Hello, as a Lemko who’s family fled the operation Wisla to Czechoslovakian Rusyn/Lemko village I would like to ask you about how you view when Ukrainians claim Lemkos and Rusyns as a subgroup of Ukrainians?
This is in no way meant as a hate to Ukrainians, since most of the time it’s just ignorance rather than malice. But here in Czechoslovakia during the communist regime had a policy of not recognizing Rusyns/Lemkos as a minority and was actively trying to erase them through the dismantlement of religious institutions, force conversions to orthodoxy (we were mainly greek-catholic due to the Union of Uzhorod) and forced Ukrainian identity (e.g. both my father and grandfather were forced into Ukrainian schools even though they never spoke the language and wished to go to either Rusyn which didn’t exist or Slovak one.) This persists today, since some of the hardcore communist who adopted the Ukrainian identity because the regime said so, which still persist to this day, even if just a minority, but the community here is still split (e.g. we still don’t have our own museums and such here like you do with Lemko museums in Poland).
Therefore, I would want to ask you, what’s usually your reaction when you get called Ukrainian / when the Rusyn language gets dialect of Ukrainian? For example when I want to listen to Lemko/Rusyn folk music, there is usually at least one Ukrainian comment claiming it is sang in Ukrainian language, even though they can’t understand it (fyi Lemko/Rusyn are not intelligible with standard Ukrainian). I just can’t comprehend the logical failure behind such line of reasoning and wanted to ask the polish community of Lemkos if such situation is as common with you as it is here.
P.S.: Polska gurom for recognizing us as every other member state of the EU <3
Posted by OldLeda
4 Comments
They are mountainfolk who kept to themselves for hundreds of years, and then all of a sudden 20th century happened and they were dragged into nationalist politics of various parties
Being a Ukrainian, it looks very wild to me every time I read about hardcore communists embracing Ukrainian identity (because in Soviet Ukraine, any embracing of the Ukrainian culture was considered anti-communist, and anyone who refused to be assimilated into a Russian would be called a “banderovets”). But I guess the circumstances were different in Czechoslovakia
As for the Lemkos, I personally consider them a separate ethnos, but I also met a lot of people of Lemko origin who thought otherwise and called themselves Ukrainians (I used to live close to Peremozhne village next to Luhansk airport, which entirely constisted of Lemko people, forcefully resettled by the communists from the forested mountains of Western Ukraine in the absolutely flat steppe). A good example of such a person is a popular Ukrainian singer Khrystyna Soloviy.
The only thing that annoys me is using the term “Rusyn” instead of “Carpatho-Rusyn”/”Carpatho-Ruthenian” (just because I hate ambiguous terms, and until mid-XIX century “Rusyn” was simply the preferred endonym of all the Ukrainians).
> But here in Czechoslovakia during the communist regime had a policy of not recognizing Rusyns/Lemkos as a minority
Poland on this same period didn’t recognized the minority too. It was hard policy to make the one united Polish nation without German, Kashubians, Silesians, Jews, Gypses and Lemkos.
Still today politics treats e.g Silesian nationality as “hidden german side” and that’s fucking sad.
I’m not a Lemko, though my 2nd great grandmother was. If your language is not mutually intelligible, then there’s a clear distinction between your group and the other guys, no matter what they say.