Mythologies of the Ruthenian (Rusyn) Tribe

Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sources to describe all Eastern Slavs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as an exonym for people of the former Kievan Rus', thus including ancestors of the modern Belarusians, Rusyns and Ukrainians. The use of Ruthenian and related exonyms continued through the early modern period, developing several distinctive meanings, both in terms of their regional scopes and additional religious connotations (such as affiliation with the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church). In medieval sources, the Latin term Rutheni was commonly applied to East Slavs in general, thus encompassing all endonyms and their various forms (Belarusian: русіны, romanized: rusiny; Ukrainian: русини, romanized: rusyny). By opting for the use of exonymic terms, authors who wrote in Latin were relieved from the need to be specific in their applications of those terms, and the same quality of Ruthenian exonyms is often recognized in modern, mainly Western authors, particularly those who prefer to use exonyms (foreign in origin) over endonyms. During the early modern period, the exonym Ruthenian was most frequently applied to the East Slavic population of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, an area encompassing territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine from the 15th up to the 18th centuries. In the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the same term (German: Ruthenen) was employed up to 1918 as an official exonym for the entire Ukrainian population within the borders of the Monarchy.

Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Kievan Rus'. It is also used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, and West European Russia. Historically, the term was used to refer to all the territories of the East Slavs. The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts of Western Ukraine, was referred to as Ruthenia and its people as Ruthenians. As a result of a Ukrainian national identity gradually dominating over much of present-day Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the endonym Rusyn is now mostly used among a minority of peoples on the territory of the Carpathian Mountains, including Carpathian Ruthenia. The word Ruthenia originated as a Latin designation of the region its people called Rus'. During the Middle Ages, writers in English and other Western European languages applied the term to lands inhabited by Eastern Slavs. Russia itself was called Great Ruthenia or White Ruthenia until the end of the 17th century. "Rusia or Ruthenia" appears in the 1520 Latin treatise Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti by Johann Boemus. In the chapter De Rusia sive Ruthenia, et recentibus Rusianorum moribus ("About Rus', or Ruthenia, and modern customs of the Rus'"), Boemus tells of a country extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and from the Don River to the northern ocean. It is a source of beeswax, its forests harbor many animals with valuable fur, and the capital city Moscow (Moscovia), named after the Moskva River (Moscum amnem), is 14 miles in circumference. Danish diplomat Jacob Ulfeldt, who traveled to Russia in 1578 to meet with Tsar Ivan IV, titled his posthumously (1608) published memoir Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum ("Voyage to Ruthenia").

Rusyn (Ruthenian) refers as well to language. Ruthenian was the term used to describe the written medium (initially based on spoken Belarusian) that functioned as the official or chancellery language of the grand duchy of Lithuania and to refer to the spoken, or simple (prosta), language of the duchy’s East Slavic inhabitants (present-day Belarusians and Ukrainians). Ruthenian (German: Ruthenisch; Hungarian: rutén) was also the official designation for the spoken and written language of the East Slavs (present-day Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyns) living in the Habsburg-ruled Austrian Empire. Today the name Rusyn refers to the spoken language and variants of a literary language codified in the 20th century for Carpatho-Rusyns living in Ukraine (Transcarpathia), Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia (the Vojvodina). Rusyn, any of several East Slavic peoples (modern-day Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Carpatho-Rusyns) and their languages. The name Rusyn is derived from Rus (Ruthenia), the name of the territory that they inhabited. The name Ruthenian derives from the Latin Ruthenus (singular), a term found in medieval sources to describe the Slavic inhabitants of Eastern Christian religion (Orthodox and Greek Catholics) living in the grand duchy of Lithuania and, after 1569, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Rusyn-inhabited territories in those states had from the 10th to the 14th century belonged to several principalities referred to collectively as Kievan Rus. The Latin term Ruthenus (plural Rutheni) is the equivalent of the Slavic Rusyn (plural Rusyny), meaning “an inhabitant of the land of Rus.”

