surprise that peoples elsewhere no longer have the ability to distinguish.
And there is reason why they focus on "Ukrainian" (borderland etymologically btw) instead of "Russian" or even "Little Russian". The therm "Little Rus" was first used for Kyiv in sense of it being the center of Rus - Rus proper and "Greater Rus" meant the wider area of their influence. Russians (as we know them today) managed to turn this around and made it a derogatory term.
Even more - the "Rus" became first to mean "Slavic Orthodox faith follower" and it covered multiple nations, even non-Slavic ones. The fact that Russians call themselves now by this name is not an accident.
Again, what you say is true, but irrelevant in the context of this discussion thread. You look like you are searching for reasons to get upset, and you ought to calm down, take a deep breath, and consider that some of your interlocutors here are not your enemies.
You copy/pasted the same text in the reply to me as you did to another user in this thread. Please don’t do this, it is considered poor form on HN.
> My comments try to explain why Ukrainians believe that Russians have stolen the "Rus" identity (from them) only for themselves.
Which is completely irrelevant to the thread. And, let’s be honest, is of little interest to anyone. This cultural appropriation bullshit has gotten old a long time ago already.
It is completely relevant to the thread about Russia stealing Ukrainian "Rus" identity. This is not some European Americans dressing up like Native Americans "this is a cultural Appropriation" bullshit. This is the real thing where a national entity denies existence of another nation and is in process to genocide this nation while pretending to be historically the same nation they are attempting to genocide. Of course there are other forces in play, but this in one of the main themes from the very beginning. Of course it is more comfortable to downplay this by calling it old and irrelevant than do something about it.
But it is clear that Polish pierogi ruskie can't be Russian dumplings because Russian dumplings are pelmeni that are dumplings with meat. But the origin of these dumplings is not Russian either, as the word comes from the Udmurt language.
Old name with a very specific meaning. The therm "Little Rus" was first used for Kyiv in sense of it being the center of Rus - Rus proper and "Greater Rus" meant the wider area of their influence. Russians (as we know them today) managed to turn this around and made it a derogatory term.
I don't quite agree here, but what they do then is conflate words "Russian and Rusian" to mean the same thing, claiming for various stuff their population has no relation to. It's a dirty tactics very in-line with their today's propaganda machine.
I don't understand what's controversial about this. "Rus" is the medieval East Slavic society.
Three of the four modern East Slavic cultures retain the word root in the name (Russians, Belarusians, Rusyns). One of them uses the expression "borderlands" for their identity (Ukrainians).
You then obviously don't know the history. One notable thing to mention is that Russia started as Principality of Moscow, a vassal state to Mongols, a collector of tribute for Mongols. Taking their own share from this tribute allowed them to prosper.
I have been in Poland for much of the time since the war started, and while I have read news articles about this supposed new term pierogie ukraińskie, I don’t think I have ever seen it in the real world. The pierogis served at milk bars, or from Żabka to be microwaved, are still overwhelmingly referred to as ruskie. Even the Ukrainian cafe nearby serves them as pierogie ruskie.
Plenty of milk bars call them ukrainskie. Especially ones in Praga.
I’ve also noticed “pierogi kresowe” which is a reference to Kresy, a historical Polish region that includes Ruthenia, the origin of pierogi ruskie. I don’t recall ever seeing these before, so my guess is that the pierogi industry decided that Kresowe was a less controversial name to use.
I've had varenky in Ukraine and they are subtly different than pierogi ruskie. But then again the filling is also slightly different from family to family, so maybe that's the reason.
I've seen them and was at first confused as to what they were, especially that Ukrainian borscht is very different from the local version, so I assumed it was something new.
That only happened in the first few weeks/months following the invasion, and since then people returned to calling them "Ruskie". The general consensus is that the name refers to the historical area of Ruthenia
I no longer live there, but when I visit now, I often see the name "Kresowe" having replaced "Ruskie", Kresy being the name of a historical region around the Polish/Ukrainian border.
My friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans.
The other issue is that people don't know how to translate "ruski" to English, so they would say "Russian dumplings", but in reality they should be called "Ruthenian dumplings" from Ruthenian Voivodeship.
They probably seen tourists turn their nose on "Russian dumplings", so they renamed them to "Ukrainian".
Since most of the Ruthenian Voivodeship is now in Ukraine it somewhat makes sense, but it is not entirely correct. Just shows lazy thinking.
In the UK, those sold in supermarkets are no longer called "ruskie" but simply potato and cheese dumplings.
When it's used as a noun it's pejorative for Russian people. When it's used as an adjective - it's neutral (and can be used both for russian and ruthenian stuff).
There's also more specific words - rosyjskie for russian and rusińskie for ruthenian, but very few people use "rusińskie" nowadays.
BTW there's this joke from communist times:
A waitress in a milk bar shouts "who ordered ruskie", someone in the bar shouts back "nobody, they came on their own".
> My friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans.
There was a joke which used that, during the Communist Poland era (where country was thoroughly dominated by it's USSR neighbor and supposed friend, as per the official propaganda):
Sorry but no. Live here and eat pierogi few times a week. Still calling them ruskie, and people are just as indifferent to that name as they have always been.
The subject has popped up here and there. But more as a whimsical joke amongst people around me with more of an intelligentsia background.
There are however, many new places with Ukrainian pelmieni opening up everywhere you look. But that’s a separate thing.
I'm not sure if it's a shift in language - it's more like a reaction/virtue signalling of some restaurants in the first weeks of invasion that briefly got viral, but - in the rare case of accuracy winning over memes - it died out as people soon after (re)learned that "ruskie" in "pierogi ruskie" refers to Ruś, not Russia. At least, that's my local experience (Kraków, Poland) - we went through the meme phase and came out of it a week or two later, and I haven't heard anyone mentioning "ukraińskie pierogi" ever since (until on HN, today).
>The reason is that the adjective ruskie is typically understood as "Russian" in general parlance
I’m not a native speaker, but I always heard that the Greek derived Rosyjski/Rosjanin/Rosjanka were for Russians (ie the ethnic majority in the Russian Federation) but Ruskie was still reserved for the Rus’ in general.
I’ve had native speaking members explain the distinction to me, that ruskie is more of a catch-all term for the Rus’ peoples. Then again, my family hails from northeast and southeast Poland near the borders with the Rus’.
"Ruskie" vs "Rosyjskie" is a difference between common speech and more proper grammar, but in regular usage of the language they both mean the adjective "Russian". I'm native.
The reason is that the adjective ruskie is typically understood as "Russian" in general parlance.