When did the Ukrainian state arise? How the Ukrainian language was created. Interaction with Austrians and Germans
How the Ukrainian language was created - artificially and for political reasons. “The truth is never sweet,” Irina Farion recently noted, presenting her next book about the Ukrainian language on the First Channel of the National Radio of Ukraine. And in some ways, and in this it is difficult to disagree with the now widely known deputy of the Verkhovna Rada. The truth for Ukrainian "nationally conscious" figures will always be bitter. They are too far apart from her. However, the truth needs to be known. Including the truth about the Ukrainian language. For Galicia, this is especially important. After all, Mikhail Sergeevich Grushevsky recognized this.
“Work on the language, as well as work on the cultural development of Ukrainians in general, was carried out mainly on Galician soil,” he wrote.
It is worth dwelling on this work, begun in the second half of the 19th century. Galicia was then part of the Austrian Empire. Accordingly, Russia for the Galicians was a foreign country. But, despite this circumstance, the Russian literary language in the region was not considered a foreign language. Galician Rusyns perceived it as an all-Russian, common cultural language for all parts of historical Rus', and therefore for Galician Rus'.
When at the congress of Galician-Russian scientists, held in 1848 in Lvov, a decision was made on the need to cleanse folk speech from polonisms, this was seen as a gradual approximation of Galician dialects to the norms of the Russian literary language. “Let the Russians start from the head, and we start from the feet, then sooner or later we will meet each other and come together in the heart,” Antony Petrushevich, a prominent Galician historian, said at the congress. Scholars and writers worked in the Russian literary language in Galicia, newspapers and magazines were published, and books were published.
All this did not please the Austrian authorities. Not without reason they feared that cultural rapprochement with a neighboring state would entail a political rapprochement and, in the end, the Russian provinces of the empire (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia) would openly declare their desire to reunite with Russia.
And then they came up with the roots of "mova"
From Vienna, Galician-Russian cultural ties were hindered in every possible way. They tried to influence the Galicians with persuasion, threats, and bribery. When it did not work, they switched to more vigorous measures. “The Ruthenians (as the official authorities in Austria called the Galician Rusyns - Auth.) did not, unfortunately, do anything to properly isolate their language from the Great Russian, so the government has to take the initiative in this regard,” said the governor of Franz- Joseph in Galicia Agenor Goluhovsky.
At first, the authorities simply wanted to ban the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in the region and introduce the Latin alphabet into the Galician-Russian alphabet. But the indignation of the Ruthenians with such an intention turned out to be so great that the government backed down.
The fight against the Russian language was carried out more subtly. Vienna attended to the creation of the movement of "young rutens". They were called young not because of their age, but because of the rejection of the "old" views. If the "old" Rusyns (rutens) considered Great Russians and Little Russians to be a single nation, then the "young" insisted on the existence of an independent Ruthenian nation (or Little Russian - the term "Ukrainian" was put into use later). Well, an independent nation should, of course, have an independent literary language. The task of writing such a language was given to the "young rutens".
Ukrainians began to grow along with the language
They did it, however, with difficulty. Although the authorities provided the movement with all possible support, it did not have influence among the people. The "young rutens" were viewed as traitors, unscrupulous servants of the government. In addition, the movement consisted of people, as a rule, insignificant in intellectual terms. The fact that such figures would be able to create and spread a new literary language in society was out of the question.
The Poles came to the rescue, whose influence in Galicia was dominant at that time. Being ardent Russophobes, representatives of the Polish movement saw a direct benefit for themselves in the split of the Russian nation. That is why they took an active part in the "linguistic" attempts of the "young rutens". “All Polish officials, professors, teachers, even priests began to deal primarily with philology, not Masurian or Polish, no, but exclusively ours, Russian, in order to create a new Russian-Polish language with the assistance of Russian traitors,” recalled a major public figure of Galicia and Transcarpathia Adolf Dobriansky.
Thanks to the Poles, things went faster. The Cyrillic alphabet was retained, but "reformed" to make it different from the one adopted in Russian. They took as a basis the so-called “kulishivka”, once invented by the Russian Ukrainophile Panteleimon Kulish, all with the same goal - to separate the Little Russians from the Great Russians. The letters "y", "e", "b" were removed from the alphabet, but "є" and "ї" missing in Russian grammar were included.
In order for the Ruthenian population to accept the changes, the “reformed” alphabet was introduced by order into schools. The need for innovation was motivated by the fact that the subjects of the Austrian emperor "are both better and safer not to use the very spelling that is customary in Russia."
Interestingly, the inventor of the “kulishivka” himself, who by that time had departed from the Ukrainophile movement, opposed such innovations. “I swear,” he wrote to the “young ruten” Omelyan Partitsky, “that if the Poles print my spelling in commemoration of our discord with Great Russia, if our phonetic spelling is presented not as helping the people to enlightenment, but as a banner of our Russian discord, then I, writing in my own way, in Ukrainian, will print in etymological old-world orthography. That is - we live at home, we talk and sing songs differently, and if it comes to something, then we will not allow anyone to separate ourselves. A dashing fate separated us for a long time, and we moved towards Russian unity on a bloody road, and now Lyad's attempts to separate us are useless.
But the Poles allowed themselves to ignore Kulish's opinion. They just needed Russian discord. After spelling, it was the turn of vocabulary. From literature and dictionaries, they tried to expel as many words as possible used in the Russian literary language. The resulting voids were filled with borrowings from Polish, German, other languages, or simply made-up words.
“Most of the words, turns and forms from the former Austro-Ruthenian period turned out to be “Moscow” and had to give way to new words, supposedly less harmful,” one of the “transformers”, who later repented, told about the language “reform”. - "Direction" - that's the Moscow word, can no longer be used - they said "young", and they now put the word "directly". “Modern” is also a Moscow word and gives way to the word “modern”, “exclusively” is replaced by the word “exclusive”, “educational” - by the word “enlightenment”, “society” - by the word “comradeship” or “suspіlstvo” ... ".
The zeal with which they "reformed" the Rusyn speech aroused the astonishment of philologists. And not only locals. “The Galician Ukrainians do not want to take into account that none of the Little Russians has the right to the ancient verbal heritage, which Kiev and Moscow equally claim, to frivolously leave and replace with polonisms or simply invented words,” wrote Alexander Brikner, professor of Slavic studies at the University of Berlin ( Pole by nationality). - I can't understand why in Galicia a few years ago the word "master" was anathematized and the word "kind" was used instead. “Dobrodiy” is a remnant of patriarchal-slavish relations, and we can’t stand it even in favor.”
However, the reasons for "innovation" had, of course, to be sought not in philology, but in politics. "In a new way" began to rewrite school textbooks. In vain the conferences of folk teachers, held in August and September 1896 in Przemyshlyany and Glinyany, noted that now the textbooks have become incomprehensible. And incomprehensible not only for students, but also for students. In vain did the teachers complain that, under the prevailing conditions, "it is necessary to publish an explanatory dictionary for teachers."
The government remained unwavering. Disgruntled teachers were fired from schools. Ruthenian officials who pointed out the absurdity of the changes were removed from their posts. Writers and journalists who stubbornly adhere to the "pre-reform" spelling and vocabulary were declared "Muscovites" and subjected to persecution. “Our language goes to the Polish sieve,” noted the prominent Galician writer and public figure, priest John Naumovich. “Healthy grain is separated like Muscovite, and the siftings are left to us by grace.”
