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Lemkos are often considered to be a sub-group of Rusyns.[6][7] In Ukraine, they are often identified as being a sub-group of Ukrainians.[2] Members of these groups have historically also been given other designations such as Verkhovyntsi (Highlanders). Among people of the Carpathian highlands, communities speaking the same dialect will identify with a different ethnic label when crossing borders due to the influence of state-sponsored education and media. As well the same community may switch its preferred identification over time. In Slovakia between the 1991 and 2001 censuses, the number of people identifying as "Ukrainian" declined by 2,467 people (an 18.6% decrease) while those reporting Rusyn as their national identity increased by 7,004 people (a 40.6% increase). It is not clear however, if this refers to the same individuals switching their identification, more young first-time respondents choosing Rusyn, or migration.[8]
The spoken language of the Lemkos, which has a code of rue under ISO 639-3, has been variously described as a language in its own right, a dialect of Ukrainian,[9] or a dialect of Rusyn. In Ukraine, almost all Lemkos speak both Lemko and standard Ukrainian (according to the 2001 Ukrainian Census).[5] Ukraine itself categorizes Lemkos as an ethnic subgroup of Ukrainians and not as a separate ethnicity.[10] In the Polish Census of 2011, 11,000 people declared Lemko nationality, of whom 6,000 declared only Lemko nationality, 4,000 declared double national identity – Lemko-Polish, and 1,000 declared Lemko identity together with a non-Polish identity.[4] I.D. Liubchyk (І.Д.Любчик) cites the number of around 700 thousand people with Lemko ancestory in the world, out of which 350 thousand are in Ukraine, 150 thousand in North America, 100 thousand in Poland, 100 thousand in Poland, 100 thousand in Slovakia and 50 thousand in Post-Yugoslavia states.[11] During the population census in Ukraine in 2001, the majority of Lemkos identified themselves as Ukrainians.
Etymology
The ethnonym Lemko derives from the word lem (Rusyn: лем, lit. 'only').[12] The term is thought to have first originated as a nickname for users of the word lem in the borderlands between the Lemko and Boyko regions: the easternmost extent of usage of the word on the north side of the Carpathians.[13] (On the south side of the Carpathians, the analogous nickname, lemak, was used in the lem-lyšisogloss area.)[14] The ethnonym eventually entered use in academia and was first recorded in print with the 1834 publication of Grammatik der ruthenischen oder klein russischen Sprache in Galizien (lit. 'Grammar of Ruthenian or Little Russian Language in Galicia') by Yosyp Levytsky.
As an endonym, Lemko only entered wider use in the early 20th century.[15][16] Prior to adopting the name, Lemkos would refer to themselves as Rusyns (Rusyn: Русины, romanized: Rusynŷ) or Rusnaks (Rusyn: Руснaкы, Руснаци, romanized: Rusnakŷ, Rusnacy).[16][17] By the interwar period the popularity of Lemko as an endonym had grown, and appeared in periodicals such as Lemko and Naš Lemko.[18]
Polish authorities also played a hand in popular adoption of the term leading up to World War II. Concerned by the potential for Ukrainian nationalism in the region, authorities sought to encourage Rusyn identity as a counter. This led to promotion of the exaggerated historicity of Lemkos as a distinctive ethnographic group and of their corresponding ethnonym.[19]
In the aftermath of WWII, Lemko finally supplanted Rusyn and Rusnak as the term of choice for the Rusyns on the north face of the Carpathians in Poland.[18]
History
Several hypotheses account for the origin of the Lemkos, however, like all Rusyns, they most probably have a diverse ethnogenetic origin. The Lemkos (and other Carpatho-Rusyns) are considered to be descendants of the medieval White Croats,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26] affected by the migration of Rusyn-influenced Slovaks,[26] and the Vlach/Romanian migrations in the 14th and 15th centuries.[20][26][27]
The Lemko Region became part of Poland in the time of the medieval Piast dynasty but was frequently disputed with the neighbouring Rus', as can be seen by taking the town of Sanok as an example: In 981CE Vladimir I of Kiev invaded the area and took it over from Poland. In 1018 it returned to Poland, in 1031 it went back to Rus', and in 1340 Casimir III of Poland recovered it for Poland. The gord of Sanok is mentioned for the first time in Hypatian Codex in 1150.
Lemkos (or their progenitors) became an ethnic minority as part of the Austrian province of Galicia in 1772.[28] Mass emigration from this territory to the Western hemisphere for economic reasons began in the late 19th century.
