The latest in our series of translations of Russian national-conservative intellectual Egor Kholmogorov.
This massive opus, which will be published in two parts, is the closest thing there is to a condensed historiosophy of Kholmogorov’s.
Russians in the 2oth Century. Part I: Origins to WWII
Translated by Fluctuarius Argenteus
Original: http://100knig.com/russkie-v-xx-veke/
Early Stages of Russian Ethnic History
The modern Russian nation grew out of the Old Rus people, whose identity had already started to coalesce in the 9th century, as evidenced by a 839 embassy to Frankish emperor Louis the Pious, where the ambassadors claimed they were representing “a people named Ros.”
Over the 9-11th centuries, the Old Rus people assimilated a number of East Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes, Scandinavian and West Slavic ethnic and social groups, developed a national awareness based around the concept of the Russian Land and Orthodox Christian identity, formed elements of high and everyday culture and lifestyle, as well as environmental, economic, and colonisation strategies.
The Old Rus identity was so durable that even the period of terrible Mongol onslaught and subsequent raids, political vassalage, and onerous tribute did not significantly hamper their development and territorial expansion. Starting in the 13-14th century, the Russians rapidly expanded to the north of the East European Plain. The system of small villages connected mainly through rivers and other waterways, allowed it to cover enormous and hard-to-colonise territories with a network of populated centres. An enormous role in the Russian colonisation was played by Orthodox monasteries, which, even at the most remote limits of Russia, acted as hotbeds of economic activity and culture.
The Russian state around 1500.
Over the 15th and 16th centuries Russia is formed as an early nation-state that identified the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its dependencies with the Old Rus and claiming the entirety of the Old Russian national legacy, above all the lands of Western and Southwestern Rus that had been annexed by Lithuania and Poland. In those lands, the population gradually developed the peculiarities of the Little Russian and Belorussian branches of the Russian nation. Together with disintegrating factors, such as Polonisation or Catholisation, there were also uniting factors, such as Orthodox communion and a common struggle for Orthodoxy.
In the East and South, we see the mass migration of Russians to the Urals, Siberia, and the Black Sea steppes, the construction of the Great Abatis Line and the emergence of a unique Cossack military and social system, which brought these lands away from nomad dominance and under intensive Russian colonisation and economic exploitation.
By the end of the 17th century, Russia grew to be the largest continental empire on Earth, even if the population was sparse and unevenly distributed. The Russians became one of the largest ethnic groups, with a rich and original culture, language, Orthodox tradition, and folkway. The existence of a Russian civilisation became a fait accompli.
Imperial Contradictions
The Imperial period in Russian history was coloured by contradictory processes. On the one hand, the expansion of the state continued, uniting the Belorussian and most of the Little Russian branches of the Russian people within a single state, leading to their mutual influence and enrichment as parts of a unified nation. In spite of roadblocks set up by serfdom, an intensive territorial expansion of the Russian population went on. In many cases, a widespread “escape from the state” only intensified the settlement of new territories by runaway serfs. Russian settlement completely engulfed Novorossiya and Crimea, North Caucasus, the Altai, and Ussuria. The Russians became the dominant ethnic group in the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia, and energetically made their way into Central Asia and the Baltics, with many Russian communities also springing up in Transcaucasia. Russian colonisation even spread beyond the borders of Russia, leading to “Yellow Russia” projects in Manchuria.
Ethnicities of the Russian Empire in 1916.
On the other hand, the Empire absorbed large populations marked by a foreign cultural, ethnic, and even civilisation identity. Their integration into the Russian cultural matrix was hamstrung by the following problem: even for the Russians themselves, the civilisation standard of Russian culture ceased to be seen as fundamental. The reforms of Peter the Great caused it to be supplanted by the European standard. Social life was marred by cultural gaps and cultural cringe, a mutual estrangement between the upper and lower classes, when the élite could barely converse in their native tongue. In this period, the Orthodox faith, professed by all estates of the society, remained the sole unifying factor of national cultural identity. Rejecting the Russian civilisation standard led to a decline of folk culture. Rather than an ideal for ethnic minorities to aspire to, Russification began to be seen as a useless half-measure, getting in the way of a direct Europeanisation of specific ethnic groups and their ultimate independence from Russia.
At the same time, the 19th century saw a tremendous effort of synthesizing a modern Russian national culture. It was marked by the birth of national historiography, journalism, religious and philosophical thought. Russian poetry and prose reached an unparalleled splendour, becoming one of the cornerstones of world culture.
The Slavophile doctrine revindicated Russian civilisational sovereignty. Yury Samarin’s [portrait right by Vasily Tropinin] and Mikhail Katkov’s polemical essays defended political nationalism, claiming that Russian culture and Russian national character are meant to integrate the entirety of the Empire’s population into a single whole, subject to the same laws, speaking a single language and having a common culture.
At the same time, we can see the the sources of the artificial separation of the Little Russian and Belorussian branches of the Russian nation. The cultural “Ukrainophile” movement in Galicia, beyond the borders of the Russian Empire, evolves into a cohesive Ukrainian separatism with its own version of history, its own purpose-built language, and political claims to all of Southern Russia. On a smaller scale the same reorientation happened with Belorussians. In both cases, one can easily see the interests of rival nations and empires, mostly Poles and Austrians, attempting to convert a part of the Russian population into a buffer between them and the Russian ethnopolitical core. Certain elements of this alienation even permeated Imperial statistics where “Great”, “Little”, and “White” Russians were counted and mapped separately.
Demonstration by the Union of the Russian People.
Early 20th Century Crisis
In the early decades of the 20th century, the Russians were faced with a systemic crisis. Social antagonism between the peasantry and the upper classes of the Empire intensified. Still largely agrarian, Russia lagged behind in developing a non-class-based national awareness in the majority of the common folk. Mass schooling, an essential factor of nation-building, was underdeveloped, the army operated in the context of a royalist rather than national patriotism, the Church, faced with revolutionary and anti-clerical propaganda, was forced to be on the defensive instead of taking any active nation-building measures.
The development of national and patriotic awareness unfolded mostly in the educated classes, with an emerging national ideology, a demand for national culture, and patriotism as the ideological norm. However, the intelligentsia by and large preferred Liberalism and Socialism, including its Marxist strain. In the fight for the masses, national ideology faced fierce competition from revolutionary ideology, which was as anti-national as it was anti-monarchy and anti-capitalist.
The interpretation of Russia as the “prison of nations” and a desire to “liberate” ethnic minorities at any cost, including the open support of separatism, was the mainstay of most Russian revolutionary factions, from Liberals to Social-Democrats (Bolsheviks). Even before the collapse of the monarchy, the ethnic fringes of the Empire saw aggressive anti-Russian movements, especially the 1916 Central Asian uprising in a large part fanned by Turkish special services.
Stolypin in the State Duma.
On a state level, the Imperial government more and more identified with Russian national values. In 1912, the State Duma passed a law that separated the Russian and Orthodox-majority Chełm (Kholm) Governorate from the Kingdom of Poland. The ethno-religious factor was put before reasons of political geography. Even more ethnocentric and Russian-favouring were the policies of Pyotr Stolypin, specifically his bill regarding zemstvo [local self-government] in the Western Krai [essentially modern-day Belarus], pushed against both left- and right-wing resistance in the Duma and the State Council. However, the assassination of the nationalist Prime Minister, social crisis, and state collapse put a decades-long stop to pro-Russian ethnic policies.
Revolutionary Russophobia
The downfall of the monarchy, anarchy, endless ephemeral governments and republics, the civil war – all of this led not only to separatism in the non-Russian periphery but also cemented the schism of the Russian people. With a Ukrainian People’s Republic proclaimed in Kiev, Ukrainian separatism became a major factor in the intervention and civil war. In addition to the Belorussian Rada, there were active attempts to promote Cossack, Siberian, and Far Eastern separatism.
If most Whites supported the idea of a “united and indivisible Russia” and were Russian nationalists and patriots, the Bolsheviks actively employed the slogans of ethnic equality and supported the separatist forces of ethnic groups living in the Volga and North Caucasus regions. Bolshevik policies in those lands were markedly anti-Russian. While reconquering secessionist statelets, the Soviets positioned their régimes as national workers’ governments fighting against national bourgeois governments. For the Bolshevik leadership, the ethnic breakup of Russia and the Russians was self-evidently inevitable.