In this regard, it is interesting to compare the various editions of Ivan Franko's works. Many words from the writer’s works published in 1870-1880, for example, “look”, “air”, “army”, “yesterday” and others, were replaced with “look”, “potrya”, “vіysko” in later reprints "vchora", etc. Changes were made both by Franko himself, who joined the Ukrainian movement, and by his "assistants" from among the "nationally conscious" editors.
In total, in 43 works that came out during the author's lifetime in two or more editions, experts counted more than 10 thousand (!) Changes. Moreover, after the death of the writer, “editing” of the texts continued. As, however, as well as "corrections" of texts of works of other authors. Thus, an independent literature was created in an independent language, later called Ukrainian.
But this language was not accepted by the people. The works published in Ukrainian experienced an acute shortage of readers. “Ten-fifteen years pass until the book of Franko, Kotsyubinsky, Kobylyanskaya sells 1,500 copies,” complained Mikhail Grushevsky, who was then living in Galicia, in 1911. Meanwhile, the books of Russian writers (especially Gogol's "Taras Bulba") quickly dispersed in the Galician villages in huge circulation for that era.
And another great moment. When the First World War broke out, an Austrian military publishing house published a special phrase book in Vienna. It was intended for soldiers mobilized into the army from various parts of Austria-Hungary, so that military personnel of different nationalities could communicate with each other. The phrasebook was compiled in six languages: German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Croatian and Russian. “The Ukrainian language was missed. This is wrong,” lamented the “nationally conscious” newspaper Dilo. Meanwhile, everything was logical. The Austrian authorities were well aware that the Ukrainian language was created artificially and was not widespread among the people.
It was possible to plant this language on the territory of Western Ukraine (and even then not immediately) only after the massacre of the indigenous population committed in Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia by the Austro-Hungarians in 1914-1917. That massacre changed a lot in the region. In Central and Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian language spread even later, but already in a different period of history...
Alexander Karevin
The territory of Ukraine has been inhabited by people for at least 44 thousand years. The Pontic-Caspian steppe was the scene of important historical events of the Bronze Age. Here the migration of the Indo-European peoples took place. In the same Black Sea and Caspian steppes, people tamed the horse.
Later, Scythians and Sarmatians lived on the territory of the Crimea and the Dnieper region. Finally, these lands were inhabited by the Slavs. They founded the medieval state of Kievan Rus, which collapsed in the 12th century. By the middle of the current Ukrainian lands were ruled by three forces: the Golden Horde, and the Kingdom of Poland. Later, the territory was divided by such powers as the Crimean Khanate, the Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary.
In the 20th century, an independent Ukraine appeared. The history of the emergence of the country begins with attempts to create the states of the UNR and ZUNR. Then the Ukrainian SSR was formed as part of the Soviet Union. And, finally, in 1991, the independence of Ukraine was proclaimed, confirmed at a national referendum and recognized by the international community.
Ancient history of Ukraine
Archaeological excavations indicate that Neanderthals lived in the Northern Black Sea region as early as 43-45 millennium BC. Objects belonging to the Cro-Magnols were found in the Crimea. They are dated to the 32nd millennium BC.
At the end of the Neolithic, the Trypillia culture arose on Ukrainian lands. It reached its heyday in 4500-3000 BC.
With the onset of the Iron Age, the tribes of the Dacians, the ancestors of modern Romanians, passed through the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. Then nomadic peoples (Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians) settled the lands of Ukraine. The history of these tribes is known not only through archaeological sites, but also from written sources. Herodotus mentions the Scythians in his writings. The Greeks founded their colonies in Crimea in the 6th century BC.
Then the Goths came to the territory of Ukraine and took place in the III-V centuries AD. In the fifth century, Slavic tribes appeared here.
In the 7th century, the state of the Bulgars arose in the Ukrainian steppes. But soon it broke up and was absorbed by the Khazars. This nomadic people from Central Asia founded a country that included vast territories - the Caucasus, Crimea, the Don steppes and eastern Ukraine. The history of the emergence and flourishing is closely connected with the process of the formation of the statehood of the Eastern Slavs. It is known that the title of kagan was borne by the first princes of Kyiv.
Kievan Rus
The history of Ukraine as a state, according to many researchers, begins in 882. It was then that Kyiv was conquered by Prince Oleg from the Khazars and became the center of a vast country. In a single state, the meadows, drevlyans, streets, white Croats and other Slavic tribes were united. Oleg himself, according to the dominant concept in historiography, was a Varangian.
In the 11th century, Kievan Rus became the largest state in Europe in terms of territory. In Western sources of that time, her lands were most often designated as Ruthenia. The name Ukraine is first encountered in documents of the 12th century. It means "land", "country".
In the 16th century, the first map of Ukraine appeared. On it, under this name, Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereyaslav lands are indicated.
The adoption of Christianity and the crushing of Rus'
The first followers of Christ appeared in the Crimea at least in the 4th century. Christianity became the official religion of Kievan Rus in 988 on the initiative of Volodymyr the Great. The first baptized ruler of the state was his grandmother, Princess Olga.
During the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, a set of laws was adopted, called "Russian Truth". It was the time of the highest political power of the Kyiv state. After the death of Yaroslav, the era of fragmentation of Rus' into separate, often warring with each other, principalities began.
Vladimir Monomakh tried to revive a single centralized state, but in the 12th century Rus' finally disintegrated. Kyiv and the Galicia-Volyn principality became the territories on which Ukraine later arose. The history of the emergence of Russia begins with the rise of the city of Suzdal, which was the political and cultural center of the northeastern Russian lands. Later, Moscow became the capital of these territories. In the northwest, the Principality of Polotsk became the center around which the Belarusian nation was formed.
In 1240, Kyiv was sacked by the Mongols and for a long time lost any political influence.
Galicia-Volyn principality
The history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine, according to a number of scientists, begins in the XII century. While the northern principalities fall under the rule of the Golden Horde, two independent Russian powers remain in the west with their capitals in the cities of Galich and Lodomir (now Vladimir-Volynsky). After their unification, the Galicia-Volyn principality was formed. At the height of its power, it included Wallachia and Bessarabia and had access to the Black Sea.
In 1245, Pope Innocent IV crowned Prince Daniel of Galicia and granted him the title of King of All Rus'. At this time, the principality waged a complex war against the Mongols. After the death of Daniel of Galicia in 1264, he was replaced by his son Leo, who moved the capital to the city of Lvov. Unlike his father, who adhered to a pro-Western political vector, he agreed to cooperate with the Mongols, in particular, he entered into an alliance with the Nogai Khan. Together with his Tatar allies, Leo invaded Poland. In 1280 he defeated the Hungarians and captured part of Transcarpathia.
After the death of Leo, the decline of the Galicia-Volyn principality began. In 1323, the last representatives of this branch of the Rurik dynasty died in a battle with the Mongols. After that, Volyn came under the control of the Lithuanian princes Gedeminovich, and Galicia fell under the rule of the Polish crown.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
After the Union of Lublin, the Ruthenian lands became part of the Kingdom of Poland. During this period, the history of Ukraine as a state is interrupted, but it was at this time that the Ukrainian nation was formed. Contradictions between Poles-Catholics and Ruthenians-Orthodox gradually resulted in inter-ethnic tension.
