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Tinto Maps #9 Carpathia and Balkans Feedback

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Ronin Szaky said:
I don't have access to it either, but a neat trick is to look into documents that cited it.

Here's a relevant ChatGPT translation from a Ukrainian paper:

"Conclusions: The province "Marchia Ruthenorum" emerged on the eastern border of the Carolingian Empire along the Upper Danube around the middle of the 9th century. Its name was derived from the activity of international merchants in this region, who traded between the Carolingian Empire and Eastern Europe and were known as the Rus. The primary goods exported by these merchants from Slavic lands included slaves, wax, and horses. At that time, only merchants could bear this name, not a state, and certainly not any Slavic ethnic community. Therefore, attempts to trace the origins of the Rusyns of Transcarpathia as an independent ethnic group stemming from the "March of the Ruthenians," which existed as early as the 9th century, lack any historical basis.

In this context, the presence of an ethnic community in Transcarpathia identifying itself as Rusyns reflects the spread of Kyivian princely power in the region. In this light, Transcarpathia’s subjugation to Kyiv can be confidently placed in the late 10th to 11th centuries, as the process of assimilating the Varangian elites, which laid the groundwork for the spread of Rus identity among the Slavs, only began after the adoption of Christianity. The title of the Hungarian prince as "prince of the Rus" in the early 11th century does not contradict this, as the title signified either claims to the "March of the Ruthenians" in the Carolingian Empire or control over the adjacent region. In short, the historical name "Rusyns" among the population of Transcarpathia, who identify as Slavs, and the absence of competing self-designations among them, means only one thing: a shared historical existence with the ancestors of the Ukrainians in the state of Rus. References to the existence of a separate state among the ancestors of the current Rusyns of Transcarpathia, called the "Ruthenian March," contradict the content of historical sources." [Page 13-14]

TL;DR: There were no indigenous Rusyns but Slavic tribes that were converted and assimilated by the ancestors of Ukrainians.

It is rather funny to see that the Ukrainians also have a claim on assimilating the original Slavs living in Transcarpathia, I wonder what the Slovak claim is.

At any rate, I am not entirely sure what the "10th to 11th century subjugation" implies in this context/translation [perhaps the start of the Ruthenian influence?!]. Hungarian scholars were adamant in stating that Ruthenian migrations only started later (12th-13th century) and intensified long after that (18th century and on). Given that the area was part of the borderlands, I can definitely see how the process may have started earlier, but I am hesitant to believe that it was much beyond the immediate border as the Hungarian settlements were also expanding significantly at the time.
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There's a video on youtube of a Ukrainian historian testifying as an "expert witness" in Ukraine's highest court that CIA created Rusyns (Ukrainian nationalism is something else). Now, it's the KGB of course. Ukrainian nationalism has as one of its core tenets the complete assimilation of all things Rusyn. Whether it's Plokhy or Timothy Snyder, they all preach the same kind of malarkey that they accuse the Russians of.

The so-called presence of Kievan Rus in transcarpathia that they keep repeating is the 20 year lease of about 30 villages around Uzhorod in the 13th centuty as part of a dowry. Imagine invading a country on a claim this thin. There was never any such presence. There were cross-border migrations and trade.
 
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Ronin Szaky said:
This is going to be a controversial take so I would appreciate counter-arguments, preferably from Ukrainian or Slovakian academic sources and not nationalistic gut reactions.

Most of the documents on Ruthenians/Rusyns seemed to suggest that they did not spread out as far and in the numbers – at the game's start – as they are represented on the current map:

"The Ruthenians initially settled in the uninhabited, flat areas along the "border defense line" [gyepűvonal]. In the 15th–17th centuries, due to the shrinking of free land, the settlement of the mountainous areas on the inner side of the North-Eastern Carpathians, the so-called Verhovina, gained momentum." [Page 66]
"Parallel to the Ruthenian settlement, the Hungarian ethnic group managed to populate the area of Transcarpathia in the present-day sense by the end of the 14th century." [Page 66]

"As for Transcarpathia, one of the researchers, Gáspár J., has shown that the current generation of Ukrainians (Rusyns) are not direct descendants of the 13th-century settlers, but are mostly 18th-century immigrants. The above is also supported by statistical data. For example, between 1720 and 1787, the population of the right bank of the Tisza River increased by 320 percent." [Page 32]

An extremely difficult-to-read map [Page 25] about the Hungarian settlements and expansion in the 11-12th century:
View attachment 1223047

Population data from the 15th century when the Hungarian % was the highest in history:
"The population of the former counties of today's Transcarpathia in 1495 was 75,685 inhabitants in 21 cities and 592 villages in the four counties. According to ethnicity, he established the following proportions: Hungarian 51,900 (69%), Ruthenian 12,600 (16.8%), Slovak 5,300 (7.0%), Romanian 5,680 (7.5%)." [Page 29]

For additional visual aid I could refer to post #41, but I will be the first to admit that it is a biased and simplified map.