Ruthenia (rōōthē´nēə), Latinized form of the word Russia. The term was applied to Ukraine in the Middle Ages when the princes of Halych briefly assumed the title kings of Ruthenia. Later, in Austria-Hungary, the term Ruthenians was used to designate the Ukrainian population of W Ukraine, which included Galicia, Bukovina, and Carpathian Ukraine. After 1918 the term Ruthenia was applied only to the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia, which was also known as Carpathian Ukraine, or by its Czech name, Podkarpatská Rus [Sub-Carpathian Russia]; for the history of this area from 1918, see Transcarpathian Region. The inhabitants of Carparthian Ukraine, known as Rusyns or Ruthenians, speak a language (Rusyn or Ruthenian) is closely related to Ukrainian, but culturally, however, the Rusyns were distinct from the Ukrainians, especially after 1596, when the Orthodox Church of the Western Ukraine entered into union with the Roman Catholic Church, and after 1649, when a similar union was effected in Hungary. The Ruthenian Uniate Church of the Byzantine (see Roman Catholic Church) thus included the majority of the Rusyns in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while the Orthodox Church was fully restored (17th cent.) in the Russian part of the Ukraine. When most Rusyns were united (1945) in Soviet Ukraine, government pressure resulted in the secession of the Ruthenian Uniate Church from Rome and its reunion with the Russian Orthodox Church. At the same time, the Soviets classified the Rusyns, who had been divided as to whether to regard themselves as ethnically Rusyn, Russian, or Ukrainian, as Ukrainian. This position also was adopted by Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia and Poland with respect to their Rusyn minorities. In 1989 the Uniate Church broke with the Russian Orthodox Church and reestablished its ties with Rome. The end of Communist rule in E Europe also brought a resurgence of a distinct Rusyn identity, although Ukraine has not recognized Transcarpathian Rusyns as an ethnic minority, as well as a interest among some in establishing a Rusyn nation.

A historic name for Ukrainians corresponding to the Ukrainian русини; rusyny. The English ‘Ruthenians’ (sometimes ‘Ruthenes’) is derived from the Latin Rutheni (singular Ruthenus), which also gave rise to the German Ruthenen and similar words in other languages. Originally the Latin name Rut(h)eni was applied to a Celtic tribe of ancient Gaul (their town Segodunum later became known as Rodez). The name Rutheni came to be applied to the inhabitants of Kyivan Rus’ as a result of the medieval practice of giving newly encountered peoples the names of extinct ancient peoples. Boris Unbegaun has suggested that the attested Latin Rucenus, a rendering of the Old Ukrainian rusyn, was instrumental in the selection of the name Ruthenus. The first use of the word Ruteni in reference to the inhabitants of Rus’ was in the Annales Augustiani of 1089. For centuries thereafter Rutheni was used in Latin as the designation of all East Slavs, particularly Ukrainians and Belarusians. In the 16th century the word more clearly began to be associated with the Ukrainians and Belarusians of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as distinct from the Muscovites (later known as Russians), who were designated Moscovitae. After the partitions of Poland (1772–95) the term ‘Ruthenian’ underwent further restriction. It came to be associated primarily with those Ukrainians who lived under the Habsburg monarchy, in Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia. In 1843, at the request of the Greek Catholic metropolitan of Halych, Mykhailo Levytsky, the Austrian authorities established the term Ruthenen as the official name of the Ukrainians within the Austrian Empire. In the 1870s the central-Ukrainian political theorist Mykhailo Drahomanov, as well as his Galician disciples Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Pavlyk, used the term rutentsi (a Ukrainianized version of Ruthenen) to denote narrow-minded, provincial, and Habsburg-true members of the Galician Ukrainian intelligentsia. Although the term Ruthenen remained in official use until the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, Galician Ukrainians themselves began to abandon that name (from around 1900) and its Ukrainian equivalent, rusyny, in favor of the self-designation ukraintsi (Ukrainians). In the last decades of the existence of the Habsburg monarchy there was a massive wave of Ukrainian emigration from there to the Americas. In their new countries the emigrant Ukrainians were often referred to and referred to themselves as ‘Ruthenians.’ In the interwar era the name ‘Ruthenian’ became even more restricted: it was generally used to refer to the inhabitants of Transcarpathia and to Transcarpathian emigrants in the United States. Since the Second World War the term ‘Ruthenian’ has been used as a self-designation almost exclusively by descendants of Transcarpathian emigrants in the United States, but since the 1970s even they have begun to abandon it in favor of the designation ‘Rusyn’ or ‘Carpatho-Rusyn.’ In official Catholic ecclesiastical language the term Rutheni was used in a wide sense, to denote all East Slavs of the Eastern church rite (Ukrainians of Galicia and Transcarpathia as well as Belarusians) until the early 1960s. Since then the term Rutheni has been used to refer only to Byzantine rite Catholics of Transcarpathian origin in the United States. In 1991 the government of Slovakia recognized Ruthenians as a distinct national minority. The regional variation of Ukrainian, after several years of study, was proclaimed a new Slavic language in 1995 by the Rusyn Renaissance Society of Slovakia.

Ruthenia, which is a Latin word for Rus’ or even Russia. Ruthenia is largely synonymous with South-Western Rus’, especially, though not exclusively, during the Polish-Lithuanian, or Austro-Hungarian periods. The Ruthenian ideal outcome would have been to achieve a commonwealth of three nations (Rzeczpospolita trojga narodów), Poles, Lithuanians, and Rusyns. This however fell short of realization, with the death of great figures such as St. Peter Mohyla, Adam Kisiel, and King Władysław of Poland, and the rise of tragic internecine wars; the rights of the Orthodox Ruthenians were not respected, and a deluge of violence from all sides erupted, flooding down on the common folk, who as always, are the ones hurt the most in wars started by power-hungry rulers. The situation was best described by the great writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, we feel no better words have been written to illustrate the fall of the Commonwealth, and Ruthenia with it, and thus, we will end this history of Ruthenia with them.

The question of where Rusyns came from is closely related to the famous controversy in the study of early eastern European history known generally as the problem of the origin of Rus'. There are at least three explanations favored by various Rusyn and other eastern European scholars: (l)that the Rus' derive from a Varangian (Scandinavian) tribe or group of leaders who made Kiev their political center in the late ninth century AD-the so-called Normanist theory; (2) that the Rus' or Ros were an indigenous Slavic tribe who were already settled just south of Kiev by the fourth century AD, later giving their name to the Scandinavian conquerors-the so-called anti-Normanist theory; and (3) that the Rus' came from Scandinavia, but were not associated with any particular Varangian tribe. Instead, they were part of an international trading company that plied the North and Baltic seas. The company, which comprised various peoples, traced its roots to the city of Rodez (Ruzzi) in what is today southern France-a city whose inhabitants were called Ruteni or Ruti, and who today are known as rutenois. As for the first Rus' in the Carpathians, there are also numerous theories. For many years, scholars thought that the Carpathian region was the original homeland of all the Slavs. Today, however, it is generally felt that the original Slavic homeland was just north of the Carpathians, in what is today eastern Poland, southwestern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. Archaeological remains indicate that human settlement in the Rusyn region south of the Carpathians goes back for centuries before Christ, but it is still not certain when the ancestors of the Rusyns first made their appearance. Some writers-who support the so-called autochthonous theory-argue that Rusyns were already in the Carpathians in the fifth and sixth centuries AD and that they had a state ruled by a Prince Laborec' which was "independent" until its destruction by the Magyars at the very end of the ninth century. Others-who support the so-called colonization theory-state that the Rusyns began to arrive with the Magyars at the end of the ninth century, although only in small groups; larger numbers did not come until after the thirteenth century.

