What is "rusyns"

Rusyns, also known as Carpatho-Rusyns or Ruthenes ( Rusyn: Русины Rusyny; also sometimes referred to as Carpatho-Russians or Rusnaks), are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an East Slavic language, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym " Ukrainian" in the early 20th century. The use of the term Rusyn was prohibited by some governments, as seen after 1945 in Soviet Transcarpathia, communist Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

Today, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Croatia officially recognize contemporary Rusyns (or Ruthenes) as an ethnic minority. In 2007, Carpatho-Rusyns were recognized as a separate ethnicity in Ukraine by the Zakarpattia Regional Council, and in 2012 the Rusyn language gained official regional status in certain areas of the province. Most contemporary self-identified ethnic Rusyns live outside of Ukraine.

Of the estimated 1.2 million people of Rusyn origin, only 98,900 have officially identified themselves politically or ethnically as such, according to contemporary censuses, due to among other reasons, the Ukrainian government's refusal to list Rusyn as an ethnic identity on any census forms. The ethnic classification of Rusyns as a separate East Slavic ethnicity distinct from Russians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians or the West Slavic Poles is, however, politically controversial. The majority of Ukrainian scholars consider Rusyns to be an ethnic subgroup of the Ukrainian people (just as Russian scholars consider Ukrainian ethnos to be part of Russian nation). This is disputed by some Lemko scholars. and majority of Czech, Slovak, Canadian and American scholars. According to the 2001 Ukrainian Census about a third of Rusyns in Ukraine speak the Ukrainian language, while others stick to their native form.

The terms "Rusyn," "Ruthenes," "Rusniak," "Lemak," "Lyshak" and "Lemko" are considered by some scholars to be historic, local and synonymical names for Carpathian Ukrainians; others hold that the terms "Lemko" and "Rusnak" are simply regional variations of "Rusyn" or "Ruthene."