Ukrainian Carpathians
An ethnographic macro-region of Ukraine comprising Hutsulshchyna, Boikivshchyna and Lemkivshchyna and, in the broader division, also Pokuttia, Bukovyna and Zakarpattia.
Ethnographers divide Ukraine into more than twenty regions grouped into four macro-regions: Polissia, the Forest-Steppe, the Steppe and the Carpathians. The Carpathian macro-region includes Lemkivshchyna, Boikivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna, Pokuttia, Bukovyna and Zakarpattia. Its distinctiveness comes from the mountain environment, a mixed farming and herding economy, historical differences between its parts, and proximity to Slavic (Polish, Slovak) and non-Slavic (Hungarian, Romanian, Moldovan) cultures.
The mountains proper are home to three ethnographic groups of Ukrainians. Hutsulshchyna lies in the east: the mountain districts of the Ivano-Frankivsk region and Bukovyna and the Rakhiv area of Zakarpattia. Boikivshchyna occupies the central part of the Ukrainian Carpathians within Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia oblasts, bordering Lemkivshchyna to the west and Hutsulshchyna to the east; wooden church architecture is regarded as its highest achievement. Lemkivshchyna extends in the west along both slopes of the Carpathians between Polish and Slovak lands; most of it lies in Poland and Slovakia, and in Ukraine it comprises the western districts of Zakarpattia. After the resettlements of 1944–1946 and Operation Vistula in 1947, a single Lemko region no longer exists.
As a «tradition» the Ukrainian Carpathians are a collective notion covering several ethnographic regions, not a single style. It should not be used as a synonym for Hutsulshchyna, which is only one of its parts.
