Hybrid War Analyzing Borscht

Your tax dollars (as an American), hard at work supporting yet another grifter NGO:

Just a few factual problems:

  • The idea of putting beetroots into soups is hardly some great accomplishment. It is a “Ukrainian” dish only to the extent that they chose to emphasize that part of East Slavic cuisine.
  • There are approximately zero Russians “claiming” plov or dolma as Russian.
  • Chicken Kiev was formally invented in a Saint-Petersburg restaurant and has zilch to do with Ukraine. Its antecedents are Pozharsky cutlets, which are associated with Tver, Russia.

Noooooo! We were the first people to come up with the idea of putting beetroots into soup! Slava Ukraini!

Oh yes, I do love Russian borscht, I will eat it with Russian salo, and then I will eat a Russian Chicken Kiev.

(original meme)


Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

  2. It seems like the people who have failed to conquer Russia – again and again – have now moved to Plan B: let’s create an alternative Russia. Then they can at some point pretend that the original Russia actually no longer exists. It looks like revenge for continuously losing, Anglos can be like that…

  3. Hogweed, cow parsnip (Heracleum sphondylium), Proto-Slavic bŭrščǐ, Proto-Indo-European bhr̥stis, Polish Barszcz, Russian Борщевик, Ukrainian Борщівник

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Illustration_Heracleum_sphondylium0.jpg

    Hogweed was the principle ingredient of the proto-borscht soup. Hogweed was also fermented like sauerkraut. Hogweed remained a famine food among peasants. The question is why it has not been developed into a cultivar.

    It seems that beets came much later. Is the color red or the red beets always associated with borscht? In Poland there is bialy barszcz (white borscht) that has no beets. It is made from fermented wheat flower while a better known zurek is from fermented rye flower. A sorel soup (schav in Yiddish or szczaw in Polish) in some places (Ukraine) is called a green borscht. So basically borscht means soup where other vegetables and greens supplanted the original hogweed.

    The future of the world depends on who put the red beets into the borscht fist. Was Іван Борщівник, Иван Борщевик, Jan Barszczewski or Yakov Borschtstein?

    The English word borscht, also spelled borsch, borsht, or bortsch, comes directly from Yiddish באָרשט‎ (borsht), as the dish was first popularized in North America by Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe.

  4. Philip Owen says

    They forgot pizza. All across the East, pizza is a thing.

  5. Assumed it was some sort of parody.

    A bit like when I first saw the reconstruction of Chedder Man, and I honestly thought it looked too dark and waxy to be real – I assumed that someone had darkened it considerably, on 4chan to create a meme, and that it was meant to be only as dark as an Italian or maybe an Arab.

  6. Russia has been conquered many times. The communist conquest was the worst.

  7. original Russia actually no longer exists

    Depends on what your definition of original Russia is. Russian culture is not something static. It is not fixed, but is changing. Russia is probably the country in Europe which had the most tumultuous history in the twentieth century. It would be silly to pretend that nothing has been altered and nothing has been lost.

    Soviets have not been always kind or caring to Russian culture, I remember visiting Suzdal first time when I was a child around perhaps 1984, how dilapidated and miserable it was, despite it being a wonderful typical medieval Rus city. Also in the Onega region there were a lot of abandoned villages with the immense typical all wooden houses that we saw when camping there as teenagers.

    Even today a lot of villages are emptying as the elderly die and their offspring move to larger cities and Moscow. The original Russia is an abstraction. Like “original Ukraine ” or “original France”.

    But one has to stay aware of what are the roots of his homeland and culture. The majority of today’s teens and youths don’t really care about these things. Whether in Russia or in other countries.

  8. Do Russians claim borscht is theirs, though? They seem to acknowledge it is originally a Ukrainian dish.

  9. Russia has been conquered many times

    Except for the Tatar and the Communist (which sasly have been partly Russian themselves) I am not aware of Russia being conquered. At least not in its entirety, nor for an extended period of time.

  10. Supposedly, the pool of original cosmonauts had to be fully ethnically Russian.

    Khrushchev, it seems, was far-thinking about this cultural appropriation stuff.

  11. Supposedly, the pool of original cosmonauts had to be fully ethnically Russian.

    Nah. Russians simply were the majority of the Soviet population. Besides, Khrushchev LARPed as an Ukrainian.

  12. A bigger waste of money are those games on Steam called OMON simulator or Russia simulator, where you try to survive in the hell hole that is dictator Putin’s Russia. They are basically flash games that cost two dollars at most and are regularly on sale for half a dollar. They are obviously an intelligence operation, since they are available in about 30 languages, if not more, including Ukrainian and Urdu. They probably even pay people to give them favorable reviews on Steam, and they definitely overpaid the developers. Then again, they probably screwed the translators and paid them in borscht instead to save some State Department money.

    (actually just checked and Russian Life simulator has removed Urdu support (I swear I saw it before…) but has Thai instead)

  13. Of course you’re right, but Karlin feels the need for some reason to up the ante in what he labels as a ‘hybrid war”. Probably Ukrainians don’t really have any right to have anything of their own within his strange and quirky “Triune” world view. 🙁

  14. It would be impossible for most folks to wear this newly improved mask and not just gobble it up right away! 🙂

  15. Belarusian Dude says

    In my experience non svidomy have better things to think about. Generally the need to claim borscht and similar foodstuffs or shared elements comes from not having any genuine and tangible accomplishments of their own. A similar effect can be observed by Bulgarians who claim to be sole creators of Cyrillic. In both cases it is ultimately a cope for mediocrity.

  16. Cope harder, lol.

  17. AltanBakshi says

    Its elementary stuff for any learned man that there is no original culture, things always change or are in flux. Yes nihilist leftists often claim in this context that there is no true or authentic French, English, European culture at all, but unlike them we see that there is a continuity or continuum of culture and cultural traditions. Lack of fixed culture is not a lack of specific culture.

    Russia is probably the country in Europe which had the most tumultuous history in the twentieth century. It would be silly to pretend that nothing has been altered and nothing has been lost.

    Sorry you are wrong, its Das Deutschland which has seen all and has been through all. They had their communist revolution, their liberal and soc dem 20s, their far right dictatorship, their short zenith as a master of Europe, the occupation, being divided by both capitalists and communists, unification and so on. At least Russia as a country is sovereign and not a soulless husk.

  18. Yeah don’t worry about that. There was a kid who used google translate and the Doom3 (id Tech 4) engine to launch shitty one level FPS titled “Putin prison hell” and what have you.

    Russian/Ukrainian trolling, especially in mid-teens, borderlines legitimate autism. By 20 they usually evolve past it. But damn it can be hilarious as fuck….

    Besides its not hard to put games on Steam (as someone who has products on steam, itch.io, and gog). I pay roughly $100 USD for decent human/context relevant localization per language. If you are cheap and its just text you can use google translate and hack it together half-assed.

    (Yes I still support piracy; programming should not be a job but a general life skill akin to first aid/medicine, electrical engineering and mechanical skills)

    Trolls will review each other positively as we area a minority prosecuted by 80 IQ masked plebs too pussy to handle anything in life.

    If you want to be an ass find out where he used some of those obviously copyrighted and trademarked pictures and let the original artists know someone is using them without license AND making a profit off them.

    I’ve seen the power of DMCA take down completed projects on Steam over use of open source assets without appropriate permission/credit or due to contract disputes over certain assets. Valve at the minimum will block them from markets that it is infringing on but more likely will just pull it altogether.

    If people thought piracy was scummy you haven’t seen the shameless asset flipping and repackaging of open source for profit (cough Apple) that is called the norm today.

  19. AltanBakshi says

    Yes its odd that he larped as a Ukrainian, or probably just tried to have some Soviet affirmative action brownie points, but Brezhnev had a quite good case of being legit Ukrainian.

  20. AltanBakshi says

    Ukrainians have a right to everything to what Russians culturally have and vice versa!

  21. They are just trolling all Karlins of Russia knowing that they would react. The USSR was trolling the West but the West did not react.

    Russian inventors celebrated as ‘the first in the world’ . Just the ones with a first name Alexander.

    Alexander Lodygin: Russin inventor of light bulb
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Lodygin_stamp.jpg

    Alexander Mozhaysky: Russian inventor of airplane
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Mozhajskij_marka_SSSR_1963.jpg

    Alexander Popov: Russian inventor of radio
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/1972_CPA_4169.jpg

  22. In my experience non svidomy have better things to think about

    Russians seem to be the ones making a dispute out of it. They must be abiding in that case.

    Generally the need to claim borscht and similar foodstuffs or shared elements comes from not having any genuine and tangible accomplishments of their own

    Like French with champagne? Does French insistence that it is theirs prove that France has no tangible accomplishments of its own? Or maybe it’s simpler than that and people are just proud of something their ancestors came up with.

    Shame on Ukrainians for being proud of their borscht when they should be loading their country up with Caucasian or Syrian “refugees” like countries with tangible accomplishments do.

    Does Belarus claim any foodstuff of its own? Other than perhaps Zubrowka? If not, does this mean it has tons of tangible accomplishments?

  23. Agree with most of your comment, except:

    At least Russia as a country is sovereign and not a soulless husk

    I am not so sure about this. It would also depend on what we define as “sovereign “. There are perhaps no more truly “sovereign ” countries in our world. And given Russian Tsars’ ethnic background’s evolution since the times of Peter the great and the sad situation of the Russian peasantry, which was definitely enserfed under Tsar Peter, I would not put too much weight on Tsarist Russia’s “sovereignty” either.

  24. The Russians dropped a bland bomb on Latin America and conquered their all-important side dish sector, though this is disputed by the Ukrainians, who claim the dish should rightfully be called Ensalada Kyiv.

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/43Cpvxoem6I/maxresdefault.jpg

  25. AltanBakshi says

    Your standards for sovereignty are absurd or fantastical, I see no point in arguing with you about such matters. To me de Gaulles France or modern Vietnam are good examples of truly sovereign countries, I think that my opinion is based on reality and in the westphalian model of international relations, ans such view is shared by others who follow realist school of international politics.

    Also to me some monarchs ethnic background doesnt matter at all. Were Angevins not good kings for England because their roots were from Anjou, France?

  26. Unfortunately, Ukrainians have not been able to easily forge ahead and develop their own unique language and culture within the confines of an all encompassing Russian family umbrella. One cannot deny that the overall trend in close Ukrainian/Russian relations has ultimately resulted in a one way street leading to a very pronounced process of russification. Even borshch now cannot be allowed to be Ukrainian in origin, but some sort of a gift from the Great Russian north towards the south. Ridiculous!

  27. Shame on Ukrainians for being proud of their borscht when they should be loading their country up with Caucasian or Syrian “refugees” like countries with tangible accomplishments do.

    Aren’t they loading it with ISIS refugees near the border with the Crimean peninsula? Like that won’t have major repercussions…

  28. Aren’t they loading it with ISIS refugees near the border with the Crimean peninsula

    No.

  29. AltanBakshi says

    Ukrainian/Russian relations has ultimately resulted in a one way street leading to a very pronounced process of russification.

    But thats normal in history, its very likely thay during the Kievan Rus cultural and religious norms spread from south to north and now they have spread from north to south. Once upon a time most culturally developed area of Italy was its south with flourishing Greek colonies, now its the north, what it helps to complain about such things between family members?

    But there is one area of Ukraine that has not undergone strong cultural russification, and that is Galicia, but is they have had their own influences, would polonization been then more preferable to you? At least Russian culture is slightly more autochthonous and more derived from the Rus than the Polish one.

  30. I tend to agree with you here. Also, another element that has hindered Russia’s ability to fully form its own national platform is its historic role as an imperialistic power. By trying to unify and homogenize (russify) so many small ethnicities into one, its sort of diluted the one large salient Russian whole that has been slow to develop, as you’ve pointed out. Look at poor Karlin, who likes to masquerade as a true-blue Russian nationalist, but who in fact appears to be more of a traditional Russian imperialist (notice hiss fascination with the Blackshirt movement that was prominent in the Odessa area of Ukraine).

  31. Ah okay, I didn’t think of this kind of possibility. That could be the case. To me it looked stupid enough to be a gigantic State Department waste of money kind of thing. But I suppose it could be one teenager in a basement using google translate. It would practically be identical.

  32. The trouble with your ruminations here is that russification has not ever totally won over the masses of Ukrainians throughout Ukraine. Try as they would, the foreign Russian culture being propagated from either Moscow or St. Petersburg to Ukraine, never fully conquered the masses of Ukrainian people. It mostly caught on with some members of Ukraine’s intelligentsia that were mostly interested in self advancement within an imperial system. Organically, Ukraine has its own language and culture and does not need the trappings of an imperial Russian veneer in order to exist. The same case could be made between Poland and Ukraine. Ukraine has been successful in throwing off its Polish past and has not suffered much for it, the same will occur between Russia and Ukraine too, hopefully sooner than later.

  33. It is petty to fight for who first invented what. In latinamerica the borsht came with soviet Sputnik (you know, babas read the cuisine recipes) and in people’s mind it is a russian dish.
    On the other hand, Ensalada Rusa is a +hundred years dish, and probably had its name from the french cooks that presidents and aristocrats used to have until 1920s.
    In the end, outside some ukrainian circles, nobody cares where did borsht originate

  34. Is this olivye? I can’t stand the stuff but when my wife makes it for parties our Cuban and Puerto Rican guests can’t get enough of it.

    I’ve never heard of Ukrainians claiming it as their own.

  35. AltanBakshi says

    Ah we have returned to the state of normalcy, once again we argue about Russia and Ukraine, and not about the historical relationship between Anglos and Indians. Khokhloscratch or what it was, is way better than Anglo-Indian Curry.

    Curry by the way was invented by the English in India, its not an Indian food, though the ingredients are Indian.

    My dear Dill friend, dont worry, in the longer run Ukraine cant and will not escape the warm and loving embrace of Russia. After all there is no reason in matters of love!

  36. The difference is that official Ukrainian “hybrid war analyzer” thinktanks write about how Russia “appropriated” borscht (and dolmas and shashlyk), while Russians merely shitpost and make fun of their svidomism in a private capacity.

    Though in the other hand it’s Western taxpayers those particular svidomy are fleecing to produce their “content”, so I suppose that at some level one can respect the grift.

  37. I have no idea about the “state of normalcy” that you write about? You and I have never discussed the “historical relationship between Anglos and Indians”.

    Also, I’m surprised that such a proud scion of Mongolian ancestry would stoop so low as to admit that he prefers “khokhlosrach” (Ukrainian diarrhea) over Ango-Indian curry, a food item that I’m quite fond of myself?

