Ruthenians
1. Ruthenians or Ruthenes- group of Slavic tribes living in Eastern Europe between the Black Sea (south) and the White Sea (north). Their name first appears in the 9th century AD. The most important tribes were: the Polans (the area around Kiev), the Volhynians (Volhynia), the Dregovithians (Belarus), the Drevlians, the Radimichs, the Krivichs, the Ilmen Slavs.
2. Ruthenes - inhabitans of Ruthenia - Rus. In general Ruthenes means all people speaking East Slavic languages.
3. Ruthenes - former name for Ukrainians.
4.Ruthenes (also called Rusyns, Rusins, Rysin, Carpatho-Rusin, Russniaks) are a small Slavonic ethnic group with language related to the Ukrainian and Slovak. They inhabit the Ruthenia region of western Ukraine and parts of Slovakia and Poland. Main groups of Ruthene Higlanders in the former Galician Carpathians are called ( from west to east) Lemko (Poland), Bojko (Ukraine), Hucul(Ukraine).
Carpatho Rusyn Web Page including Lemko, Bojko, Hucul pages
During the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (18th and 19th centuries), some Ruthenians moved to what are now the northern regions of Serbia (Voivodina) and Croatia (Slavonia). There they are called by the name Rusins.
The mountain areas of the Carpathians were settled down since the 14th century in the process of Wallachian colonization. Eastern Slavic populations engaged in the colonization became Ruthenes.
Throughout history they were regularly assimilated by neighbouring larger Slavic peoples (Russian, Polish and Ukrainian) whose national states encompassed the Ruthenian regions. With the onset of the Internet, some of the Ruthenian emigrees to the west acquired a vehicle to voice their concerns and try to preserve their separate ethnic and cultural identity.
Warning: While reading the sources listed below, as well as sources of Ukrainian and Polish origin, one has to be careful to recognize the underlying interest of each of these groups supporting their own national mythology by selective presentation of information and the inter- and extrapolations favorable to that mythos.
A note on History
Sources