This is a chapter within The New Rusyn Decade that is being published on our Substack for free. It is a provocative chapter, but one I believe represents the truth regarding Ukrainian-Rusyn relations. You can read the full book by either requesting it through our form or purchasing it at our store.

In light of recent chapters on the formation of Rusyns and the historical background of their oppression, it is also prudent to further examine the single most difficult challenge that Rusyns face. In particular, how two national concepts have divided neighboring peoples and will continue to do so. This is the relationship between the Ukrainian nation and ours. Understand that while this chapter will be long, the purpose of doing so is to give enough context for those who have no background knowledge. Answering the question of why we are so disrespected by this nation directly leads us to the answers that we seek.

It is a truly tragic yet undeniable reality that as long as what it means to be Ukrainian is how it exists today, there will be never-ending strife between Carpatho-Rusyns and Ukrainians. To clarify why this reality is so, we must first understand the ambition of Ukraine itself in both present and historical contexts, and what it sees as integral to its existence. On one distinct side there is the perceived victimization of the Ukrainians, an important part of their national story not unlike us or many other peoples. In this case there is good reason for such a thing.

This particular tendency for perceived oppression does have historical and current political backing. The mistreatment of Ruthenian peasants by outsiders was a common occurrence throughout the centuries following the collapse of the Rus states by the Mongols. Those from the West colonized their former kingdoms, and most Ukrainians who were within the scope of civilization were forced to live on small plots of land with only the barest of subsistence farming. The majority of any profits too were sent away to the nobles in the castles or regional cities. Funnily enough, many who couldn’t stand it became what we now know today as Carpatho-Rusyns if they fled for the mountains, and Zaporizhian Cossacks if to the wild fields.

While not just those who are now Ukrainians were serfs in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire, their regions were amongst the poorest in Europe. Galicia itself was seen as possibly the poorest in the 19th century even with its rich natural resources. Famines ravaged the land at the pace of every few years. Plagues too at various times wiped out entire villages and half the population of cities like Lviv. Combine this with not being ruled over by their own people, but ethnic outsiders, it gives little wonder as to why there is such a powerful undercurrent of anger in the culture of Western Ukrainians in particular.

This feeling was only further fortified by the actions of Russia in the previous centuries. In the time of the Russian empire there were complex assimilation policies outlawing the Ukrainian language and imperial decrees leading to the displacement of the Zaporizhian Cossacks to the Kuban by Catherine the Great in 1775. During the period of Soviet rule the majority of those in the Kuban who had been Ukrainian were assimilated into Russians, with the total Ukrainian population dropping from forty-nine percent in 1926 to just one percent in 2002. The complex nature of such events during this time should not be understated. By the Soviet authorities giving regions like the Donbas and Crimea to the Ukraine SSR, many of the actual wishes of Ukrainian nationalists were fulfilled. These decisions made for the legal incorporation of Russian majority areas into Ukraine, leading to the difficult post-1991 era. Why authorities did these things is rather vague except in the case of Crimea, which was given as a gift from Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Russian from Ukraine.

Modern attempts at meddling in Ukraine’s affairs even if geopolitically justified in the Russo-Ukraine war of 2022 only further advance tensions. Something that tactical politicians within Ukraine have already used to their advantage. There has never been a complete purge of Russian influence as large as has occurred over the past 24 months. This important part is not the full story. Aside from the ability to legitimate action through fear, this is not even the main actor that disallows what could be our peaceful coexistence. A true danger lies within the Ukrainian ambition in building their own empire of sorts.