Ukrainization campaign in Odessa.
While constructing the USSR, the Bolshevik leaders politically reinforced the separations of Little Russians (renamed to Ukrainians) and Belorussians from Great Russians, now seen as the sole nation that the term “Russian” encompassed. On the other hand, they rejected the plans for a “Russian Republic” which implied the secession of Tatar, Bashkir, etc. republics from the RSFSR.
The USSR turned into an asymmetrical edifice, with its weakest point being the enshrinement of Ukrainian separatism. In 1924, Mykhaylo Hrushevsky, a leading ideologue of Ukrainisation, returned to Kiev and charted the course for imposing the Ukrainian language and identity via Soviet mass schooling. The national policies of early Bolshevik rule were based on systematic Russophobia. The Russians were seen, to quote Lenin, as a people “great only in their violence, only as great as bullies are.” The Bolshevik headman called for a purge of government administration from “a veritable sea of chauvinist Great Russian scum.”
The relations between the Russians and other ethnic groups were to be based on a complete humilitation of the Russian people as a way for them to atone for past injustices. As Nikolay Bukharin deigned to speak for all Russians, “we, as a former imperial nation, must place ourselves in unequal conditions by way of giving even more leeway to national movements.” The creators of the USSR seemed to imagine it as a prison for the Russian people where the Russian people were serving a sentence for the Russian Empire, officially dubbed “the prison of nations”.
Fortunately, even this affirmative action internationalism had its limitations. The Bolshevik leadership ostracised and annihilated the group of Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, a Tatar nationalist who championed the separation of a Tatar-Bashkir-Chuvash state from the RSFSR, “with rights equal to those of the Ukraine”, and creating a Turan Republic in Central Asia. Sultan-Galiev’s rationale for those projects was that they were “terrible for Russian nationalism but harmless for the Revolution.” In this particular case, geopolitical reasons and the principle of state unity prevailed over the strictures of Bolshevik doctrine.
Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, ideologue of the Red Turan.
The revolution and civil war divided the Russians into Reds and White, the latter forced into emigration. Numerically the White émigrés were incomparable to the Russians that had remained in the Motherland; the breakup was more along educational and social lines. Russia was deprived of most of its bourgeoisie, officers, intelligentsia, and clergy. The Russian culture broke into three parts: émigré, official Soviet, and “forcefully Soviet” (paying only lip service to the conditions imposed by the Soviet régime).
The philosophers’ ship.
A Nation on the Brink of Liquidation
Of course, the ideological thought of the Russian intelligentsia kept working on restoring national unity, building bridges between the sundered Russian world. Popular both in Soviet Russia and among émigrés, the ideology of the Smenovekhovtsy called for all patriots to work for the USSR, seeing it not as a Communist tyranny but a common Motherland, a homeland of the Russian nation, while awaiting a gradual national transformation, a Russification of Bolshevism. This ideology kept most Russian intellectuals and specialists from emigrating and supported their desire to work for the Motherland while waiting for better times to come. As a result, Russia kept within its Soviet borders a critical mass of people with a developed national awareness.
Among the peasantry, still forming the majority of the nation, conformism with regards to the Soviet system was intertwined with economic pragmatism: the Soviets solved the question of land ownership and slowly unfolded development programmes in the countryside. As a result, the peasants were lukewarm regarding the gradual erosion of national culture and church tradition, especially given that the foundations of country lifestyle remained largely the same.
Participants of the Tambov Rebellion.
The Bolshevik onslaught against the peasantry was repelled by an acrimonious civil war that the Soviets had to endure after having defeated the Whites. Nominally, the Kronstadt, Tambov, and Don rebellions were crushed, and the 1921-23 famine decimated Russian peasantry, but in fact the Communist assault against the country was frozen for almost a decade. Revolutionary upheavals were mostly limited to urban areas.
Nevertheless, in 1928-32 the Soviets dealt a terrible blow both to the traditional peasant lifestyle and Russian national consciousness, preserved by the Smenovekhovtsy intelligentsia. The collectivisation wrecked the traditional life of the Russian countryside and started the machinery of repression and population transfer (both forceful and voluntary). The 1932-33 famine stroke a second demographic blow after the one in 1921-23 to the Russian peasantry. The excess mortality index in Southwestern Russia (Ukraine), the Volga region, and North Caucasus oscillated between 2.6 and 3.2 over the normal. The largest depopulation occurred in Krasnodar and Stavropol krais, as well as Donetsk, Lugansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, and Zaporozhye oblasts – meaning that the so-called Holodomor was thrust mainly against Novorossiya.
Exile of the Kulaks.
Anti-clerical policies, enacted right after the revolution, intensified during the “Godless Five Years”, which saw mass closure and demolishment of churches and mass executions of priesthood. For most of the Russian population, the road to traditional church life was severed.
At the same time, a campaign of elimination targeted the Smenovekhovtsy intellectuals. A series of show trials (“Academy Affair”, “Vesna affair”, “Slavic Studies Affair”, the Industrial Party and Peasant Labour Party trials) all but stamped out the milieu of non-Communist academics, intellectuals, and specialists who collaborated with the Soviets out of national and patriotic sentiment.
Removal of the Monument to Nakhimov in Sevastopol, 1928.
The 1920s and the 1930s were the apex of anti-Russian propaganda with Bolshevik slogans. Pravda published doggerel like the following: “Russia! Are you through? Are you gone? Have you croaked at last? Well, good riddance to you, as you didn’t live but only kept moaning in a dark and narrow hut”. In 1928, a monument to Admiral Pavel Nakhimov was torn down in Sevastopol for being offensive to Turkish sailors that entered the seaport. In 1932, the Narkompros [education ministry] ordered a monument to General Nikolay Raevsky on the Borodino battlefield to be turned into scrap metal, claiming it was “devoid of any historical or artistic value”.
This practice of historical nihilism and systematic humiliation of Russian national sentiment had its theoretical foundations in Nikolay Pokrovsky’s school of historiography that treated the entirety of Russian history as that of a “prison of nations” and painted national heroes as flunkies of the Tsars and bourgeois capital. By 1933, the Russian nation as a community joined by common memory, traditions, and cultural practices stood on the brink of destruction, ravaged by both ideological denationalisation and economic collectivisation brought about by Communism.
A Forced National Revival
The right-wing swerve of capitalist Europe after the rise of the Nazi Party forced the Communists to review their policies. It became impossible to ignore the national factor in foreign affairs with the same ease as they did within the country.
The Soviets start employing Russianness not only to describe the internationalist duty of the “nation of bullies”, not only as the idea of Russians as a vanguard revolutionary nation, but while appealing to Russian cultural and historical tradition. This tradition was no longer seen as a purely negative factor or something to be outlived. The era of “Let’s melt down Minin and Pozharsky” [1] doggerel was over. Stalin himself voiced a demand for “a Bolshevik Ilovaysky” (pre-revolutionary history manuals written by Dmitry Ilovaysky were a byword for ultraconservative nationalist historiography). The Pokrovsky school was subjected to an ideological interdiction. A series of films and books came out, glorifying the national heroes of the past – Alexander Nevsky, Minin and Pozharsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov. A symbolic watershed came in November 1936 with a well-orchestrated critical savaging of Tairov’s opera The Bogatyrs, with a thoroughly Russophobic libretto by Demyan Bedny.
Of even greater importance that changes in the rarified heights of political atmosphere were the decision to curtail the korenizatsiya in Soviet republics and autonomies, and switching all national alphabets to Cyrillic (even more surprising given that the Latinisation of Russian script was discussed in earnest in the earlier 1930s). All schools faced more stringent requirements for compulsory Russian teaching.
However, this ideological renovation did not mean an end to Soviet internationalist aggression against the Russians. The dismemberment of Russian national territory continued into the 1930s. In 1936, to coincide with the new Soviet constitution, a Kyrgyz and a Kazakh Soviet Republic were carved out of the RSFSR, and the authors of ideologically approved official histories of those republics emphasised colonial oppression in Imperial times.