Cossacks
The Poles were interested in protecting their eastern borders from the Ottoman Empire and its vassals. For these purposes, the Cossacks were best suited. They not only repelled the raids of the Crimean khans, but also participated in the wars of the Commonwealth with the Moscow kingdom.
Despite the military merit of the Cossacks, it refused to grant them any significant autonomy, trying instead to turn most of the Ukrainian population into serfs. This led to conflicts and uprisings.
Ultimately, in 1648, a liberation war began under the leadership of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. The history of the creation of Ukraine has entered a new phase. The state of the Hetmanate that arose as a result of the uprising was surrounded by three forces: the Ottoman Empire, the Commonwealth and Muscovy. A period of political maneuvering began.
In 1654, the Zaporozhye Cossacks entered into an agreement with the Moscow Tsar. Poland tried to regain control over the lost territories by concluding an agreement with Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky. This was the cause of the war between the Commonwealth and Muscovy. It ended with the signing of the Andrusov Treaty, according to which the Hetmanate was ceded to Moscow.
Ruled by the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary
The subsequent history of Ukraine, whose territory was divided between two states, was characterized by an upsurge among writers and intellectuals.
During this period, the Russian Empire finally defeats the Crimean Khanate and annexes its territories. There are also three partitions of Poland. As a result, most of its lands inhabited by Ukrainians are part of Russia. Galicia goes to the Austrian emperor.
Many Russian writers, artists and statesmen of the 18th-19th centuries had Ukrainian roots. Among the most famous are Nikolai Gogol and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Unlike Russia, in Galicia almost the entire elite consisted of Austrians and Poles, and the Rusyns were mostly peasants.
national revival
In the 19th century, a process of cultural revival of the peoples under the rule of large empires - the Austrian, Russian and Ottoman ones - began in Eastern Europe. Ukraine has not remained aloof from these trends. The history of the emergence of the movement for national independence begins in 1846 with the founding of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. The poet Taras Shevchenko was also a member of this organization. Later, social-democratic and revolutionary parties appeared that advocated the autonomy of Ukrainian lands.
Around the same time, in 1848, Golovna Ruska Rada, the first political organization of Western Ukrainians, began its activity in Lvov. At that time, Russophile and pro-Russian sentiments dominated among the Galician intelligentsia.
Thus, the history of the creation of Ukraine within its modern borders begins with the birth of nationally oriented parties in the middle of the 19th century. It was they who formed the ideology of the future unified state.
World War I and the collapse of empires
The armed conflict that began in 1914 led to the fall of the largest monarchies in Europe. The peoples, who for many centuries lived under the rule of powerful empires, have a chance to determine their own future destinies.
On November 20, 1917, the Ukrainian People's Republic was created. And on January 25, 1918, she proclaimed her complete independence from Russia. A little later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. As a result, on November 13, 1918, the Western Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed. On January 22, 1919, the UNR and ZUNR were reunited. However, the history of the emergence of the state of Ukraine was far from over. The new power found itself at the epicenter of the civil, and then the Soviet-Polish war, and as a result lost its independence.
Ukrainian SSR
In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was created, which became part of the USSR. From the moment the Soviet Union appeared until the collapse of the Soviet Union, it ranked second among the republics in terms of economic power and political influence.
The map of Ukraine during this period changed several times. In 1939, Galicia and Volhynia were returned. In 1940 - some areas that previously belonged to Romania, and in 1945 - Transcarpathia. Finally, in 1954, Crimea was annexed to Ukraine. On the other hand, in 1924 the Shakhtinsky and Taganrog districts were transferred to Russia, and in 1940 Transnistria was ceded.
After World War II, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding countries of the UN. According to the results of the 1989 census, the population of the republic was almost 52 million people.
Independence
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state. This was preceded by a rise in patriotic sentiment. On January 21, 1990, three hundred thousand Ukrainians organized a human chain from Kyiv to Lvov in support of independence. Parties based on national-patriotic positions were founded. Ukraine became the legal successor of the Ukrainian SSR and the UNR. The government of the UNR in exile officially transferred its powers to the first president, Leonid Kravchuk.
As you can see, the history of Ukraine since ancient times has been filled with great victories, unsurpassed defeats, noble catastrophes, terrible and fascinating stories.
The whole truth about the creation of Ukraine...
Thanks to the inexhaustible energy of "Svidomo" ideologists and propagandists, the myth that the communist regime was a fierce enemy of Ukrainians and "Ukraine" has become established in our society. The Ukrainian conscious intelligentsia, foaming at the mouth, tirelessly broadcasts about the crimes of Lenin and Stalin against the “Ukrainian people”. And this brazen lie is perhaps the most unfair in the arsenal of "Svidomo". Its injustice lies in the fact that without Lenin and Stalin, without Soviet power and the "national policy" of the Bolsheviks, neither "Ukrainians" nor "Ukraine" in the form in which we know them would ever have appeared. It was the Bolshevik regime and its leaders who created "Ukraine" from the South-Western Territory of Russia, and "Ukrainians" from its population. It was they who later added to this new formation territories that never belonged to either Little Rus', or the Hetmanate, or the South-Western Territory.
Why did the Bolsheviks create "Ukrainians"
With all the hatred of the “Svidomo” Galicians for the “Soviets”, they would have to admit that without Stalin, Galicia at the beginning of the last century would have remained torn between Poland, Hungary and Romania, and now there would hardly be anyone at all about the “Ukrainians” of the Carpathian and Transcarpathian regions I remembered something, given the assimilation talents of our Western neighbors.
The strained artificiality of the "Ukraina" project in those years was obvious to many leaders of the communist movement. Even then, Lenin was warned that his experiments with nation-building and flirting with the unfinished operetta nationalists of the imperial outskirts would sooner or later lead to disaster. Very clearly in this sense, the so-called. "Ukrainian issue". However, Lenin ignored these warnings. And not only because of its so-called "policy of national self-determination." The Ukrainian people did not exist just at the time of the revolution. There was only the southwestern branch of the Russian ethnic group and an insignificant handful of "Svidomo" Little Russian and Galician intellectuals who never expressed the interests of ordinary people. And Lenin was well informed about this. He was actively interested in the political situation in Little Russia in those years.
Here is the story he told on January 30, 1917 in his letter to I. Armand, which he heard from a soldier who had escaped from German captivity: “I spent a year in German captivity ... in a camp of 27,000 people. Ukrainians. The Germans form camps according to nations and with all their might break them away from Russia. The Ukrainians were sent clever lecturers from Galicia. Results? Only de 2,000 were for "independence" ... The rest de fell into a rage at the thought of secession from Russia and the transition to the Germans or Austrians.
Significant fact! It is impossible not to believe. 27,000 is a big number. A year is a long time. The conditions for Galician propaganda are extremely favorable. And yet, proximity to the Great Russians prevailed! .
That is, already in 1917, Lenin perfectly understood all the absurdity, artificiality and far-fetchedness of the “nation of Ukrainians”. I understood who created this “nation” and why. But, nevertheless, he consciously continued the Polish-Austrian-German work to remove the "Ukrainians" from the Russians of South-Western Rus'.