Knowing who exactly “Ruthenians” are is important. In many articles and books, the terms Ruthenian/Ukrainian are used interchangeably when speaking about this time frame. It is also important to know the context of the term. How words change and organically change over time is an interesting part of any language. At first, the Latin name of “Rutheni” was meant for a Celtic tribe in Gaul. By the Middle Ages, it became to be associated with the people of Rus, particularly in the context of the Kingdom of Hungary and later in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. So, over time, that name was given to people in the area of Kyivan Rus. In the 16th century, the term Ruthenian became linked to Ukrainians and Belarusians within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, distinguishing them from Muscovites, later called Russians. After Poland was divided in the period from 1772 to 1795, the term Ruthenian started being more distinctly associated with Ukrainians living under Habsburg dominion in regions like Galicia, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia. Under Habsburg rule, the term Ruthenian denoted a linguistic and cultural identity and had some political implications. It became a marker for those Ukrainians living within the Habsburg Empire's domains, emphasizing their distinctiveness in contrast to other groups. Even though they shared a cultural background and lived in the same greater region, Ukrainians in the Russian lands were not commonly called Ruthenians. In essence, the term Ruthenian witnessed an evolution, from its origins in Gaul, it became a label intertwined with the identity of Ukrainians and Belarusians, particularly under various European powers and empires.

Carpathian Ruthenia (Rusyn: Карпатьска Русь, romanized: Karpat'ska Rus') is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast, with smaller parts in eastern Slovakia (largely in Prešov Region and Košice Region) and the Lemko Region in Poland. From the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin (at the end of the 9th century) to the end of World War I (Treaty of Trianon in 1920), most of this region was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the interwar period, it was part of the First and Second Czechoslovak Republics. Before World War II, the region was annexed by the Kingdom of Hungary once again when Germany dismembered the Second Czechoslovak Republic. After the war, it was annexed by the Soviet Union and became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It is an ethnically diverse region, inhabited mostly by people who regard themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, Rusyns, Lemkos, Boykos, Hutsuls, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, and Poles. It also has small communities of Jewish and Romani minorities. Prior to World War II, many more Jews lived in the region, constituting over 13% of its total population in 1930. The most commonly spoken languages are Rusyn, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, and Polish. The name Carpathian Ruthenia is sometimes used for the contiguous cross-border area of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland inhabited by Ruthenians. The local Ruthenian population self-identifies in different ways: some consider themselves to be Ukrainians; some consider themselves to be Russians; and some consider themselves to be a separate and unique Slavic group of Rusyns. To describe their home region, most Rusyns use the term Zakarpattia (Trans-Carpathia; literally "beyond the Carpathian mountains"). This is contrasted implicitly with Prykarpattia (Ciscarpathia; "Near-Carpathia"), an unofficial region in Ukraine, to the immediate north-east of the central area of the Carpathian Range, and potentially including its foothills, the Subcarpathian basin and part of the surrounding plains.