A new wave of repression in 1937-38 dealt a new blow to the Russian. The purges targeted not only Communist apparatchiks but also clergy, military specialists, and intelligentsia, deemed “ideologically hazardous” for this or that reason. Russian culture was robbed of dozens of great scientists, thinkers, and writers.
The Great War
The Great Patriotic War was the time of unthinkable trials for the Russian people. Hitler’s aggression saw as its end the complete destruction of Russian statehood, the dismemberment of the country, and its breakup along ethnic lines. The war was waged to destroy the Russians, not the Soviets, and Nazi policies were based on a complete disdain for Russian cultural heritage (“all and any cultural values in the East do not matter”, said the infamous order signed by Walther von Reichenau), as well as for civilian lives (e.g., the mass starvation of Leningrad citizens was planned regardless of whether the city surrendered or not).
It is not surprising that the war triggered a rapid national upsurge, a development of Russian patriotism that called for victory over the invaders. The great Russian thinker Ivan Ilyin noted in a wartime article written for the Swiss press that “the further the war extended in time and space, the more noticeable was the Russian instinct of self-preservation, the greater was the resolve of the Russians to repel the enemy, the more the warring masses subjected themselves to the discipline of the national High Command while ignoring the Communist régime…”
Ilyin also claimed that “the collective memory of the First World War, where Russia’s desertion led to a terrible 25-year long retribution, led to the thought that this new war had to be loyally fought to the end.” That is why the level of active collaborationism was much lower than Hitler’s analysts expected based on the pre-war anti-Russian policies of the Soviets. Pro-Nazi collaborationism “in the name of the Russian people” was the province of numerically insignificant groups.
The war took a terrible toll on the Russians, bringing untold grief, gigantic demographic losses (a third demographic collapse in 30 years), and untold destruction. At the same time, the Russians restored their self-awareness as a great nation with a unique historical mission. The self-awareness as a nation of victors, cemented in wartime propaganda, became a part for millions of people a part of their personal consciousness. The word “Russian” reached a worldwide prestige rarely seen in Imperial times.
It seemed that the USSR would turn to a national/imperial model with a clear Russian dominance. This idea even dawned upon several high-ranking RSFSR apparatchiks. A noticeable change was the expansion of the Russian habitat after a long period of shrinkage. The newly annexed East Prussia, Southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands were settled almost exclusively with ethnic Russians. These lands became core Russian territories, largely against the grain of Stalin’s plans for using East Prussia as a bargaining chip in a gamble for “a unified neutral Germany”. Essentially, Kaliningrad was claimed for the Russians thanks to Konrad Adenauer’s recalcitrance; the West German chancellor saw Germany only as a part of the Western bloc.
However, the consequences of deportations in the North Caucasus and Crimea were much more dramatic for the Russians. The regions became almost exclusively Russian, but the rehabilitation and return of the deported ethnic groups led to inter-ethnic conflict, terrorism, and anti-Russian pogroms. Even during this period, the interest of Russians weren’t always put first – e.g., the request of Carpathian Ruthenian representatives to annex their land to the Russian (as opposed to Ukrainian) Soviet republic was declined.
The effect of annexing Western Ukraine to the Ukrainian SSR proved to be quite dubious. The Soviets spent more than a decade on suppressing Banderite terror gangs, but even after that Galicia kept contaminating the rest of the republic with the most radical strain of Ukrainian nationalism, founded upon a zoological hatred of the “Moskals”. By the end of the 1980s, that ideology had infested most of the Ukrainian SSR population, Ukrainised in the Soviet manner, and gave fruit that were more and more anti-Russian in nature.
Election of the Patriarch Alexey I (Simansky) in 1945.
An important part of the patriotic swerve was a partial rapprochement between Soviet régime and the Russian Orthodox Church. The traditional hierarchy with the Patriarch at the head was restored, the schism of the Living Church [2] liquidated, most of the country gained access to Orthodox sacraments and rituals, and thus to ages-old Russian cultural milieu. Orthodoxy was largely restored as a part of the vision of Russian identity.
Regardless of its ideological intent, the post-war educational revolution had enormous repercussions for the Russians. A multitude of new colleges gave a higher or specialised education to most young men and women, while most schools attempted to emulate pre-revolutionary classical gymnasia, even if only in look and feel. However, it should be kept in mind that, for the entirety of post-war Stalin’s rule, college education in the country of triumphant socialism was not free but paid.
[1] An infamous poem by Soviet poet Dzhek Altauzen (1907 – 1942), referring the monument to in the Red Square commonly seen as an iconic symbol of Russian patriotism.
[2] A schism in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s-40s that called for a “modernisation” of church doctrine and rituals along Marxist lines and collaborated with the Soviets.
unique historical mission…Russian nationalists should really ditch this demented Messiah complex, nations with an eschatological conception of their own role in history tend to be insufferable.
I very much doubt that, by the 1950s almost all Germans were gone from East Prussia, this would hardly have been reversed.
There’s probably lots more to criticize about this piece (its treatment of Ukraine seems characteristically one-sided), but I’ll leave that to others with better knowledge.
Being a insufferable nation is not so bad at all.
On a related note:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_of_Russian_Solidarists
The flag at the above linked site (in the form of an NTS pin) is especially problematical for some.
The Whites aren’t a fully well understood group, c/o left leaning biases and sheer anti-Russian propaganda, meshed with a subconscious influence (JRL shouldn’t be exclusively relied on for otherwise quite obvious reasons).
http://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/
Excerpt –
“The Russian Civil War era Whites have been criticized for not being so forthcoming to the national aspirations of non-Russian peoples of the former Russian Empire. For clarity sake, keep in mind the historical period under review. Many of the national independence movements weren’t as well developed and as popular as they were to become. There’s also the matter of some non-Russians favoring a continued existence with Russia. The Whites weren’t exclusively ethnic Russian.
Many Brits of that Russian Civil War period were on the verge of accepting an independent Ireland (excluding the pro-British Protestant majority north of that island), unlike other parts of the British Empire, which eventually achieved independence. The Russian Civil War era Whites expressed the commitment to recognizing Polish and Finnish independence within mutually acceptable boundaries, unlike some other independence movements. There’s good reason to believe that over time and with some bumps, a hypothetically victorious White Russian side would’ve been able to reach a common ground with most, if not all of the former Russian Empire territories.”
That observation relates to the point concerning a good number of people brought up on one bias, without getting a more complete overview. That scenario leads to a subconscious slant. Regarding this very matter, it seems apparent that some establishment venues/individuals intentionally leave out the valid counters which don’t conform with their preferences.
On the subject of Russia, Ukraine and the Russian Civil War, this option missed out in large part because of the strategic positioning at the time:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/22052011-pavlo-skoropadsky-and-the-course-of-russian-ukrainian-relations-analysis/
An anti-Communist, post Russian Empire alternative for Russo-Ukrainian togetherness.
So many inaccuracies under the guise of Russian messianism, where does one begin? After assigning six centuries of early ‘ethnic’ history to the great Russian school of thought (totally ignoring Ukrainian and Byelorusian trends) the author finally get it somewhat right with the real beginnings of Russian history:
‘Claiming’ this legacy, however, in no ways substantiates its exclusivity nor its validity!
Wishful thinking and pure nonsense, in full view within Ukraine where the Ukrainian idea has more than modestly eclipsed the idea of an all Russian triune nation. This was true already by the early part of the 20th century and is even more certainly true today.
Total nonsense! Hrushevsky had no part in setting national policies in Ukraine, but was lured back there with an offer to chair the Kyiv Academy of Sciences. But his return back to Ukraine ensured his daily surveillance by the party and eventual demise.
More nonsense. The areas of ‘Novorosiya’ always were and remain predominantly Ukrainian, and thus reflected the total malaise of Russian sympathy exhibited recently in the Russian inspired unrest in South Eastern Ukraine. Within the Crimea, it’s true that Russian ethnic presence supersedes Ukrainian and Tatar,but not by the overwhelming ‘engulfment’ referred to by Komogorov. All in all, a bunch of fractured fairy tales sewed together to provide warm fuzzies for the likes of Karlin, severely lacking in depth of thought or substance.
The Soviets did collaborate with Ukrainians outside Soviet Ukraine to develop the modern day Ukrainian language.
