Carpatho-Rusyns or Ruthenes (Rusyn: Русины, Rusyns, also sometimes referred to as Carpatho-Russians or Rusnaks) are a primarily diasporic ethnic group who speak an Eastern Slavic language, known as Rusyn. Carpatho-Rusyns descend from a minority of Ruthenians who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early twentieth century. The use of the term Rusyn was prohibited by some governments, as seen after 1945 in Soviet Transcarpathia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

Today, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Croatia officially recognize contemporary Rusyns (or Ruthenes) as an ethnic minority. In 2007, Carpatho-Rusyns were recognized as a separate ethnicity in Ukraine by the Zakarpattia Regional Council. Rusyns within Ukraine have Ukrainian citizenship, and most have adopted a Ukrainian ethnic identity. Most contemporary self-identified ethnic Rusyns live outside of Ukraine.

Of the estimated 1.2 million people of Rusyn origin, only 55,000 have officially identified themselves politically or ethnically as such, according to contemporary censuses.^[who?] The ethnic classification of Rusyns as a separate East Slavic ethnicity distinct from Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians is, however, controversial. The majority of Ukrainian scholars, as well as some Rusyns when considering their self-identification, consider Rusyns to be an ethnic subgroup of the Ukrainian people. This is disputed by some Lemko scholars.

Ivan Yakovych Franko (Ukrainian: Іван Якович Франко, pronounced [iˈvɑn ˈjɑkovɪt͡ʃ frɑnˈko]) (August 27 [O.S. August 15] 1856 – May 28 [O.S. May 15] 1916) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, political activist, doctor of philosophy, the author of the first detective novels and modern poetry in the Ukrainian language.

He was a political radical, and a founder of the socialist and nationalist movement in western Ukraine. In addition to his own literary work, he also translated the works of such renowned figures as William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dante, Victor Hugo, Adam Mickiewicz, Goethe and Schiller into the Ukrainian language. Along with Taras Shevchenko, he has had a tremendous impact on modern literary and political thought in Ukraine.

Franko was born in the Ukrainian village of Nahuievychi (Ukrainian: Нагуєвичі) located then in the Austrian kronland Galicia, today part of Drohobych Raion, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. As a child he was baptized as Ivan by Father Yosyp Levytsky known as a poet and the author of the first Galician-Ruthenian Hramatyka and who was exiled to Nahuyevychi for a "sharp tongue". At home, however, Ivan was called Myron because of a local superstitious belief that naming a person by different name will dodge a death. Franko's family in Nahuyevychi was considered "well-to-do", with their own servants and 24 hectares (59 acres) of their own property.