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There's an interesting shift in language associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine - a type of pierogi which used to be called ruskie (from the region of
by Tade0 3y ago
There's an interesting shift in language associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine - a type of pierogi which used to be called ruskie (from the region of Red Rus, where they originate) are now commonly named ukraińskie (Ukrainian) instead.
The reason is that the adjective ruskie is typically understood as "Russian" in general parlance.
- k_bx 3y ago[flagged]
- acadapter 3y agoSo it's basically a new version of the "Freedom Fries" mania, but with higher popularity?
- nicbou 3y agoWe had a few instances of that in German supermarkets last year.
- k_bx 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoPlease don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- keiferski 3y agoDon’t think I’d explain it as being that simple. Rusyns today are also descendants of Rus but don’t get much recognition in Ukraine today.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoEven the Ukrainian state’s non-recognition of the Rusyn people isn’t so simple: in Slovakia you can meet minority East Slavic speakers who insist that what they speak is “Ukrainian” (when it’s obviously not), and that “Rusyn” is a weird label outsiders keep trying to pin on them.
- keiferski 3y agoThere is a long history of states denying and repressing the Rusyn identity. I’m sure many modern people aren’t bothered to learn their history and just adopt whatever label has been given to them. It’s not significantly different from any other minority group that has been subsumed into a larger group. There are historical cultural differences between the groups as well. Lemkos, for example, are Greek Catholics, which is a minority group in Ukraine and has a different history (tracing themselves to Croats.) https://case.edu/ech/articles/r/rusyns https://case.edu/ech/articles/r/rusyns
- reportgunner 3y agoI'm of Rusyn descent from Eastern Slovakia and I have never heard of this.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoWhich villages does your family descend from specifically? Although it wouldn’t be surprising if a person of Rusyn descent has never heard of this, since one of the most frequent remarks in histories of the Rusyn people is that the identity has sometimes flourished more in the diaspora than in situ. My experience is from mid 2019 in communities around Medzilaborce where I was collecting microtoponymic data. I was obviously inclined to think of this minority East Slavic material as Rusyn, but my informants insisted that it was “Ukrainian”. Considering that these communities have produced figures who went on to be famous in wider “Ukrainian” movements, it is no surprise that the two ethnonyms have competed in that region. EDIT: So I went searching to read more about this using "Čertižné" (one of the supposedly “Ukrainian” villages) as a search term. In this essay[0] where a writer of Čertižné descent is mostly busy criticizing Timothy Snyder, he briefly sketches the phenomenon I witnessed: "The end of WW2 saw the annexation of Subcarpathian Rus’, renamed Transcarpathia, into the USSR. To legitimize seizure of this territory, Stalin brought the debate over the ethnic identity to a close and deemed all Rusyns Ukrainian. Rusyn became a bourgeoise term placed outside of law and all those who identified as such were now forcefully Ukrainianized. Some Rusyns in Czechoslovakia, given the choice of complete assimilation or at least a partial preservation of their culture, accepted the Ukrainian label. For example, the current director of the Rusyn Museum in Prešov, Ľuba Kráľová, identified as a Ukrainian during the communist regime even though she doesn’t speak Ukrainian. Other Rusyns felt closer to the Slovak ethnic identity than to the Ukrainian one." [0] https://rusynsociety.com/2023/04/03/where-timothy-snyder-falls-pitifully-short/ https://rusynsociety.com/2023/04/03/where-timothy-snyder-fal...
- acadapter 3y agoStealing? It's their shared East Slavic heritage.
- k_bx 3y agoI don't quite agree here, but what they do then is conflate words "Russian and Rusian" to mean the same thing, claiming for various stuff their population has no relation to. It's a dirty tactics very in-line with their today's propaganda machine.
- acadapter 3y agoI don't understand what's controversial about this. "Rus" is the medieval East Slavic society. Three of the four modern East Slavic cultures retain the word root in the name (Russians, Belarusians, Rusyns). One of them uses the expression "borderlands" for their identity (Ukrainians).
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoIndeed. “Rus” is an ethnonym, of famously Scandinavian origin, used across the entire East Slavic area and was never something limited to people in now-Ukraine that people in now-Russia could “steal”. The Uralic- and Turkic-speaking peoples of the Middle Volga, for example, already called the neighboring Slavic-speaking populations “Rus” in the medieval era.
- genman 3y agoActually no. "Rus" was meant to describe "all" East Slavic people, but Russians took it for themselves "only" and started to call Ukrainians "Little Russians" in sense of "Lesser Russians".
- acadapter 3y agoBelarusians also call themselves a variation of "rus", obviously. And "Little Russia" is an old name of a geographical region (which somewhat corresponds to the traditionally Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine).