The 19th century saw the noticeable development of a separate Ukrainian national identity, which was by no means as popular as it was to become. During this period in the former Russian Empire part of Ukraine, there existed a regional pride among many who proudly saw themselves as a part of Russia. In what’s now the former Habsburg part of Ukraine, there was a noticeable pro-Russian sympathy, as evidenced by the friendly reception that Russian forces received there en route to put down the Hungarian rebellion in the late 1840s. I know someone in his eighties, whose father was from Galicia. The latter recalled conversations with Cherkess and Cossack border guards about a reunified Russia.
“nations with an eschatological conception of their own role in history tend to be insufferable”
is there any nation without such a concept?
You misunderstand. There is nothing messianic about this. The idea here is that God put each nation on Earth with its own unique mission, which is to do their thing.
What Kholmogorov is saying here, to put it in simpler terms, is that post WWII the Russians were finally allowed to think that “it’s okay to be Russian.”
Especially in the last days of the USSR and thereafter.
While the USSR still existed, I recall a Soviet analyst disagreeably replying with a sovok influenced Westerner who belittled pre-Soviet Russia’s development.
Well, go for it Averko! Plenty of reason here for Ukraine to become a Russian satellite state again, aping Russian imperial dreams and culture. Or better yet, cut off Galicia and give it to the Poles and reestablish a ‘greater Novorosiya’ and annex it to Mother Russia ala Crimea? I think this is what keeps Karlin up late at night ater a few belts of vodka and a few rounds of singing ‘Kalinka’? 🙂
“Their integration into the Russian cultural matrix was hamstrung by the following problem”
Lack of Russian self confidence wasn’t the reason why peripheral peoples weren’t assimilated.
Densely populated regions inhabited by ethnic minorities of different race, language, religion and political traditions are impossible to assimilate.
The Russian Czars made a big mistake when they tried to incorporate unassimilable regions (Finland, Baltics, Poland, Moldavia, Transcaucasia, Chechnya etc., Central Asia).
They should have self-restricted their conquests to areas already inhabited by East Slavs, or sparsely inhabited temperate and arctic regions suitable for colonization by East Slavs – modern Belarus, Ukraine, Russia (minus Chechnya etc.), and northern Kazakhstan.
So many nice, warm and fuzzy myths.
Reality: a different peoples adopted the name of their mutual Scandinavian invaders and overlords, and kept it for a long time. Kind of like how Romanians, Romans, Romansch (in Switzerland), and Rum (ethnic Greeks in Turkey) all have similar names coming from the same old empire.
One interesting thing about 15th and 16th century Rus peoples is that that the Rus peoples of the commonwealth considered themselves to be Rus people, but referred to the people of Moscow as Muscovites. Conversely, the Rus people in Moscow referred to themselves as Rus people but to the Rus of the Commonwealth as Lithuanians. Both groups retained the Rus name for themselves but considered the other to be an Other and, generally, an enemy.
As for common struggle – in 15th-16th centuries this was mostly nonsense. The supreme commander of Polish-Lithuanian forces in their war against Moscow was a Orthodox Prince Ostrogsky, patron and supporter of Orthodox churches and monasteries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstanty_Ostrogski
When Polish-Lithuanian forces captured Moscow, some of the most savage destruction of Russian lands was at the hands of the Orthodox Cossack forces of the Commonwealth.
Only in the mid to late 17th century, during the Counter-Reformation, when Orthodoxy was reduced in status in the Commonwealth, did significant portion of Orthodox Rus turn to Moscow/Russia. But this was not universal.
Nothing “artificial”. Source is loose relationship to begin with, followed by centuries of separate development and massive foreign cultural contact/influence. Under such conditions separation is completely natural and expected. On the contrary – union is utterly artificial.
Initially, Austria and Russia were allies. So in Galicia, the Austrians promoted the Russian idea first. The result of this was that there was a stronger pro-Russian party among Galician Ukrainians than among Ukrainians in the Russian Empire. Only later did the Austrians switch their support to another group of East Slavs. Funny how Russian nationalists claim Ukrainian identify to be created by the Austrians but don’t give the same credit for the Russian idea.
This is just stupid. When Czech peasants moved to Prague (once a German-speaking city) and were taught in their own language by Czech activists, thereby turning Prague into a Czech-speaking city, was this “imposing Czech language and identity”? Ukrainianization simply meant teaching people in the language they spoke, rather than in a related but foreign language.
By “Russian settlement” the author included Ukrainians. This region experienced significant ethnic Russian settlement but was about 80% Ukrainian/20% Russian around 1900. Russian percentage increased under Soviets.
Dostoyevsky (I am paraphrasing) – every real nation thinks that it and only it will save the world. Nations who don’t think like this are merely ethnographic material.
While a little more subtle than what many modern day Russian nationalists love to promote, this pearl of lunacy equates to the Russian nationalist trope that unstrustworthy and Russophobic ‘Poles and Austrians’ were instrumental in promoting Ukrainianism, never mind Shevchenko and his circle of friends. But when queried just a little bit about just who exactly these ‘Poles and Austrians’ were, or how exactly they hatched their nefarious plans, the discussion evaporates and they all seem to vanish into the woodwork. Poles, Austrians, I’ve even read about some imaginary Hungarian generals behind it all, everybody but Ukrainians themselves? 🙂
This was the point that I was trying to make. Not really indicative of ‘Russian engulfment’ as a casual reading might lead somebody to believe.
I agree with your concern.
However, I would question that it is maybe a little naive to assume as if any nation can escape from these kind of ‘existential projects’ (I think Sartre’s terminology is appropriate here).
You can reply about how countries like Spain or Italy seem to lack these ambitions. But you can equally see these messianic drive is instead thrown into the irrationality of EU project.
Likewise, there are countries like Sweden, that assert their interest in becoming a ‘moral super-power’ (in some sense the most messianic belief of all, as if they will take on the function even of a deity).
In all this, I admire very much the model of German and – particularly – Japan, where some of this sublimated into megalomania to make everyone drive their cars or play their excellent board games (former country) or video games (latter country).
Bangladesh and nations like it. They have no delusions about themselves; I haven’t met any Bengali with an outsized idea of what Bangladesh’s role is in world affairs except being Bangladesh. Very humble people. I expect much the same from, say, Madagascar and Ecuador.
Peace.
I much preferred Shiropayev’s account of Russian history
https://www.counter-currents.com/2016/01/prison-of-the-nation-part-1/
This processes – occurred in all great European countries.
In Russia, as always, everything just in a later and more brutal and accelerated form, with this permanent feeling of ‘desperate catching up’.*
It might be recalled, English poet, William Blake, writing of industrialization and dislocation at beginning of the 19th century, of the “dark Satanic Mills” and destruction of the English peasantry, which all sounds as familiar, but was written many decades earlier, than even idyllic picturesque country life could still be described in Russian novelists (who in opposition to British literature, were naively advocating such reform and industrialization).
In cultural sphere – there was some fortune that the cultural flowering came at a particular junction, later than in the West, as many art-forms – let’s say e.g. the novel – were already technically perfected a couple decades earlier in France, could be rapidly imported into Russia.
And that Tchaikovsky and even more late-flowering, Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, already have the modern harmonic palette pre-developed for them.
But that the national geniuses were later, but not arriving too late to join the conversation. By the onset of 20th century, the total exhaustion of European high-culture was already underway in the West.
A good essay. One cannot however accept the idea that the transformation in Soviet policy happened suddenly after January 1933. Not only had the Pokrovsky school, Proletkult, etc., been essentially abandoned before then, not even the change in foreign policy was due to events in Germany alone. The previous Japanese invasion of Manchuria had a strong influence in calculations at the time.
Plenty of Ukrainians who don’t buy into your convoluted notions. Ditto Rusyns, Belarusians and others.
The Habsburgites got edgy at the pro-Russian sentiment in their empire, thereby explaining a selective promotion of Ukrainian identity, which encouraged separatism in the Russian Empire unlike the Habsburg variant.
Russia shouldn’t have helped the Habsburgs in the late 1840s.
Better for them to indulge in nationalist fantasies, intoxicated in hatred of neighbours, rehabilitate Nazi collaborators, while they become completely subservient to stronger economies of countries of alien cultures, whose brothels their women rapidly fill.
