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Comment by f6v | Hacker News Reader

Oh, now “it’s not so simple”. Come on, Rusyn is a very distinct cultural identity that’s much closer to Magyars than to Ukrainians.

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Both me and the other poster in this thread have posted links on the overlap between Rusyn and Ukranian identities in Eastern Slovakia. The Magyar identity is centered around the Hungarian language and Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, while any history of the Rusyn people will emphasize how they are East Slavic-speaking Greek Catholics, so why you feel that the Magyars are relevant here is beyond me. Some of the Rusyn-speaking world was under Austrian administration in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so they weren’t even under Hungarians politically.

Rusyns in Ukraine do speak Hungarian though.

No, not to any significant extent. I speak Hungarian and have very frequently passed through that small part of Transcarpathia where Hungarian is still spoken, and I have rarely encountered an ethnic Slav who learned Hungarian to proficiency. The language of interethnic communication in Transcarpatia was generally Russian during the Soviet era, and even remained such into the post-Soviet era, though Ukrainian has naturally gained ground.

And again, most of the Rusyn population in Ukraine is living far enough to the north or northeast that they have no contact whatsoever with the Hungarian language. I don’t think you have any actual knowledge of this part of the world.

Yeah my wife’s granddad was stationed in a Ukrainian village as a doctor and had to learn some Hungarian to communicate with locals, so… Let’s fight who anecdotes are better.

> they have no contact whatsoever with the Hungarian language.

Yet loads of them pass Hungarian nationality test which involves speaking Hungarian.

Again, the Hungarian-speaking part of Transcarpatia is a fairly small area, see the convenient map[0] on Wikipedia. Most Rusyns in Ukraine live to the north or northeast of that small area in green. These are statistics that you can consult for yourself, no need for anecdotal evidence. Congratulations, your wife’s granddad must have got stationed in one of those very few communities in Transcarpatia where Hungarian is spoken. That means nothing for categorizing a people spread over Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland as “akin to Magyars”.

You do realize that the vast majority of people from Ukraine passing the Hungarian nationality test are ethnic Hungarians, not Rusyns?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarians_in_Ukraine

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