Here is what, for example, Rosa Luxemburg wrote, accusing Lenin of creating an artificial “people” and deliberately dismembering Russia: “Ukrainian nationalism in Russia was completely different from, say, Czech, Polish or Finnish, nothing more than a simple whim, antics of several petty-bourgeois intellectuals, without any roots in the economy, politics or spiritual sphere of the country, without any historical tradition, because Ukraine has never been a nation or a state, without any national culture, except for the reactionary-romantic poems of Shevchenko. […] And such a ridiculous thing of several university professors and students was artificially inflated by Lenin and his comrades into a political factor with their doctrinaire agitation for “the right to self-determination right up to”, etc.
Luxembourg was a realist politician and perfectly understood what “Ukraine” was, but she obviously did not know that the Bolsheviks, Poles and the “Ukrainians” they raised had two common properties that put them on the same position regarding the “Ukrainian question” . These are very important properties of their mentality - fear and hatred. THEY STRONGLY FEARED AND HATED RUSSIA AND EVERYTHING RUSSIAN. In this matter, they were dominated by a very powerful irrational principle. The international, let's say, top of the RSDLP (b), in which Russians still had to be looked for, could not afford to preserve the state-forming ethnic core of the Russian Empire. In their opinion, neither the Russian people nor Russian culture should have dominated in a communist paradise. For them, the Russian people was an oppressor people, the Russian state was an enslaving state, and Russian culture was "Russian great-power chauvinism." It is not for nothing that the non-Russian elite of the Bolsheviks consistently and totally destroyed everything Russian and all carriers of Russianness.
When in the revolutionary years it was about “class hatred” fueled by Bolshevik agitators, what was actually meant was hatred of everything Russian, since it was precisely the highest social strata of Russia that were its bearers. To question the existence of Russianness and, accordingly, Russia, it was necessary simply to exterminate the ruling elite, to exterminate the nobility. Which, in fact, happened.
And the common people at that time in their spiritual and psychological development had not yet reached the level of a clear national and even more so cultural identity. The people understood very poorly where “ours” and “theirs” were. That is why the sweet-voiced foreign commissars were closer to him than the Russian nobles, and the talk that the “gentlemen” were to blame for everything stimulated the popular enthusiasm for the Red Terror. The Bolsheviks skillfully used the underdevelopment of the peasant consciousness in their propaganda. As a result, they were able to turn a significant part of the people into a rebellious boor, and set this boor against the Russian ruling elite. Naturally, the divided people could not resist. When the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox faith, the last strongholds of Russianness, came under the repressive and terrorist attack of the new regime, the Soviet authorities had a real spiritual and psychological opportunity to create a “Soviet man”, and the ruling “Svidomoya” elite of the Ukrainian SSR had the opportunity to create a regional variety of the “Soviet person" - "Ukrainian".
As the historian Nikolai Ulyanov wrote already in exile: “Even before the October Revolution, the revolutionary parties discounted Russia, even then a new deity was opposed to it - the revolution. After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, Russia and the Russian name were among the forbidden words. The ban continued, as is well known, until the mid-1930s. The first seventeen or eighteen years were the years of the merciless extermination of the Russian cultural elite, the destruction of historical monuments and monuments of art, the eradication of scientific disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, Byzantine studies, the removal of Russian history from university and school teaching, replaced by the history of the revolutionary movement. Until then, there was no such bullying in our country against everyone who bore a Russian name. If later, before the Second World War, he was rehabilitated, then with the undisguised goal of Sovietization. "National in form, socialist in content" - such was the slogan that exposed the cunning design.
By adapting the Austro-Marxist scheme to Russia with all their might, the Bolsheviks "comprehended" all national questions with the exception of Russian. The point of view of some publicists, like P. B. Struve, who saw in the “Russians” a “nation in the making,” nation in the making, as the Americans called themselves, was alien and incomprehensible to them. Guided by the ethnographic principle of the formation of the USSR and having composed the Ukrainian and Belarusian nations, they had no choice but to compose a Great Russian one. They ignored the fact that Great Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians are not yet nations, and in any case not cultures, they only promise to become cultures in the indefinite future. Nevertheless, with a light heart, the developed, historically established Russian culture is sacrificed to them. The picture of her death is one of the most dramatic pages in our history. This is the victory of the Polyans, Drevlyans, Vyatichi and Radimichi over Russia.
The Bolsheviks did not take Russia into account at all. They even seized power in it not in order to then make the Russians happy with communism, but in order to use it as a consumable in fomenting a world revolution. In the autumn of 1917, Lenin said bluntly: “It’s not about Russia, it’s not about Russia, good gentlemen, I don’t give a damn - this is just the stage through which we are going through to the world revolution ...”. The Bolsheviks needed the material and human resources of the empire for a revolutionary campaign in Europe. For the sake of their messianic goals, they were ready to sacrifice both the Russian people and the country as a whole. From their point of view, the Russians were too wild, primitive and inferior to build communism, but using them as a kind of giant lever, it was possible to turn Europe over in order to direct its enlightened and cultured peoples to the path of building a communist society.
In order to destroy Russia and seize power on its ruins, the RSDLP (b) was ready to do anything, stopping at nothing. In 1914, her leaders, with the natural ease of Judas, entered into an agreement with her enemy - Kaiser's Germany. In his memoirs, General Ludendorff wrote: “By sending Lenin to Russia, our government assumed a special responsibility. From a military point of view, his passage through Germany had its justification: Russia should have collapsed into the abyss. The Bolsheviks thought the same way.
In Paris, in 1922, the book "History of Bolshevism in Russia from its emergence to the seizure of power (1883-1903-1917)" was published. It was of particular interest because it was written by the former gendarmerie general Alexander Ivanovich Spiridovich, on the basis of those documents that were obtained by the Russian special services in the process of fighting the RSDLP (b). Here is how he described the situation of cooperation between the Bolsheviks and the Germans in the destruction of Russia: “Lenin was one of those who were convinced that war was inevitable and that if Russia was defeated, it would lead to great internal upheavals that could be used for the purposes of revolution, for overthrow of the monarchy. The victory of Russia was understood as the strengthening of the autocracy and, consequently, the failure of all revolutionary desires. Naturally, Lenin really wanted the defeat of Russia. Considering how important it is for Germany to get at its disposal everything that in one way or another will contribute to the defeat of Russia, Lenin decided to use the favorable moment in order to raise funds for his revolutionary work, he decided to enter into an agreement with Germany regarding the joint struggle against Russia.
He went to Berlin in June of that year and made a personal offer to the German Foreign Office to work for him in order to corrupt the Russian army and raise unrest in the rear. For his work against Russia, Lenin demanded large sums of money. The Ministry rejected Lenin's first proposal, which did not prevent him from making a secondary proposal, which was also rejected. Then the Social Democrat Gelfant, known under the name of Parvus, who served Germany as a political agent, came to the aid of Lenin.
Under the direct influence of Parvus, who informed the Germans about the real essence of Bolshevism, about its leaders and their moral fitness to carry out the treacherous proposal, the German government realized the full benefit of Lenin's plan and decided to use it. In July, Lenin was summoned to Berlin, where he, together with representatives of the German government, developed a plan of action for a rear war against Russia and France. Immediately after the declaration of war, Lenin was to be paid 70 million marks, after which further sums were to be placed at his disposal as needed. Lenin undertook to send against Russia the party apparatus, which was in his hands, with its central organs.
