Due to many reasons, which discussion lies beyond the framework of this article, contemporary Hungary is almost a mono-ethnic and mono-lingual state, with Hungarians constituting 98.3% of the population as of 2016. The largest minority was Romani, with a share of 3.2%. Ukrainians were the 10^th largest minority (10,996 persons, or 0.1% of the country’s total population). Rusyns came in 16^th place (2,342 persons; 0.02%). It is worth noting that in Hungary a person can give more than one answer to the question about their ethnic identity, hence the sum of the answers exceeded 100%. In other words, these figures reflected the self-identification of Hungary’s residents, but the World Population Review’s estimation of ethnic Hungarians accounting for 84% of the country’s population may have more precisely reflected the historical background of Hungary’s ethnic palette.

In Hungary, there are 13 “established national minorities” that are entitled to form local and national self-government bodies: Armenian, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek, Polish, Roma, Romanian, Ruthenian (Rusyn), Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian. They are listed in the Annex to the Act CLXXIX of 2011 on the Rights of Nationalities which proclaims that “all ethnic groups resident in Hungary for at least one century are nationalities which are in numerical minority amongst the population of the State, are distinguished from the rest of the population by their own language, culture, and traditions and manifest a sense of cohesion that is aimed at the preservation of these and at the expression and protection of the interests of their historically established communities.” The country’s Ombudsman for the Rights of National Minorities’ website states that “almost 10% of the population of Hungary affiliate themselves with a national minority, and their languages, cultures, traditions, and customs make our country not only more colorful and richer, but they also create and maintain important links towards the nationalities’ mother countries, most of which are neighboring to Hungary.”

It is worth noting that although the numbers of Russians (21,518 persons; 0.2% of the country’s population), Chinese (15,454 persons; 0.2%), Arabs (11,704 persons; 0.1%), and Vietnamese (7,304 persons; 0.07%) living in Hungary exceeded that of Rusyns, these ethnic groups are not treated as the “established national minorities,” because they have lived in the country for less than a century.

In July 2018 – June 2019, the Hungarian National Archives held an exhibition entitled Who Are We? Hungary’s Ethnic Groups. Later its materials served as the basis for the album of the same name. Let us cast a brief look at the history of Rusyns in historical Hungary (i.e. in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, or pre-Trianon Hungary) through the lens of the archive documents used in this book – leaving the task of analyzing them and comparing them with other sources to learned academics.

“In the 10^th – 11^th centuries, in the time of constant resettlement of the Magyars, few other foreign ethnic elements were added to those whom the arriving Magyars had found in this region <…> From the East, Pechenegs and Ruthenians were scattered in insignificant numbers; from the West, few German and Latin guests were penetrating; and here and there Muslims and Jews of Bulgarian origin were arriving <…> During the time of St. Steven, only in the north-western part of the country Slavs had created a continuous ethnic body, but the general ethnic picture of the country was formed by the sole guidance of the Magyars.”

István Szabó. A magyarság életrajza (A Biography of Magyars). Budapest, 1941.

According to Hungarian documents, Ruthenians or Rusyns that lived in Máramaros in the 13^th century were Greek Orthodox by faith, like the neighboring Romanians. They led a semi-nomadic, pasturing way of life. Ruthenians, together with Slovaks and Southern Slavs, “played a big role in the colonization of unpopulated forest-covered areas, and they formed a majority in the northern, north-eastern and south-western areas.”

The ethnic picture of Hungary described by Miklós Oláh in 1536 was as follows: “Nowadays, Hungary is everywhere full of different peoples: Magyars, Germans, Czechs, Slavs, Croats, Saxons, Szeklers, Vlachs, Serbs, Cumans, Jazygians, Ruthenians, and at last now Turks; they all use different languages, except for the fact that owing to the long-time habit and borrowing relations some words have acquired some similarity and accord.” It is interesting that the author separates Magyars and Szeklers (that lived in Transylvania), Germans and Saxons (apparently Saxons were the first German-speaking settlers who came to Hungary; ‘proper’ Germans arrived later), and Slavs and other Slav nations (the Slavs then may have meant ‘Slovaks’). The other ethnic names that may need an explanation are Vlachs – contemporary Romanians, Cumans – also known as the Polovtsy, and Jazygians – ancestors of the present-day Ossetians.

By the end of the 15^th century, Ruthenians allegedly constituted 1% of Hungary’s population.

In the 1770s, as a consequence of Empress Maria Theresa’s reforms, the Urbarium (an agreement between Hungarian landlords and peasants about the latter’s rights and obligations) appeared that was published, among others, in Ruthenian. This document is considered the first printed artifact of the Subcarpathian vernacular as spoken in Máramoros (Maramorosh) County. 

Other documents of that time stated that by then, the Ruthenians had fully shifted to Greek Catholicism, and they “had been gradually descending from the Carpathians, so that in the second half of the 18th century in Zemplén County they had already reached the Bodrog [River],” and in Ugocsa County they had formed a majority of the population. The authors of the reviewed book assert that that time was the beginning of the formation of the Hungarian proto-national self-conscience, uniting a significant part of ethnic communities residing in the Kingdom of Hungary irrespective of their mother tongue. Thus, the educated part of all ethnic groups living in Hungary was becoming what was called the Hungarus.

At the end of the 18^th century, Ruthenians accounted for 3% of Hungary’s population (the third smallest share, followed only by Slovenes and Poles).

By the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849, the Ruthenians (unlike other ethnic communities of Hungary) had not shaped up any political movement, although the Munkács and Eperjes (Prešov) Greek Catholic Eparchies had provided the basis for the establishment of their ethnic culture and literature. However, the Ruthenians were not able to agree upon what language should be taken as their literary language – Church Slavonic, one of the local vernaculars, or Great Russian (astonishingly, it seems to have remained an issue until now!).

A map showing Hungary’s ethnic picture in the 1850s asserts that Ruthenians formed a 50 to 65% majority in Ung, Bereg, Máramaros Counties, and partly in Zemplén and Ugocsa Counties.

Another document shown in the book is the map drawn by Aurel C. Popovici (1863–1917), a Romanian journalist and politician, who proposed a federative division of the Dual Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. As can be seen, Popovici proposed (like the Ruthenian deputy of the Austrian Parliament Adolf Dobriansky had done several decades before) to unite East Galitzia (Halychyna) and Subcarpathia into one administrative unit (leaving the Prešov Region and Ungvár/Uzhhorod beyond this formation).

Csaba Szabó, one of the co-authors of the book Who Are We? writes: “To heal the wartime centuries-long wounds, we had regularly been accepting more and more foreigners – but though becoming richer in culture, mindset and creativity, our nation itself was continually becoming smaller. Shall we be able to remain welcoming hosts in the future so that we will remain ourselves? In Hungary – [will we remain] Hungarians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Croats, Poles, Germans, Armenians, Romany, Romanians, Rusyns, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ukrainians, and Jews?” A good and well-relevant question, isn’t it?