Skovac said:
The area was bordered by Galician principality, that was part of the Rus. The influence is easily proven by the religion of Ruthenians - orthodox christianas. Since christianization of Rus began at the end of 10th century, this also proves strong influence at the time when Magyars were already present in the Basin.
You are mixing the time scale. Kiev was taken by the varegs at 870, just 25 years before the magyars moved from "Etelköz" (=which is the area between the Dniepr river and the Danube, East to the Carpathians) to the Carpathian basin. So the Rus state cannot have influence in that area, because the magyars were between Kiev and the Carpathians. Also, the principality exist only after the polish state was created and it was a clashing zone between Poland and Kiev. So it is clear that Kiev do not have any influence in this area till the XI. century, and after that period, their influence fluctuated even above the Galician principality, so they simply cannot have any influence in an area, which is more far than Galicia.
The christianisation only proves the origin of the ruthenes, but the questions is that who owned that area at that times
because if Hungary owned that area, then it is obvious that the ruthenes cannot be there in the 11th century, because in this case they have to be catholics. (and I think in this case we would call them slovaks..)
Skovac said:
The Magyars themselves (well, one stream of them, the other went through Bulgaria) did cross the Carpathians in that area(does Vereckei-hágó ring a bell?
. So did the Mongols. Looks it is not that impassable. And no habitable land? People live in deserts and tundras, why not in pleasant Carpathian Ruthenia.
I said, that it was impassable for the
avars, not for the magyars. We know, that the avars settled slavs to their lands as peasants, but exactly that shows, that the slavs not migrated through the basin before the avar rule (the main reason could be the gepid state, which existed before the avar attack). So till the end of the avar rule of the carpathian basin, there could be some settlers in the lover parts of the carpathians, and also, the magyars just moved through (and this is also questioned I think, but I have to look after this, because some say, that most of the magyars moved through Transsylvania) that area, not settled down there.
About habitability: an area full of forests and mountanis, but without any open fields is uninhabitable for a group of people who are currently in migration and need to get to an area where agriculture is possible without drastically changing the local environment. The slavs were not hunting-fishing people but they grew crops, so an area full of forests were unihabitable for them because you cannot grow wheat in a forest. To populate this area, the settlers need to cut down the forests in the walleys, and this needs a hinterland, they cannot eat trees
. And this hinterland was present only after a stable state was formed in the basin.
But anyway, this discussion is senseless, because there aren't any sources that could prove that Kiev was able to hold any area inside the carpathians, but there are many which prove that this area was under the influence of the hungarian tribes/kingdom after the 10th century. The theory of the kievian influence and this kind of explanation of the origin of the ruthenes is a kind of history fabricating to explain and prove the rights of the soviet state, why it takes this territory from Hungary/Czechoslovakia. It is not unusual in this part of Europe