Łemkowie (Lemkos)

Lemkos - descendants of Vlachs shepherds or White Croats?

 

The origin of the Lemko population has not been unequivocally established to this day, and the opposition between supporters of different theories is the subject of many disputes. It is very difficult to say exactly who and when gave rise to the Lemko ethnic group. The main problem in defining the ethnogenesis of the Lemkos is how historically the relations between the Lemko community and the Slavic and non-Slavic groups were formed. The scientific world is dominated by three theories indicating the origin of the Lemkos. There are fundamental differences in views between the supporters of the Lemko theory of autochthonism in the Carpathians and the supporters of the migration theory. One of them assumes that the Lemkos are indigenous to the Western Carpathians as descendants of the White Croats (Chrobats), a tribe that was part of the Ruthenian state. Proponents of this theory claim that the territory of Kievan Rus extended much further to the west and north than is assumed in historiography. The fall of the Kiev principality under the pressure of the Tatars in the 13th century, on the one hand, and the growth of the power of the Polish state, on the other, were, according to the theory of autochthonism, the main reasons for the displacement of the Ruthenian population by Polish colonists. As a result, the Ruthenian population survived only in mountainous areas, difficult to access and economically unattractive.

Opposite to this theory is the migration theory, assuming the emergence of a Lemko community as a result of the overlapping of the Polish settlement (settled in these areas already in the 13th century) of the Vlachs-Ruthenian settlement waves. According to the supporters of the " Vlachs colonization of the Carpathians" theory, Wallachians settled and created villages in the Western Carpathians in the 15th and 16th centuries, and during their migration, pastoral tribes mixed with the people living in the Eastern Carpathians, hence when they reached the Western Carpathians, their ethnic composition had the advantage of Ruthenian. The main arguments used in support of this thesis are documents on the establishment of villages under the Vlachs law and toponomics and pastoral terminology of Romanian origin. One of the arguments against the theory of "Vlachs colonization" is, according to Ivan Krasowski, "Metryka Józefińska" (a document issued in the eighties of the 18th century on the land ownership of Galician peasants). According to this document, 70% of surnames from the Lemko region are surnames created according to the rules of Ukrainian word formation, 15% are Slavic surnames, 10% are Polish and Slovak, and only 1% are Romanian and Hungarian. Hence the author concludes that the Lemkos are not Wallachians, but former Ruthenians who lived in the Carpathians much earlier than the theory of " Vlachs colonization" indicates.

Despite the arguments against the Vlachs colonization, the presence of ethnic Vlachs in the territory of the historical Lemko region, and in general in the entire Carpathians and Subcarpathia, is proven today. Roman Reinfuss stated that there was no convincing evidence to support the thesis about the autochthonism of Ruthenians in the Central and Western Carpathians. However, he cites facts that might suggest that the Ruthenian population could have stayed in the Lemko region before the beginning of the Vlachs settlement. According to the researcher, "the creation of almost simultaneously two Dominican institutions in two different parts of the Lemko region suggests that there were some non-Catholic elements in this area that required missionary work, and they could only be schismatic Ruthenians". Another theory about the origin of the Lemkos refers to the thracian shepherds who for centuries led a pastoral, nomadic lifestyle in the Carpathians. It was not until the end of the 14th century that they began to settle down - "colonization under the law of Vlachs" and to rutheize.

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