    Equally puzzling is your clumsy rejoinder admonishing me to be giddily enthused at the prospect of the “loving embrace of Russia” when even a cursory sampling of Ukrainian history would reveal to the dullest of minds that this embrace has too often been implemented at the point of a gun or by late night knocks on the doors of those trying to manifest any signs of adherence to the Ukrainian language and culture. A little too early to be hitting your beloved samogonka, eh Tovarishch? 🙁

  38. The difference is that official Ukrainian “hybrid war analyzer” thinktanks write about how Russia “appropriated” borscht (and dolmas and shashlyk), while Russians merely shitpost …Though in the other hand it’s Western taxpayers those particular svidomy are fleecing to produce their “content”, so I suppose that at some level one can respect the grift

    Some Russian officials working on Russian taxpayer time are also involved in this “conflict”:

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/lifestyle/battle-over-borscht-new-front-in-russia-ukraine-conflict-1.5211583

  39. AltanBakshi says

    Does it really mean Ukrainian diarrhea? I thought that its just some internet meme word, and not a real curse word. I take my words back then. Oh well I just checked and its connected to the word срать, how I couldve been so deaf.

    By normalcy I meant than there hasnt been a long time arguing about the Ukraine and Russia and their relations, but theres have been quite much discussion about India and Anglos.

    when even a cursory sampling of Ukrainian history would reveal to the dullest of minds that this embrace has too often been implemented at the point of a gun or by late night knocks on the doors of those trying to manifest any signs of adherence to the Ukrainian language and culture.

    Lies! Never there has been such situation in the Russian empire. Maybe momentarily in Soviet Union for Ukrainians who did not accept the Soviet rule, but same fate was shared by ethnic Russians and other nationalities during the rule of Stalin, who did not accept the Soviet rule.

    A little too early to be hitting your beloved samogonka, eh Tovarishch

    Maybe for some!

  40. John Achterhof says

    As any sophisticated, Epicurean cultural explorer understands intuitively the first consideration as to the height of any civilization consists not in abstractions of form of government or array and strength of civil liberties but in hands-on assessment of the quality of its native cuisine. Good for you, Anatoly, in not letting this scurrilous attack at the heart of Russian civilization go by unchallenged.

  41. Lies! Never there has been such situation in the Russian empire. Maybe momentarily in Soviet Union for Ukrainians who did not accept the Soviet rule, but same fate was shared by ethnic Russians and other nationalities during the rule of Stalin, who did not accept the Soviet rule.

    Similarly to your lack of understanding of the Ukrainian language, you exhibit a deficit in your knowledge of Ukrainian history as well. The Russian Empire was hellbent on eradicating the Ukrainian language and its culture. If it wasn’t, how do you explain the promulgation of the “Valuev Circular” in 1863 or the “Ems Ukase” in 1876?

  42. Belarusian Dude says

    For the most part Belarusians even of the zmahar variety tend to know nobody cares that we invented a new way to cook potatoes and chocolate.

    FTR, I’m not saying Ukrainians haven’t accomplished anything or for the matter are mediocre, but the people who actually care about national accomplishments would point out scientists and artists rather than grasping at the straws of foodstuff.

  43. Belarusian Dude says

    Given even today nobody really knows of this I’m inclined this is more a tool for internal consumption to control the population than a cope. If they continued saying this, then I would heartily agree with you that it is a cope for Russian mediocrity which is very often evident. However their unending national blunders have taught them at least a shred of humility.

  44. AltanBakshi says

    I know Ems Ukase, but havent heard about the circular. Yes Russian empire repressed the manifestation of Malorossian language or cultural expression, but its not like people were thrown en masse to camps or feared for their life if they wrote something in Little Russian. Maybe you couldnt get some novels or poems published or they were heavily censored, so I will still claim that you over exaggerate how things truly were.

  45. Let’s face it, food is a very important aspect of human civilization. I don’t know about Byelorus, but here in the West there’s been a huge proliferation of cooking shows that has flooded the television airwaives (or cables), most of them being quite interesting. There’s nothing wrong with Ukrainians wanting to lay claim that Ukraine was the country of origin of borshch, universally acclaimed as the “king of soups”. I’m glad that so many neighboring (and outlying countries) enjoy eating and making borshch. I’ve taught some of my non-Ukrainian friends how to make borshch, it’s not some sort of “ancient Ukrainian secret” allowed only to be enjoyed by Ukrainians. 🙂

    My father was from Bukovyna, a region that was mostly inhabited by Ukrainians in the north and by Romanians in the south. The regional dish everywhere there was called “Mamalyga”. It was basically a dish made from cornmeal similar to polenta made with many different types of sauces and feta type cheese, etc. For my family growing up, it was a Ukrainian dish, but as I grew older I noticed that the further that one got from the Bukovynian origins of the dish, the less and less you would encounter it. I also discovered that mamalyga is eaten quite a bit throughout Romania, not just in the Bukovynian portion. Logically, I would have to conclude that Mamalyga was probably originated somewhere in Romania and spread out to other areas, including bordering areas in Ukraine. The same most likely occured with the evolution of borshch and its spread to other countries close to Ukraine. I mean really, nowhere is borshch made more frequently, over a greater territory than in Ukraine. “The facts is the facts”. 🙂

  46. Generally agree. In this case it was a Ukrainian chef seeming recognition for borscht that was comparable to the recognition that Georgian wine gets. Understandable for a chef to go for this. Russian government worker pushback OTOH…

  47. its not like people were thrown en masse to camps or feared for their life if they wrote something in Little Russian. Maybe you couldnt get some novels or poems published or they were heavily censored, so I will still claim that you over exaggerate how things truly were.

    So it looks like your only criteria in judging the fairness and adequacy of living within any society is whether or not it throws its people en masse into prison camps for attempting to use their own vernacular language? The fact that plenty of individuals did in fact experience this fate is of no consequence?

    Besides “some novels” as you put it, the banning and censorship of serious and educational books, newspapers and journals in Ukrainian should also be looked upon as an acceptable practice? I beg to differ!

  48. This is the result of Western countries giving funding to anyone willing to create anti-Russian propaganda. You get a lot of dumb shit like this.

  49. Probably Ukrainians don’t really have any right to have anything of their own

    Everything Ukrainian is really Russian, even Ukrainians.

  50. AltanBakshi says

    So it looks like your only criteria in judging the fairness and adequacy of living within any society is whether or not it throws its people en masse into prison camps for attempting to use their own vernacular language? The fact that plenty of individuals did in fact experience this fate is of no consequence?

    Excuse me, but it was you who claimed something like this:

    “when even a cursory sampling of Ukrainian history would reveal to the dullest of minds that this embrace has too often been implemented at the point of a gun or by late night knocks on the doors of those trying to manifest any signs of adherence to the Ukrainian language and culture.”

    Besides “some novels” as you put it, the banning and censorship of serious and educational books, newspapers and journals in Ukrainian should also be looked upon as an acceptable practice? I beg to differ!

    Im not saying that it was nice, but the French and English had similar policies towards minority languages. The Scottish Gaelic was heavily persecuted, so heavily that only about 50 000 people speak it in Scotland, even though vast majority of of people in Highlands and Isles spoke it in early 19th century, the story of Irish is even worse. Only 200 years ago it was the majority language in Ireland but it has now less than 100 000 speakers.

    The tale of Breton language, Occitan and Arpitan in France is similar, even though Occitan has immensely rich medieval troubadour and epic traditions, few living European languages where so influential in Middle Ages. French state persecuted almost maniacally and sadistically those who tried to continue speaking in other languages than French, in schools, universities, churches and workplaces.

    But Russians were too tolerant, if they would have done what the French or especially what the English did, there wouldnt be whole Ukrainian dilemma, English just shipped those Highlanders and Irish that they didnt like or who were too uppity to the far reaches of the world.

    Then theres Spain where ancient rich languages like Leonese and Aragonese are almost moribund, Franco wasnt anywhere as humane with minority languages as Soviets or Russians were.

    Once again you see Russian behaviour as a some kind of cruel aberration in European history, even though Russians were much milder in this case than the “more civilised nations” of the Europe.

  51. Excuse me, but it was you who claimed something like this:
    “when even a cursory sampling of Ukrainian history would reveal to the dullest of minds that this embrace has too often been implemented at the point of a gun or by lanight knocks on the doors of those trying to manifest any signs of adherence to the Ukrainian language and culture.”

    I did, and I still stand on this. Individuals (although at times, quite a few individuals) did indeed spend time in prison for trying to cultivate the Ukrainian language and culture. You, on the other hand, indicate that this sort of behavior is acceptable, as long as it doesn’t include the whole population “en masse”, which I find to be pure rubbish.

    As a Buddhist, do you find the policies today of intense Sinicization acceptable within Tibet? It’s a somewhat analogous historical situation as between Russia and Ukraine.

  52. AltanBakshi says

    when even a cursory sampling of Ukrainian history would reveal to the dullest of minds that this embrace has too often been implemented at the point of a gun or by late night knocks on the doors of those trying to manifest any signs of adherence to the Ukrainian language and culture.

    Well in my opinion your claim is maximalist and sensationalist. Heavens sake its the Russian empire and not the Nazi occupied Poland.

    As a Buddhist, do you find the policies today of intense Sinicization acceptable within Tibet? It’s a somewhat analogous historical situation as between Russia and Ukraine.

    Bad analogy, Poland or maybe Georgia under the Russian empire would be better. Ukraine doesnt have ancient history of its own literature and cultural traditions. Maybe better comparison would be the domination of Mandarin Chinese and how some southerners feel about that, yes some Hong Kongers and Taiwanese dont like how Cantonese has less and less cultural space.

  53. HyperDupont says

    Chicken Kiev is really nothing to be proud of (contrary to borscht). I would recommend instead Cordon Bleu a French/Swiss recipe which in addition to chicken includes ham and and cheese. Not very sophisticated but quite tasty. https://www.spendwithpennies.com/chicken-cordon-bleu/

  54. AltanBakshi says

    But Mr. Hack thanks to you and AP, and some new Ukrainian acquaintances that I made last summer, I am not anymore against the existence or flourishing of Ukrainian culture, and I see at last that in good or bad the Ukrainian culture exists nowadays, and it has right to exist, or as long as majority of Ukrainians think so.

    Now Im more wondering if Russia-Ukrainian federation could work. Like if there would be a clause or amendment in the constitution of such federation that would ensure the rights and protection of the Ukrainian culture and language, and that the Ukraine has right to separate from the federation if those rights and safeguards are threatened, would that be enough?

    Come home Ukrainian man, come home and join us in building of an empire that will once again reach the stars!

  55. Here’s one of those rockets that didn’t quite make it to the stars, last time around. You’ll have to make it without me this time. Good luck Tovarishch!

    https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59096e1c6552fa0be68300e2/master/pass/100830_r19919_p646.jpg

  56. Ano4, why don’t you return to the homeland and help AltanBakshi build the “Russian World” that he envisions and rise up to the stars? At least you were born there…

  57. AltanBakshi says

    You couldnt give a normal answer to my question, okay…

  58. Ukraine doesn’t need and doesn’t want any sort of “federation” with Russia. Where do you get the impression that it does?

  59. Your facts are generally correct but the fact that Tsars were not nearly as bad as others (they were not) is not a compliment to them or an argument supporting another Union. While Romanovs were much better than the post-Revolutionary French, or the probably genocidal English, their generally mild repression (I agree that Mr. Hack’s description was extreme) was still bad. Catherine destroyed native institutions and expanded serfdom, public education and most publications in the native language were banned for awhile, etc. The best period, right before the First World War, was one of benign neglect. In contrast, there was real development under Hapsburgs. Reform and decline in serfdom in 1790s (just as Catherine had expanded it and made it worse) followed by its abolishment in 1848. Massive expansion in schools resulting in full literacy of schoolchildren in their native Ukrainian language by 1910, mass participation in electoral politics resulting in actual (not just “Revolutionary”) political parties, etc.

  60. Now Im more wondering if Russia-Ukrainian federation could work. Like if there would be a clause or amendment in the constitution of such federation that would ensure the rights and protection of the Ukrainian culture and language, and that the Ukraine has right to separate from the federation if those rights and safeguards are threatened, would that be enough?

    This was a legitimate position to think about in the 17th century. The attempt was made at that time, it worked out poorly for the Ukrainian people. There is too much of an imbalance between populations, too strong of a Russian political instinct for centralisation, natural frictions due to some fundamental differences. A second Union came about in 1920. This one resulted in a few million starved to death under Moscow’s orders. In both cases, outnumbered Ukrainians couldn’t do anything to preserve their autonomy or save themselves from whatever Moscow wanted to do. Why would Ukraine place itself at Moscow’s mercy for a third time?

  61. I did, and I still stand on this. Individuals (although at times, quite a few individuals) did indeed spend time in prison for trying to cultivate the Ukrainian language and culture

    Correct, but these individuals numbered I think in the hundreds at most. After the abolishment of serfdom, life was rather mild. Cultural and educational improvements were artificially stifled but otherwise life carried on. One of my grandparents was from central Ukraine, only a small child when World War I broke out, but knew from parents and uncles how life had been, and told me. Other than the tax man coming once a year, there was no contact with the Russian government. People raised their families, went to church, sold their products at markets in peace. Everyone spoke Ukrainian, as there was basically no contact with ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers; Kiev was a few days away by horse. There were no real schools. People were poor but fed. Great-grandfather managed to learn how to read, at a third grade level, the other villagers came to him if they ever needed something read because he was the only “literate” one. He would be murdered as a kulak/kurkul by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s during their policy of building a new Soviet man/reverse natural selection.

    Nobody cared about politics and nobody was particularly unhappy. Of course, national development would have been much better. The Galician peasantry became literate, they understood and participated in politics, Galicia became richer, etc. But after the abolishment of serfdom, life under the Tsars was by no means horrible for the vast majority of people.

  62. Swedish Family says

    Chicken Kiev is really nothing to be proud of (contrary to borscht).

    Yes, it’s a waste of good chicken. (And I’ve had it, I should perhaps say, in some of Kiev’s finest restaurants.)

    As for where the dish comes from, Anya von Bremzen (in Please to the Table — the English reference work for Soviet dishes and recipes) writes:

    Although Chicken Kiev is one of the best-known Russian (or Ukrainian) classics, its history and origins are almost completely obscure. The dish probably started life as a version of the French côtelettes de volailles (stuffed chicken cutlets), but how the noble city of Kiev came to lend its name to the dish is not clear, especially as chicken Kiev does not really blend in with the much heartier dishes typical of Ukrainian cuisine.

