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igen7777 said:
that page of wikipedia is not accurate.

e.g. it states here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Ruthenia

"In 981, the western border of Kievan Rus’ was redefined when Volodimir I (the Great) of Kiev signed non-aggression pacts with Bolesław I (the Brave) of Poland and Stephen I (the Great) of Hungary. "

Well, Stephen I (and not great, but Saint) just was born at that time, he ruled from 1001...

The same for Poland :) Bolesław became the ruler in 992...
 
pithorr said:
The same for Poland :) Bolesław became the ruler in 992...

I did not want to mention that I do not know about any sources of a non aggression pact between the hungarian kingdom and the Rus state. But I know about dynastic ties. but this is like the old joke about the radio of Jerevan.
 
igen7777 said:
I did not want to mention that I do not know about any sources of a non aggression pact between the hungarian kingdom and the Rus state. But I know about dynastic ties. but this is like the old joke about the radio of Jerevan.

And Bolesław finally invaded and seized Kiev in 1018... He, he - non-aggression pact :)
 
From what I understand Boleslav went in at the request of the Prince of Kiev, who was his son in law.

And the price for that intervention were the Grady Chervensikie.
 
RGB said:
From what I understand Boleslav went in at the request of the Prince of Kiev, who was his son in law.

And the price for that intervention were the Grady Chervensikie.

Yes, he went in Svetopelk favour against Iaroslav the Wise in their struggle after Vladimir's death. Grody were a disputable area so he made a opportunity to seize them by the way...
 
pithorr said:
And Bolesław finally invaded and seized Kiev in 1018... He, he - non-aggression pact :)

That area which is defined as Ruthenia is strangely mixed in paradox's games, for example Ungvár (Uzgorod) is inside the Carpathian basin in Victoria, but outside (and the capital) of Ruthenia in EUIII. I always wondering in these cases that no one checked a map when the map was created? :)
(to tell the truth there are much worse errors outside Europe)
And there is some truth in the text, because the hungarian kings really tried to take ruthenia in the 13th century, but this was the land of the principality of Galich, outside the carpathians.
 
igen7777 said:
That area which is defined as Ruthenia is strangely mixed in paradox's games, for example Ungvár (Uzgorod) is inside the Carpathian basin in Victoria, but outside (and the capital) of Ruthenia in EUIII. I always wondering in these cases that no one checked a map when the map was created? :)
(to tell the truth there are much worse errors outside Europe)
And there is some truth in the text, because the hungarian kings really tried to take ruthenia in the 13th century, but this was the land of the principality of Galich, outside the carpathians.

Uzhorod (that is how my grandfather always pronounced it) should be in Ruthenia.
 
Regarding the idea of nation in the Middle Ages: it certainly existed, but not under the same form as today. Language was one criterium, but not the only one or even the most important. A person's socio-economic status and way of life also mattered in deciding his belonging to one nation or another. In Transylvania, for example, the three accepted nations were the Hungarian nobility, the Szeklers and the German (Saxon) burghers.
 
Well my grandfather gets confused sometimes. When you have lived under so many different regimes you get confused =p.

He left after WWII, so he didn't get a chance to see Uzhorod become Uzgorod. Its nice to see another Hungarian on the forum (I like your name by the way, but I thought egen was spelled with an e?)

Just out of curiosity, do you know Mukacs (thats my hometown's name in Hungarian)?
 
Gotikiller said:
Well my grandfather gets confused sometimes. When you have lived under so many different regimes you get confused =p.

He left after WWII, so he didn't get a chance to see Uzhorod become Uzgorod. Its nice to see another Hungarian on the forum (I like your name by the way, but I thought egen was spelled with an e?)

Just out of curiosity, do you know Mukacs (thats my hometown's name in Hungarian)?

Munkács is the name of that city, Munkacevo in ukrainian I think. Yes, that area belonged to 6 different countries in the XXth century: Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, The Soviet Union and now belongs to Ukraine. There are some old people there who were the members of 6 different countries while they did not even moved from their birthplace to an other settlement.
The local ukrainians who lived there from the middle ages are the ruthens, or rusins (they are greek catholics), but this was also an ethnically mixed area with ruthenes, hungarians, slovaks, germans and later, in the 19th century lots of jews moved there from Galicia. but regardless of ethnicity when the hungarian goverment got back this area in 1939 (and lost it again in 1945) they called the locals as the folk of Rákóczi, because this was the area where Ferenc Rákóczi II. started his rebellion against the Habsburgs in 1703 and the people of northeast Hungary supported him regardless of their ethnicity.
My nickname doesn't mean anything, it just mean yes7777.
 
I know it means yes7777 =). I was just wondering if you were really supposed to spell igen with an i instead of an e (since after all I trust your Hungarian is much much better than mine :) ).

I didn't know the SU took Carpathian Ruthenia to tell you the truth. I thought Stalin just "reassigned" it to Ukraine at one of the post-war conferences or something of the sort.

My family consider ourselves Hungarian because even though from 1918-1939 we lived under Czechoslovak control, from sometime in the mid 1800s or earlier we lived under Hungarian control, so Hungarian culture is staunchly in our roots.

We even have some family property in Budapest if I remember correctly.

So culturally we view our homeland as Hungary even though our hometown is in Ukraine today.
 
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Gotikiller said:
I didn't know the SU took Carpathian Ruthenia to tell you the truth. I thought Stalin just "reassigned" it to Ukraine at one of the post-war conferences or something of the sort.

Ukraine did not exist before 1991. So it could not get back anything. That territory always belonged to the hungarian state after the magyar tribes invaded the basin and the state was founded.

Gotikiller said:
My family consider ourselves Hungarian because even though from 1918-1939 we lived under Czechoslovak control, from sometime in the mid 1800s or earlier we lived under Hungarian control, so Hungarian culture is staunchly in our roots.