Prior to World War I, Lemkos begun to develop conflicting national identities. While some adopted the Ukrainian nationality, others favored the concept of the All-Russian nation (the so-called "Old Ruthenian" identity).[29] As the Greek Catholic Church was keen on promoting the Ukrainian identity, some of the pro-Russian Lemkos begun converting to the Orthodoxy.[30] One of the most notable Orthodoxy converts was Saint Maxim Sandovich, a Lemko peasant who, after a brief experience as a Greek Catholic monk, converted to Orthodoxy, became a priest and begun spreading Orthodoxy in the region.[31]
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was highly suspicious of the pro-Russian Lemkos, as well of Sandovich himself. This led to a series of imprisonments before the breakout of World War I, including one of Sandovich himself.[32] After the war broke out, Sandovich was imprisoned again, and executed without trial.[33]
In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian authorities created the Thalerhof internment camp, where they imprisoned Lemkos suspected of spying for the Russian Empire. During the war, 1767 people died in the Thalerhof camp.
During the time of the Second Polish Republic, the identity conflict between the Lemkos intensified.[34] In 1926, following a conflict with their local Greek Catholic priest, the Lemko people of the village Tylawa underwent a massive conversion to Orthodoxy.[35] This event, known as the Tylawa schism[36] begun a wave of mass conversions in the region, during which many villages completely converted to Orthodoxy, while some remained either loyal to Eastern Catholicism or divided between the two religions.[37] As the Catholic Church was unwilling to hand over their temples to the Orthodox Church, in many convertite villages new churches had to be built.[38]
Some 5,000 Lemko families returned to their home regions in Poland between 1957 and 1958,[39] (they were officially granted the right to return in 1956), the Lemko population in the Polish section of Lemkivschyna only numbers around 10,000–15,000 today. Some 50,000 Lemkos live in the western and northern parts of Poland, where they were sent to populate former German villages in areas ceded to Poland. Among those, 5,863 people identified themselves as Lemko in the 2002 census. However, 60,000 ethnic Lemkos may reside in Poland today. Within the Lemko Region, Lemkos live in the villages of Łosie, Krynica-Zdrój, Nowica, Zdynia, Gładyszów, Hańczowa, Zyndranowa, Uście Gorlickie, Bartne, Binczarowa and Bielanka. Additional populations can be found in Mokre, Szczawne, Kulaszne, Rzepedź, Turzańsk, Komańcza, Sanok, Nowy Sącz, and Gorlice.
An important aspect of Lemko culture is their deep commitment to Byzantine Christianity which was introduced to the Eastern Slavs from Byzantium via Moravia through the efforts of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century. Originally the Lemkos adhered to Orthodoxy, but in order to avoid latinization, directly entered into Union of Brest with the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century.
The distinctive wooden architectural style of the Lemko churches is to place the highest cupola of the church building at the entrance to the church, with the roof sloping downward toward the sanctuary as opposed to their neighbouring sub-ethnic groups such as the Boykos who place the highest cupola in the middle. Both groups styles have three cupola with numerous eaves.
The Slavic dialects of Central Europe form (or formed, prior to standardization) a dialect continuum with few distinct boundaries between neighbouring varieties. However the question of language boundaries has become a controversial political issue since the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later the Soviet Union into "nation states", each having only one official language. The Lemko dialects share many features with other Carpathian ones, which are often grouped together as the Rusyn language by outside linguists.[40][41]
The Lemko dialect has been influenced greatly by the languages spoken by geographically neighboring peoples and ruling elites, so much so that some consider it a separate entity.[42][better source needed]—Lemko speech includes some patterns matching those of the surrounding Polish and Slovak languages.[citation needed]
Metodyj Trochanovskij developed a Lemko Primer (Bukvar: Perša knyžečka dlja narodnŷch škol, 1935) and a First Reader (Druha knyžečka dlja narodnŷch škol, 1936) for use in schools in the Lemko-speaking area of Poland.[43] In 1934, Lemko was introduced as the language of instruction in schools in the Lemko region. The pupils were taught from textbooks prepared by Trochanovskij and published by the State Publishing House. However, shortly before the outbreak of World War II Polish authorities replaced them with Ukrainian texts.[44] Important fieldwork on the Lemko dialect was carried out by the Polish linguist Zdzisław Stieber before their dispersal.