    The commonest view — as Karlin points out — is that the dish was “invented” (a bit of a stretch given its simplicity) by a French chef working in Petersburg.

    As for the other dishes on the list, a sound overall rule is that if a European dish has no rare ingredients, it will be found all over Europe, and only God knows who came up with the “original” recipe.

  63. AnonFromTN says

    You remind me of a current Ukrainian/Russian joke.
    Ukrainian prays to God:
    – Dear God, why are you so unfair? Russians have oil, natural gas, diamonds, gold, great writers and poets, great composers, painters, etc., while Ukrainians have nothing.
    – But you had it all.
    – When?
    – When you were a Russian.

  64. AltanBakshi says

    And thats why I didnt mention the Habsburgs. The poor guys just didnt have any other choice in their multicultural quasi-feudal empire, and those kind of policies were only employed in the Cisleithanian part of the empire. In the kingdom of Hungary there was a state program of Magyarization of the minorities, so its always a half truth to claim that Habsburgs were so enlightened.

    In the Germany and Italy the cultural repression of their small minorities was also bad, like with the Slovenians and the Polish. But Russian empire genuinely supported the national and cultural awakening of the Finns, Estonians and Latvians, although most of these butthurt peoples would never acknowledge that nowadays.

  65. AltanBakshi says

    B-b-but third times a charm! And now with constitutional guarantees and safeguard mechanisms! Also without communism this time!

    My simple mind thinks that it would be helpful for a common man, cheap gas, cheap heating, or at least cheaper, more exporting potential for Ukrainian industrial goods and so on…

    Think about it, you could then absorb Moldova into you, with such constitutional guarantees you could be junior partners in imperialism, just like Scots in the British empire, think how nice the border would look with Moldova, also its quite clear that Russia would in such situation return Donbass, maybe even Crimea. What possibilities the fall of Nato could open in a distant future, maybe even Zakerzonia could be returned to its rightful rulers, the Galicia would be whole once again! Then there are large Rusyn areas in Eastern Slovakia and Romanian littoral or Dobruja is practically extension of Ukrainian Budjak, there are even thousands of poor Ukrainians living there separated from the motherland, yes think what Ukraine could do in such partnership! Yes Ukrainians find your inner imperialists, such relation with Russia could be mutually beneficial…

    Like you once wrote nationalism and liberalism are modernist heresies or ideologies, but imperialism, thats eternal!

  66. Philip Owen says

    I’d go further. Langauge erosion accelerated when the labels on packet food started being produced in whatever was the local Imperial Language. We still have no labelling in Welsh on Fast moving Consumer Goods although Welsh is an official language in the UK. It’s easier to find Polish or Punjabi, even Mandarin.

    Without a full range of media and books and IT interfaces a language is not being given equal treatment.

  67. Isn’t this topic custom-made for khokhlosratch though?

  68. Philip Owen says

    There was no direct persecution of Irish and Scots Gaelic or Cornish (a Brythonic Celtic language like Welsh). The Gaels were Catholic. Working class and peasant literacy was not widespread. The speakers of Scots (Scottish English) were Protestants and two distinct dialects of Scots English survived due to that, Lallans and Doric. The Cornish language was already fading away. Protestantism came too late to save it.

    Wales was not quick to become Protestant but when it did, it went all the way. Quakers, Baptists and Calvinists fuelled by an early tranlation of the Bible into Welsh by an Anglican Bishop. It helped that there was a considerable body of Welsh literature, particulalry poetry and some histories available, even printed, in Welsh for the Gentry who made a point of distinguishing themselves from the English, as opposed to the Irish gentry who were English and the Scots who tried to be. In the 18th C, Wales was probably the most literate area of its size or larger on earth. The non conformist protestants built a system of Circulating Schools which taught in Welsh. By moving around, they enabled the scarce resource of school teachers to be amplified. Welsh literacy and numeracy, another story, was definitely a factor in the early industrial revolution.

    However, they were literate in Welsh , not English. In 1840, the WEstminster government sent school inspectors into Wales. The inspectors tested the children’s proficiency in English. Levels were lower than common in England. So, the law was amended to make English instrution compulsory. Also, the Welsh Not was introduced. This was a wooden tablet, inscribed Welsh Not, on a string necklace. The teacher put it around the neck of the first child heard speaking Welsh that day. The children were then to pass it on to the next child who dared speak Welsh. The one wearing it at the end of the day was caned. It was banned by the 1880 local government act but much damage had been done. The same act removed Welsh usage from local government. Even English border counties recruited Welsh speaking magisrates for example, despite laws against it in Wales itself. In my own family, my grandmother, the oldest of 10, born in 1994 in South Wales, spoke in Welsh to her parents. Her younger siblings attending school in WW1 were spoken to in Welsh but replied in English. It was the imperial “patriotism” of WW1. It affected the whole of Industrial South Wales. I am slightly surprised that in Eastern Europe the reverse seems to have happened. Non imperial languages enjoyed a revival in the 1920s, not just in the Soviet Union.

    With the language goes a big chunk of the culture. If you don’t have the right words for traditional food, it is harder to think about them or taste them in your imagination.

  69. AltanBakshi says

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scottish_Gaelic

    According to the Wikipedia there was quite much repression of Scottish Gaelic. Also some Highlanders were Catholics, but not all.

    Irish language is a complicated topic, I really don’t know enough that I could start arguing about it.

    But thanks for your reply, its always nice to hear about the Welsh history and you guys really got interesting culture and literal traditions.

  70. And thats why I didnt mention the Habsburgs. The poor guys just didnt have any other choice in their multicultural quasi-feudal empire, and those kind of policies were only employed in the Cisleithanian part of the empire.

    Correct. It’s better to be in such a group than joined to a much larger nation several times your size. So integration with Visegrad or Poland would be better for Ukraine, than with huge Russia.

    In the kingdom of Hungary there was a state program of Magyarization of the minorities, so its always a half truth to claim that Habsburgs were so enlightened.

    Hapsburgs couldn’t control Magyar policies and indeed did not support them. Franz Ferdinand had made plans to crush the Magyars and free their Slavs, but was killed before he could ascend to the throne. Magyars are still stirring up trouble with Slavs. Orban, in order to deflect from the crisis of one of his top politicians getting caught an an illegal gay orgy (!!!) is manufacturing some mini-crisis with Ukraine. (no offense to our Magyar poster Reiner Tor, one of the best ones here).

    In the Germany and Italy the cultural repression of their small minorities was also bad, like with the Slovenians and the Polish.

    Yes. Austrians were best, Russians second best. Or rather, Austrians were good, Russians were the least bad of all the bad ones. Under Hapsburgs, non-German nations developed, under everyone else the non-titular ones were typically persecuted or forcibly assimilated. Russians were kinder than the others but most of the ones under Moscow did not flourish like Czechs, Galicians, etc. did under Vienna.

    But Russian empire genuinely supported the national and cultural awakening of the Finns, Estonians and Latvians

    They did support them against the native Baltic German or Swedish nobles, just as Austrians supported Galician Russophiles and later Ukrainian nationalists against local Polish lords. Although the support was not as strong. I could be wrong but I think it was mostly about allowing the native activists to do their thing, whereas under Vienna large-scale elements of the state were controlled by the activists.

    although most of these butthurt peoples would never acknowledge that nowadays.

    Moscow under Bolsheviks erased the goodwill.

  71. You’re absolutely correct. Of course people who started this topic online wanted the katsaps and khokhols to get it going again.

    BTW did you watch Kin-dza-dza?

    https://youtu.be/EYHv8eJrW2Y

    The katsaps differ from the khokhols as the patsaks differ from the chatlany…

  72. Victor Koukin says

    I’m Russian and for me:
    1) Borsch is kinda Ukrainian soup, but has Moscow, Belorussian, Polish and other variants.
    2) Kholodnik is Lithuanian soup from Kovno region
    3) Draniki (potato hash) is Belorussian dish
    4) Shashlyk is Georgian dish
    5) Plov belongs to Middle Asia and Azerbajdzjan.
    6) Chiken Kiev is restaurant dish, no one claim it is of some national cuisine
    7) Dolma is from Moldova
    8) Nalyshniki? it is the first time in my life I see this world. Stuffed blintz (Blinchiki in Russian) is all Eastern European tradition, mainly Polish. It is dish for family gathering.

    Although Russians claim Blintz and Schi (Cabbage soup) as belongs specifically to Russian culture.

  73. That’s a great list.

    I agree with you, except that I think that you might be wrong about dolma.

    Dolma is Armenian, isn’t it?

    https://swarajyamag.com/food/they-say-dolmades-we-say-dolma

  74. AltanBakshi says

    Correct. It’s better to be in such a group than joined to a much larger nation several times your size. So integration with Visegrad or Poland would be better for Ukraine, than with huge Russia.

    Visegrad countries unlike Ukraine have something tangible to offer to EU and especially to Germany. I dont know about Slovakia, but Poland and Czechia have lots of manufacturing and German investments, unlike Ukraine. Almost half of Polish GDP is made of industrial sector and they retained and modernized their old commie factories with German economic help, Czechia has a similar story. I think that Hungary too has retained lots of it industrial capacity. But then you have Ukraine that has de-industrialized its highly developed economy and has lost its main market for its products.

    AP I believe in gradual and pragmatic development, you must work with what you have, steadily and gradually. No one can ask moon from sky or get wondrous results just like that. In Ukraines situation best choice would be to use cheap Russian energy and try to get investments from Russia and China, so that Ukraine could slowly and surely modernize its industries. And you cant really integrate with Visegrad countries, they are members of EU, as long as Ukraine is not in that club there are tangible obstacles for such development.

    And only thing what Visegrad countries would need, no, only thing what their capitalists need from Ukraine is cheap workforce, is that your dream, Ukrainians as Mexicans of Eastern Europe? Other thing that Ukraine has, after its deliberate destruction of its factories, is agricultural products, but EU is bloated with cheap farm products already, unlike Russia. Actually I always wonder how Russians survive with their meagre salaries, the German Lidls and Aldis have much cheaper prices for their products than Russian Lentas or Pyaterochkas. Its not realistic that Ukraine will climb from its sorry state with the current economical model of de-industrialization, migrant workers, cheap agricultural products, and political problems and obstacles with its former most important trade partner. Yes maybe Lvov and some parts of Kiev thrive modestly, but thats quite little for a country of almost 40 million people. I get it that Ukrainians are traumatized by the misrule of Soviets, but in my humble opinion your view is unrealistic.

    Yes. Austrians were best, Russians second best. Or rather, Austrians were good, Russians were the least bad of all the bad ones. Under Hapsburgs, non-German nations developed, under everyone else the non-titular ones were typically persecuted or forcibly assimilated. Russians were kinder than the others but most of the ones under Moscow did not flourish like Czechs, Galicians, etc. did under Vienna.

    I know that this probably quite marginal for you, but Kalmyk and Buryatian cultures and literature flourished during the period of Russian empire, though Buryats used Classical Mongolian in their writings. And again its only the Cisleithanian part of the empire your talking of, Romanian and Slovakian cultures didnt really flourish under Habsburgs, and the flowering of the other cultures was quite limited. Only after Austro-Hungarian compromise, was it in 1868 or something, they stopped their policy of Germanization of minorities. Maybe they were especially tolerant towards Ukrainians so that they could crush Polish power and stop spreading of Russian led pan-Slavism in Galician lands.

  75. AltanBakshi says

    Forgot to add that at least when I was nine or eight years ago in Lvov, it was in quite dilapidated state, so much that it surprised me.

  76. AltanBakshi says

    Shashlyk is a definitely Tatar dish, if Georgians claim otherwise then may there be a new steppe invasion into their puny little country.

    Plov is universal basic food everywhere in the lands of Greater Iran, or in any place that has had some Persian cultural influence.

    Pelmeni are probably from the Mongols or the Uralic peoples. I just love good pelmeni!

  77. Gerard1234 says

    Supposedly, the pool of original cosmonauts had to be fully ethnically Russian.

    German Titov? I dont know his genetics, but the reason he is supposed to not have been first is because his flight was a much harder one – longer and taking more measurements, so they saved the better cosmonaut for that mission ( although that assumption is unproven).

    Gagarin would not have been allowed into the program if Stalin had lived on for another 5 years – Gagarin grew up in a village that was occupied by the Nazi’s, so none of these people were allowed serve in any top-secret work during Stalin time.

  78. Forgot to add that at least when I was nine or eight years ago in Lvov, it was in quite dilapidated state, so much that it surprised me.

    Soviets ran Lviv into the ground. Lviv began improving dramatically in the mid to late 200os. When I visited in the early 2000s the first signs of new life had appeared, but the city didn’t even have electricity after 9:00 PM and 95% was run down as in Soviet times. A wonderful experience for a tourist, actually, to walk in the heart of a large old European city and see all the stars as if one is in the mountains somewhere, like travelling back in time in Prague or Vienna (Lviv is not as grand as those cities but it is close enough). One just had to be careful not to trip on the cobblestone streets in the dark.

    In 2010 electricity was normal, about 60%-70% of the center had been redone but large parts were still as before, but there was a lot of construction going on. Most of the city was rebuilt by 2013, it was packed with cafes and good restaurants and full of people, most of whom were Ukrainian-speaking locals enjoying their wages. My last visit was in 2017. Then for the first time Western luxury stores appeared (like Armani) and there was a large shopping center outside the city. I rented a car to drive to a neighboring oblast and saw that the region was for the most part developed up to Western standards for 20km to 30 km around the city. There were suburban subdivisons, little themed hotel “resorts” where people had weddings, roads were great. Beyond that things got spotty. Near the border with Ternopil oblast and beyond, things were closer to the third world. Roads had huge holes, people were dressed and carried themselves as in Mexico although the houses and everything else were tidy and with gardens (not like in poor rural parts of Russia where one sees garbage around). The only new and not poor-looking objects were the churches and numerous roadside shrines. The people were very kind. When my tire blew out on a hole in the road a bunch of villagers I had never met and had no connection to changed my tire.

  79. Remarkably, Titov – the second man to orbit and the fourth in space (depending on a certain rumor being incorrect) – a month short of 26 when he made his flight, is still the youngest person to have ever been in space.

    They generally favor older people these days, as they are worried about germ-line mutations.