Zakarpatia oblast (Kárpátalja in hungarian) has two different regions. the mountaneous area, which has lower population and it was mostly inhabited by ruthens, and the lover areas near the Tisza river, where the larger cities are like Ungvár, Munkács and Beregszász, which was mostly inhabited by hungarians till 1945. Naturally this was changed at the stalinist era (lots of hungarians and all of the local germans were taken to malenki robot, while the local jewish community (the amount of jews was the largest in this area in Hungary) was nearly completely killed by the nazis. Also the bit different ruthen identity was not accepted by the soviet goverment and they were counted as simple ukrainians, and the soviet goverment gave all greek catholic churches to the orthodox church.

Anyway your story about your family is nice :), and it also worth to mention that this was the territory (and the neigbouring slovakian territories) from where the most people immigrated to the USA, hungarians, ruthenes, and slovakians.

My mother's family is possibly has ruthenian origins, because of their name, so I have also personal connection to that area and to ruthenians :)
 
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Sarmatia1871 said:
I'd also be quite interested to know exactly how "Slovaks", "Czechs" and "Germans" were defined in both of these decrees
So would I, especially when all burgess those times spoke german. But I presume that the nationality was declared the same way it is today - that is you are what you (and to some degree others) say you are.

Igen777 said:
No, it was not, because it could not. The Rus state was a state of a viking originated ruling class, which assimilated to their slavic subjects. These vikings were interested in the trade between the Baltic and the Black sea, so they tried to control the trade routes between these two seas. This mean that they mostly contolled the area near the Dniepr river, and partly the area near the upper Volga river. The inner areas of the carpathian basin were absolutely not important for them, that's why they did not had any influence inside (it was even too far to reach for them). The northeastern part of the basin was the least populated area inside, none of the states which had influence in the basin tried to control it. Not the morva (? I don't know their english name) state, nor the bulgarians, it was too far for the franks, and the avar "state" (it was rather a tribal federation than a state) was destroyed by Charlemagne at 800 a.d.

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.

very easily, because that area did not contain any habitable land. the slavic migration went through moldova and wallachia to the south, and through poland to the west. the carpathians were a nearly impassable barrier. When the avars tried to invade to the Carpathian Basin, and attack the gepid state, they were only able to invade through the "Iron Gate pass" near the Danube, at the southern part of the basin, because the passes in the northeastern carpathians were impassable! there was a 100-200 km wide barrier of forests and mountains with absolutely no roads and paths.

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.
 
igen7777 said:
that 200 years were 10, but never mind
no, it was 200 years, by the end of St. Stephan the control of the state on the north span to the line Trenčín (Trencsén) - Banská Štiavnica (Selmecbánya) - Užhorod (Ungvár) - Mukačevo (Munkács). Northern parts were organized into comitatus only during the reign of St. Ladislaus.
[Source:Florián Sivák - Dejiny štátu a práva na území Slovenska do roku 1918 (Florián Sivák - Historyof state and law on the teritory of Slovakia to the year 1918)]
 
Skovac said:
Sarmatia1871 said:
I'd also be quite interested to know exactly how "Slovaks", "Czechs" and "Germans" were defined in both of these decrees
So would I, especially when all burgess those times spoke german. But I presume that the nationality was declared the same way it is today - that is you are what you (and to some degree others) say you are.

Not completely true. The Germans in Ruthenia were real Germans. What basically happened was when the Austrians took Ruthenia from Wallachia (also called Transylvania) in the 1700s, although the serfs in the countryside remained intact, the cities and towns were completely depopulated.

So then, after the war, the Austrians gave the land as a fief to a German Cardinal\Nobleman from Mainz (if I remember correctly, it might have been Frankfurt), whom basically "forcibly imported" German Middle Class types from somewhere in Germany (i.e. craftsmen, etc.) to settle the towns and cities of Ruthenia.

Later on they also took Germans from Austria to settle there as well.

My grandfather was telling me how in his day they had become more of upper middle class/lower upper class and were very wealthy.

Let me see if I can find the website which backs this up. If I remember correctly it is owned by an international group of ruthenian emigres. I will edit in the link.
 
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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 :(
 
Skovac said:
no, it was 200 years, by the end of St. Stephan the control of the state on the north span to the line Trenčín (Trencsén) - Banská Štiavnica (Selmecbánya) - Užhorod (Ungvár) - Mukačevo (Munkács). Northern parts were organized into comitatus only during the reign of St. Ladislaus.
[Source:Florián Sivák - Dejiny štátu a práva na území Slovenska do roku 1918 (Florián Sivák - Historyof state and law on the teritory of Slovakia to the year 1918)]

It is a typical nomadic practice to use a wide impassable land as a border, and the hungarians kept this legacy till the 12th century, you (and your source) are talking about this. So it is obvious that these territories were very sparsely populated, or even deserted, but this does not mean that the state had no influence above these territories, because it is an important part of the defence of the state. it was called "gyepű" in hungarian.
 
Gotikiller said:
What basically happened was when the Austrians took Ruthenia from Wallachia (also called Transylvania)

Wallachia and Transsylvania are NOT the same! Wallachia was a romanian principality south to the southern Carpathians, while Transsylvania was a hungarian principality (which was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire) in the eastern part of the hungarian kingdom which was not directly taken by the ottomans after 1526. The Transsylvanian principaily existed from 1541 to 1689, but the Habsburgs kept the title and the governed it separately from the hungarian kingdom. but ruthenia(=Kárpátalja or Máramaros) belonged to the hungarian kingdom even when Transsylvania de facto existed, it was just ruled by the transsylvanian ruler, but de jure it belonged to the kingdom.