I just found out I'm Ruthenian, aka Rusyn, aka Carpatho-Russian

[BurtWorm]

What a weird ethnic group! Is anyone else of this heritage? I'm one-eighth Rusyn. My great great grandfather Andrew Szemansco was from a little town below the High Tatras in Eastern Slovakia. I grew up believing he was Ukrainian. Apparently a lot of Rusyns think they're Ukrainian, Polish, Russian or Slovak. Even Hungarian.

Andy Warhol was a Rusyn. A lot of them settled in Pittsburgh. My great grandfather went with the wave that landed in Passaic, NJ. Before Saturday, I never even heard of Rusyns. What a strange feeling to find out after 44 years that your people are not who you thought they were!

[R Hickey]

1. Welcome to the Caucasians

I've been white all my life.

[catzies]

2. I know what you mean. Thought my paternal grandmother was Austrian.

She came over with her parents as a small child just prior to WWI. The village they're from was Austrian then (and coninuously settled since the Romans), but only because borders are political.

Ethnically we're Romanian I guess. I'm still trying to learn more about that.

[BurtWorm]

3. Politically relevant point about Rusyns

Their American cousins call them the Kurds of Eastern Europe because they've been without a nation. I almost wrote without a homeland, but the fact is, they've lived along the Carpathians, from Poland down to Croatia, for more than a thousand years, perhaps closer to 1500 years. But being village-centered peasants, they haven't had a need to develop the kind of national consciousness that might lead them to demand a state. They've also been a persecuted minority, having their ethnicity denied by Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks and Hungarians, each of whom has tried to swallow them up into their own ethnic group--and some of whom have succeeded in some cases.

There's an interesting Website I was reading last night called rusynlegacy.com by an American political science professor of Rusyn descent who argues quite convincingly that the Rusyns don't need a nation. They don't need to have their American cousins referred to as a diaspora. They merely need to be left alone to speak and write their language, call themselves what they want to be called (some in the US are insisting upon Rusyn) and worship and live as they have for centuries without anyone trying to alter their ideology or heighten their nationalist consciousness. It made me wonder if the age of nationalism could be led finally (if quietly) to a close by my East European cousins.

[XanaDUer]

6. That web site does not work.

I really want to see that site! :)

[BurtWorm]

7. I miscited it

http://www.legacyrus.com/forward.htm


This is my favorite part:

On the Rusyns:

Recognizes no one exclusive name but a multiplicity of name referents for the Rusyns, each with a unique value and each reveals a different facet of Rus.

While condemning the emphasis of Rusyns as a "Stateless People", Recognizes the Rusyn Political Culture as a Village Centric Mountain-Peoples Culture.

Condemns the concept of a Rusyn Diaspora and incorporates especially the United States and Canada and part of the global Rusyn home.

Condemns the politics of separatism and national fascist elements in all Slavic peoples.

[lanlady]

4. I know all about Ruthenians--

--I'm married to one! He's from a village near the Warhol family homestead. All his family are still there. They speak a Ukrainian dialect.

The king of Carpatho-Rusyn identify is Paul Magosci of the U of Toronto:

http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/magocsi.htm

Wrote a book called, I believed, "History of Carpatho-Rus."

[BurtWorm]

5. I checked him out.

Very interesting site.

[BurtWorm]

8. From LegacyRus.com, a critique of the concept of a "Stateless" people

The Rusyns: A Stateless People

A "Stateless People." What does that mean? Intuitively it seems to suggest some type of deficiency and a lack of something essential.

Quite simply these are people who lack a nation-state built around their ethnic group. This is important if one believes that the highest aspiration of a people is their own ethnically defined nation-state. Rusyns have been defined as a "stateless people."

The focus is on the "nation-state" as an expression of the political aspirations of one ethnic group. Has this helped the security of a people? Does the focus on the Nation-State help us at the end of the 20th century? The answer is NO. In the past, this focus has led to fascism, the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing. The emphasis has been and is on states defined by an ethnic majority and ethnic minority, INSTEAD of citizen democracies, where everyone has exactly the same rights.

The Legacy of the Rusyns has been one of living in harmony and at peace within the Empire or Kingdom or state in which history has placed them. These People are not the so called "Kurds of Eastern Europe." Quite the opposite. The Rusyns have seemed and do seem quite content to live at peace with the authorities. They preserve their unique identity primarily through their faith and church, not by political mass organizations demanding autonomy or independence. The Rusyns are more comparable to the Jews of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the Rusyns lived in such apolitical that they did not help their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.

[Palacsinta]

9. I'm Transylvanian Saxon

Another weird little ethnic group like yours. We're from the region around Sibiu in Romania. (Pre-WWI, it was part of Hungary.) Anyway, gather up every little scrap of info you can...it'll be a fascinating project.

[BurtWorm]

10. That's a new one on me.

There must be hundreds of these micro-ethnic groups in Eastern Europe alone.