Ruthenians (Ruthenian and Russian: Rusin, plural Rusini), a Slavic people from Southern Russia, Galicia and Bukowina in Austria, and Northeastern Hungary. They are also called in Russian, Malorossiani, Little Russians (in allusion to their stature), and in the Hungarian dialect of their own language, Russniaks. They occupy in Russia the provinces or governments of Lublin (Poland), Volhynia, Podolia, Kieff, Tchernigoff, Kharkoff, and Poltava, in Russia, and number now about 18,000,000. In Austria they occupy the whole of Eastern Galicia and Bukowina, and in Hungary the northern and northeastern counties of Hungary: Szepes, Sams, Abauj, Zemplin, Ung, Maramaros, and Bereg, and amount to about 4,500,000 more. The Ruthenians along the borderland of the ancient Kingdom of Poland and the present boundary separating Austria from Russia proper are also called Ukrainians (u, at or near, and krai, the border or land composing the border), from the Ukraine, comprising the vast steppes or plains of Southern Russia extending into Galicia. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire the Ruthenians are separated from one another by the Carpathian Mountains, which leave one division of them in Galicia and the other in Hungary. The Ruthenians or Little Russians in Russia and Bukowina belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, whilst those of Galicia and Hungary are Greek Catholics in unity with the Holy See. For this reason the word Ruthenian has been generally used to indicate those of the race who are Catholics, and Little Russian those who are Greek Orthodox, although the terms are usually considered as fairly interchangeable. It must be remembered that in the Russian and Ruthenian languages (unlike in English) there are two words which are often indiscriminately translated as Russia, but which have quite different meanings. One is Russ, which is the generic word denoting an abstract fatherland and all who speak a Russo-Slavic tongue, who are of Russo-Slavic race and who profess the Greek-Slavonic Rite; it is of wide and comprehensive meaning. The other word is Rossia, which is a word of restricted meaning and refers only to the actual Russian Empire and its subjects, as constituted today. The former word Russ may be applied to a land or people very much as our own word “Anglo-Saxon” is to English or Americans. It not only includes those who live in the Russian Empire, but millions outside of it, who are of similar race or kin, but who are not politically, religiously, or governmentally united with those within the empire. From the word Russ we get the derivative Russky, which may therefore be translated in English as “Ruthenian” as well as “Russian”, since it is older than the present Russian Empire. From Rossia we have the derivative Rossiisky, which can never be translated otherwise than by “Russian”, pertaining to or a native of the Russian Empire. Indeed the word “Ruthene” or “Ruthenian” seems to have been an attempt to put the word Rusin into a Latinized form, and the medieval Latin word Ruthenia was often used as a term for Russia itself before it grew so great as it is today.

The Ruthenians are a population that is descended from a Slavic branch of the Indo-European nations. Their name is mentioned by Julius Caesar, with reference to a Celtic tribe settled in Gallia Narbonensis. Another author of the antiquity mentioning them is Pliny the Elder. The Gauls or the Celts migrate in the 5th and 4th century BC to the east of Central Europe, settling in the Northern Carpathians. The Dacians learn from them the technology of iron processing. The terms of Ruthenian and Ruthenia are first attested by the Latin text of Gesta Hungarorum, also known as the Chronicle of the Anonymous Notary of King Béla and later by Anton Verancsis. In the Middle Ages, they are Slavicized, but they keep their ethnic name of Ruthenians, to which that of Rusyns is later added. Paul Robert Magocsi explains the difference in the Encyclopaedia of Rusyn History and Culture, by pointing out that the former term, Ruthenian, is used by non-Slavic populations, while the latter, Rusyn, is used by the Slavs themselves to refer to a specific Slavic population living in the Transcarpathian region. Written testimonies of the early Middle Ages keep attesting to them continuously and specifically. Gesta Hungarorum, or the Chronicle of the Anonymous Notary of King Béla, the Hildersheim Almanac, Ystoria Mongolorum, specifically mention the Ruthenians and their country, Ruthenia, even if its exact borders are not known. Many other testimonies follow, belonging to well-known authors such as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini – the famous humanist Pope Pius II, or Georg Reicherstorffer. The Ruthenians and the territory inhabited by them are later incorporated in the Habsburg Empire. The most suggestive name given to them was that of Carpatho-Rusyns or Rusyns, made official in the 19th century by the poet Aleksander