  80. Russians seem to be the ones making a dispute out of it. They must be abiding in that case.

    Is this idiotic statement based on the fact:

    A. You have absolutely zero knowledge of Russian language – meaning that you haven’t followed any of the argument about this
    B. Instantaneous lying as usual
    C. Combination of A and B

    Of course the truth is the exact opposite, the argument has been brought by the same demented Soros/Khokhol retards that give us the “Kyiv” not Kiev debacle or the amazingly ( knowingly obvious lie) that is was Ukrainians who liberated such a place in WW2 because army was called “Ukrainian Front”. No, there is not the “it’s just some chef promoting the heritage of the cuisine he cooks” – obviously it’s not you dimwit, there is no civil society element to this – it’s just bored-out of their mind nutjobs promoting anti-Russianism, self-deception…….that still achieves the result of
    highlighting how there is no “Ukraine” and that they are same people of Russia!

    Like French with champagne?

    HAHAHAHAHAHA. Is the clue not in “champagne” you idiot (i.e region where it’s from, making “arguments” about it completely non-existant? You are not a stereotype because you are psychopathic, sociopath human garbage….but here you are fully immersed in that of the “dumb American” stereotype – those who might accidentally visit the village of Sandwich on trip to the UK and ask if they make sandwiches there,

    You are comparing a well-established, unique, culture and nation of France ..with a clearly non well-established, insecure and non-existant “culture” of Ukraine ( from your home 1000s of kilometres away)

    The french also appear to be uninterested in the fact that the Statue of Liberty and that of Jesus in Rio, two of the most iconic sites on the planet, are actually French

    and people are just proud of something their ancestors came up with

    LOL – WTF did reject Galicians have to do with borscht you cretin? A creation of Russian people, cooked in Russian homes for centuries, Russian world, around Dnepropetrovsk region Russian Empire, anybody cooking it with potatoes doing so with what is a Russian introduced crop to the area of the former Ukrainian Socialist Republic, Garlic in “Ukraine” is “coincidentally” used for identical medical and culinary ways as it it is Belarus and Russia for many centuries.
    “coincidentally” we (Bel/ukr/RF)are all eating Sochivo at Christmas AND following other identical eating habits during the religious year and showing identical trepidation of if to do the more western style big Christmas celebration in conjunction with our much bigger New Year festivity

  81. Visegrad countries unlike Ukraine have something tangible to offer to EU and especially to Germany. I dont know about Slovakia, but Poland and Czechia have lots of manufacturing and German investments, unlike Ukraine.

    I met a German engineer who works for the US operations of the firm Leoni. They make electric cables for different automakers (Mercedes, BMW, etc.). He told me that their largest plant in the world was in Lviv oblast.

    But then you have Ukraine that has de-industrialized its highly developed economy and has lost its main market for its products.

    Ukraine’s deindustrialization has not been one-sided. It has lost and continues to lose its Soviet-era heavy industries but is growing light manufacturing in the country’s west and center. New plants are being opened in Zhytomir and Vynnytsia. Overall industry continues to decline but it is not a one-sided picture, there are young new trees growing out from where the forest fire had been.

    I had discussed this with “factcheckukraine” a while ago:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/economics-wont-magically-bind-belarus-to-russia/#comment-4109486

    Ukraine’s industrial statistics are unreliable and vary. Either they are horrible, or stagnant after the 2014-2015 drop. Given that Ukrainian wages have clearly improved, ongoing collapse is unlikely.

    And you cant really integrate with Visegrad countries, they are members of EU

    Ukraine has an association agreement with EU.

    Other thing that Ukraine has, after its deliberate destruction of its factories, is agricultural products,

    Ukraine also has a thriving IT sector. It is a huge source of outsourcing and R & D. It generated $5 billion revenue in 2019 and employed 200,000 people, and is growing significantly. It’s not just video game studios, there are large outsourcing farms for programming and R & D for IBM etc.

    Here is Forbes magazine from late 2019:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriacollins/2019/10/01/the-ukrainian-tech-industry-and-the-launch-of-the-ukraine-it-creative-fund/?sh=274c0a1e4031

    I have learned that Ukraine’s developers have helped to build Ford’s in-car infotainment systems, Reuters’ award-winning photography app, Nokia’s customer retail experience, and Deutsche Bank’s Risk Management System to name just a few. Talking to experts in the field, I have started to explore this background.

    After the fall of the USSR, the engineers, mathematicians and technicians from this era were some of the first to start software development companies in Ukraine. SoftServe, now the largest outsourcing and out staffing company IT company in Ukraine, was founded in Lviv in 1993 by two post-graduate students of Lviv Polytechnic. They now operate in the fields of Big Data, Internet of Things, cloud computing, DevOps, e-commerce, security and experience design. They employ over 8,000 people in 35 offices around the world.

    Technology in Ukraine today

    The early 2000s saw a continued rise in software companies in Ukraine. Ciklum, for example, was founded in 2002 by a Danish native Torben Majgaard in Kyiv. They now have more than 3,500 developers across the globe in 24 offices.

    The IT industry has grown from 0.06% of GDP to 3.3%, more than 50 times, between 2013 and 2018.

  82. Are you mad because of Covid you can no longer afford your hormone treatments and skirts?

  83. In romanian we have the word borș which means a liquid, sour like a light vinegar, which is made from fermenting the bran left from the milling of wheat or barley. Borș also means a soup that is soured with this liquid.

  84. I know that this probably quite marginal for you, but Kalmyk and Buryatian cultures and literature flourished during the period of Russian empire, though Buryats used Classical Mongolian in their writings.

    Thank you for the info.

    And again its only the Cisleithanian part of the empire your talking of, Romanian and Slovakian cultures didnt really flourish under Habsburgs, and the flowering of the other cultures was quite limited.

    Correct. That is why I wrote under Vienna. Under Budapest was a different story. But Croatia had autonomy and did well.

    Only after Austro-Hungarian compromise, was it in 1868 or something, they stopped their policy of Germanization of minorities.

    They were not numerous enough to force Germanization. When Czechs decided to revive their language and culture in the early 19th century they couldn’t be stopped inevitably did so. Now imagine what would have been their fate if they were part of huge Germany rather than small Austria?

  85. Boomthorkell says

    A good book about that topic is, “Guardians of the Nation.”

  86. “In romanian we have the word borș which means a liquid, sour like a light vinegar ” You might be onto something.

    The hogweed used in the proto-borscht was fermented and thus sour. The Polish white borscht is ferment wheat flour. Ukrainian green borscht is sour because it is made from sorel. Some recipes for borscht call for fermented beets or rather the juice from fermentation without beets. Acidity keeps the juice very red. If you do not use the fermented juice when boiling beets your borscht you must add some vinegar or lemon juice otherwise it will turn brownish.

    However the Polish etymology of barszcz points not to the sourness but to prickliness and brush like leaves and stems of the hogweed.

    barszcz, a proto-Slavic name for ‘heracleum‘, eng. hogweed, barszcz, barszczyca/I>, in the 15th and 16th centuries, since the 18th century, the name of ‘sour soup from beetroot’ (but also ‘żur’, white barszcz), which replaced the original hogweed, from sharp, pointed leaves, German Borste, Bürste, ‘ brush’

    Interestingly it indicates that barszcz soup in Poland became a beet soup in 18th century and it suggests sa possibility of German connection.

  87. Previously discussed and far from being a hell bent eradication, as evidenced by an early 20th century Russian Empire census, noting wide use of the Little Russian (as it was typically called at the time) language.

  88. Moscow under Bolsheviks erased the goodwill.

    Moscow before and after the Bolsheviks isn’t the same as Moscow with the Bolsheviks. Consider equating the Soviet Ukrainian government with the pre and post-Soviet variants. Not every Russian is a Sovok like Lyt:

    https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/farewell-chubais/#comments

  89. TheSkepticalCynic says

    The scales tilt more toward joniel’s intuition. The absolutism of AP’s unqualified “No” suggests a troll or a Jewge! (A Jew’s stooge)

  90. Humbert Humbert says

    Heh:

    “A similar effect can be observed by Bulgarians who claim to be sole creators of Cyrillic”

    You don’t make any sense. Growing up in Bulgaria, our history lessons were very clear. Cyrillic, the alphabet, was created by Kiril and his brother Methodi (Methodius) who were half SLAVIC and half ROMEI (Bizantine) and not even born in Bulgaria. It was only after their attempts to spread the orthodox religion in Moravia were thwarted that the only other existing slavic country in the world (c. ~860), namely Bulgaria, accepted their students to implement the FIRST purely slavic language alphabet in all spheres of life including liturgy and bureaocracy.
    No Bulgarian will claim that Bulgaria/Bulgarians were the creators of the Cyrillic, rather, it was the Bulgarian kingdom at the time that ACCEPTED, IMPLEMENTED and PROMOTED the Cyrillic language as the intended official language of all the slavic ppl (including belorussian dumbos) with the goal of promoting eastern orthodoxy.

    “In both cases it is ultimately a cope for mediocrity”

    Remind me again what is your country famous for?

  91. Jews on the brain aside, this is a mint reply to the hit and run Quatermaster:

    https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/oh-what-a-lovely-war/#comment-1640576

  92. Ruth and Gehrig, Gretzky and Messier, Jordan and Pippen, Montana and Rice and now Hack and AP.

  93. You switch between banality and ignorance, all while missing the big picture.

  94. The scales tilt more toward joniel’s intuition.

    He posted no “intuition.” He made a claim of fact, which was false. Ukraine isn’t loading up the Crimean border with ISIS refugees.

  95. You switch between banality and ignorance, all while missing the big picture.

    That “big picture” of yours:

    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/agitated-ukrainian.png

  96. Russian inventors celebrated as ‘the first in the world’ . Just the ones with a first name Alexander.

    Reminded of an ethnic joke I heard that’s not for the PC crowd, but agreeable for those having an appreciation for All In The Family.

    What’s the longest book in the world?

    List of Russian inventions.

    What’s the thinnest book?

    List of Polish intellectuals.

  97. All that the census shows was that most Ukrainian peasants could speak in their native Ukrainian, not read or write in their native language. Are you trying to indicate that Ukrainian was being taught in schools during the Czarist era?

  98. Wow, to be put onto the same platform as so many other really talented people, what an honor.

    Thanks Mickey. Just goes to show how wrong so many of your detractors are about you. I’ve always felt that behind that outer veneer of a megalomaniac was always a really swell guy. I hope that incident with the CIA (or was it the FBI?) is now far behind you. Imagine, those nasty brutes trying to breathe down your neck?…

  99. If anything, I think they regretted it.

  100. Why’s that?

  101. All that the census shows was that most Ukrainian peasants could speak in their native Ukrainian, not read or write in their native language. Are you trying to indicate that Ukrainian was being taught in schools during the Czarist era?

    They didn’t have a formal alphabet of their own. As you know a mix of Soviets and Svidos worked on such.

    Back then, the worldwide standards of great powers was different. Non-Communist Russia was heading in the direction of having a standard language known and utilized by most, followed by the kind of regionalized approach seen among present multilingual nations.

  102. Who do you think got the better of it?

  103. Not too good for Ukrainians then. Any nation that’s worth its salt needs to have and use its own native language. I don’t see Ukraine suffering any today because its forsaking the Russian language for its own Ukrainian one.

  104. I really have no idea. I’d love to see a video copy of your interrogation – I think that it would be a real classic. Well, now that we’ve managed to build it up, let’s here your version of how it went?

    Well Mr. Averko, at what point did you feel that your handlers in Moscow really weren’t responding very well to your overly optimistic assessments for a return to Deniken’s White movement?

    You realize of course, that both Ukrainian and Russian immigrants really aren’t interested at all in any last minute shenanigan’s that Skoropadsky was up to in trying to sway back any Russian openness to a federation with Ukraine? It’s a pipe dream that didn’t work 100 years ago, and certainly one that doesn’t have any validity in todays post soviet world?

    🙂

  105. “All that the census shows was that most Ukrainian peasants could speak in their native Ukrainian, not read or write in their native language. Are you trying to indicate that Ukrainian was being taught in schools during the Czarist era?”

    They didn’t have a formal alphabet of their own. As you know a mix of Soviets and Svidos worked on such.

    Here comes your ignorance again. Ukrainian alphabet had been developed in the 19th century and was in widespread use in Austrian schools. Soviet revised the Ukrainian alphabet, as they did the Russian one.

  106. Soviet revised the Ukrainian alphabet, as they did the Russian one.

    Your ignorance again, as the modern Uke alphabet/language was a joint Soviet-Svido project. Lke there’s really a tremendous difference between the two.

  107. Overall, Ireland and Scotland seem to prefer English over Celtic.

    To a certain degree, is the presence of Surzhyk to a certain degree a kind of adverse reaction to the coerced Ukrainianization?

    Ukraine is suffering for reasons not having to do so much with Russia as suggested by some. As has been noted by numerous folks, Russian is still quite frequently used within Ukraine – some parts more than others.

  108. Way off the mark. Many aren’t interested in history, which explains the large scale ignorance out there. History wasn’t discussed. Phil Giraldi’s piece and my follow ups on the subject relates well to what happened.

  109. as the modern Uke alphabet/language was a joint Soviet-Svido project

    Now, banality. It’s good that you repeat what I wrote. Repeating what I write is the best you can do. Bravo.

    As I wrote, the Ukrainian alphabet was revised under the Soviets (as was the Russian one). However there had also been a Ukrainian alphabet in the 19th century, which had widespread use in Galician schools. So your statement about Ukrainians that “ They didn’t have a formal alphabet of their own” reflected your ignorance, of even basic things.

    Banality and ignorance are your essence.

  110. Projection is yours.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_alphabet

    In 1925, the Ukrainian SSR created a Commission for the Regulation of Orthography. During the period of Ukrainization in Soviet Ukraine, the 1927 International Orthographic Conference was convened in Kharkiv, from May 26 to June 6. At the conference, a standardized Ukrainian orthography and method for transliterating foreign words were established, a compromise between Galician and Soviet proposals, called the Kharkiv Orthography, or Skrypnykivka, after Ukrainian Commissar of Education Mykola Skrypnyk. It was officially recognized by the Council of People’s Commissars in 1928, and by the Lviv Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1929, and adopted by the Ukrainian diaspora. The Skrypnykivka was the first universally adopted native Ukrainian orthography.

  111. Overall, Ireland and Scotland seem to prefer English over Celtic.

    Yeah, and its a real shame too. See, this is what happens when an imperial power, in this case England got involved in the affairs of their Celtic neighbors. I don’t remember any of the Celtic peoples requesting that the English come and colonize their lands and impose their language over the local ones.

    To a certain degree, is the presence of Surzhyk to a certain degree a kind of adverse reaction to the coerced Ukrainianization?