Such was the situation in which the Russian nobleman Ulyanov-Lenin, who had long been torn away from Russia, having forgotten in his internationalism what the homeland and its interests were, went on high treason. From that moment on, the RSDLP, in the person of its Bolshevik organizations and its central organs, in the person of many individual party workers, becomes an instrument of the German General Staff, put into action by Lenin and a group of his closest friends.
Hatred of Russia, the Russian people, as well as the desire to destroy them, united the "Svidomo Ukrainians" and the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the 20th century. In that sense, they were twin brothers. Moreover, they were supported and directed by the same force that opposed the Russian Empire in a mortal struggle - Kaiser's Germany. Since 1914, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SOU), headed by D. Dontsov, and the RSDLP (b), headed by V. Lenin, had a common foreign source of funding - the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Staff. They also had a common German curator - Israel Gelfand (Parvus), teacher and inspirer of Leon Trotsky. While still in the United States, when asked how his mentor was doing there, the future creator of the Red Army answered very succinctly: "the twelfth million is making money."
Now it looks extremely interesting that on December 28, 1914, one of the leaders of the SOU, M. Melenevsky, wrote a letter to V. Lenin, in which he offered the latter a strong alliance in the common cause of destroying Russia and seizing power on its ruins. “Dear Vladimir Ilyich! - with amazing tenderness he turned to the leader of the Russian proletariat. - I am very glad that I can convey my best regards to you. In these times, when such a universal truly Russian wind blew through the Moscow provinces - your and your group's speeches with the old revolutionary slogans and your correct understanding of the events that were taking place made me and my comrades believe that not everything is shabby in Russia and that there are elements and groups , with which we, the Ukrainian Social-Democrats. and revolutionary Ukrainian Democrats can and should contact and, with mutual support, continue our old great revolutionary cause.
Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, which included as an autonomous and full-fledged group, and we, Spilchane and other Ukrainian Social-Democrats. elements, is at the present moment a truly democratic organization, pursuing as its goal the seizure of power in the Ukraine and the implementation of those reforms for which the masses of the people have been fighting all the time in our country (confiscations in favor of the landlord people in other lands, the complete democratization of political and other institutions, the Constituent Assembly for Ukraine). Our union is still acting as the core of the future Ukrainian government, pulling all the living forces to itself and struggling with its own Ukrainian reaction. We are confident that our aspirations will meet with your full sympathy. And if so, we would be very glad to enter into closer relations with the Bolsheviks. We would also be extremely happy if the Russian revolutionary forces, headed by your group, set themselves similar tasks, even to the extent of striving and preparing to seize power in the Russian part of Russia.
Among the Ukrainian population there is an extraordinary national-revolutionary upsurge, especially among Galician Ukrainians and Ukrainians in America. This contributed to the receipt of large donations to our Union, it also helped us organize all kinds of equipment perfectly, etc. If you and I came to an agreement for joint action, we would gladly render you any material and other assistance. If you want to enter immediately into official negotiations, then telegraph me briefly ... and I will inform your committee to immediately delegate to you a special person for these negotiations ... How are you, how are you feeling? I would be very grateful if you would send all your publications to my Sofia address. Best regards to Nadezhda Konstantinovna. I shake my hand firmly. Your Basok.
After reading this message, Vladimir Ilyich became hysterical. He immediately, in the presence of a courier, scribbled an angry response to his unwanted comrades in the common cause of the destruction of Russia, in which he categorically stated that he was not going to enter into any relations with the mercenaries of imperialism, sharply rejecting any cooperation with the SOA. Of course, for M. Melenevsky and D. Dontsov (a former Marxist), this reaction was unexpected, since they knew very well that the Bolsheviks receive money from the Germans just like they do. Lenin, however, was well aware that the slightest hint of his connection with the SOU would cast a shadow on his revolutionary reputation and reveal the fact of his cooperation with Germany. Moreover, the Georgian Social Democrats, to whom the Galician “Svidomo” approached with a similar offer of cooperation, made a public scandal, officially declaring that the proposal of the SOU was rejected, “as an offer from an organization that operates with the material support and patronage of the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs and their brothers."
From the above facts, it is not difficult to understand that both the SOU and the RSDLP (b) had an anti-Russian nature, striving for the destruction of Russia. The only difference between them was that, unlike the semi-virtual Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, the Bolsheviks were a strong, cohesive organization that really fought Russia for life and death. And in this struggle, all means were good for them.
Thus, the alien hatred of everything Russian, as well as the fundamental internationalism of the revolution, which did not allow the preservation of the Russian ethnic core of the empire, made the Bolsheviks see almost the main danger for themselves in everything Russian. That is why the Russian ethnic monolith was cut alive into three parts and declared "three fraternal peoples." The Russian colossus was too big and mighty. It was here that the Polish ideology of “two separate peoples”, a special Ukrainian language and an independent culture, came in handy. So it turns out that the very idea of creating “Ukrainians” and “Ukraine”, in other words, anti-Russian Rus', was born by the creative genius of the Poles, its working prototype was designed by the Austrians and Germans in Eastern Galicia, but turned it into a large-scale reality by Lenin and Stalin.
How the Bolsheviks created "Ukrainians"
In 1921, speaking at the 10th Party Congress, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin emphasized that "if Russian elements still predominate in the cities of Ukraine, then over time these cities will inevitably be Ukrainized." And it was a big statement. In April 1923, the XII Congress of the RCP(b) declared "indigenization" the party's course on the national question, and in the same month, at the VII conference of the CP(b)U, the beginning of the policy of "Ukrainization" was announced. The Ukrainian CEC and the Council of People's Commissars immediately formalized this decision with the relevant decrees.
The communists had to create the Ukrainian “nation”, the Ukrainian “language”, the Ukrainian “state”, the Ukrainian “culture”, etc. practically out of nothing. The Ukrainization of Little Rus' was total. Everything was Ukrainianized - state institutions, office work, schools, universities, the press, theaters, etc. Those who did not want to be Ukrainianized or did not pass the exams in the Ukrainian language were fired without the right to receive unemployment benefits. Anyone who was found to have a "negative attitude towards Ukrainization" was regarded as a counter-revolutionary and an enemy of the Soviet regime. The apparatus of state administration was subjected to a purge according to the criterion of “national Svidomo”. The fight against illiteracy was carried out in the Ukrainian language. There were mandatory courses for everyone to study the Ukrainian language and culture. The process of Ukrainization was constantly controlled by the darkness of various commissions. All the power of the party apparatus and the state machine fell upon the "invisible population", which was supposed to become a "Ukrainian nation" in the shortest possible time.
It was not for nothing that Grushevsky, having returned to Soviet Ukraine, enthusiastically wrote to one of his comrades-in-arms that “here, despite all the shortcomings, I feel like in the Ukrainian Republic, which we began to build in 1917.” Still would! After all, for example, two such ardent fanatics of Ukrainization as Mykola Khvylovy and Mykola Skrypnik, in the past held leading positions in the Cheka and were directly involved in punitive actions against the enemies of the revolution. Not surprisingly, their methods of Ukrainization were inherently Chekist. It’s good that at least no one was shot for not wanting to change their national identity, as the Austrians did in Galicia.