Dukhnovici. He says in one of his poems "I was, am and will remain a Rusyn", a sentence that has become the national creed of the Ruthenians. This term can also be found in the popular hymn Subcarpathian Rusyns, wake up of your deep sleep. The territory inhabited by the Ruthenians since ancient times has been that of the Transcarpathian region, or Transcarpathian Russia, which stretches in the border regions of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland. The main occupation of this population has been shepherding, which presupposed the migration of the shepherds.. That is why these people were often called Vlah. They also practiced various domestic crafts, carving wood or working on looms. In the 18th century, after the Peace of Karlowitz (1699), a great part of the Ruthenians were integrated in the Habsburg Empire. The Leopoldine Diploma, of February 16th 1699, refers to the Romanians, Greeks and Ruthenians of Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia and Transylvania. Some of the latter will join the Orthodox believers who recognize the Pope as head of the Christian Church, becoming Greek Catholics. The union with the Church of Rome was also the reason for the publication of a book such as the Catechism of 1726, printed in Târnavia for the Ruthenians united with Rome. Ever since, the Ruthenians have joined either the Orthodox Church or the Eastern Catholic Church. The revolutionary movement of 1848 leads to the appearance of some projects for the autonomy of the territories inhabited by Ruthenians. The leader of the Ruthenians, Adolf Dobrianskzj, presents in Vienna a plan for the creation of an autonomous province, Ruthenia, a plan that never comes to life because of the suppression of the Revolution. 1918 is the year when the assertion of the national identity of the Ruthenians reaches its climax. National Councils of the Ruthenians are now created in Ungvar, Presov and Sighet. After this date, the Ruthenians remain scattered in the eastern regions of Central Europe, without managing to create their own national state. In Czechoslovakia, an autonomous region of the Ruthenians existed between 1919 and 1938. After World War II, the only change is that Subcarpathian Russia is annexed by the Soviet Union, more exactly by Soviet Ukraine. In 1945, in Czechoslovakia, in the Presov region, the Ukrainian National Council was created that functioned until 1949, when the communist government of Prague dissolved it. Ruthenians were forced to adopt a new identity, the Ukrainian one. Historically speaking, we can distinguish three great moments in the evolution of the Ruthenian nation, an evolution that has always been prevented from leading towards the creation of a national state, a trans-national identity being rather granted to them, across national borders, which unites them in a common project, the project of safeguarding their existence as a nation. During the 1848 Revolution, the First National Rebirth of the Ruthenians is announced by the proclamation of independence from Vienna and by the political activity of Aleksander Dukhnovici, the spiritual leader of Ruthenians, the promoter of the unconditional assertion of the national identity of Ruthenians. His work is continued by the well-known Greek Catholic bishop Iuliu Firczak. The end of World War I brings about the Second National Rebirth of Ruthenians, most of them being included in the new Czechoslovakian state, where they were granted full freedom of expression. Their fate, however, changes for the worse after World War II. The Soviet Union annexes Subcarpathia. The existence of Ruthenians as a distinct ethnic group is denied, and we can no longer speak of a self-conscious national existence. 1989 brings about the Third National Rebirth of Ruthenians. Today, Ruthenians are asserting their national identity and carrying out remarkable cultural activities in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, Germany, the United States of America, Canada, Romania and, to a certain extent, Ukraine. After 1989, Ruthenians can be found in roughly the same territories, living in Ukraine, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the reduced Yugoslavia, and Croatia. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ruthenians initiate actions for regaining their former historical status and autonomy. In the referendum of December 1, 1991 of Ukraine, 78% of the inhabitants of Transcarpathia voted for self-government within Ukraine. The National Council of Transcarpathia is created in 1994 that has 51 members. In Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania the Ruthenians enjoy cultural autonomy, as many cultural associations have been in place since the early 1990s. The purpose of these associations is the assertion of the Carpatho-Ruthenians as a distinct ethnic group, an important support being offered by the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center in the United States of America.