- Pet_Ant 3y agoThe Moscovy stealing "Rus" identity. FTFY
- snehk 3y agoAnecdotal, but I'm in Poland for the weekend every other week and I've never seen this.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoIt's different when we do it, you don't understand.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI have been in Poland for much of the time since the war started, and while I have read news articles about this supposed new term pierogie ukraińskie, I don’t think I have ever seen it in the real world. The pierogis served at milk bars, or from Żabka to be microwaved, are still overwhelmingly referred to as ruskie. Even the Ukrainian cafe nearby serves them as pierogie ruskie.
- Tade0 3y agoI've seen them and was at first confused as to what they were, especially that Ukrainian borscht is very different from the local version, so I assumed it was something new.
- keiferski 3y agoPlenty of milk bars call them ukrainskie. Especially ones in Praga. I’ve also noticed “pierogi kresowe” which is a reference to Kresy, a historical Polish region that includes Ruthenia, the origin of pierogi ruskie. I don’t recall ever seeing these before, so my guess is that the pierogi industry decided that Kresowe was a less controversial name to use.
- k_bx 3y agoIn Ukraine they're called Varenyky (originating from a verb "boil", like "boiled things").
- kamov 3y agoThat only happened in the first few weeks/months following the invasion, and since then people returned to calling them "Ruskie". The general consensus is that the name refers to the historical area of Ruthenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia
- worklaptopacct 3y agoI no longer live there, but when I visit now, I often see the name "Kresowe" having replaced "Ruskie", Kresy being the name of a historical region around the Polish/Ukrainian border.
- ajuc 3y agoKresowe is even less PC than ruskie, but people don't care it seems :)
- varispeed 3y agoMy friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans. The other issue is that people don't know how to translate "ruski" to English, so they would say "Russian dumplings", but in reality they should be called "Ruthenian dumplings" from Ruthenian Voivodeship. They probably seen tourists turn their nose on "Russian dumplings", so they renamed them to "Ukrainian". Since most of the Ruthenian Voivodeship is now in Ukraine it somewhat makes sense, but it is not entirely correct. Just shows lazy thinking. In the UK, those sold in supermarkets are no longer called "ruskie" but simply potato and cheese dumplings.
- ajuc 3y agoRuskie is a plural adjective or a plural noun. When it's used as a noun it's pejorative for Russian people. When it's used as an adjective - it's neutral (and can be used both for russian and ruthenian stuff). There's also more specific words - rosyjskie for russian and rusińskie for ruthenian, but very few people use "rusińskie" nowadays. BTW there's this joke from communist times: A waitress in a milk bar shouts "who ordered ruskie", someone in the bar shouts back "nobody, they came on their own".
- badpun 3y ago> My friend told me "ruskie" is used as a somewhat pejorative description of a "Russian". Like Brits say "Yanks" about the Americans. There was a joke which used that, during the Communist Poland era (where country was thoroughly dominated by it's USSR neighbor and supposed friend, as per the official propaganda): " (in a bar) - Who ordered russkie? - No one. They came on their own. "
- TeMPOraL 3y agoI'm not sure if it's a shift in language - it's more like a reaction/virtue signalling of some restaurants in the first weeks of invasion that briefly got viral, but - in the rare case of accuracy winning over memes - it died out as people soon after (re)learned that "ruskie" in "pierogi ruskie" refers to Ruś, not Russia. At least, that's my local experience (Kraków, Poland) - we went through the meme phase and came out of it a week or two later, and I haven't heard anyone mentioning "ukraińskie pierogi" ever since (until on HN, today).
- ajuc 3y agoThat lasted like 3 months.
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y agoSorry but no. Live here and eat pierogi few times a week. Still calling them ruskie, and people are just as indifferent to that name as they have always been. The subject has popped up here and there. But more as a whimsical joke amongst people around me with more of an intelligentsia background. There are however, many new places with Ukrainian pelmieni opening up everywhere you look. But that’s a separate thing.
- mikrl 3y ago>The reason is that the adjective ruskie is typically understood as "Russian" in general parlance I’m not a native speaker, but I always heard that the Greek derived Rosyjski/Rosjanin/Rosjanka were for Russians (ie the ethnic majority in the Russian Federation) but Ruskie was still reserved for the Rus’ in general. I’ve had native speaking members explain the distinction to me, that ruskie is more of a catch-all term for the Rus’ peoples. Then again, my family hails from northeast and southeast Poland near the borders with the Rus’.
- grozmovoi 3y ago"Ruskie" vs "Rosyjskie" is a difference between common speech and more proper grammar, but in regular usage of the language they both mean the adjective "Russian". I'm native.
- mikrl 3y agoI assume the average person does not care about what Rus’ means versus Russian, Belarusian, and so on? Is there a tendency to group them together? As Russians or as Rus’? There is a lot of cultural context that Western Europeans (inc myself) are not aware of.