There is a strong desire by nationalists and non-nationalists alike to not just unite the historical principalities of Rus, or otherwise the Ruthenian populations outside of Muscovy, but to also claim the lands gained by Cossack pillaging after their sworn allegiance to the Tsar in 1654 as well. This can be particularly described as the action of the Zaporizhian and Kuban Cossack Hosts, for which only the second remains in any legitimate form to this day though as stated above not really Ukrainian in character anymore. Writings and verbal statements, especially with the present state of politics can only get one so far in understanding the aims of a particular movement. Rather, they only provide background information in analyzing actual decisions. Insights from philosophical interpretations alone miss the second half of what went on. As is especially the case of the Ukrainians, one must look at historical political demands to realize the dream of nationalists. Below is a map created for a proposed Ukrainian state that was given to officials by Ukrainian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Two things in particular stand out above the rest in regard to this map. One can first see very clearly that the entire region of Carpathian Rus is encapsulated within the proposed state boundaries. At this point it can already be acknowledged that the initial formation of what Ukrainian identity means as a sovereign state rested in part, on the inclusion of Carpatho-Rusyn territory in its boundaries. The second is the inclusion of the Northwestern Caucasus, Bessarabia, Kuban, Crimea, and much of Polesia. While an interesting map in its delusions, there lies the issue of national minorities involved. These lands, not so much in the case of the Kuban but certainly in the Caucasus and Bessarabia, were ethnic homelands of other peoples until the Cossack Host pacified them.

This was under the direct order of the Russian Empire, so it does not confer the majority of the blame in these ethnic liquidations to the Ukrainian ideology necessarily. What can be said about this situation is that by further claiming these invaded lands as historical Ukrainian lands, like in the case of Budjak, Crimea, and the former Novorossiya if we wish to stick only to modern boundaries excluding our case, it is politically validating the multitude of previous imperialist atrocities that made them this way. One should not be stupid and think that any nation will simply give up land for the sake of being philosophically more correct, but it does open a window into the Ukrainian mind when early formations of statehood arose.

Even at the time of this map the ethnic populations were very much swung toward the indigenous peoples. Crimea was as today a primarily Russian territory with varying levels of Crimean Tatars. Bessarabia was largely Bulgarian and Moldovan as the region had been an integral part of Moldavia until its annexation into the Russian empire in 1812. The populations in the western Caucasus also constituted a significant percentage of the population before their eventual removal because of their desire to remain free. It seems as though where a lone Ukrainian had once lived, that land was there for the taking. Now that some of them have been captured as integral parts of a sovereign state, the will to forever keep them is unrelenting in its tenacity.

The role that Cossacks play today in the thought of Ukrainian statehood is fairly good evidence of the role that these ambitions from a century ago still influence internal affairs. The picture of the Ukrainian Cossack is one of freedom-loving resistance against the state of Muscovy, not in its role of the Circassian genocide or general malpractice throughout the wild fields under the behest of the Tsar they now so openly speak against as a historical terror upon their lands. Any aforementioned attempts at accurately characterizing this legacy have been met with intense resistance and for a good reason. Reacknowledging its own imperial past would only help to destabilize the Ukrainian psyche as a whole because it challenges so many underlying truths.

Pan-Ruthenian imperialism, when putting away these other important considerations, is the core issue that makes it so difficult for us to even be acknowledged. The desire to make Ukraine synonymous with the lands of the Ruthenians and Cossack possessions creates a situation where to allow Rusyns to be their own entity changes the definition of what it means to be Ukrainian. What is meant by Ukraine would no longer be the Rus lands between Russia and the West, but something which can be chosen. There is no finality in that assessment, just a vast lingering grey zone with room for balkanization.

You may ask how this is fundamentally different or incorrect versus our conception of Carpathian Rus? This may seem like a competition between two ideologies alone, but that is only when looking at the mundane exterior of the existential conflict at hand. A first point to make is that our national scope is measured through local attributes. What we claim to be Rusyn is from what regions speak Rusyn (a language that Ukrainians do not understand), the historical precedence of what has been considered Carpathian Rus for centuries, the will of the people to identify differently, and the shared trauma we have endured. There is no convincing to be had here for the majority on what constitutes a Rusyn, we are merely crystallizing it. This cannot be said for the Ukrainians to the same extent.

They do not share our language, have not been through the same shared trauma of the past 155 years, and have tried at every turn to eliminate the native beliefs of our people. From our perspective this is nothing more than a virus attempting to erode us as a people because the beast of their project does not allow for any step outside of the rigid boundaries it has set. The fact of Rusyn identity not only steps outside this conception, but exploded through it in a way that is ideologically unacceptable has helped to produce the situation we now see. Anything else regarding the strain of our relationship is minimal in importance.