    Actually, it was just the other way around. Surzhyk developed as a result with the locals who never had the opportunity to study the imperial Russian language, and tried to mimic the sounds and words that they heard in the cities, newspapers, radios and TV’s and apply them to their own native Ukrainian tongue. There’s no need for this phenomena to exist, and as more and more people get educated within the new Ukrainian environment, this silly adaptation from the past will definitely disappear. Shouldn’t make much of a difference to you, whom I understand has only a modicum of knowledge of Russian and no knowledge at all of Ukrainian. You wouldn’t recognize any surzhyk even if you tripped over it. 🙂

  112. It’s great that you copy and pasted info that supports exactly what I wrote.

    But reading is hard for you.

    Top of the link you provided:

    Late 18th century to the present

    Also in the link you provided:

    The Zhelekhivka became official in Galicia in 1893

    ::::::::::::::::::::::

    So thanks to your efforts, we have established that in addition to you being banal and ignorant, you are also semi-literate.

  113. It clearly substantiates what I said about the Soviets and Svidos collaborating on a Uke alphabet.

    As the Skeptical Cynic would put it:

    You are a perfect example of the Dunning Kruger Effect in action! Too phooking stupid too realize just how stupid you are! An uninformed, misinformed, and dis-informed; mentally, morally and culturally bankrupt, cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so dense that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid so dense that no intelligence can enter. Black hole stupid. Singular cerebral neuron stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. So stupid you emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Exploding nova stupid. . . Stupid to Avogadro’s Number stupid (6.022 x 1023 ). Stupid to infinity3 stupid. Incurably stupid, terminally stupid. Ebola stupid. Fingers, toes, and ears falling off from leprosy stupid. Monkeys in a feces fight stupid. Super saturated trans fat stupid, 100% hydrogenated fat stupid, Metaphysically-stupid. Stupid beyond mega stupid by a factor making you yotto stupid. Stupid achieving a plasma state that nothing intelligent can penetrate it stupid. Stupid impregnable by a 25 lb. depleted uranium projectile fired from a 155 howitzer at point blank range stupid. 10 on the Richter Scale stupid. Mount Krakatoa volcanic eruption stupid. Fujita Scale F6 tornado stupid. Stupid exceeding the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale stupid. Fukushima Radiation pollution stupid. Stupid higher than a 1000 foot tsunami stupid. Global warming stupid. Stupid so stupid as to be capable of instantaneously melting glaciers stupid. An hour long solar eclipse stupid. Singularity stupid. Absolute, ceasing-of-all-molecular-activity, Zero Degree stupid. ALL IN CAPS STUPID. Quasar stupid. Exploding nova stupid. . . Even bigger stupid than Big Bang Stupid. Stupid so stupid that a new language has to be developed to adequately define it stupid. Stupidity such that a map of which would extend to the limits of our galaxy stupid.— you are even stupid in parallel universes stupid in addition to being in this universe stupid. God actually having to admit that your stupidity is even beyond His creativity pay grade to produce — so great a stupidity as he/she/it scratches head in befuddlement as to how it was created stupid.”

  114. In other words, Surzhyk is the severely repressed language that some have preferred to use.

    As for the Scots and Irish, they appear less knowledgeable of their respective native tongue than the Ukrainians of theirs. So much for the image of more tolerant Brits when compared to evil, imperialistic Russians.

  115. It clearly substantiates what I said about the Soviets and Svidos collaborating on a Uke alphabet

    Indeed, it supports your repetition of what I taught you. Good job. That’s the best that can ever be expected of you – to repeat what I write.

    This, your banality.

    It also, of course, doesn’t disprove the fact that there existed a Ukrainian alphabet decades before the Soviet-era reforms. The one put in widespread use in Galicia in the early 1890s. This disproves your false claim about Ukrainians that “they didn’t have a formal alphabet of their own”

    This, your ignorance.

    Digging yourself an ever-deeper hole as you are doing is simply a display of your stupidity. Which means that the lengthy diatribe you copy and pasted shows your propensity for projection.

    🙂

  116. Philip Owen says

    Slovakia has had huge manufacturing success. A large chunk of South Wales’ future went to Slovakia. Sony stopped making crt’s in Bridgend and moved them to Bratislava for example. Many automotive component parts. Not just Wales, the whole of the UK overseas investment. Japanese, Germans, US even British firms shifted East model change by model change. The British more to Poland. Ford Engine plant most recently. Hence Brexit .

  117. Philip Owen says

    See my comments above, about the differences between the retention of Irish and Scots Gaelic compared to Welsh. Choice didn’t really enter into it. Literacy was a defence for the preservation of a medieval language following the invention of printing. State education had less impact on the already literate (and at the time prosperous) Welsh than it did on the Highland Scots and the native Irish.

    Imperial Russia was about 30 years behind the UK (130 years behind Wales) with literacy which in the Russian case coincided with state mandated education. So the attack on local languages was strong. Mordivin languages suffered greatly, not just Little Russian.

  118. AltanBakshi says

    Mordvin and Mari are bad comparisons, they didnt have ancient and vast literary traditions like Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. Irish is in all likelihood oldest written language in the Western Europe after Latin and Etruscan.

    Thanks for your info about Slovakia, it seems that all of the four Visegrad countries have successfully modernized their manufacturing. AP is half right about Ukraine, as Im too. What I am supporting is good for cities like Kharkov and Zaporozhye, what he supports is good for places like Lvov and Ivano Frankovsk.

  119. In other words, Surzhyk is the severely repressed language that some have preferred to use.

    Once again, you seem to have things “upside down”, Mickey. No one is “suppressing” surzhyk, it’s just a strange amalgamation of two languages that no educated person would ever be heard using. It’s really something that’s uttered in bad taste by those poor souls that don’t know any better. Neither a Ukrainian nor even a Russian who knows either (or both) languages derives any pleasure from hearing it. There is no grammar or diction for this “language” and there are as many versions of it as there are people who use it.

    https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/man-building-snowman-upside-down-winter-eps-vector-illustration-thinking-outside-box-123154892.jpg
    In case you didn’t know, that’s you on the right side. 🙂

  120. To AP – Do I understand you correctly, you’re supporting AltanBakshi’s proposal for both Kharkiv and Zaporizhya’s annexation and incorporation into “Russia”?

  121. Not much was discussed within Giraldi’s thread. You’re not able to summarize or perhaps add anything at all to what was disclosed there? If you’re looking for a drum roll, well here it is:

    https://youtu.be/P_1tcJjQWmg

  122. The dominating Austrians and later Austro-Hungarians weren’t/aren’t Slavic, or familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. The Ukes on that territory over the course of time became distant from the Rus lands that became associated with the Russian Empire. It’s your arrogance (not mine) which suggests that their way is the more appropriate one – once again noting minute differences between the modern Russian and Ukrainian alphabets.

    Your stupidity includes the ongoing belief that Vlasov collaborated with the Nazis unlike Bandera and Krasnov, which is on par with blowing over the fact I brought up about the Svidos and Soviets collaborating on the development of a separate and unified Ukrainian language/alphabet.

  123. Plenty enough discussed in the particular article of his, with some follow-up due out shortly.

  124. You don’t completely get the manner of being rhetorical – something you periodically do yourself.

    No one was suppressing the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire in the manner that you seem to suggest. Had that been the case, the official early 1900s census wouldn’t have asked and acknowledged what it did – noticeable Ukrainian language use. By the time of the Russian Civil War, Denikin supported a single Russian language at a national level, with Ukrainian to be utilized in Ukraine.

    The late 1870s restriction concerned anti-Russian material coming from the Hapsburg Empire. The person who complained about that material was Ukrainian. Whatever the restriction was limited and didn’t last.

  125. Do I understand you correctly, you’re supporting AltanBakshi’s proposal for both Kharkiv and Zaporizhya’s annexation and incorporation into “Russia”?

    No, rather agreeing with him that Ukraine’s integration with Russia would be economically good for those places (at least in the short to medium term) whereas integration with the EU/Visegrad is good for Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. I would add that it is also good for places in the center like Zhytomir and Vynnytsia. Ideally there would be a solution that would benefit all regions. But there isn’t.

  126. AnonFromTN says

    Aren’t you tired of khokhlosrach? Discussing anything with Ukies makes as much sense as a heart-to-heart conversation with a lamppost. Leave them to their derangement. They are more effectively destroying Ukraine than any enemy could.

  127. You’ve a point regarding the Laurel and Hardy tandem here.

  128. LOL – recycling this cretinous joke is even more amusing in view of the highly comedic and retarded self-discrediting you have given yourself by not even knowing that there is no dispute or argument about the fact that Champagne is of French origin you idiot!What there is dispute over is producers all over the world calling their sparkling wine “Champagne” when the term should only be used for sparkling wine from that particular region in France (a naming practise for many wines) and therefore should not earn money derived from the prestige of this regions sparkling wine by marketing it as Champagne. It’s like Albanians calling their chocolate “Belgian chocolate” ….. not a dispute over who invented chocalate. You have not only been extremely ignorant but somehow also combined this with being a lying POS by making a falsely analogous argument of Borsch with this Champagne trade infringement issue…which should be impossible if you can’t even deduce that Champagne is a French term ( what is the French term for deja vu?lol) and the dispute is completely different!As I say, just instantaneous BS.

    All this fresh from the mind-numbingly disgraceful ” typical
    Galician Ukrainian culture” of a video by yourself of some North Americans dancing to classical music that absolutely no same person on the planet could claim was representative of it in any way at all. Disturbing LOL.

    It just shows again perfectly that if you lose your anonymity on here ( Karlin this is 100 % NOT a threat or an incitement for anybody to hack/expose him,or even a wish for it to happen to this loser) then you would quite clearly kill yourself out of shame. At worst, all the rest of us would be fine socially if anonymity stopped, maybe some, particularly the Americans could lose their jobs if a particularly PC or “woke” employer saw their comments…. but none would be a social outcast. You though, with your messed up nonsense would be the type of wacko that people, including relatives, would run over to the other side of the road if you were on their side…. if they knew you were the disturbed wacko making the posts that you do here. You know this.

    “Typical Galician Ukrainian culture in this video”….hahahahaha!!!

  129. You ad Professor Tennessee should consider reanimating an old soviet act “Shtepsel & Terpunka”. One is the subservient Ukrainian kissing ass to the other (a Russian) and trying to appear very content in his degrading role. Tennessee could play the mixed up, ass kissing Ukrainian, and you could play the smug and overbearing Russian. It’s all good!

    https://youtu.be/vRbEAoU2k7k

    Professor Tennessee and Mike Averko.

  130. As I’ve already pointed out (that I’m about to do again to compensate for your slower abilities to digest information the first time around). the census information only reflected the spoken language preferences of the respondents, not their ability to read and write in their native language.

    No one was suppressing the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire in the manner that you seem to suggest.

    Really? Then please try and explain to me the purposes of the “Valuev Circular” in 1863 or the “Ems Ukase” in 1876?

  131. What do you mean by “integration” with Russia? Any loss in sovereignty or home rule in those Ukrainian areas affected?

  132. You are becoming an even dumber idiot Mr Hack as the year goes on!

    For Ukrops to be named by, and as one WITH its “aggressor” just one time in history could be considered unfortunate or just an accident. To be named effectively 3 times as Russians is not an accident…. and something even the worst moron fantasist loser at some American Ukrainian “Institute” (Banderite nutjob “learning institution” because all they are is the sadist scum 1940s fugitives ) would try and counterargue against!

    The three terms over a millenium used to describe “ethnicity” of the Khokhol tribe are Russky, Malorossiyans (typical of the “Greater” and “little” terms used in those centuries for lands of same people but different geography) and Ukrainians ( a term first applied to Russians in Pskov and Southern border of Russia at the time)

    Bizarre “coincidence” LOL.

    I also forgot to mention to the other cretin that even a small thing like cooking Borsch with tomatoes is, as with potatoes, just another emphatic stamp of Russian world on Borsch you idiot. Importing and cultivation of tomatoes in their modern edible form is something lands of what is called “Ukraine” and people of Russian civilisation only started to get from time and policies of Catherine the Great.

  133. Sharikova has been very triggered by the borscht controversy.

    Are you jealous of the dresses those Galician-Ukrainian girls were wearing? You wish you had such dresses? Does that make you so bitter that you still remember that video?

  134. I may be wrong, but it seems that AltanBakshi supports some sort of union between Russia and Ukraine. He is correct that this would economically benefit a place like Kharkiv.

  135. So, you’re advocating to a split of Ukraine into two? One large piece ending up within some sort of a Rusian federation (Kharkiv, Zaporizhya, Crimea all of Donbas) and the other within the Visigrad Grouping? Why not just add all of Ukraine? As Western Ukraine is already starting to percolate, why not include it in this new plan of yours too? How are these two Ukraine’s to interact with each other?
    How is Russia to incorporate this new area when so far it seems that it doesn’t have the economic will to even take on half of Donbas? You’re talking about an area probably 5 to 6 times larger than half of Donbas? And Russia still needs to further develop Crimea too (that project isn’t done yet).

  136. Look Dude, when I was into gardening, I used to always put at least one super ripe juicy tomatoe into the pot when I was cooking borshch. Now that I live in the Southwest, I like to add at least one nice sized ripe chile pepper into the pot. Borshch is a versatile dish, and as the old saying goes, “there are as many recipes for borshch as there are cooks making it” I like to use pork ribs, my sister prefers beef – it’s all good! Carry on and don’t despair – tomatoes aren’t trying to war with the beets! 🙂

    https://64.media.tumblr.com/53e5adabd78ed629885cff83b4876058/tumblr_muayfj7OtP1rqpa8po1_500.jpg

  137. BTW, you never really answered my question to you in #133:

    What do you mean by “integration” with Russia? Any loss in sovereignty or home rule in those Ukrainian areas affected?

  138. And as you continuously put aside, a truly repressive government wouldn’t ask such a question and then openly acknowledge the result.

    As previously noted, the restricting decrees were in reply to anti-Russian material coming from Hapsburg territory. The complaints about this ciontent came from some pro-Russian Ukrainians. If Ukrainian was so suppressed, it wouldn’t have been as widely evident in use – once again noting how the native tongues of Scotland and Ireland aren’t as popular in use when compared to Ukrainian in the Russian Empire.

  139. The reverse has been evident like (from awhile back in RFE/RL) a PC Russian speaking in western Ukraine on the horrors of Russia before a demanding svido audience.

  140. A galloping gourmet eh?

  141. AltanBakshi says

    Your intellectual honesty makes me quite happy. You clearly are a man of reason and not of emotions.