Here a natural question arises: how did a simple Little Russian peasant react to the communist Ukrainization? After all, according to the version of "Svidomo" ideologists, the Little Russian people have been raving about everything Ukrainian for thousands of years. Ukrainization was supposed to become for them almost God's grace, the realization of their cherished dream of becoming a Ukrainian, speaking fluently in their native Ukrainian language, and enjoying Ukrainian culture. However, the reality of the 1920s was different. The joy of Ukrainization, as now, the inhabitants of the newly minted Ukraine did not experience. They did not want to become Ukrainians. They did not want to speak Ukrainian. They were not interested in Ukrainian culture. Ukrainization aroused in them, at best, irritation, at worst, sharp rejection and hostility.
This is how the “Svidomo” Ukrainizer from the CP(b)U, People’s Commissar of Education of the Ukrainian SSR Zatonsky described the popular mood in 1918: “The broad Ukrainian masses treated Ukraine with… contempt. Why was it so? Because then Ukrainians [in the sense of Ukrainophiles - A.V.] were with the Germans, because Ukraine stretched from Kyiv right up to imperialist Berlin. Not only workers, but also peasants, Ukrainian peasants did not tolerate “Ukrainians” at that time (through Rakovsky’s delegation in Kiev, we received the protocols of peasant meetings, most of the protocols were stamped by the village elder and everyone signed them - you see what a wonderful conspiracy it was) . In these protocols, the peasants wrote to us: we all feel Russian and hate the Germans and Ukrainians and ask the RSFSR to join us.”
The Bolsheviks broke the Little Russians in the 20s over the knee, striving through the so-called. "indigenization" to remake them from Russians into "Ukrainians". However, the people showed stubborn, albeit passive, resistance to Ukrainization. There was a frank sabotage of the decisions of the party and government. In this regard, the party leaders were simply "flattened" with anger. “The despicable selfish type of the Little Russian, who ... flaunts with his indifferent attitude to everything Ukrainian and is always ready to spit on him,” Shumsky angrily lamented in those years at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine. No less energetically expressed in his diary was the party leader Efremov: “It is necessary that this slave generation perish, which is accustomed only to “depict a crest”, and not organically feel like Ukrainians.” Despite these wishes of the fiery Bolshevik-Leninist, the Little Russians did not “perish” and did not feel organically “Ukrainians”, even though this ethnonymic nickname was assigned to them during the years of Stalinism. As it turned out, the Russian spirit is not so easy to strangle. For this, mass terror and concentration camps according to the Austrian model were clearly not enough.
Understanding perfectly well the complexity of the task of Ukrainizing the Russian population of the former Southwestern Territory, Stalin wisely pointed out to his party comrades the mistakes that they made in the process of creating "Ukrainians". So, in April 1926, he writes a letter to Lazar Kaganovich and other members of the Central Committee of the CP (b) U, which says the following: “It is true that a number of communists in Ukraine do not understand the meaning and significance of this movement and therefore do not take measures to master it. . It is true that a change must be made in the cadres of our Party and Soviet workers, who are still imbued with a spirit of irony and skepticism on the question of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian society. It is true that we must carefully select and create cadres of people capable of mastering the new movement in the Ukraine. All this is true. But Comrade Shumsky makes at least two serious mistakes in this.
First, he confuses the Ukrainization of our Party and Soviet apparatuses with the Ukrainization of the proletariat. It is possible and necessary to Ukrainize, while observing a certain pace, our party, state and other apparatuses serving the population. But it is impossible to Ukrainize the proletariat from above. The Russian working masses cannot be forced to renounce the Russian language and Russian culture and recognize Ukrainian as their culture and language. This is contrary to the principle of the free development of nationalities. This would not be national freedom, but a peculiar form of national oppression. Undoubtedly, the composition of the Ukrainian proletariat will change with the industrial development of Ukraine, with the influx of Ukrainian workers into industry from the surrounding villages. There is no doubt that the composition of the Ukrainian proletariat will become Ukrainized, just as the composition of the proletariat, say, in Latvia and Hungary, which at one time had a German character, later began to be Latvianized and Madyarized. But this is a long, spontaneous, natural process. Trying to replace this spontaneous process with the forcible Ukrainization of the proletariat from above means pursuing a utopian and harmful policy capable of evoking anti-Ukrainian chauvinism in the non-Ukrainian sections of the proletariat in Ukraine.”
It is easy to understand from this letter that the Ukrainization of Little Russia was going very hard. Ordinary people resisted as best they could, and the local "Svidomo" party elite, desperate to achieve their goal, actively used violent forms of Ukrainization. Because of this, the people grumbled, and the authority of the party in their eyes fell. Stalin understood this very well, warning against excesses.
Big problems arose among the Ukrainian communists and with personnel who would be able to carry out the Ukrainization of the Russian population of the former Little Russia at the proper level. In Moscow, they were even forced to recommend to local party bodies to involve former political opponents from among the “Svidomo” as “specialists” in Ukrainization (similar to how officers and officials of the Russian Empire were involved in the civil war).
This recommendation was not accidental. The Little Russian Bolsheviks, who won the Central Rada, the Hetmanate and the Directory in the military-political confrontation, were unable to independently transform the South-Western Territory of Russia into “Ukraine”, and its Russian population into “Ukrainians”.
That is why Moscow allowed the former Bolshevik opponents, the socialists of the Central Rada and the Directory, whose political convictions were almost identical to the ideology of the RSDLP(b), to join the CP(b)U and the Soviet authorities. It is today's Ukrainian propaganda that paints these figures as irreconcilable enemies of Bolshevism, but in fact there were no differences between them on fundamental issues, differences arose only as to who would hold power. Both the Central Rada and the Petliura regime represented a regional variety of Bolshevism. Only to a greater extent demagogic and completely incompetent. As an absolute evil, the leaders of the Central Republic and the Directory perceived not the Bolsheviks, but the White movement in general and the Volunteer Army in particular. The communists also took a similar position. For them, the Ukrainian socialist-nationalists were something like half-baked Bolsheviks who fell under hostile influence. That is why they mercilessly exterminated representatives of the White movement, and with the leaders of the Central Rada and the Directory they sought a compromise from the position of the winner.
Proof of this is the fact of the Soviet government's generous forgiveness of many leaders, as well as simple "Svidomo" figures and supporters of the Central Republic and the Directory, who subsequently flooded the party and state structures of the Ukrainian SSR.
Everything that the ideologists of modern political Ukrainianism weave about the allegedly irreconcilable struggle of the “Ukrainian and national revolutions” with the Bolsheviks is complete nonsense. Hrushevsky and Vinnichenko (who personified the period of the Central Rada) after the civil war returned safely to their native land and lived out their lives under the tutelage of the Soviet authorities. The same applied to a number of prominent figures of the Directory.
In May 1921, a trial took place in Kyiv over the former leaders of the Central Republic and the Directory. There were quite a lot of people in the dock. However, among them there was no one who would have suffered a serious punishment, and even more so received a "capital measure". Some of them were completely justified.
Of this company, only Petlyura was unlucky. But he was killed in Paris not because he fought against the Soviet regime, but because of the massive Jewish pogroms that engulfed the entire Southwestern region during his leadership of the Ukrainian army. Then the Petliurists exterminated about 25 thousand Jews. What is the massacre in Proskurov in March 1919, during which the “Zaporozhye brigade” of Ataman Semesenko killed about three thousand Jews, including women and children.