Here's a Slovakian source, albeit not about Transcarpathia:
"Ruthenians penetrated into the territory of eastern Slovakia in two basic waves starting from the beginning of the 14th century... it was only in the 16th century, especially from its middle, that more substantial Ruthenian-Wallachian activity can be documented." [Page 62]
All in all, the current culture map is doing a good enough job, but perhaps flipping Ungvár and Beregszász from Rusyn to Hungarian majority is warranted: View attachment 1223056

To clarify, I am not disputing whether Rusyns lived there at the time, just that they only became a majority in later centuries, during and after the Ottoman occupation. Additionally, when it comes to population statistics, it will be important to represent Slovaks, Romanian (not sure which group) and German populations as they are also mentioned in practically all the sources that I've been reading.
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Have you read Magocsi? Hungary in the 11th c.png
Hungary in the 11th c.png
 

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v.skala said:
That would actually be in line with other historical examples. Take the Romanians, as an example. The last Romans. Where do we find them? At the very periphery of the former empire. Or at the island of Lemnos, where one to one British traveler asking about the people's origin, the locals replied: "we are the Romans."

Rusyn, in this case, is not a nod to the Varangians from the north, but to the Byzantine mission from the south, which proselytized among the Slavs.

I write about this naming phenomenon in more detail here:
rusynsociety.com

Between the Millstones: The Rusyns - The Society for Rusyn Evolution

Vladimir Skala gives his own overview on Rusyn history and modern day politics.
rusynsociety.com rusynsociety.com
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Why would a Byzantine mission from the south lead the people to take the Rusyn name?

Also your own article talks about 14th and 15th century East Slavic colonization:

"The etymological connection between Rusyns and the Russians is self-evident. In the Rusyn Carpathian homeland, there is a large number of settlements named “Rusky”, “Ruska”, or “Ruske” meaning “of the Rus’” or simply Rusyn in the ancient sense. These settlements were found during the Wallachian colonization in the 14th and 15th centuries when a number of shepherding communities from the eastern Carpathians – present-day southwestern Ukraine and northern Romania – moved and settled westward – northeastern Slovakia and southeastern Poland. Just as countries today entice large factories with tax breaks, so too did medieval kingdoms use tax incentives and other privileges to settle and develop the sparsely settled regions in the Carpathians. While earlier Wallachian colonization in the southern parts of the Carpathians had a strong ethnic Vlach (Romanian) characteristic, by this phase of the colonization, the new settlers were predominantly Eastern Slavs or Ruthenians. Eventually, the term Vlach lost its ethnic characteristic and instead took on a vocational significance (i.e., shepherd). To distinguish themselves from their mostly Roman Catholic neighbors, many of these settlements staked their eastern Christian identity in their settlement name – “Rusky(a/e)”."

Like your article makes it seem they used the Rusyn name not just because they were Orthodox Slavs, but because they were Orthodox East Slavs with ancestry from places that used the "Rus" name too. I don't understand how you could write the article but also say something that doesn't really fit the picture you are painting.

If they had to state their "Eastern Christian" identity why not call themselves Bulgarians if it was the southern mission that converted them? Why use the name of the people that are migrating from across the Carpathians? To me it seems like the whatever White Croat population remained it fundamentally was subsumed under the Galician Rus migrant population to the point of adopting "their" ethnonym.

To say that the Halych name makes no sense when it does really seem the "Rus" name ultimately itself came from Halych seems weird to me.
 
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Zerodv said:
Why would a Byzantine mission from the south lead the people to take the Rusyn name?
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Because that is what the term meant. It was not a strictly speaking ethnic term. More like an ethno-religious term. During the time of reformation, "ruteni" was used to denote eastern Christians falling under the Uzhorod Union within Austria. The religious affiliation was and continues to be the most important cultural elements for Rusyns. You can clearly see that when you compare statistics for Greek Catholics (250k in Slovakia) and those who pass on Rusyn as their native language (30-50k).

To me it seems like the whatever White Croat population remained it fundamentally was subsumed under the Galician Rus migrant population to the point of adopting "their" ethnonym.
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Right. What they brought is a sense of belonging to the larger Rus' ethno-religious space. However, what they didn't bring is a sense of a regional Rus identity, i.e. of belonging together with Halycz. That became much more clear much later when ethnic identity became the centerpiece of organizing nation-states (and those Ruhenians in Halycz were promoting a smaller regional Ukrainian identity, while the Ruthenians to the south railed against what they perceived as fragmenting one single Rus' identity, however illusory that was).

Also there wasn't one single wave of migration and not only from Halycz. Although modern scholarship disputes the so called 50k migration from Podolia under the aegis of Fedir Koryatovich, there is an expansion of Orthodox activity dated to around that time, i.e. founding of monasteries (like the one in Krasny Brod).

If the devs want to break up the larger Ruthenian culture into regional subgroups, it doesn't make sense to merge Galicians together with Rusyns.
 
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bokorthedust said:
I thought he was referencing the AoE2 mission depicting the battle.
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Thanks; I did suspect it was Age of Empires 2, but the mention of the Mongolian Civil War confused me.

I've even played that campaign, but I never made it to the final mission.
 

I wonder what will happen to the final nail in the coffin that was the Byzantine civil war, now that you can basically skip it via surrendering for some (seemingly) small penalties? And when I say small, I mean relatively. Taking a prestige/stability/legitimacy hit, in exchange for not losing the whole empire.

 
SuperLexxe said:

I wonder what will happen to the final nail in the coffin that was the Byzantine civil war, now that you can basically skip it via surrendering for some (seemingly) small penalties? And when I say small, I mean relatively. Taking a prestige/stability/legitimacy hit, in exchange for not losing the whole empire.

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Wait they showed how the Byzantine civil war gonna work? Like requirements and penalties?
 
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