I don’t think or want that they need to annex anymore to Russia – I don’t see the advantage from directly taking onboard another failed state from either perspective. But they should have taken a strategy to be a median point – Belarus, which is already providing a successful example.
You’ve your own fuzzy myths.
The ancestors of modern day Ukrainians weren’t so gung ho in being subjects of Poland, with Russian-Ukrainian deeper than Polish-Ukrainian ones, as evidenced by how most Poles view Rus, relative to how Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Rusyns at large view Rus.
When the independent part of Rus was strong enough to overtake the Poles, many of the ancestors of modern day Ukrainians and Belarusians felt okay with being together again.
In 1812, the ancestors of modern day Ukrainians overwhelmingly supported Russia against Napoleon, much unlike the Poles.
Depends on when. They were fairly loyal until the mid 17th century. As I wrote, Rus were strong anti-Moscow fighters in the 16th century; main Polish-Lithuanian commander in those anti-Moscow wars was a Rus prince. Ukrainian Orthodox slaughtered Muscovites mercilessly when together with Poles they captured Moscow (the Cossack officer Andriy Nalyvaiko, and Orthodox Rus, was infamous for impaling Muscovite nobles). Ukrainian Orthodox together with Poles fought the Turks to a standstill at the epic Khotyn battle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khotyn_(1621)
The Ukrainian Hetman and the Polish supreme commander both died, fighting on the same side.
As for “togetherness” when Russian nobleman Andrei Kurbsky moved to the Lithuanian Rus after 1564 he described in his memories being treated as a foreigner and referred to as a Moskal rather than as a Rus. Even marrying a Volhynian wasn’t enough to get him accepted by the locals. Rus writings from Poland-Lithuania considered Rus and Muscovites to be two different peoples.
Perceptions were mutual. Muscovite sources in the early 17th century refer to Muscovites as Russkie Liudi but to Rus from Lithuania or Poland as inozemtsi, Poles or Lithuanians. So the Karamzin chronographer refers to “Lithuanian foreigner Ivan Storovsky.”
This togetherness mythology was created later. It would come as a surprise to most 16th century people.
Napoleon didn’t go through Ukraine so we have no way of knowing.
However there were plenty of volunteers from among Rusyns, who joined the Poles in the 19th century anti-Russian rebellions. Even the main Russophile leader, Ivan Naumovich, did so in his youth.
A common activity. This article is an excellent example.
Mostly a myth. Wanting separation is not hatred.
Which ones? Allies of convenience are not collaborators, unless you mean Stalin was also a collaborator, or Churchill a collaborator of Stalin.
Is subservience to an economy of a more similar culture and filling its brothels better?
Poland is a much more successful example. This is the approach they should have taken from the beginning.
I think we can all agree, Ukraine would have better without the coup and unrest.
Even many Ukrainian nationalists, with a time-machine, would have go back to beginning of 2014, and said ‘sure we are no fan of Yanukovich, but let’s better chill out rather than destabilize country and its relations with neighbours, rather than this nightmare alternative’.
The best situation for Ukraine was to stay friends with its sibling, while also trying to maintain friendly relations with the West, which gave it bargaining power with both sides. It had a potential role as bridge between East and West, and as such with a greater leverage over both.
Now bridges are burned, and there is little left than to be exploited – in position of strategic weakness – by the Western countries.
Poland is indeed a possible role model, as they managed to negotiate vast transfers of tens of billions of dollars – still ongoing today – from the EU. But it doesn’t seem as if the EU will be in such a generous mood to repeat this exercise anymore – and especially, in Ukraine, in which generous funds will rapidly disappear.
And yet all same drawbacks of European integration will be present (including emigration of large parts of workforce to higher-income states), without such a generous compensating factor that Poland had and still receives.
The hope for Ukraine is a return to power of more pro-Russian politicians, but this seems unlikely now to be possible given current opinions of the wider population. Lukashenko type solution has probably expired. That said, even Georgia – which in some sense was fortunate to never have the EU carrot- has now returned to a more moderated position.
There is no difference in fundamentals between Ukrainian nationalism proper and its domesticated Soviet-style version.
Both Soviet and non-Soviet Ukranian nationalisms are based on the following central assumptions:
1) The Ukrainian language is not a dialect, patois, local variety, sociolect, or anything else of Russian but a separate language. Literature, press, science, etc. in Ukrainian are viable and should be actively propagated;
2) Ukrainians are not a regional, sub-ethnic, dialectal or ethnographic group or variety of Russians. They are not like Swabians in relation to Germans, or Sicilians in relation to Italians, or Andalusians in relation to Spaniards, or Gascons in relation to Frenchmen, but a completely separate ethnic group. Consequently, the Ukrainian identity is not regional, or local, or sub-ethnic, or sociolectal; it can only be national. One can be both Scottish and British, or Provençal and French, or Bavarian and German at the same time, but being both Ukrainian and Russian is a contradictio in adjecto;
3) Consequently, having a separate language and national identity, Ukranians have a right to self-determination and their own separate state, nation, or polity.
These principle varied in intensity only. Essentially, the Soviet position was that the Ukrainian SSR IS the Ukrainian nation-state. Never at any point during its existence did the Soviets deviate from those principles, however mild and domesticated their application might seem to a Ukrainian nationalist.
These 3 principles bring the Soviet vision infinitely far away from the most liberal Imperial views on the Ukrainian question and much closer to hardcore Banderaism. Consequently, the transition of the Ukraine to nationhood was infinitely facilitated by almost 70 years of Soviet schooling and propagation of the Ukrainian language and identity.
Not all of them, but the ones you choose to highlight. As for the present, I’ve yet to run into someone of Ukrainian background who isn’t favorable towards Taras Bulba, the fictional main character in Gogol’s novel, who leads an attack against Polish rule. Gogol wrote other works which were clearly not sympathetic to Poland/Polish rule.
Some did, which didn’t mean that such a view reflected all.
You’re good at cherry picking and interpreting to your slant. Daniel of Galicia and Alexander Nevsky didn’t view each other in such a manner – noticeably opposite.
The anti-Russian Banderite manner would come as a surprise to Daniel of Galicia.
If the Russian Empire ancestors were anti-Russian and pro-Napoleon, they had the ideal moment to go against Russia in 1812. They didn’t while exhibiting quite the opposite.
In conclusion, there has been a good deal of mythology in Ukrainian nationalist leaning historical circles. Kept chronicles from Rus reveal a common language.
Yes, in his youth, the biases at a pro-Polish leaning seminary got the better of him. His change to a pro-Russian orientation was greatly influenced by the considerable opposition to Poland among, Rusyns, Ruthenians, Little Russians ,Ukrainians, or however you want to term them.
While most Ukrainians would prefer not to have the Donbas war and Crimea taken, most Ukrainians are glad that Yanukovich is gone and are pleased with the pro-Western orientation, even of they are not happy about the current particular rulers. They do not regret what you inaccurately describe as a “coup.”
When I was there last summer, I never heard a single regret about his overthrow, from anybody. I had, over the years of visits, heard people getting the collapse of the USSR, but not as single person complained about Yanukovich’s overthrow or wish it hadn’t happened. Maybe if Ukraine had kept spiraling downward, by now it would have been a different story. But it hasn’t, and it isn’t.
This situation existed but was squandered by the ruling elite for the purpose of personal enrichment and to line their own pockets.
Burning the bridge with Russia and forcing greater of dependence from one side reduces the ability to do so: there is less opportunity to reduce corruption by playing towards the other side, so people are better off.
Translation: Soviets had a more realistic view of Ukrainians and fantasized less about them.
Let’s compare Soviet-era ideas about antibiotics, or mass literacy, etc. to smear someone as “Soviet-like.”
But one can be both Ukrainian and Soviet. And according to Soviets, Ukrainians and Russians were brother-peoples fated to be united as Soviets.
This, btw, is very similar to the old Triuune idea of 19th century Little Russian pro-Russian nationalists. There were separate Little Russian and Great Russian peoples, with their own languages and cultures, but they were part of the one Rus people.
Little Russians were not seen as a subset of Great Russians, the Little Russian language was not seen as a mere dialect of the Great Russian language. Both were separate and equal branches of Rus, one not better than the other, just bigger. The Soviets just recycled this old idea, but used the name “Ukrainians” because it had achieved wide usage and popularity by 1918. It was a return to ideas of the mid-19th century and rejection of modern late 19th/early 20th century ideas.
