Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos: Ukrainians of the Carpathian Mountains

The wooden churches of the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine are classified by the group that built them, as “Boiko type,” “Hutsul type,” and “Lemko type” (see our article on the Carpathian wooden churches). Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos are all names of Ukrainian groups that have lived in the Carpathian Mountains. Where do the three differ, and where have they lived? And why do so many Lemkos now live in Ukraine’s lowlands? This article traces these questions using the accounts of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU).

Not a “Nation,” but a Group Within the Ukrainian People

The IEU describes the Hutsuls as “an ethnographic group of Ukrainian highlanders engaged in animal husbandry, living in the Hutsul region of the Carpathian Mountains,” and the Boikos as “a tribal or ethnographic group of Ukrainian highlanders living on both slopes of the central Carpathian Mountains.” The ESU likewise describes the Boikos as “a distinct ethnographic group of Ukrainians,” and the Lemkos as “an ethnographic group of the Ukrainian nation, the original inhabitants of the Lemko region.” Neither encyclopedia treats the three as separate nations; both treat them as groups within the Ukrainian people distinguished by their speech (dialect), dress, house- and church-building styles, and customs.

The 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census — the only census Ukraine has held — publishes figures consistent with this treatment. The table is titled “Numbers of Individual Ethnographic Groups of the Ukrainian Nation,” and counts people who gave the group’s name as their own ethnicity.

These figures are not the number of people belonging to each group. Most Hutsuls and Boikos presumably answer “Ukrainian” when asked their ethnicity, and the table shows only those who chose to give the group’s name instead. For example, the ESU’s entry on the Hutsuls states that more than 420,000 people lived in the Hutsul region in 2000 (again, this is the region’s population, not the number of Hutsuls). There is no official statistic showing the current number of people in any of the three groups.

Rusyn, the last entry in the table, is a self-designation used in Zakarpattia Oblast and elsewhere. According to the ESU, there are two currents of thought among Lemkos: one holds that they are part of the Ukrainian nation, and the other that they belong to a separate “Rusyn (Carpatho-Rusyn) nation” that also includes the people of Zakarpattia. The census counts Rusyns, too, within its table of groups within the Ukrainian nation.

The Origins of the Names

All three names are said to derive not from terms the people themselves used from ancient times, but from names given to them by others.

• Boiko: The IEU states that it is thought to come from the interjection “boie” (боє), often used by these people. The ESU also lists other theories: a link to the ancient Celtic Boii tribe, and derivation from the personal name Boiko. According to the IEU, Boikos sometimes dislike the name, feeling it condescending, and call themselves “highlanders” (verkhovyntsi) instead.
• Lemko: Both the IEU and the ESU trace it to the word “lem” (лем), meaning “only.” The ESU states that the name first appears in print in a work by Ivan Vahylevych in 1841. According to the IEU, Lemkos themselves often call themselves “Rusnak” or “Rusyn,” and it was scholars and intellectuals who, from the mid-19th century, began calling the western highlanders Lemkos.
• Hutsul: The origin is not clear. The IEU states that the theory tracing it to a Romanian word for “brigand” has been the most widely accepted since the 19th century, while also listing theories tracing it to a word for nomads and to a Turkic tribal name. As for the year the name first appears in print, the encyclopedias disagree: the IEU cites a researcher who puts it at 1816, while the ESU states that it appears as a personal name in a Moldavian document from 1494.

Where They Have Lived

The three groups have lived across the Carpathian Mountains from east to west, roughly in the order Hutsul, Boiko, and Lemko. The IEU’s and ESU’s descriptions are summarized in the table below.

In other words, most of the Lemkos’ original homeland lies outside today’s Ukraine. According to the IEU, the Galician side of the Lemko region, before 1946, covered about 3,500 km² and had a population of 200,000, of whom 160,000 were Ukrainians (1939), living in about 300 villages. The Lemko region on the Slovak side, in the Prešov area, covers about 3,000 km² and has a population of 110,000. Among the Carpathian wooden churches that make up the World Heritage site, all five Lemko-type churches are on the Polish side.

