Ruthenian nobility

The Ruthenian nobility (Ukrainian: Руська шляхта, romanized: Ruska shliakhta; Belarusian: Руская шляхта, romanized: Ruskaja šlachta; Polish: szlachta ruska) originated in the territories of Kievan Rus' and Galicia–Volhynia, which were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Russian and Austrian Empires. The Ruthenian nobility became increasingly polonized and later russified, while retaining a separate cultural identity.^[1][2][3][4]

The Ruthenian nobility, originally characterized as East Slavic-speaking and Eastern Orthodox,^[1] found itself ruled by the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it rose from second class status to equal partners of the Lithuanian nobility.^[1] Following the Polish–Lithuanian union of the 14th century, the Ruthenian nobles became increasingly polonized, adopting the Polish language and religion (which increasingly meant converting from the Orthodox faith to Roman Catholicism).^[2][3][4] Ruthenian nobility, however, retained a distinct identity within the body of the Polish-Lithuanian szlachta, leading to the Latin expression gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus or gente Rutheni, natione Poloni (translated as "of Polish nationality, but Ruthenian origin",^[5] "of Ruthenia race and Polish nation",^[6] or in various similar veins), although the extent to which they retained and maintained this separate identity is still debated by scholars, and varied based on time and place.^[7][8]

Eventually, following the Union of Lublin in 1569, most of the territories of Ruthenia became part of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.^[3] The transfer of Ruthenian lands from the Grand Duchy to Poland occurred with the strong support of the Ruthenian nobility, who were attracted to the Polish culture and desired the privileges of the Polish nobility.^[3] Thus the Ruthenian nobility gravitated from the Lithuanian noble tradition towards the Polish noble one, described by Stone as a change from "wealth without legal rights" to "defined individual and corporate rights".^[9] The Lithuanian, Polish and Ruthenian nobility gradually became more and more unified, particularly with regards to their standing as a socio-political class.^[6][10] By the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ruthenian aristocracy became so heavily Polonized, that the eventual national resurgence of Belarus and Ukraine was mostly spurred by middle and lower classes of the nobility, that later was joined by the growing national consciousness of the new middle class, rather than of the former upper class of Ruthenian nobility.^[2]

Despite polonisation in Lithuania and Ruthenia in the 17th-18th centuries, a large part of the lower szlachta managed to retain their cultural identity in various ways.^{[11][12][13][14]} According to Polish estimates from the 1930s, 300,000 members of the common nobles -szlachta zagrodowa - inhabited the subcarpathian region of the Second Polish Republic out of 800,000 in the whole country. 90% of them were Ukrainian-speaking and 80% were Ukrainian Greek Catholics.^[15] In other parts of Ukraine with a significant szlachta population, such as the Bar or the Ovruch regions, the situation was similar despite russification and earlier polonization.^[16][17]

Some of the major Ruthenian noble families (all of which became polonized to a significant extent) included the Czartoryski, Sanguszko, Sapieha, Wiśniowiecki, Zasławski, Zbaraski and the Ostrogski family.^[4]