    Yes you are correct with Zhytomir and Vinnitsa, but if Yanukovitsh would have succeeded and not the Euromaidan, I could be sure that cities like Dnepropetrovsk, Krivoy Rog, Sumy, whole Donbass, Kherson and Nikolaev would have benefitted much more from economic integration with Russia, therefore I claim that it would have been beneficial for greater share of Ukrainians than the current situation which mainly benefits Kievites and Western Ukrainians.

    Mr. Hack ideally Ukraine should be divided using the 1667 border between Poland and Russia, but with the exception that the right bank of Kiev would be left to the West Ukrainian Peoples republic. Or at least Three eastern oblasts should be integrated to Russia and of course Mr. Hack its hard for Russia to help Donbass with the war destroying the infrastructure, with the sanctions and all. Especially when Donbass cant even trade lawfully with the outside world!

    For heavens sake Malyshev tank factory is sacred land for the Russia, it cant be left for Banderites, its like giving up Jerusalem to infidels!

  142. AltanBakshi says

    But its sad and a crime against humanity that such land, which has temperate climate with comparatively thinly populated land and with an excellent soil for agriculture and which still has thanks to Soviet reforms, a well educated workforce, is given for destruction and looting in the hands of the oligarch class, who are just using stupid banderites as a disposable tool against the true Ukrainian patriots. Its a shame, a real shame! From 50+ million to 35+ million in population, and without any world wars or major epidemics! I think even Norks couldnt lie themselves that such development could have been a victory or progress or something! The progress has been so bad that its even possible that Ukraines integration with a relatively poor country as a Russia is not even desirable anymore! So congratulations! Well done! Even Kim Il Yong couldnt waste his countrys potential and resources in such way. But I cant derive any satisfaction from such state of affairs, you American Ukrainians are well fed and well paid, but Ukrainians of Ukraine really suffer, the vast majority of them, so do many people in Russia, but in Ukraine its even worse, much worse…

  143. Autists Anonymous Rehab Camp Fugitive says

    AK linked to a tweet claiming borscht was hybrid warfare. He didn’t say borscht was hybrid warfare. Are you intentionally pretending to be dumb, so you can attach some labels you don’t like to the author? Or are you literally incapable of reading.

  144. By titling this thread “Hybrid War Analyzing Borshcht” without any parenthesis and then offering reasons why Borsch shouldn’t be looked upon as strictly a Ukrainian culinary dish (and also offering a reason challenging Chicken Kiev’s validity as a Ukrainian dish too), he gave the concept validity and also attached new wings to it to help it fly further. Do you think that he succeeded? Funny, I don’t recall that this issue made it to debate on the floors of the Russian parliament? 🙂

  145. If the main thrust of the Valuev Circular was to stem the tide of Ukrainian literature coming from Galicia to Central Ukraine, how could it possibly incorporate such sentiments within the body of the work:

    “a separate Little Russian language never existed, doesn’t exist, and couldn’t exist, and their [Little Russians] tongue used by commoners is nothing but Russian corrupted by the influence of Poland”.

    The Ems Ukaz was even more draconian in its nature and was even set against the publication of the New Testament in the local vernacular, that was somehow also seen as being “politically suspect”.

  146. Yeah, poor “Geraldina” seems peeved at the thought of Ukrainians claiming borshch as a Ukrainian culinary delight. He seems to think that tomatoes were a Russian invention too. 🙂

  147. Going around the same carousel is boring.

    As noted, in practice the measures weren’t draconian. There’s a reason why there’re apparently no figures given on how many were locked up utilizing Ukrainian. Plenty obviously did communicate in Ukrainian on account of the info acknowledged in an early 1900s census dealing with Ukrainian language use.

  148. So, you’re advocating to a split of Ukraine into two?

    Where did you get that, from what I wrote? I stated the obvious fact that places like Kharkiv would benefit economically from a Union with Russia.

    It is equally true that Sakhalin would benefit from a union with Japan, Karelian would get richer if they joined Finland, etc. The thing is, people unless they are totally deracinated, prefer to be with their own kind. There is no movement among Sakhalin Russians to join Japan even though doing so would make them a lot richer.

    2014 was a real test for Ukrainian territory: there was no effective government or army, and Kiev was taken over by Westerners whom people in Kharkiv don’t like. Russian nationalists were confidentially predicting that all of “New Russia”, free to do what it wanted, would join Russia. But in reality, only areas with a majority or plurality ethnic Russian population chose to follow “economic” interests and join Russia: Crimea and the urban southeastern parts of Donbas. Kharkiv (70% ethnic Ukrainian) didn’t leave, in fact this place is the homeland of the ultranationalist Azov groups.

  149. From 50+ million to 35+ million in population, and without any world wars or major epidemics!

    A lot of this is simply territorial loss which is a good thing (ethnic Russian regions have left). Much is due to free movement of labor to places where wages are very high.

  150. Mr. Hack ideally Ukraine should be divided using the 1667 border between Poland and Russia, but with the exception that the right bank of Kiev would be left to the West Ukrainian Peoples republic.

    Ukraine should be divided according to the wishes of its residents. This has already been accomplished. People of Kharkiv would prefer Ukraine to be reoriented towards Moscow (as evidenced by their voting pattern) but not at the price of splitting from Ukraine.

  151. AltanBakshi says

    Ukraine would probably have population of 40~ million without Euromaidan. Thats still a huge drop.

  152. AltanBakshi says

    Or they are not stupid enough to destroy their oblast after they saw what banderites did to Donbass?

    “See how loyal the Costas are, when they saw what happened to Puglisis? ”
    -Said one Mafia Don to another.

    “Kharkiv prefers to be with Ukraine!”
    -said a banderite after wrecking the Donbass!

  153. Yes, it is a shame. Ukraine had a chance to become a real country. However, the populace allowed thieving oligarchs to rule. I mean all Ukrainian “governments” from 1991 on: they were largely crime syndicates, rather than national governments.

    By a series of quirks of history Ukraine in 1991 was extremely heterogeneous. Any government that cared about the country would have emphasized what unites the people, rather than what divides them. However, all Ukrainian “governments” since 1991 did not care about the country, they were busy lining their pockets. Russia had the same problem. It tried to kick traitorous thieves out as early as 1993 and finally succeeded in 2000. Ukraine never did.

    Ukrainian “leaders” decided that rabid nationalism is the best fig leaf for their thievery. That alienated at least half of the population and keeps destroying the country from within. The subservience of the “leadership” to the declining Empire, which in its stupidity decided to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia, not understanding that something rotten through and through cannot be a battering ram, contributes to the disaster. We are witnessing death throes, running of a headless chicken.

    Ukraine today is the poorest country in Europe, with dying industry, declining agriculture, destroyed healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, raging Nazi wannabes, etc., while its tariffs for natural gas are the highest in Europe. The majority of Russian population does not want to take over that cesspit now. If Putin (or whoever comes after him) decides to take Ukraine, that would be solely out of spite, to prevent Poland from getting anything. But even Putin won’t be able to do it unless the West writes off Ukraine’s humongous debt. That would happen only after a major Chernobyl-style disaster in Ukraine, involving nuclear power plant or a chemical plant. Only something of that magnitude would scare Europeans enough to act. Unfortunately, Ukrainian population would suffer yet again as the result. The price of tolerating scum in power is high, and it is ordinary people who pay it.

  154. A good point, but in 2014 the fate of Donbas was not yet clear, yet Kharkivites did not try to leave Ukraine. Our host AK posted poll results clearly showing no appetite for separatism in Kharkiv.

    Also, a lot of the Banderites operating in Donbas are from Kharkiv. Kharkiv is the bAse for the Azov battalion.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

    The Azov Battalion has its roots in a group of Ultras of FC Metalist Kharkiv named “Sect 82” (1982 is the year of the founding of the group).[21] “Sect 82” was (at least until September 2013) allied with FC Spartak Moscow Ultras.[21] Late February 2014, during the 2014 Ukrainian crisis when a separatist movement was active in Kharkiv, “Sect 82” occupied the Kharkiv Oblast regional administration building in Kharkiv and served as a local “self-defense”-force.[21] Soon, on the basis of “Sect 82” there was formed a volunteer militia called “Eastern Corps

  155. Usual nonsense and sour grapes by someone who hasn’t been there in decades.

  156. AltanBakshi says

    Azov battalion is as representative of people of Kharkov as Cosa Nostra is Italys.
    In a failed state you find various and radicalised outliers, especially if people are without normal wages, and there are shadowy oligarchs willing to pay for some muscle.

  157. You seem totally unable to understand that people speaking in a language doesn’t automatically translate over to the same people being able to read and write in the same language. I’ve tried to make this clear to you, but your “I’m dense and don’t understand” radar seems to be set on high today. 🙁

  158. And yet there were no anti-Kiev formations there, as in Donbas.

  159. It’s very difficult to understand what exactly you mean by “integration with Russia”? I’ve tried twice already to clarify this, and you haven’t done so. And, of course we’re talking about much larger areas than just Kharkiv, aren’t we? So, in addition to clarifying what you think would be beneficial for Ukraine, if you could also include a more complete answer to my question within comment #133, I could then offer my own assessment of your ideas. Please, feel free to give full vent to these new ideas of yours, here and now. Take your time. Remember “the devil is always in the details”! 🙂

    You have to excuse me, but when I read AltanBakshi compliment you for your ideas regarding Russian integration, it gives me pause to sit up and wonder?………

  160. Autists Anonymous Rehab Camp Fugitive says

    The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their
    dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and
    then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played
    stupid. If all this didn’t help, they pretended not to understand, or,
    if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes
    which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely
    different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and
    pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you
    tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like
    slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next
    moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows
    so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn’t help but
    agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step
    forward, your amazement was great the next day. [He] had not the
    slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old
    nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly
    challenged, affected amazement; he couldn’t remember a thing, except
    that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

    Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck. I didn’t know what to be more
    amazed at: the agility of their tongues or their virtuosity at lying.

    I thought Hitler was referring to the Jews in this quote. But maybe we all collectively misunderstood, since I’ve seen this kind of behavior only among Ukrainians.

  161. As previously noted, the restricting decrees were in reply to anti-Russian material coming from Hapsburg territory.

    What a pretentious reply. If the Valuev Ukaz was promulgated primarily in order to stem the tide of subversive materials from Galicia, why was the printing of the New Testament bible in the Ukrainian language stymied? Perhaps, you can help explain to me what exact “Galician” messages were deeply ingrained within the bible that needed to be censored or destroyed so that the unwary Ukrainians in Central Ukraine wouldn’t be effected in a biased or negative manner? Was the New Testament somehow to be construed as “anti-Russian material”?

  162. AltanBakshi says

    You have to excuse me, but when I read AltanBakshi compliment you for your ideas regarding Russian integration, it gives me pause to sit up and wonder?………

    Dont be so absolutist with your thinking, AP just stated facts with Kharkov, its a Soviet rust belt city, its not like EU has any need for things that Kharkovs factories need. He is just realist, and realism is what helps more in the longer run than denial of facts.

    I get APs logic, first in short term Euro-integration will help western Ukraine, then slowly East will too get benefits from that.
    But I fear that East just gets completely deindustrialized and stays as corruption ridden backyard of Ukraine, to me it seems that AP is willing to risk that chance, as long as his beloved west will reap the benefits. If Bulgaria cant succeed as part of the EU, why then places like Kryvbass would?

    Heh this is like the story with the king Solomon and who is the real mother of baby, but in reverse or something, those who really care about Ukrainians would divide Ukraine, so west could integrate with the EU and the east could integrate with the Russia. Then the pointless suffering could end…

  163. those who really care about Ukrainians would divide Ukraine, so west could integrate with the EU and the east could integrate with the Russia. Then the pointless suffering could end…

    I hope that this is not the kind of nonsence that AP believes in. Once Russia would get its claws more firmly sunk into Ukraine, the stronger the appeal would be to conquer and integrate the Western portion too. Ukraine needs to remain one solid whole with no more divisions, integrations etc; I’ve always felt that a path like what Finland follows is better suited for Ukraine. A bigger and better Finland as a buffer, perhaps included with the V-4, now what’s wrong with that?

  164. Philip Owen says

    What language does Verka Serduchka sing?

  165. Most Ukrainians understand both Russian and Ukrainian, so what’s the problem? I attend a diaspora Ukrainian Orthodox church where a fair number of attendees are Russian speaking Ukrainians and Russians. Because I know a modicum of Russian, whenever a supplicant speaks to me in Russian, I speak back in Russian. The same with our priest. Our president, who know no Russian, speaks back in such cases in Ukrainian, and everybody seems to understand one another. We don’t attend church to spread nationalistic platforms or politics, but attend for a higher purpose. If we all had a little bit more of Christ in our hearts, these sorts of problems would disappear.

    BTW, I’ve never run into a Russian speaker at our church that has any problem at all with our affiliation with the OCU Patriarchate, or that we use strictly the Ukrainian language during the mass. Most probably don’t care either way. Recently, a Russian speaker donated two beautiful oriental styled rugs to our church that are a beautiful addition.

  166. I’m pretty sure that he’s fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian. I haven’t watched him in years though, so I could be wrong.

  167. Philip Owen says

    Brexit resembles the Ukrainian problem a lo. For a significant minority, identity matters more than prosperity. The heart of the movement is based on football clubs. The demand to return to the unity of the past is strongest in areas of economic decline.

  168. AltanBakshi says

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html

    Yes even Kissinger supports the “Finlandization” of Ukraine. I didnt know that you Mr. Hack are such a witty proponent of the realpolitik in Europe.

  169. AltanBakshi says

    May I ask how you are under OCU in USA? Its written in the Tomos of OCU that it cant have congregations outside of Ukraine? So most of its diaspora congregations and bishops are now continuing under the schismatic Filaret. So are you under a so called Kyiv Patriarchate? Actually your congregations ecclesiastical status has puzzled me for a sometime.

  170. AltanBakshi says

    Mongolian, ha ha, or so he claimed with his Lasha Tumbai…

  171. We are in a state of flux at the moment, working with the Mother Church in Kyiv to resolve these issues. In the meantime, we’re open for business to all who need some spiritual nourishment, including the wonderful blessing of offering communion, no matter what language the supplicants are most comfortable with.

    Likewise, we used to sponsor many bountiful luncheons throughout the year, including everybody’s favorite…can you guess what it is? 🙂 We pray for the passing of this epidemic from the face of the earth.

  172. Rereading this article by Kisinger, I see a lot of wisdom put forth. How about you?

  173. AltanBakshi says

    Let me guess, Okroshka? Thats a one strange soup, must be acquired taste or something. Especially the kvass version, though I normally enjoy good kvass.

    But why you are not in UOC of USA? At least you would be in a canonical church?