Their ways of life also differed. According to the IEU’s entry on the Hutsul region, farmland made up only 4% of the land there, with mountain pastures and hay meadows at 33% and forest at 59%. The share of farmland was 25% in the Boiko region and 35% in the Lemko region. Hutsuls have lived mainly by grazing and animal husbandry, trading meat, dairy products, and wool for grain from the lowlands (summer mountain grazing is covered in our article on Hutsul mountain-pasture herding and brynza). According to the IEU, the Boikos, too, lived by animal husbandry in earlier times, later shifting to farming oats and potatoes and to dairying as their mainstays.

1944–1947: How the Lemkos Left Their Homeland

The reason so many Lemkos now live in Ukraine’s lowlands lies in population movements from the end of World War II through the postwar period. According to the IEU, about 4,000 Lemkos moved to Soviet Ukraine under a 1940 German-Soviet population-exchange treaty, and after the war resettlement resumed under a Polish-Soviet arrangement. A Polish-Soviet agreement of August 16, 1945, fixed the border, placing the entire northern part of the Lemko region within Poland. The IEU states that, under pressure from the Polish side, most Lemkos (as much as 80%) were relocated to Ukraine by mid-1946, and that those who remained, with only a few exceptions, were dispersed across former German territory in western and northern Poland in 1947. This 1947 resettlement is known as “Operation Vistula.”

The two encyclopedias differ on the numbers. The ESU states that more than 200,000 people were moved from the Galician Lemko region to Ukraine in 1944–46, and that more than 100,000 who refused to move were dispersed in small groups to northwestern Poland in the spring of 1947. The IEU states that, of the Lemkos who remained in Poland, only about 4,000 of the 30,000–40,000 were permitted to return home by 1957–58.

According to the IEU, those who moved to Ukraine settled in former Polish villages around Ternopil, Sambir, and Lviv, and in the Donbas. The ESU states that they still live dispersed today across Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil, Poltava, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts.

In a resolution of November 8, 2018 (No. 2608-VIII), the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine termed the forced relocation, from 1944 to 1951, of Ukrainians from six regions — the Lemko region, Nadsiannia, Kholmshchyna, Southern Podlachia, Lubachivshchyna, and the western Boiko region — a “deportation,” and designated the second Sunday of September each year as a day to remember its victims. Those relocated included not only Lemkos but also people from the western Boiko region that fell on the Polish side. Further, a law of July 16, 2025 (No. 4540-IX, effective January 30, 2026) amended the law on the restoration of rights to persons deported on ethnic grounds, recognizing those forcibly relocated from Polish territory between 1944 and 1951 on account of their Ukrainian ethnicity as “deported persons” and establishing their right to a one-time payment, with the amount and procedure to be set by the Cabinet.

What Has Been Passed Down Since the Move

The ESU states that, having been dispersed to land far from their homeland, much of the Lemkos’ traditional dress and dialect is disappearing from daily life, and there is a real risk that their distinct character as a group will be lost. At the same time, efforts to pass it on have continued. According to the ESU, the first Lemko choir was formed in a village in Ternopil Oblast in 1959, the socio-cultural organization “Lemkivshchyna” was founded in Lviv in 1988, and six All-Ukrainian Lemko congresses have been held since independence. Churches modeled on Lemko church-building styles have also been built in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk.

All three groups appear repeatedly in Ukrainian literature and art. A novel set in a Hutsul village is introduced in our article on Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and pottery from a town in the Hutsul region is introduced in our article on Kosiv painted ceramics. Both the IEU and the ESU note that the writer Ivan Franko came from the Boiko region (see our article on Franko). The IEU writes that Lemko folklore features a dwarf-like household spirit rarely found elsewhere in Ukraine (see our article on folk spirits).

How the regional names Galicia, Bukovina, and Zakarpattia map onto today’s oblasts is summarized in our article on historical region names distinct from oblast names.