The facts of the extermination of the Jewish population by the Petliurists were so obvious that the French court acquitted Samuil Schwarzbart, who in 1926 took revenge on Petliura for his people.
Thus, as mentioned above, after the CP (b) U, with the support of Moscow, established Soviet power throughout the South-Western Territory (with the exception of Volyn), former leaders of the left Ukrainian parties, the Central R and directories.
Their first group, very numerous and active, consisted of the so-called "ukapists" - former members of the left-wing factions of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. They completely stood on the Bolshevik political platform, advocating only the creation of a separate Ukrainian army, economy and total Ukrainization of the South-Western Territory.
The second group, which merged into the Soviet and party structures of the Ukrainian SSR, consisted of former leaders of the Central Rada and the Directory who had repented and been forgiven by the Bolsheviks.
And, finally, the third group of “Svidomites”, who played an important role in the construction of the Ukrainian SSR and its total Ukrainization, were Galicians, who poured in crowds from Polish Galicia and emigration to the USSR, where, in their opinion, the construction of the Ukrainian state began. In their ranks there were about 400 officers of the Galician army, defeated by the Poles, led by G. Kossak, as well as various cultural and political figures (Lozinsky, Vitik, Rudnitsky, Tchaikovsky, Yavorsky, Krushelnitsky and many others).
Beginning in 1925, tens of thousands of “Svidomo Galychs” moved to the central regions of Little Russia for permanent residence. They were placed evenly in leadership positions in Kyiv, instructing them to brainwash the population. In 1927-1933, the head of the People's Commissariat for Education, the fiery Bolshevik Skrypnik, was especially zealous. The "Svidomo" Janissaries of Franz Joseph, the Bolsheviks also replaced Russian professors, scientists who did not want to be Ukrainianized. In one of his letters, Grushevsky said that about 50 thousand people had moved from Galicia, some with their wives and families, young people, men. Obviously, without the involvement of the ideological "Ukrainians" of Austria-Hungary, nurtured on Polish propaganda, the Ukrainization of Rus' would have been simply impossible.
And here is what one of them wrote about how they were perceived in Little Russia: “My misfortune is that I am a Galician. Nobody likes the Galicians here. The older Russian public is hostile to them as to the Bolshevik instrument of Ukrainization (the eternal talk about the "Galician Move"). Senior local Ukrainians are even worse off, considering the Galicians "traitors" and "Bolshevik mercenaries".
It is good form for our “Svidomo Ukrainians” to spend five minutes of hatred towards the “Kat” and the “Holodomorite of the Ukrainian people” Joseph Stalin, but the comicality of the situation lies in the fact that, if not for the iron will of the “father of the peoples”, no “Ukrainians” , there would never have been "Ukraine".
By the way, if we talk about the traditional pantheon of enemies of Ukraine, compiled by “Svidomymy”, it should be noted that if their hatred of the “Muscovites” can somehow be substantiated, then their hatred of the “Kids” is difficult to explain. Perhaps this is just outright ingratitude, or perhaps just stupid ignorance. The fact is that the Jews made a colossal contribution to the creation of "Ukrainian", "Ukraine", "Ukrainian" language and literature. This is a topic for scientific research and at least draws on a separate monograph. If the “Svidomites” had even a drop of gratitude, then on the Maidan “Nezalezhnosti” they would have erected a giant sculpture of Joseph Stalin, and on the European Square they would have erected a monument to Lazar Kaganovich.
The fact is that the most intense and radical period of the Soviet Ukrainization of the 20s of the last century took place under the direct leadership of Kaganovich. At that time, there was no more ardent Ukrainianizer of Russians than he. It was a truly remarkable person. A man of sharp mind and unbending will. Compared to how he carried out Ukrainization, everything that his followers did after the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991 looks like slobbering and fooling around. “Svidomo” should not wrap portraits of Taras Grigorievich in towels and hang them like an icon on the wall, but photographs of Lazar Moiseevich. Historical justice simply yells about this with a good obscenity.
However, even such titans as Stalin and Kaganovich could not break the national and cultural backbone of the Little Russians. After raging for ten years, the Ukrainization process quietly stalled, running into the passive resistance of the people.
The curtailment of Ukrainization, apparently, was associated not only with the stubborn resistance of the inhabitants of Rus', but also with a change in the strategic plans of the communist elite. It seems that by the beginning of the 1930s, Stalin had to abandon Lenin's beloved idea of a world revolution. The fact is that the leader of the Russian proletariat, already deceased by that time, “stirred up” this whole game of “national self-determination” for all the “oppressed peoples” of Russia only in order to later gradually add new states that had passed through to their liberated fraternal union. through the proletarian revolution. By the 1930s, Stalin, as a talented realist politician, realized that, in principle, nothing “shines” with the world revolution and that in the face of predatory imperialists, it is necessary to turn the Soviet Union into a reliable communist fortress. It was a stage of deaf defense. Stalin needed a strong, monolithic state with efficient, rigidly centralized power. The “Ukrainian Nation” had already been created, but there was no need to further deepen Ukrainization, which irritated the people quite a bit. In addition, he was pretty fed up with the stubborn "bourgeois-nationalist" deviationism of some leaders of the CP (b) U, whom he then slightly "thinned out" for "excesses". As a result, Ukrainization stalled. The people breathed a sigh of relief. But "Ukraine", "Ukrainian", "Ukrainian language" remained. It was only in 1991 that former party members and Komsomol members solemnly revived Stalin's Ukrainization with sharavar-dumpling elements in its national-democratic, extremely caricatured version.
Was there then in 1991 our country a real opportunity to go the other way? Hardly. There were simply no ideological prerequisites for this. When the party and managerial nomenklatura unexpectedly turned out to be "independent" from their senior comrades from Moscow, it was necessary to lay an appropriate ideological foundation under this "independence". In addition to the Polish-Austrian-German separatist ideas, polished to a shine in the 20s by the Soviet government, in the 30s and 40s by the “thinkers-warriors” of the OUN-UPA (b) and in the 60s and 70s by dissident Ukrainophiles, other ideas it just wasn't. Neither the officials nor the people were ready for the independence that suddenly fell on them. Nobody knew what to do with her. “Great ideas” of precisely “Ukrainian independence” were thought up on the go, while chewing food ... What did all this result in ... we are now witnessing many years of work, many generations of "prospectors" ... well, as always, the United States, this country of the devil, could not do without.How this whole Ukrainian mess will end, we will soon find out ...
Let's first understand the origin of the term Ukraine. At the same time, consider his attitude to the terms Little Rus', Little Russia. As it is easy to understand, the word "Ukraine". (“oukraina” in the spelling of that time) our ancestors called the outlying, border lands. For the first time the word "oukraina" appeared in the Ipatiev Chronicle under 1187. Moreover, the chronicler used it not as a toponym, but precisely in the meaning of the borderland. To be more precise, the borderlands of the Pereyaslav principality.
