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?