Name some, of the stature of Ostrogski or Sahaidachny (no obscurites, please), of the 16th century, the topic of discussion. You are fond of empty words, provide some examples.
They were from the 15th or 16th centuries?
And it seems you are confusing Alexander Nevsky with his brother Andrei.
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/history-and-i/two-diplomats
Daniel and Andrei were plotting against the Mongols but Alexander, working with the Mongols and against the allied Rus princes, thwarted those plans.
As we said above, Daniel of Galicia visited Batu Khan in the Horde only once, in 1250, and that visit was brilliantly described in a chronicle, whereas Alexander Nevsky visited the Mongol capital at least three (some historians claim five) times. What is more, chronicles very much stint on details, only saying that the prince was there, saw the khan, and came back. So what did the “Saint and Most Orthodox” Alexander do in the headquarters of Batu and his successors? The answer is in the historical events of the 1250s-1260s. Let us recall them.
Pursuing a policy of “checks and balances” and not allowing one prince to get stronger at the expense of another, the Mongol khans nevertheless came across an unexpected event — a rapprochement, on an anti-Horde platform, between Prince Daniel of Galicia and Andrei Yaroslavich, Alexander Nevsky’s younger brother and the grand prince of Vladimir-Suzdal since 1250 under a Mongolian yarlyk. According to a medieval custom, the alliance of the two princes was consolidated with a family dynastic union — the marriage of Andrei Yaroslavich and Daniel’s daughter. Thus, bowing to the Horde, Daniel and Andrei were masterminding a large-scale uprising against the Mongol domination.
And what did Alexander Nevsky, an all-triumphant fighter against the foreign invaders of Rus’, do? In 1252 he went to Batu Khan’s headquarters (historians still argue whether he did so on his own or was summoned by the khan who, incidentally, had just managed to place his protege onto the great khan’s throne, thus greatly strengthening his position) to lodge a complaint against his brother Andrei for allegedly having usurped the grand prince’s power and, still worse, delaying the payment of tribute to the Horde. Can you imagine? Nevsky, incidentally, a winner of the giant 2009 TV competition “Name: Russia,” complained to the murderers who had poisoned his father Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, the Grand Prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, six years earlier for political considerations. Nevsky literally begged Batu’s son Sartak to give him a Mongol military unit in order to topple his brother from his throne.
As the chronicler says, once Andrei came to know that his brother had visited the Horde and the Mongol troops were approaching, he exclaimed in a righteous wrath: “Good Lord! What is this? How long shall we quarrel and set the Tartars against each other?!” But this still happened. The Horde’s army commanded by tsarevich Nevruy marched towards the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal. This invasion went down in history as Nevruy’s Expedition. The First Sophia Chronicle says that Prince Andrei took his regiments against Nevruy, and there was a fierce battle on the River Klyazma. Daniel of Galicia, who was too far away, could not send help to his ally Prince Andrei in time, and, besides, he had enough problems to tackle on his own western frontiers. The Vladimir, Suzdal and Tver forces were defeated in the Battle of Klyazma, Prince Andrei fled to Novgorod and then to Sweden. The sacking of Vladimir and Suzdal was almost as horrible as Batu Khan’s nightmare of 1238-40. Alexander Nevsky re-ascended the throne of the Vladimir-Suzdal grand prince.
Daniel, whose positions had been noticeably weakened, in spite of the royal crown given a bit later by Pope Innocent, and who pinned very little hope on European help, still decided to fight the Horde. In 1257 he drove Mongol basqaqs (tribute collectors) and Horde garrisons away from Galician and Volhynian cities. Remembering that Batu Khan was once unable to take Kremenets and Kholm, Daniel of Galicia hurried to reinforce the cities. In 1259 the troops of Kuremsa, a Horde prince and general, tried to take back what they had lost but had to retreat. Yet the Horde sent a stronger army with basqaq Burundai at the head, who, well aware that the Galicians’ strength lies in fortresses, demanded that Daniel have fortress walls in all the cities torn down. The price had to fulfill this demand because he, unfortunately, had no military means to resist Burundai. Yet, until his death in 1264, Daniel of Galicia was a political adversary of the Horde and posed a serious threat to the latter.
What did Alexander Nevsky do in those years? He “very successfully” put down a 1257 Novgorod uprising caused by the Horde’s intention to hold a census in this city (which, incidentally, Batu Khan had failed to occupy before) in order to facilitate tribute collection. Naturally, the Novgorodians, especially the have-nots (the “lesser people”), were extremely indignant. When the “accursed blood-thirsty Tatars Berkai and Kasachik” arrived to rob the burghers, the latter rebelled. So Berkai and Kasachik rushed for help to Prince Alexander, who was in Novgorod at the time, imploring: “Give us guards so that we are not killed!” Which “the great protector of the Russian land” did without hesitation, according to the 1st Novgorod Chronicle. Moreover, as soon as the Novgorodians announced that they refused to take part in the census, he immediately mustered the Suzdal and Vladimir regiments and allowed the Horde officials to enter Novgorod under the protection of his troops. He sent into exile his son Vasily for insubordination and support for the rebels and had many active “mutineers” executed. Is any comment needed?
Alexander Yaroslavich died on November 14, 1263, under still unclear circumstances on the way back from his third (or, maybe, fifth) visit to the Horde, where he must have received some new instructions. The fact is that it is at the time of Daniel of Galicia and Alexander Nevsky that the historical ways of the Galicia-Volhynia and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities became further estranged: the former increasingly looked to the West, where it sought allies against Batu’s descendants (unfortunately for Ukraine, those Western allies proved to be too aggressive), and the latter began to search for a longtime “coexistence” with a despotic East. Nikolai Karamzin, a loyal monarchist (and, in his youth, a Republican deep in his heart), aptly commented: “The long obsequiousness to the Tatars could not, unfortunately, but reflect on the moral image of the Muscovite state…”
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With Russia and Ukraine as one example, perhaps some day Scotland will separate from English dominated Britain.
In point of fact, the Russian Empire part of modern day Ukraine had a regional feel to it, where many positively identified with their part of the Russian Empire (short of taking a complete separatist route), while very much feeling akin with Russia. Gogol among others took to this view. Skoropadsky drafted the idea of an All Russian Federation, inclusive of Ukraine and Russia.
Even RFE/RL described it as a coup. A democratically elected president was overthrown after he signed an internationally brokered agreement on how Ukraine was to be governed. Rather than see that played out, he was chased out of Kiev.
No one I know is denying his unpopularity at that point in time. That doesn’t deny the coup which occurred and the good number in the former Ukrainian SSR who didn’t like how it happened and what occurred thereafter. On the matter of popularity, we see how popular the current Ukrainian prez is. His considered main rivals aren’t so greatly popular as well – an obvious sign of understandable apprehension.
most Ukrainians are glad that Yanukovich is gone and are pleased with the pro-Western orientation,
But this was going to happen anyway, without the coup, wasn’t it? Just before the coup he signed an agreement with opposition leaders for early elections, no later than December 2014 as I recall, which he was sure to lose.
Nobody believed he would voluntarily give up power, because to do so would have meant pretty much guaranteed exile or incarceration. This agreement was seen as a delaying tactic; he had been caught by surprise. We don’t know what he would have done, because he wasn’t given a chance. By December he could have stocked Kiev up with loyal interior ministry troops from Crimea and Donetsk, purged others, made some constitutional changes (i.e, become PM, and turn presidency into a ceremonial post), at best just siphon everything he could safely out of the country.
We do know that a coup occurred, which went against the internationally brokered agreement. Given the existing kleptocracy, dominating Kiev regime controlled Ukraine, it’s pretty rich to suggestively single him out for corruption.
The coup was done under pressure by the extreme nationalists, as evidenced by their clear fear factor tactics, enabling them to have disproportionate representation in the regime that immediately followed Yanukovych.
Recall the Kiev street mob’s influence leading to people going outside the government hall to ask the nationalist influenced crowd who should get what position? This was noted in Western mass media. That’s not democracy – having violent nationalists on the street telling government who should and shouldn’t get a ministerial position.
