Goryuns

Goryuns, also Horiuns or Horyuny (Ukrainian: горюни), a little-documented ethnic group of East Slavs, live around Putyvl, now in the Sumy Oblast of north-eastern Ukraine, in the past in Kursk Governorate of the Russian Empire. The dialect of the Russian language spoken by Goryuns has some features of Belarusian and Ukrainian.[1]

Museum of Goryun culture

Goryuns are considered a tiny sub-ethnos of Russians.[2] Regardless, they consider themselves as distinct from other Russians, as well as distinct from Ukrainians living in the same region.[3]

Chronicles first mention Goryun villages in the sixteenth century, shortly after the annexation of the region to Muscovy. From this, the Belarusian scientist Fiodar Klimchuk concludes that the Goryuns might have lived in the region before the year 1500.[1]

Different hypotheses address the origins of the Goriuns. James Stuart Olson describes them as an Ukrainianized subgroup of the Polekhs.[4] According to Fiodar Klimchuk, the Goryuns may be descendants of local Severians or they might be of mixed Severian-Radimich stock, or their Severian ancestors might have moved to the north-west and then returned.[1] Some researchers believe that they are autochthonous to the region and are related to the local early Slavic population;[2] according to others, they descend from migrants from what is now Belarus — mixed with the local population.[5]

Goryuns have a reputation for their unique style of polyphonic singing.[3] In 2017, in the village of Nova Sloboda, a museum of Horyun culture was opened, the exposition of which recreates the estate of the Horyuns of the late nineteenth — early twentieth centuries.[6]

See also

References
  1. Klimchuk, F.D. (13 February 2004). About ethnolinguistic history of Left Bank of Dnieper (in connection to the ethnogenesis of Goriuns). "Goriuns: history, language, culture" Proceedings of International scientific conference. Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.
  2. "Russians in Ukraine". Archived from the original on 19 May 2007.
  3. Olshanskaya, Elena (27 February 2004). Lagunina, Irina (ed.). "Горюны" [Goryuny]. Radio Svoboda (in Russian).
  4. Olson, James Stuart (1994). An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Greenwood Press. p. 554. ISBN 0-313-27497-5.
  5. "Соціально-економічний Паспорт Путивльського Району" [Socio-Economic Passport of Putivl district] (in Ukrainian). Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 23 July 2007.
  6. "На Сумщині з'явився унікальний музей горюнів". www.ukrinform.ua (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2022-10-12.
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