The name Ruthenian (Rutheni) is found for the first time in the old Polish annalist, Martinus Gallus, who wrote towards the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century; he uses this name as one already well known. The Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus (1203), also uses it to describe the Slavs living near the Baltic Sea. These Slavs were already converted to Christianity and the name was probably used to distinguish them from the pagans. The term Ruthenian was well known in the eleventh century and its origin seems to be considerably older. It is said to have really originated in the southern part of Gaul in the time of Charlemagne. When the Huns overran Europe in the fifth century, they subdued the Slavic tribes with whom they came in contact and made them a part of their victorious army. Under Attila's leadership they pressed still farther west, devastating everything in their path, and penetrated into Northern Italy and the south-eastern part of Gaul. In the great battle at Châlons the Christian armies overcame them; a portion of the Huns' forces was slaughtered, but other portions were divided and scattered in small detachments throughout the country, and the greater part of these were the Slavs who had been made captive and forced to join the army. After the death of Charlemagne they had settled largely throughout the land, and their names are still retained in various Latin names of places, as Rouerge (Provincia Ruthenorum), Rodez (Segdunum Rutheni), and Auvergne (Augusta Ruthenorum). As these Slavic tribes furnished the name for the Latin writers of Italy and France, this same word was also used later in describing them in their native land, where descriptions came to be written by western writers who first came in contact with them. Indeed the word "Ruthenian" is considerably older than the word "Russian", in describing Slavic nationality; for the term Russia (Rossia), indicating the political state and government, did not come into use until the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The Ruthenians may well claim to be the original Russians. Theirs was the land where Sts. Cyril and Methodius converted the Slavic peoples, and that land, with Kieff as the centre, became the starting point of Greco-Slavic Christianity, and for centuries that centre was the religious and political capital of the present Russia. Great Russia was then merely a conglomerate, of Swedish, Finnish, and Slavic tribes, and although it has since become great and has subdued its weaker brethren, it does not represent the historic race as does the Ruthenian in the south. They were never so thoroughly under the rule of the conquering Tatar as the Great Russians of Moscow, Vladimir, and Kazan. Besides, Little Russia was separated from Great Russia and was for nearly five centuries subject to Poland and Lithuania. Yet Great Russia has become in Russia the norm of Russian nationality, and has succeeded largely in suppressing and arresting the development of the Little Russians within the empire. It is no wonder that the old dreams of Mazeppa, Chmielnicki, and Shevchenko of Little Russia, independent both of Russia and Poland, have found a lodgment in the hearts of the Southern Russians; the same feeling has gained ground among the Ruthenians of Galicia and Hungary, surrounded as they are by the German, Polish, and Hungarian peoples. However, the milder and more equitable rule of Austria-Hungary has prevented direct political agitation, although there is occasional trouble. The resultant of such forces among the Ruthenians of Galicia and Hungary has been the formation of political parties, which they have brought to America with them. These may be divided into three large groups: the Ukraintzi, those who believe in and foster the development of the Ruthenians along their own lines, quite independent of Russia, the Poles or the Germans, and who actually look forward to the independence of Little Russia, almost analogous to the Home Rulers of Ireland; the Moscophiles, those who look to present Russia as the norm of the Russo-Slavic race and who are partisans of Panslavism; these may be likened to the Unionists of Ireland, in order to round out the comparison; the Ugro-Russki, Hungarian Ruthenians, who while objecting to Hungary, and particular phases of Hungarian rule, have no idea of losing their own peculiar nationality by taking present Russia as their standard; they hold themselves aloof from both the other parties, the ideas of the Ukraintzi being particularly distasteful to them. (See GREEK CATHOLICS IN AMERICA.) In Russia all political agitation for Little Russia and for Little Russian customs and peculiarities is prohibited; it is only since 1905 that newspapers and other publications in the Little Russian language have been permitted. It was Little Russia which united with the Holy See in 1595, in the great reunion of the Greek Church; and it was in Little Russia where the pressure of the Russian Government was brought to bear in 1795, 1839, and 1875, whereby the Greek Catholics of Little Russia were utterly wiped out and some 7,000,000 of the Uniats there were compelled, partly by force and partly by deception, to become part of the Greek Orthodox Church.