    Sorry if I have sounded offensive, its just my style, nothing personal, I wish you and your parish success and happiness!

  174. Most of the Ukrainian Orthodox in the USA was under Constantinople even before the Tomos. I think they did got under Constantinople in the 1990s. A small group of them objected because Constantinople was in communion with Moscow; these parishes joined Filaret.

  175. But why you are not in UOC of USA? At least you would be in a canonical church?

    I’ve asked the same question myself? 🙂

    Let me guess, Okroshka?

    Hey friend, have you bothered to see what the title of this thread is all about (at least ostensibly)? 🙂 🙂

  176. AltanBakshi says

    It was a bad joke, but in my opinion Okroshka is one of my least favorite foods.

    Yes I mostly agree with the Kissinger except on point four, but sadly at the present moment its not possible to integrate simultaneously with EUs and Russias economies, even Finland is nowadays strongly tilted towards the EU, though situation was different before the sanctions and Russia was then most important trade partner for Finland. So the Ukrainian conundrum has made quite far reaching effects. Oh well everything is because of Anglos… Without America there wouldnt be such pressure on EU countries…

  177. Belarusian Dude says

    Quod Erat Demonstrandum, the mediocre get so infinitely butthurt when their grasp at straws at a claim to fame is ignored for being nonsensical.

  178. Dont be so absolutist with your thinking, AP just stated facts with Kharkov, its a Soviet rust belt city, its not like EU has any need for things that Kharkovs factories need. He is just realist, and realism is what helps more in the longer run than denial of facts.

    Exactly.

    I get APs logic, first in short term Euro-integration will help western Ukraine, then slowly East will too get benefits from that.

    This is indeed what I hope. The first part has been happening.

    But I fear that East just gets completely deindustrialized and stays as corruption ridden backyard of Ukraine, to me it seems that AP is willing to risk that chance, as long as his beloved west will reap the benefits.

    This is a lesser evil than opposite: Russian-speaking East does well, Ukrainian-speaking West is a poor backwater. I prefer for all of Ukraine to do equally well and I hope this will eventually be the case. But if one had to choose one region doing well versus another doing poorly – well, whom should the Ukrainian state benefit more – a Russian-speaking mixed with Russian population region, or a fully Ukrainian one?

    If Bulgaria cant succeed as part of the EU, why then places like Kryvbass would?

    Or conversely, if Romania can succeed as part of EU, why not Kryvbass?

    We can compare performance of countries in the same region, all of whom were about equally wealthy in 1990. Ukraine’s neighbors Poland and Romania chose to integrate with the EU. They did the best. Belarus integrated with Russia. It did okay but worse than those two. Ukraine and Moldova integrated with no one, they were independent playgrounds for local oligarchs. They did terribly, the worst of all.

    Ukraine (minus Crimea and Donbas) chose a westward path in 2014, after nearly 25 lost years. After the 2014-2015 collapse it showed solid consistent improvement, surpassing 2013 in per capita GDP and wages by the end of 2019 and with faster upward movement than during the stagnant Yanukovich years.

  179. AltanBakshi says

    well, whom should the Ukrainian state benefit more – a Russian-speaking mixed with Russian population region, or a fully Ukrainian one?<

    Thats a totally subjective bias or statement. I would like to get angry, but then again Im looking from the other side, with my own bias, but still I believe that most of Ukraine would benefit more with integration with Russia, unlike Belarus, Ukraine was crucial component, its industries designed with dependence towards cheap Russian energy. And its not like western orientation is something new, you guys always forget the Euromaidan 1.0 or the Orange revolution.

  180. AltanBakshi says

    To me Belarus is famous from the best partisans ever to exist and good tractors, that their folk is down to earth and humble. Such attributes are more than most people can claim, especially Poles with their victim complex – Christ among nations and other such bs. Even though proportionally Belarus suffered more from WWII. Or Bulgarians with their constant turncoating.

    We are the 16th state of the Soviet Union, we hate Russians they spoiled everything, Nazis are our allies, wait a minute we hate them, long live communism and so on and so on, all the way when they got their independence.
    Though Romania, Serbia, and Hungary have been in the same neighbourhood and suffered a lot, they have not been anywhere as spineless.

  181. but still I believe that most of Ukraine would benefit more with integration with Russia

    If Ukraine still included Donbas and Crimea that probably about half of Ukraine would benefit from integration with Russia – the half that included all of the non-Ukrainian-inhabited territories. But now the areas than benefit from Euro-integration outnumber those that would benefit from Eurasian integration.

    Since 2016 Ukraine’s (oriented towards Europe) overall GDP per capita has been growing faster than that of Belarus (oriented towards Russia):

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locations=UA-BY

    This is spite of Eastern parts not benefitting as much from Euro-integration.

    And its not like western orientation is something new, you guys always forget the Euromaidan 1.0 or the Orange revolution.

    That Ukraine was still held back by Crimea and Donbas. Yanukovich was even PM for a time while Yushchenko was president.

  182. It’s very difficult to understand what exactly you mean by “integration with Russia”?

    Kharkiv would benefit from economic integration with Russia economically. The city is next to Russia and its local economy had been linked to the supply chain with Russia. I’m not sure how clearer I could be. That’s just reality. It certainly doesn’t mean that the people there want their region to be part of Russia. There is no widespread appetite for separatism in Kharkiv. But there is support for economic integration there. In this region people do not want to split from Ukraine, or to become part of Russia (unlike Crimeans or Donetskers), but they would prefer for Ukraine to join the Eurasian Customs Union rather than the EU.

  183. Why not think larger? All of Ukraine (and Russia) would benefit from further economic development between both countries. Of course, you’d need to first work towards ending the war in the Donbas before any sort of really large economic benefits could ensue. And that of course is quite difficult, if one of the major parties involved refuses to even admit that it’s involved there at all. As somebody who often criticizes his debaters here at this blogsite for being dishonest, don’t you think that open and honest relations between the two primary opponents in this war need to be established first?

  184. “I’m dense and don’t understand” radar seems to be set on high today.

    For you.

    Once again, not much of a difference between the Russian and Ukrainian alphabets, with many Ukrainians of that era communicating in Ukrainian. On your “draconian” claim, still no substantiated figure on the number of Ukrainians, jailed, beaten and killed for communicating in Ukrainian.

  185. Shortsword says

    Since 2016 Ukraine’s (oriented towards Europe) overall GDP per capita has been growing faster than that of Belarus (oriented towards Russia)

    True, but it must be added that is in part due to Ukraine having a larger GDP drop. But Ukraine does beat Belarus either way. Ukraine’s total per capita growth since 2014 is about 3% while Belarus sits at under 1%. That’s 2019 numbers. It does look likely that the 2020 recession puts Belarus ahead again.

  186. Nothing non-factual. Subtelny noted a pro-Russian Ukriian complaining to the Russian government about anti-Russian material coming from the Hapsburg Empire. Thereafter, a lid was put on such. This was a time in history when tolerance was lacking worldwide when compared to the present. That said, even today, there’re censoring restrictions of one sort or another – svidos not being an exception. If I were in power, I would’ve allowed the aforementioned Habsburg based material along with fact based rebuttals.

  187. Covid is sort of a wildcard.

    But Belarus had been outperforming Ukraine every year since 2004 (in 2011 the two countries were basically tied). Only in 2016 did Ukraine start to outperform Belarus and had done so consistently since that time, and IIRC in the first quarter of 2020.

  188. So, ‘a Ukrainian” complained that “anti-Russian material was coming from the Hapburg Empire” and the whole idea of allowing Ukrainians to read and write in their own vernacular language was shut down? I guess in the Mike Averko bizzaro world, that makes infinite sense. 🙂

    Could you tell me the nature of this “anti-Russian material” coming from Galicia? Could it perhaps be something as pernicious as the New Testament written in Ukrainian? Were there any calls for rebellion against the Czar or revolution of some sort?

  189. Shortsword says

    The point is that the GDP drop must also be considered. The interesting number is the total growth since 2014. But Ukraine has slightly outperformed Belarus so you’re not wrong.

  190. sadly at the present moment its not possible to integrate simultaneously with EUs and Russias economies

    As soon as VVP quits it will change. Russian elites are not happy with the situation. Everyone wants to go back to normal. In a couple of years we will live in a very different world.

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2012-01-01/balancing-east-upgrading-west

    It has been planned since years ago…

  191. But was it actually “shutdown”? Show proof. Evidence suggests differently. The aforementioned Hapsburg based material was anti-Russian enough for that pro-Russian Ukrainian to complain to the Russian government. Obviously had svido inspired content.

  192. Look Mickey, most of the materials coming from Austrian Galicia were in the form of belle letters, plays, books about ethnography, even the bible as I’ve mentioned twice already. I’m sure that somewhere there may have even been something subversive found in the whole bunch, but on the whole, pretty lame material. The Czar and his circle of advisors were intent on trying to “homogenize” the masses (russify) and after the Polish insurrection in the Kyiv area of the mid 19th century felt that the nascent and spreading Ukrainophile movement might also become revolutionary in nature if left unchecked. You can read about it all in Johannes Remy’s excellent book on just this topic called “Brothers or Enemies” that came out just a few years ago. It includes all of the details, including who was involved and any related punishments etc; I believe that somewhere in the book, he mentions that upwards of a couple of hundred Ukrainian advocates were either punished or put under surveillance (its been a couple of years since I last read it). Reviews of the book are positive and point to the fact that the book provides a lot of newly researched unfamiliar historical information. I think that you’d find it an interesting read that would open you up to a lot of information that you’re probably only slightly familiar with. The book relies on newer located sources and goes into a lot more detail than Subtelny ever did.

  193. This comment is in response to Mikhail’s comment #193 above.

  194. No evidence Ukrainian language was suddenly shutdown as you stated. No clearly verified specifics on the number jailed, beaten, imprisoned and killed.

  195. Of course the Ukrainian language was shut down, at least as far as the written word was concerned. The book that I’ve recommended that you read is like an encyclopedia of authors that had their works destroyed or returned and not published because they didn’t pass the strict control of the censor’s purview. If you think that Ukrainian literature and the written word didn’t undergo massive restrictions during the 19th century, you’re really only revealing your lack of knowledge of the subject matter. Instead of shooting from the hip, why don’t you read this book and learn something new?

    Not everybody was killed or sent off to prison. Some lost jobs or were forced to move to other areas. But basically, they jut weren’t allowed to pulblish in Ukrainian.

  196. I did ask for some specifics which you didn’t give.

    If you think the Ukrainian language was massively restricted in the form of a near complete to complete shutdown, you’re misled. Ditto for not acknowledging what prompted the restrictions. For accuracy sake, these observations shouldn’t get twisted into meaning something else.

    What happened at the Austro-Hungarian run Talerhof concentration camp in terms of numbers and suffering against those deemed as having pro-Russian sentiment appears to be the more excessive clamp down.

  197. Belarusian Dude says

    Since 2016 Ukraine’s (oriented towards Europe) overall GDP per capita has been growing faster than that of Belarus (oriented towards Russia):

    Low base effect.

  198. I really try to be nice and civil with you, but I find that you’re quite a hard headed and unreasonable person to communicate with. I’m through with you Mickey, Bye Bye! 🙁

  199. Yeah, and its a real shame too. See, this is what happens when an imperial power, in this case England got involved in the affairs of their Celtic neighbors. I don’t remember any of the Celtic peoples requesting that the English come and colonize their lands and impose their language over the local ones.

    The Normans were invited into Ireland by Diarmaid mac Murchadha. Edward Longshanks was invited into Scotland also to help with a succession dispute. The Germanic tribes were originally invited to Roman Britain to deal with raids from Picts.

    English wasn’t imposed on Scotland. Scotland itself has rarely been linguistically uniform, with Gaelic, Brittonic, Pictish, Anglic, and Norse languages all existing and speakers of these groups at various times absorbing others.

    Calling England an imperial power in Scotland is Hollywood stuff. England and Scotland were engaged in border disputes for centuries with invasions occurring from both sides, and also raiding on both sides. People on both sides spoke related languages until relatively recently. After 1295, much of the conflict was a result of Anglo-French politics. In any case, the English invasions were mostly failures anyhow. The formal union between Scotland and England was not a conquest, but a joining of the crowns under James VI, King of Scotland.

    The Catholic Church played the decisive role in the decline of Gaelic in Ireland. The irony of this is delicious.

    The most significant language persecution in the British Isles was probably the efforts of the Normans to replace English with French Norman and Latin.

  200. Sorry, the LOL is for someone else.

  201. Since 2016 Ukraine’s (oriented towards Europe) overall GDP per capita has been growing faster than that of Belarus (oriented towards Russia):

    Low base effect.

    Which had not helped prior to Ukraine’s definitive westward turn.

  202. They had to destroy their complex industries, inherited from the USSR first?

    This :

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/cd/c8/2bcdc879cdb6c73f7ea22de65842105d.jpg

    For that:

    https://tuca.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/sonyach.png

  203. AltanBakshi says

    There were quite many Russian authors were censored or who couldnt publish their books, actually such situation was endemic in practically all Central and Eastern European countries of the 19th century. Its like seeing the larger picture is impossible for you.

    Honestly if Russians would have allowed the flowering of Ukrainian language, which still was seen more or less as a Russian dialect, it would have been revolutionary in the 19th century context, when French, Germans, Italians and Spanish didnt tolerate regional variations of their standardized governmental languages. Even though its now accepted that Low Saxon, Occitan and so on are practically their own separate languages and at least as divergent from German and French as Ukrainian is from the Russian. And once again Low Saxon/German and Occitan both have ancient medieval literary traditions unlike Ukrainian. You are demanding, Mr. Hack impossible things from old Russian authorities, things that are practically first time possible in European history after the rise of nationalism.

  204. AltanBakshi says

    Those Normans became “more Irish than Irish themselves.”

    You are overly simplifying things, Cromwellian conquest of Ireland was what brought the colonization and English language, before that almost no one Spoke English beyond the Pale.

    In regards of Scotland it would be better if we would talk about Lowlands and Highlands, the Gaelic language and culture were repressed in the Highlands, but the process was started by the Scottish Kings and not by the English.

  205. No, don’t be silly, for that:

    Here is Forbes magazine from late 2019:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriacollins/2019/10/01/the-ukrainian-tech-industry-and-the-launch-of-the-ukraine-it-creative-fund/?sh=274c0a1e4031

    I have learned that Ukraine’s developers have helped to build Ford’s in-car infotainment systems, Reuters’ award-winning photography app, Nokia’s customer retail experience, and Deutsche Bank’s Risk Management System to name just a few. Talking to experts in the field, I have started to explore this background.