According to the Central Statistical Office of Poland, in the school year 2010–2011, Lemko was taught as a first language in twenty primary schools and interschool groups, and ten schools and interschool groups at junior high level, with 188 students attending classes.[45]
In the late 20th century, some Lemkos/Rusyns, mainly emigres from the region of the southern slopes of the Carpathians in modern-day Slovakia, began codifying a standard grammar for the Lemko dialect, which was presented on the 27 January 1995 in Prešov, Slovakia. In 2013 the famous novel The Little Prince was translated into Lemko by Petro Krynyckij.[46]
Lemkos in fiction
Nikolai Gogol's short story The Terrible Vengeance ends at Kriváň, now in Slovakia and pictured on the Slovakian euro, in the heart of the Lemko Region in the Prešov Region. Avram Davidson makes several references to the Lemko people in his stories.[47] Anna Bibko, mother-in-law of the protagonist of All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well,[48] is a Lemko[49] "guided by her senses of traditionalism and grievance, not necessarily in that order".[50]
In the critically acclaimed movie The Deer Hunter the wedding reception scene was filmed in Lemko Hall in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, which had a significant immigrant population of Lemkos at one time.[51] The three main characters’ surnames, however, appear to be Russian, possibly Polish and Ukrainian (Michael "Mike" Vronsky, from Polish Wroński, Steven Pushkov, and Nikonar "Nick" Chevotarevich) and the wedding was filmed inside St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which is also located in Tremont.
The Lemko region became part of Poland in medieval Piast times. Lemkos were made part of the Austrian province of Galicia in 1772.[28] This area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its dissolution in 1918, at which point the Lemko-Rusyn Republic (Ruska Lemkivska) declared its independence. Independence did not last long however, and the republic was incorporated into Poland in 1920.
As a result of the forcible deportation of Ukrainians from Poland to the Soviet Union after World War II, the majority of Lemkos in Poland were either resettled from their historic homeland to the prеviously German territories in the North-Western region of Poland or to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.[52] Only those Lemkos living the Prešov Region in present-day Slovakia continue to live on their ancestral lands, with the exception of some Lemkos who resettled in their homeland in the late 1950s and afterward. Lemkos are/were neighbours with Slovaks, Carpathian Germans and Lachy sądeckie (Poles) to the west, Pogorzans (Poles) and Dolinians (a Rusyn subgroup) to the north, Boykos (a Ukrainians subgroup) to the east, and Slovaks to the south.
Highlander groups of southeastern Poland, Lemkos in blue.
^Listed as Rusyns; includes 23,746 as primary ethnicity and 39,810 as secondary ethnicity.
References
^Pilip, Milan (2014). Medviď, Peter (ed.). Русиньска народна сiмболiка [Rusyn National Symbology] (PDF) (in Rusyn, Slovak, and English). Svidník, Slovakia: Tlačiareň svidnícka. p. 92. ISBN978-80-89755-03-5. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
^Mihalasky, S. Y. (1998). "Ethno-national Orientation Among Lemkos in Poland". National Identities and Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 208–224. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-26553-4_15. ISBN978-1-349-26555-8.
^Георгий Геровский (1995) [1934]. Язык Подкарпатской Руси (in Russian). Moscow. p. 22.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Helena Duć-Fajfer (2005). "Lemkos". Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture. University of Toronto Press. ISBN0-8020-3566-3. By the early twentieth century the Rusyns living on the northern slopes of the Carpathians had given up their traditional ethnonym, Rusnak, for the name Lemko.
^ abMagocsi, Paul Robert (1995). "The Carpatho-Rusyns". Carpatho-Rusyn American. XVIII (4). The purpose of this somewhat extended discussion of early history is to emphasize the complex origins of the Carpatho-Rusyns. They were not, as is often asserted, exclusively associated with Kievan Rus', from which it is said their name Rusyn derives. Rather, the ancestors of the present-day Carpatho-Rusyns are descendants of: (1) early Slavic peoples who came to the Danubian Basin with the Huns; (2) the White Croats; (3) the Rusyns of Galicia and Podolia; and (4) the Vlachs of Transylvania.
^Majorov, Aleksandr Vjačeslavovič (2012), Velika Hrvatska: etnogeneza i rana povijest Slavena prikarpatskoga područja [Great Croatia: ethnogenesis and early history of Slavs in the Carpathian area] (in Croatian), Zagreb, Samobor: Brethren of the Croatian Dragon, Meridijani, ISBN978-953-6928-26-2
^Ivan Katchanovski; Kohut, Zenon E.; Nebesio, Bohdan Y.; Yurkevich, Myroslav (2013). Historical Dictionary of Ukraine. Scarecrow Press. p. 321. ISBN978-0-8108-7847-1. In the opinion of some scholars, the ancestors of the Lemkos were the White Croatians, who settled the Carpathian region between the seventh and tenth centuries.
^И. А. Бойко (2016). "ЛЕ́МКИ". Great Russian Encyclopedia (in Russian). Bolshaya Rossiyskaya Entsiklopediya, Russian Academy of Sciences. Сформировались к 17 в. на основе потомков историч. хорватов и укр. переселенцев (в т. ч. пленных запорожских казаков) при влиянии вост.