Some reasonable points made in this primer, which isn’t available in the overtly biased anti-Russian/Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Day :
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Alexander-Nevsky
He realistically knew the existing limits of power and worked within that scenario to better enable the potential for a stronger Russia, which is what eventually happened. As noted, Alexander Nevsky, with some success had sought to protect those affiliated with him from greater Mongol scrutiny. This included the manner of some ill advised princes whose efforts would’ve led to a strong Mongol onslaught.
BTW, over the years, there doesn’t seem to be any polling on Ukrainians seeking to be with Poland. In the entire former Ukrainian SSR, pro-Russian sentiment has had the upper hand.
English is your only language, right?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup%20d'%C3%A9tat
a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group a military coup d’état of the dictator
LOL for you:
COUP D’ÉTAT Defined for English Language Learners
coup d’état
noun
a sudden attempt by a small group of people to take over the government usually through violence
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Large-scale uprising by much of the country is not a coup, it is a revolution.
Russian nationalists play with words in order to downplay the mass nature of the overthrow, to make it like a narrow plot by few people.
In an incorrect way, your understanding of the English language appears limited:
https://www.google.com/search?ei=6669WuCtG4u0ggeXp7SIAw&q=definition+of+coup&oq=definition+of+coup&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l10.7664.12052.0.13708.18.15.0.3.3.0.84.948.15.15.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.18.964…46j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i46k1.0.nEtFi5JK-sU
It was a coup, with an RFE/RL piece concurring. No need for “Russian nationalists” on this one.
Some “revolution”, with an overbearingly corrupt kleptocracy, coupled with the influence of extreme nationalists. The majority of folks in Crimea and a number of others in the former Ukrainian SSR weren’t so gung ho on the manner of that “revolution”.
Well, what if some nations are truly chosen by God?
Russia is basically the only good guy on the world stage and the only Christian power in the world (the Western countries are either post-Christian like France and Germany or outright anti-Christian like the US, ruled by literal satanists and pedophiles).
I mean no offense to Slovakia or whatever, but from the countries that are relevant, Russia is the only one where Christianity is a thing and is something that influences directly or indirectly the thinking of the nation up to the very top.
Good and evil exist and they are objective. Moral relativism is a path to satanism where “there is no truth and everything is permitted” or everyone has “their own truth”. You can have a bunch of countries who think that they are forces of good in the world, but some of them actually are and some are not, so they are not all the same just because they have a sense of destiny.
A Messianic complex can be expressed in aggression and conquest or it can be expressed in defending itself and the world, standing up to an Empire of Evil.
If I understand our esteemed host AK correctly, Christianity is quite superficial among most Russians and more a matter of cultural identity than fervent belief, so in that regard things probably aren’t that different from Western Europe (the main difference probably being that Christianity in Western Europe has become a completely subversive, pro-Islamic cult of extended suicide, which doesn’t seem to be true yet in Russia). Attitudes to issues like abortion or divorce don’t seem to be dominated by Christian values (AP or some other commenter probably has data for that).
That strikes me as dangerous Manichaean thinking that could have potentially catastrophic consequences if applied to political issues.
Having a sense of destiny can be dangerous, yes, but dangerous things are often inspiring as well. If, as Nietzsche wrote, that by killing God we engender a generation of men without chests, then in a place where they still believe that they have a mission to defend the Word of God as the Third Rome, they remain the only men who yet have their hearts strong.
As a follow-up to one of AP’s dubious opinion confused with fact remarks, no one knows for sure what Yanukovych would’ve done had he not been chased out.
There’s good reason to believe he would’ve honored the conditions of the internationally brokered power sharing agreement that included an election within a 12 month period.
We know that the aforementioned agreement was violated by those who overthrew him. Yeltsin, during and after the failed coup attempt against Gorbachev, didn’t formally chase the latter from the political scene. Gorbachev was allowed to gradually fade into political obscurity in a civil enough way.
What transpired with Kuchma, could’ve been likewise with Yanukovych. For consistency sake, the corruption attributed to Yanukovych shouldn’t be hypocritically singled out, given the corruption among others in Ukraine.
‘Plenty’? Just how many don’t agree with my notions as opposed to how many do, oh master of all knowledge?…And even if a handful don’t, so what?…
It seems that only Mike Averko is still shedding huge crocodile tears for Yanukovych. The ‘revolution’ that occured in Ukraine to oust Yanukovych is aptly described in this article. It needs to be noted that on February 28 a vote was held in parliament, with 328 membeers voting to oust the president, including a majority of his own Party of Regions faction:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-ukraines-parliament-brought-down-yanukovych?ref=scroll
Averko, you need to follow Yanukovych right into the dustbin of history (not that anybody would ever consider you an articulate and intelligent journalist) where you belong.
Nevsky was a Mongolian bootlicker who would stoop to no new level of perdition in order to increase his hold on power. He was responsible for the murder of untold thousands of Russian patriots who were truly of a higher moralistic mindset:
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/history-and-i/alexander-nevsky-symbol-russia
Skoropadky’s legacy and imprint on Ukrainian history is minuscule. His eight month reign during the tumultuous revolutionary period largely resulted from the support of German bayonets, paid for by the expropriation of foodstuffs to Germany. The peasantry detested him for this, and shed no tears after his departure. For his services to Germany, he was afforded a decent pension there, to idle way his remaining years. Your trying to infuse some life into this historic anomaly is telling. One nobody trying to support another. Really now Averko, wake up and smell the coffee! 🙂
He’s wrong, and you have it completely reversed. Russians lost the Christian cultural identity due to Soviet pressure, but actual faith is quite strong. Any number of objective metrics will prove this, e.g., publisher numbers for modern editions of the Church Fathers, etc.
Everyone, and I really mean everyone (90% or more of the population) in Ukraine understands that “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” are artificial constructs for economic purposes. (Gibs and EU integration, put plainly.)
They’re not wrong; there’s no chance of big old Russia ever being accepted into the globalist New World Order, but a small, quaint and poor Eastern-European anti-Russia can be.
The “Ukrainians” themselves will tell you this in plain language if you ever ask them.
Stop deluding yourself.
Google isn’t a dictionary.
Dictionary for American English:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup%20d'%C3%A9tat
a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group; a military coup d’état of the dictator
Oxford:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/coup
A sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.
(this is where google got it).
Oxford provides numerous examples for clarification.
All of them involve a small group seizing power, usually the military. Examples:
‘he was overthrown in an army coup’
‘Earlier this year more than 70 suspected mercenaries were arrested for their alleged plan to help carry out that coup.’”
‘They claimed she was making strange demands of the budget, she claimed it was a coup d’état by radical prohibitionists who had infiltrated the organization.’
‘This was the coup d’état of his grandfather Louis XV and chancellor Maupeou against the parlements.’
Apparently you are unaware that large segments of the populations opposed the Russian, French, and American revolutions.
Prove it. What do you base this spurious piece of nonsense on? It’s 100% pure BS! Don’t substitute your own Ukrainophobic tripe with reality. I’m in touch with Ukrainians most everyday, and I can assure you that they’re real and nowhere as ‘artificial’ as the ideas that you’re trying to promote.
Agree. Not sure if Russia is one of them. We cannot be certain how God acts.
LOL. Better guy in Syria, that’s about it.
Very low church-going rates, still sky-high abortion rates, high divorce rate, say otherwise. Opposition to homosexuality is the only single factor here, but this Russia has in common with never-Christian China.
The most Christian country in the industrialized world is Russia’s rival, Poland. Within Ukraine, the western part is as Christian as Poland, the eastern part even less Christian than Russia. Guess which part Russia supports?
Not reflected in the behavior of the general population or its leaders. Russia is as post-Christian as Sweden, other than in terms of attitudes towards gays.
For most Russians, Orthodoxy is a tribal marker – we are Russians, we are Orthodox. They are rebuilding churches. They openly state they are Orthodox. They wear crosses around their necks.
These are good things but mean very little compared to actually living the faith, something most Russians do not do. The contrast with Poles, western Ukrainians, even many Americans is striking.
Did you know that attending the liturgy every week is a sacrament, necessary according to Orthodox and Catholic belief? Most Russian “Christians” think this is a funny thing to do. Only 8% of them do so – the lowest rate in the world. In contrast 48% of Poles go to church every week, as do 47% of Americans, 37% of Italians, etc. Even Germans beat Russia, at 13%. (Ukraine overall is at 13% too but this is because the eastern parts drag the Ukrainian average down).