    After the fall of the USSR, the engineers, mathematicians and technicians from this era were some of the first to start software development companies in Ukraine. SoftServe, now the largest outsourcing and out staffing company IT company in Ukraine, was founded in Lviv in 1993 by two post-graduate students of Lviv Polytechnic. They now operate in the fields of Big Data, Internet of Things, cloud computing, DevOps, e-commerce, security and experience design. They employ over 8,000 people in 35 offices around the world.

    Technology in Ukraine today

    The early 2000s saw a continued rise in software companies in Ukraine. Ciklum, for example, was founded in 2002 by a Danish native Torben Majgaard in Kyiv. They now have more than 3,500 developers across the globe in 24 offices.

    The IT industry has grown from 0.06% of GDP to 3.3%, more than 50 times, between 2013 and 2018.

  206. Your premise that regional languages were squelched by other larger entities in the 19th century, especially in Eastern Europe flies in the face of reality. The Hapsburg Empire was the largest political entity in the region and is well known for tolerating the languages and customs of its constituent ethnic minorities, and with its Ukrainians, even encouraged their aspirations of cultural development. Indeed, the Ukrainians that were within the Russian Empire could look towards their kin to the West and see what a more tolerant political milieu could look like.

  207. There were quite many Russian authors were censored or who couldnt publish their books, actually such situation was endemic in practically all Central and Eastern European countries of the 19th century

    Correct, but the Russian government even banned publication of the New Testament in the Ukrainian language. So clearly it was about stifling the language, not simply a problem with certain political content.

    was endemic in practically all Central and Eastern European countries of the 19th century

    Except for lands under Vienna.

  208. I can see that you’ve been reading my comments. 🙂

  209. But basically, they just weren’t allowed to pulblish in Ukrainian

    Then how come that full Kotlyarevsky’ Eneyida was published in 1842.
    What’s more, Kotlyarevsky staged theatrical productions in Ukrainian in Poltava in 1812-21.
    Sorry to point this out, but your info is as false as most things spread by Ukies. No surprise there.

  210. Correct, but both Prussia/German Empire and Budapest (under Hapsburgs, but free to run its own internal policies over lands it controlled) were worse than Russia – which as you correctly state was worse than Vienna. In the late 19th century, the Ukrainian nationalist movement was less developed in Transcarpathia than in Russian lands. Related to this, I suspect literacy rate was lower there too though I don’t have time to check this out.

  211. Then how come that full Kotlyarevsky’ Eneyida was published in 1842.
    What’s more, Kotlyarevsky staged theatrical productions in Ukrainian in Poltava in 1812-21.
    Sorry to point this out, but your info is as false as most things spread by Ukies. No surprise there

    The restrictions came later, as was made clear. Your implications are as false as most things spread by Sovoks, no surprise there.

  212. The ability of Ukrainian literature to be printed within the 19th century wasn’t static, however, the general trend was more and more prohibition as time went on. At one point, as Remy points out in his book, Ukraine actually had 27 literary journals that were printed. Unfortunately, this number dwindled all the way down to one. You’re another candidate for reading his book, you might find it to be a good “shock treatment” for some of your misconceptions! 🙂

  213. When I was in kindergarten, kids considered repletion of what was said to you a good reply. Most people grow out of this. Some apparently don’t. My condolences.

  214. The Catholic Church played the decisive role in the decline of Gaelic in Ireland. The irony of this is delicious.

    Please tell us some more. I’m wondering, how is it that so many Gaelic peoples eventually forsook their own native languages for English? Was it all the doing of the Roman Catholic Church?

  215. You get what you deserve, on your level, my condolences.

  216. AltanBakshi says

    when French, Germans, Italians and Spanish didnt tolerate regional variations of their standardized governmental languages

    Russian authorities in 19th century perceived Ukrainian as a regional variation or dialect of Russian. Languages like Estonian, Volga Tatar and Finnish were not repressed by the Russian empire.

  217. AltanBakshi says

    when French, Germans, Italians and Spanish didnt tolerate regional variations of their standardized governmental languages

    Are you and Mr Hack dimwitted or what?

  218. No, but maybe you are? 🙂 That Russians may have considered Ukrainian a regional variation of their own language was a problem for them to sort out. It’s clear that russification of the Ukrainian masses was desirable for the imperial center, and was less so in the Ukrainian periphery. History has proven that Russian and Ukrainian are indeed separate languages.

  219. AltanBakshi says

    We are not talking how you and me or how the modern people see things, we are now talking how French, German or Russian 19th century governmental authorities saw the matters.
    Is it so hard for you to understand this?

  220. when French, Germans, Italians and Spanish didnt tolerate regional variations of their standardized governmental languages

    Neither Occitan nor Breton (a Celtic language) are regional variants of French, but separate languages that were persecuted by the post-Catholic French regimes. Did Germany ban publications in, say, the Bavarian dialect? I could be wrong, but I suspect not. In contrast, Germans did engage in policies against the Polish and Sorbian languages.

    So I ignored your mistaken claim.

  221. Are you and Mr Hack dimwitted or what?

    Ukies are like schizophrenics: perfectly normal, sometimes even witty, while discussing most subjects, but totally loony when you hit upon a certain point. Charitable people should not gloat, only commiserate: mental disorders are incurable.

  222. Russians pursued policies against the Polish language:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Poles_during_the_Partitions

    The years 1869-1885 saw the systematic removal of the Polish language from the education system, the end result, in 1885, was its placement as a second, uncompulsory school language. Only religion was taught in Polish. Dmitry Ilovaysky’s history text books were enforced in school history classes, falsifying history and as such continually implemented Russification. Additionally, the Russian language was introduced into folk schools. Conclusively, speaking the Polish language was banned in institutions of education. There was also an attempt to introduce the Cyrillic alphabet into Polish.

    ::::::::::::

    I suppose from a certain perspective all Slavic languages can be considered regional variants of Great Russian 😉

  223. Projection; certain Russians do get deranged on the topic of Ukraine.

  224. All along we were discussing here how the Ukrainian written language was suppressed within the Russian Empire (see comments #33 – #222), and its Okay (from my point of view) to try and make analogies outside of this loose box, you about other countries, me about how things finally ended up. Why so rigid all of a sudden?

  225. I would think that it’s you that has had a lifelong personality disorder, never being quite able to reconcile both your Ukrainian ethnicity and your Russian (Jewish?) one too?

  226. AltanBakshi says

    Occitan is a separate language from the language Langues d’oïl, as is Arpitan, that but French authorities saw them just as useless and backwards dialects.

    And why you bring up Bavarian dialect, which is a dialect of High German, and modern Standard German is based on the High German. No one has ever thought now or before that Bavarian is separate language from the Hochdeutsch. But linguists nowadays classify Low German as its own language.

    https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederdeutsche_Sprache

    War Preußen jedoch lange Zeit durch Sprachtoleranz geprägt, so änderte es seine diesbezügliche Haltung ab 1815, indem es in seinem Staatsgebiet nur eine offizielle Sprache, in diesem Falle, das Hochdeutsche akzeptierte und begann, dieses konsequent durchzusetzen: ein Vorgang, der – wie in den slawischsprachigen – vor allem in seinen niederdeutsch- und niederfränkischsprachigen Gebietsteilen massive Folgen hatte. Zum preußischen Bestreben eine einheitliche Staatssprache zu haben, trat noch die fast gleichzeitig eintretende Industrialisierung und Urbanisierung, die den Gebrauch des Niederdeutschen zugunsten des Hochdeutschen immer mehr einschränkte.

    Here translated by google

    However, if Prussia was shaped by language tolerance for a long time , it changed its attitude in this regard from 1815 onwards by accepting only one official language in its national territory, in this case Standard German , and beginning to enforce this consistently: a process that – as in the Slavic-speaking – especially in Low German and Lower Franconian-speaking areas. In addition to the Prussian endeavors to have a uniform state language, industrialization and urbanization , which occurred almost simultaneously, also occurredwhich increasingly restricted the use of Low German in favor of High German.

  227. AltanBakshi says

    There was two or three reasons for that, Poles were seen as rebellious, their Catholicism was seen as suspicious and because of Pan-Slavism.

    If we would use same standards as Chinese use, then yes all Slavic languages are just variations of one language, the so called Chinese dialects started to diverge 1500-2000 years ago. But for some reason Slavs like being tribal clowns…

  228. A general pattern is that dialects do not get persecuted, while actual languages do. The excuse by the persecutor that the language is simply a dialect doesn’t change this. Thus Plattdeutsch, Sorbian and Polish all underwent persecution by Central authorities, Hessian and Bavarian did not. Indeed, authorities in a purely Bavarian-speaking country such as Austria promoted the official and educational use of the standard language rather than the local dialect. Similarly, Canada and Australia use the Queen’s English officially. America is a special case because of the Revolution, but within the USA even Southern separatists weren’t promoting official use of the southern dialect versus standard American English. Conversely, if someone chose to write in Southern their writings haven’t been banned by anyone.

  229. Projection on your part.

  230. But for some reason Slavs like being tribal clowns…

    Among the different European ethnic groups, the Slavs are the most irrational. Always have been and probably always will be. It is not a judgment of moral value, it is a statement of fact.

    Slavs are only united through a strong imperial organization. This organization doesn’t need to be ethnically Slav (arguably it should not be ethnically Slav). As soon as such an organization weakens – Slavs start to agitate, when it disappears – Slavs go their separate ways.

    If they were different, they would be now at least twice as numerous as they are today. If they were different they would be the dominant force in Europe and a major force in the world affairs.

    But they are what they are, and if the current trends continue to unfold, they will probably be twice less numerous by the end of this century. That will make them forever second league players.

    They will have all eternity then to discuss if borscht is better than sschi and vice et versa.

  231. And the other races of humankind are more united? The Asians? The Semites? The Negros? The Germanic? The Latin(o)?? the etc? etc??

    Весь мир бардак, все люди бляди…

    Isn’t it so? 🙂

  232. I agree that we are collectively a wild bunch as humans. But quite frankly, it is hard to find an ethnic group of closely related populations that are so inclined at bickering about trivial matters, allying with their enemies against each other and overall acting in the dumbest possible ways on an historical scale.

    Again, if Slavs would have united – as Chinese eventually did after centuries of feudal warfare and wars between North and South Chinese dynasties – then they would probably be at least twice as numerous in population today, probably more. They would dominate the Eurasian landmass between the Elbe and Kamchatka, would enjoy a higher standard of living and would project power far and wide.

    Instead, their ethnonym became the synonym of bondage and servitude. It is not a coincidence that Slavs only got organized and strong under the patronage of Norse/Wendish Rus, Baltic Lithaninas, Central Asian Mongols/Tatars and Germanic Hapsburg and Holstein Gottorp Romanovs. Even in USSR they were ruled by a significantly non-Slavic elite.

    So yes: Весь мир бардак, все люди бл☆ди, но и среди бл☆дей есть разные степени бл☆дства. Наши Наташи как известно чемпионки вне всех категорий. А если бабы такие, то каковы мужики?

    You understand that I find this state of affairs sad, Mr Hack?

  233. I agree that we are collectively a wild bunch as humans. But quite frankly, it is hard to find an ethnic group of closely related populations that are so inclined at bickering about trivial matters, allying with their enemies against each other and overall acting in the dumbest possible ways on an historical scale.

    You make a good point, but nothing unique about Slavs here – if anything, the Chinese are the aberration while Slavs are just like the rest of humanity. What if all the Germanics had been united (including the Anglos, thus also Americans) into a massive superstate, never mind that the Germans alone hadn’t managed to do so for most of their history. This would be about 600 million people or so, clearly a match to all the Slavs put together. Or even just the Germans and Dutch (who are as close as Russians and Ukrainians), with German numbers and muscle combined with Dutch trading and maritime prowess, the Dutch/Deutsch colonial empire might have been unstoppable in the 18th and 19th centuries. Or if the “five eyes” countries were all united as a massive democratic cut-throat trading Anglo state with ~450 million people straddling the globe?

    Moreover, although Russia might seem to have the best instincts in terms of being open to a pan-Slavic Union, the country rejected a massive Slavic Union with Poland when the opportunity presented itself. So really their instinct was just to absorb others under their own power.

  234. Perhaps I just too extreme because I am disappointed with the way things are, especially the whole Russo – Ukrainian situation.

    We are in the twenty first century for God’s sake!

  235. We are in the twenty first century for God’s sake!

    And still trying to create order out of a chaotic world without God’s help (that of course will eventually change), all babbling in our own separate languages.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon.jpg

    Actually, the civilization from which it sprung already looked pretty good. The tower is depicted in the background. The Babylonian gardens look almost as good as the Garden of Eden….

  236. AltanBakshi says

    Slavs and Chinese are both extremes. Sinic languages/dialects are as far from each other as Romance languages are(there are proper dialect variations inside Mandarin, but thats another topic), Slavic languages are much closer to each other than Romanic ones, but English and German are farther away from each other than Romance languages. Slavlike situation is extremely rare in the Old World outside of Muslim countries. Yes its true that the Scandinavian languages are as close to each other as East Slavic ones, but is there a major mountain range between Russia and Ukraine like between Norway and Sweden, or sea, like between Sweden and Denmark?

    Hindi is officially one language, but its quite hard for Delhite to understand Bhojpuri or Maithili, even though they officially are part of the Hindi range. Same kind of situation occurs in Thailand, Center and Issan, Burma, Indonesia and so on, even in Japan. Currently Slavs behave like Arabs and Bantus, what a wonderful and exemplary company!

    17th century unia with Poland, daydreaming again? But now I will go to banya.

  237. Slavs and Chinese are both extremes

    Germanics seem to be more fractured than Slavs. Germans themselves were divided for much of their history, and no Slavic nation warred against itself as brutally or lengthily as Germany did during the 30 Years War. As I had mentioned, the Dutch and the Germans are as close as Ukrainians and Russians, with no major geographic boundaries, yet they never united.

    Yes its true that the Scandinavian languages are as close to each other as East Slavic ones, but is there a major mountain range between Russia and Ukraine like between Norway and Sweden, or sea, like between Sweden and Denmark?

    Regarding Norway – Bergen and Trondheim are isolated from Sweden by mountains, but the largest population center around Oslo is on the same plain as Sweden. The water boundary between Denmark and Sweden is small enough that a bridge connects them; Copenhagen is on an island and is closer to Sweden than it is to the Danish mainland (which has no geographic barrier with Germany). If anything, the greater geographic distances between the Slavic countries (Poland, Ukraine, Russia) make their separations more logical than those between Germany and Netherlands and Denmark.