History of Ukraine
Strikingly different interpretations of the medieval state of Kievan Rus' appear in the four schools of historiography within Ukraine: Russophile, Sovietophile, Eastern Slavic, and Ukrainophile. The Sovietophile and Russophile schools have become marginalized in independent Ukraine, with the Ukrainophile school being dominant in the early 21st century. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is mutually exclusive of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.
Rusyns
Of the estimated 1.2 million people of Rusyn origins, as few as 90,000 individuals have been officially identified as such, in recent national censuses (see infobox above). This is due, in part, to the refusal of some governments to count Rusyns and/or allow them to self-identify on census forms, especially in Ukraine. The ethnic classification of Rusyns as a separate East Slavic ethnicity distinct from Russians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians is, however, politically controversial. The majority of scholarship on the topic considers Rusyns to be an ethnic subgroup of the Ukrainian people. This is disputed by some non-mainstream scholars and some other scholars from Czechia, Slovakia, Canada and America. According to the 2001 Ukrainian Census about a third of Rusyns in Ukraine speak the Ukrainian language, while others stick to their native form.