The terms Little and Great Rus' began to be widely used only after the Mongol invasion. The first meant the Galicia-Volyn land, the second - Vladimir-Suzdal. As we remember, the Kiev region (and the Dnieper region in general) was completely devastated by nomads and lay deserted. Some historians believe that these names were introduced by the Greek church hierarchs to designate those two fragments of Rus', which, after Batu, continued contacts with Constantinople. Moreover, the Greeks were guided by the rule that came from antiquity, according to which the ancestral lands of the people were called the Small Country, and the Great - the lands colonized by immigrants from the Small. In the future, the names Great / Little Rus' were used mainly by clergy or people who were educated in a church environment (and there were a majority of them at that time). Especially often these names began to appear after the Union of Brest in 1596 in the texts of Orthodox publicists.
The term "Ukraine" at that time continued to be used by the Commonwealth, and the Muscovite kingdom in the meaning of border lands. So in the 15th century, Serpukhov, Kashira and Kolomna were called Moscow Ukrainian cities. Ukraine (with an emphasis on A) was even on the Kola Peninsula. South of Karelia was the Kayan Ukraine. In the Pskov Chronicle in 1481, “Ukraine beyond the Okoya” is mentioned, and the lands around Tula are called “Tula Ukraine”. If you wish, you can give many similar examples, but I think even these will be enough to understand that there were many “oukrainian” in Rus'. Over time, in Russia, due to changes in the territorial division, this term went out of use, giving way to volosts and provinces. But on the lands of Rus' occupied by the Poles, this term remained, however, the occupying power distorted the word “ukrAi-ia” in its own way, calling it “ukraine” in its transcription.
By the way, I think that it would be useful to explain that in the Middle Ages Rus' was divided into White, Black, Red and Small. Here you need to remember the origin of the name "Black Rus'". In the XIV - XVI centuries. "Black Russia" They called the lands that paid the Golden Horde a universal tribute - "black forest". These were mainly the northeastern principalities. To understand why Rus' "turned black", let's remember that "black" in Ancient Rus' was called people subject to various duties or taxes. For example, the taxable class was called "black people", hence the name "Black Hundred".
The political structure of Muscovite Rus' in the 15th-16th centuries
However, in the fifteenth century, Moscow threw off the yoke of the Horde, and with it the name "Black" Rus' also sank into oblivion. From now on, Great Rus' appears on the maps, whose autocrats, who received the informal title of the white king, began to gather around themselves the lands of all Rus'. As of the first half of the 16th century, Black Rus' and part of White Russia were in the Moscow state, i.e. Smolensk and Pskov; in Poland - Red Rus', i.e. Galicia; in Lithuania - White and Little Rus'.
Therefore, the Poles needed to oppose the Russian lands belonging to them to the Russian lands of the Muscovite state. Then the term Ukraine came in handy, in which they put a new meaning. However, at first the pamphleteers of the Commonwealth tried to declare the subjects of the Moscow Tsar not the Russian people at all. The Poles declared only Little and Chervonnaya (Red) Rus' to be Russia, and the city of Lvov was called the capital of Rus'. However, the absurdity of such a statement was obvious, because everyone understood that both the Muscovites and the Orthodox of the Commonwealth were a single people divided between two empires. Even the Polish geographer of the early 17th century. Simon Starovolsky wrote in his work “Polonia” about “Russia” the following: “It is divided into White Russia, which is part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Red Russia, which is most closely called Roksolania and belongs to Poland. The third part of it, lying behind the Don and the sources of the Dnieper, is called by the ancient Russia Black, in modern times it has become known everywhere as Muscovy, because this whole state, no matter how lengthy it is, is called Muscovy from the city and the river Moscow.
However, this state of affairs threatened the Polish authorities in the Russian lands. Moreover, with the increased pressure of the royal administration and the Catholics on the Orthodox Church, the Russian people increasingly turned their eyes to the east, to the consanguineous and fellow-religious Moscow tsars.
Under these conditions, the concept of "Ukraine" instead of "Rus" is increasingly used in the Polish written tradition. As we have already mentioned, initially this name in Poland was applied to the border Russian Voivodeship, consisting of the lands of Chervonnaya Rus (Galicia). After the Union of Lublin, the crown (i.e. Polish) lands included the voivodships of Kiev and Bratslav, which from now on became the new Polish borderland. The merging of the old and new Ukraines of the Polish state gave rise to the generalized name of all these voivodeships as "Ukraine". This name did not immediately become official, but, having gained a foothold in the everyday use of the Polish gentry, it began to gradually penetrate into office work.
Map of Ukraine in the 17th century
In its development, this Polish concept of replacing Rus' with “Ukraine” reaches the 19th century. to the logical end - i.e. theories of Count Tadeusz Chatsky (1822) and the Catholic priest F. Duchinskiy (mid-19th century). For the first, Ukraine is a name that comes from the ancient tribe “ukrov” that never existed in real history, and for the second, the Slavic origin of the Great Russians is completely denied and their “Finno-Mongolian” origin is affirmed. Today, these Polish nonsense (they say that not Slavs live in the Russian Federation, but Mongolian-Ugric “hybrids”) are selflessly repeated by Ukrainian nationalists, who defend the “Project Ukraine” with foam at the mouth.
And why did this Polish name take root in our lands?
Firstly, it was well known to all Russian people and did not cause rejection. Secondly, along with the introduction of the name “Ukraine” among the Poles instead of “Rus”, this concept is also accepted by the foreman of the Cossacks, who received a Polish education. (After all, as we know, the Cossack elite bowed to everything gentry!) At the same time, initially the Cossacks use the term "Ukraine" when communicating with the Poles, but in communicating with Orthodox people, the clergy and state institutions of the Russian state, the words "Rus "and" Little Rus' ". But over time, the Cossack foreman, who in many respects was equal to the customs and education of the Polish gentry, began to use the name "Ukraine" along with "Rus" and "Little Russia". After the final entry of Little Russia into the Russian Empire, the appearance of the word "Ukraine" in documentation and literary works is sporadic, and in the eighteenth century this term almost completely fell into disuse.
However, there remained a reserve where anti-Russian ideas developed freely. As we remember, after the Pereyaslav Rada, not all the ancient Russian lands at that time were freed from foreign domination. It was on these lands that the idea of the existence of a separate non-Russian people of Ukrainians received state support and eventually captured the minds. The Right Bank remained under Polish rule until the end of the eighteenth century and was reunited with Russia under the second (1793) and third (1795) partitions of Poland. We emphasize that although in our history these events are referred to as “partitions of Poland”, the empire here did not encroach on the original Polish territories, but only returned the ancient lands of Rus' occupied earlier by Poland. However, Chervonnaya Rus (Galicia) was not returned then - by that time it no longer belonged to the Polish crown, since even under the first partition of Poland (1772) it had passed into the possession of Austria.
As we can see from the above, from the XIV century. The main name of the people and the country on the territory of modern Ukraine was Rus (Black, Red or Small), and this name was used until the middle of the 17th century. all ethnic, class-professional and confessional groups that lived in Little Russia. And only with the process of penetration into the upper strata of the Russian population of the Polish culture did the newfangled Polish name “Ukraine” begin to spread. The entry of the Hetmanate into the Russian state stopped this process, which was revived only at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Right Bank entered the Russian Empire, having lost its entire national Russian elite in more than 100 years, whose place was taken by the Polish gentry. All this points to the external and artificial introduction of the name "Ukraine" instead of natural and historical concepts: Rus' and Little Rus'.
