CKCU Literary News
Wednesday April 9th, 2025 with Hans G. Ruprecht
Polish poet Olena Duc-Faifer about Lemko culture, language and literature (translated to English) in collaboration with TRAFIKA EUROPE RADIO.

"The Rusyn language is considered one of the newest Slavic literary languages. Together with Russian, Belarusan, and Ukrainian, Rusyn is an East Slavic language that functions as the national language of Carpatho-Rusyns, a stateless people living within a historic territory called Carpathian Rus’. Historic Carpathian Rus’ refers to lands within present-day southeastern Poland (the Lemko Region), northeastern Slovakia (the Prešov Region), far western Ukraine (the Transcarpathian oblast), and the north central Romania (Maramures,). There are also a few communities of Rusyn speakers in northeastern Hungary, northern Serbia (Vojvodina), and far northeastern Croatia (Srem). The number of Rusyn-speakers and/or persons who identify as Rusyns in the above-noted countries ranges from an official figure (according to recent census data, 2001-2002) of 90,500 to unofficial estimates that are as high as 890,000. 1 The current status and present challenges facing the Rusyn language are in part a function of the group’s complicated evolution as a stateless people living since the late eighteenth century in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and from 1918 to 1989 in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Union, and Romania. During this entire period Carpatho-Rusyns, regardless of the state in which they lived, struggled to find an appropriate literary language. The problem in one sense was straightforward: (1) to create a literary language based on the local Carpatho-Rusyn vernacular; or (2) to adopt a related and already codified Slavic language (Russian or Ukrainian). The debates about such choices came to be known as the language question (языковый вопрос), which, in turn, was intimately related to another challenge, the nationality question. In other words, did Carpatho-Rusyns form a distinct nationality, or were they a branch of the Russian or Ukrainian nationalities? [...]" Prof. Paul Robert Magocsi, PhD. http://lemko.org/lemlem/best01.html