^ abc"Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine"(PDF) (Press release). Warsaw – Kiev. UNESCO. 2011. p. 9. Retrieved 2020-08-03. The Lemkos an ethnic group inhabiting the Eastern Carpathians, between the River of Poprad to the west and the rivers of Oslava and Laborec to the east. The ethnic shape of the Lemko territory was affected by the Wallachian colonization in 14th-16th centuries, the influx of a Rusyn-influenced Slovak population and the settlement of a Slavic tribe called the White Croats, who had inhabited this part of the Carpathians since the 5th century.
^Ewa Kocój (2015). "Heritage without heirs? Tangible and religious cultural heritage of the Vlach minority in Europe in the context of an interdisciplinary research project". Balcanica Posnaniensia Acta et Studia. Baner. 22 (1). Jagiellonian University, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Kraków, Poland: 141–142. The prevailing religion among Lemkos and Boykos, who are the representatives of the Vlach minority in Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine, includes the Orthodox faith and then the Greek Catholic Church ... Hutsuls, who inhabit the south-west of Ukraine (Chornohora) and the north of Romania, are mostly Orthodox and, to a much lesser extent, Greek Catholics
^Best, Paul Joseph; Moklak, Jarosław, eds. (2000). The Lemkos of Poland : articles and essays. Carpatho-Slavic Studies. Vol. 1–3. New Haven, Cracow: Carpatho-Slavic Studies Group, Historia Iagellonica Press. ISBN978-83-912018-3-1. OCLC231621583.
^Hornsby, Michael (2015). Revitalizing Minority Languages: New Speakers of Breton, Yiddish and Lemko. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 97. ISBN978-1-137-49880-9.
^Nicholas Lezard (28 June 2008). "Sympathy for the outsider"(book review). The Guardian. Retrieved 23 December 2009. (You could be forgiven for thinking Wodicka has made the Lemkos up. He hasn't.)
Moklak, Jaroslaw. The Lemko Region in the Second Polish Republic: Political and Interdenominational Issues 1918--1939 (2013); covers Old Rusyns, Moscophiles and National Movement Activists, & the political role of the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches
Łemkowie Grupa Etniczna czy Naród?, [The Lemkos: An Ethnic Group or a Nation?], trans. Paul Best [pl]
The Lemkos of Poland – Articles and Essays, editor Paul Best and Jarosław Moklak
The Lemko Region, 1939–1947 War, Occupation and Deportation – Articles and Essays, editor Paul Best and Jarosław Moklak
Gocz T., Życie Łemka / Teodor Gocz. - wyd. II, poprawione i uzupełnione. - Zyndranowa - Krosno : Oficyna Wydawnicza "APLA", 2007. - 142 s.
Drozd R., Halczak B. Dzieje Ukraińców w Polsce w latach 1921–1989 / Roman Drozd, Bohdan Halczak. – wyd. II, poprawione. – Warszawa : TYRSA, 2010. – 237 s.
Halczak B. Publicystyka narodowo – demokratyczna wobec problemów narodowościowych i etnicznych II Rzeczypospolitej / Bohdan Halczak. – Zielona Góra : Wydaw. WSP im. Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, 2000. – 222 s.
Halczak B. Problemy tożsamości narodowej Łemków / Bohdan Halczak // W: Łemkowie, Bojkowie, Rusini: historia, współczesność, kultura materialna i duchowa / red. nauk. Stefan Dudra, Bohdan Halczak, Andrzej Ksenicz, Jerzy Starzyński . – Legnica – Zielona Góra : Łemkowski Zespół Pieśni i Tańca "Kyczera", 2007 – s. 41–55 .
Halczak B. Łemkowskie miejsce we wszechświecie. Refleksje o położeniu Łemków na przełomie XX i XXI wieku / Bohdan Halczak // W: Łemkowie, Bojkowie, Rusini – historia, współczesność, kultura materialna i duchowa / red. nauk. Stefan Dudra, Bohdan Halczak, Roman Drozd, Iryna Betko, Michal Šmigeľ . Tom IV, cz. 1 . – Słupsk – Zielona Góra : [b. w.], 2012 – s. 119–133 .
Дрозд Р., Гальчак Б. Історія українців у Польщі в 1921–1989 роках / Роман Дрозд, Богдан Гальчак, Ірина Мусієнко; пер. з пол. І. Мусієнко. 3-тє вид., випр., допов. – Харків : Золоті сторінки, 2013. – 272 с.
"The bells of Lemkivshchyna. Will the authorities of Ukraine and Poland listen to them", Zerkalo Nedeli, (Mirror Weekly), May 25–31, 2002. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.