Probably high percentage wear crosses worn around their necks, too.
Meanwhile Russia has lowest % of weekly church attendance in the world, highest abortion rate in the world, one of the world’s highest divorce rates, etc.
Let’s compare a country that pretends to be Christian, Russia, with an actual Christian country, Poland and the USA.
% who never attend religious services (2008)
Russia 30%-40%
Poland under 10%
Weekly church attendance (2013):
Poland 48%
USA: 47%
Russia: 8%
Percentage marriages ending in divorce (2011):
USA: 53%
Russia: 51%
Poland: 27%
HIV rate , Russia (2011): 1.1%
HIV rate, USA (2011): .6%
HIV rate, Poland (2011): .1%
Abortion rate, Russia (2013): 534
Abortion rate, USA (2013): 252.7
Abortion rate, Poland (2013): 2.61 (this is not a typo)
Homicide rate, Russia: 6
Homicide rate, USA: 4.9
Homicide rate, Poland: .74
(murder is a sin)
Read again, “Ukrainians” (whatever that means, because someone from Lvov has absolutely nothing in common historically or culturally from someone from Kiev) aren’t artificial. The “Ukrainian” identity is artificial. (As are the Soviet, American and British identities.)
Any culture that “attends church” instead of following the sacramental lifestyle (with prayer, fasting and confession) is a culture that has already lots its Christian faith. Try again.
Irrelevant. The so-called “churches” in these countries don’t have sacraments. (Even the Poles these days don’t.)
LOL. Have you ever been to either place?
And Russian, and Polish, and French, and Spanish, etc. All man-made identities. This is why nationalism is idolatry.
You think that Russians do these things more than do Poles?
So, wise sage, please do explain to everyone reading this blog what really constitutes a Ukrainian identity (seeing that you seem to agree that Ukrainians exist and aren’t artificial)?…
It is very far from a fanatical country like America is, and it will never be fanatical religious in the way Americans are.
It’s closer to Japan, where the Japanese respect and honor a lot their native religions, but they are not fanatical. It’s more about getting a different insight or perspective on life.
In Russia, there’s also lots of little cults, and superstitions, and credulity – even a lot of scientifically trained people are believing astrology. Fortune tellers are very popular, etc. People are fantasizing a lot.
The conservative ‘family values’ culture in Russia is mainly coming from traditional soviet values though – it’s more like national values. And the church can be used to support that, but it was all there in soviet-times.
Ummm……
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Skoptsy_man_and_woman.jpg
I was vaguely aware there were nutters who did things like that in Tsarist Russia, but had to google it, for those Westerners who don’t know about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoptsy
Disgusting.
It can be reasonably assured, that nobody is practising this today.
Of course. They even have their own song lyrics…
It’s rather a strange interpretation. Let’s shut off relations with our main friendship and trading partner, because some ruling elite were exploiting their relationship to it.
If I was Ukrainian, and I could replicate the Poland scenario, with $100 billion future wealth transfers from the EU, I would support it and only for this reason.
https://msp.gov.pl/en/polish-economy/economic-news/4015,Poland-to-get-nearly-EUR-106-bln-from-2014-2020-EU-budget-pool-expected-impact-o.html
But this is not foreseeable option for Ukraine. While the negative side of the equation is all there – including – even as we see just with the lifting of visa restrictions – mass migration of the workforce to higher income countries.
All that said, who knows how the Ukrainian economy will do in the future. Hopefully they can at least get sustained economic growth in a customs union with the EU.
Your uncritical reference of a trashy anti-Russian site is in line with your warped views. Nuff said.
That vote happened after the coup. A vote was scheduled for later on as specified in the internationally brokered agreement which was violated.
I never indicated the kind of support for Yanukovych that you suggest. Leave it to a fool like yourself to claim differently.
Those “thousands of protestors” didn’t and don’t reflect all of the former Ukrainian SSR. Who was actually responsible for the killings? Ivan Kachanovski has some detailed commentary on that matter.
Modern Ukrainian historiography says otherwise oh cowardly anonymous troll. Like some Orthodox Christian noble who prostituted himself to Poilsh imperialism is a better alternative.
I’m aware of your whataboutisms and your incorrect understanding of the meaning of a coup, which applies to what happened in Ukraine.
BTW, during the American Revolution, the pro-US independence side was greatly aided by a foreign power and some foreign mercenaries.
So what!
Some (certainly not all) religious people can be quite morally flawed like Warden Norton. Some of the more religious of US southerners were among the biggest of discriminatory bigots.
It’s good for non-religious people to respect those who’re religious and vice versa. Many religious and non-religious Russians have that attitude.
I wouldn’t. I heard chernozem alone can be worth $100B. And EU membership comes with immense strings attached. There is a third way – Ukraine must draw from its internal resources. This would be extremely hard, of course, and may require a change in the political system and definitely a certain type of protectionism, but Ukraine has tremendous resources (a huge, European, educated and unspoiled / resilient population, high TFRs in the western part of the country, great geographic position, military infrastructure, etc), they can be self-sufficient. Ukraine is not Czechia or Slovakia. They will never be left alone and they can only survive and thrive as a strong country (and potentially have a gravitational pull in the region to create its own alliance of friendly, like minded neighboring states). To achieve this right now sounds like a dream, of course, but the potential is there. Ukraine could become the first Eastern European country which is independent of both Russia and the West. With regards to the EU, the ideal would, of course, be some sort of an agreement that allows Ukraine to participate in the economic zone, but simultaneously allows it to retain its protectionist measures. The borders should be closed in both Ukraine and within the EU – there is a new reality radically different from 2004 (travel can be free like now, but no resettlement – Ukraine will need its high quality people). Again, this sounds like fantasy right now, but, if this were to pass, and the global trends are definitely getting better for that, it would have a positive geopolitical effect on Europe.
Here’s a good Russian term – “народный бунт” (popular revolt, people’s uprising, rebellion of the society).
Still unable to digest the will of Crimean people?
The Crimean majority don’t go along with the trashy ultra-nationalist anti-Russian Day site that he’s fond of.
Regarding the matter of humanitarian intervention, Crimea’s reunification with Russia was less bloody than the “revolution” (coup) in Kiev.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/03032014-humanitarian-intervention-undertaken-in-crimea-analysis/
Thanks for the video clip. A bunch of young, healthy and strong looking yourn men singing some patriotic Ukrainian songs, referring to their cossack and haidamak ancestors. Quite the different image than what a lot of pro-Russian types like to promote. Excellent. Thanks!
Slava Ukraini!
Well, you finally got one right, Mickey. These hundreds of thousands that experienced the cold and violent atmosphere on Kyivs streets for several months represented tens of millions around the country, all who detested Yanukovych and what his corrupt regime represented! 🙂
You’re rambling incoherently once again, Mickey. What are you referring to? What Orthodox Christian noble are you blathering about, old boy?…
Just a bowl or two of wonderful Ukrainian borshch and all is ‘digestible’ again! 🙂
Referencing a trashy the anti-Russian ultra-nationalist venue Day, is a tell all of the weakness of your idiotic claims.
Nevsky smartly knew his limits, which in turn better improved the chance for Russia to become strong and independent. As noted further up this thread, he interceded on behalf of some idiot princes who got themselves in trouble along the lines of the pencil neck geek who stupidly talks tough to a brute in a bar.
That kind of idiocy put Russians in danger. Kudos to Alexander Nevsky.
With corruption still very much in existence with the added clout of violent ultra-nationalists.
Those not supporting Yanukovych doesn’t equate to a universal common cause on a number of key issues.
You’re quite poor at following the discussion. It’s in this thread
And so they decided to become loyal subjects of Soros, McCain and other such international jew types and their lackeys… There is petty corruption and then there is the profound corruption of those that rule the world. What exactly is so enticing for you to want to have a regime that has the likes of Merkel, May or Macron as the puppet head of state?
Yanukovych’s brand of corruption was flagrant, real, grandiose and quite despicable. He’s the guy, if you remember that was famous for having installed gold plated toiletry in his huge and gaudy mansion and was robbing the country dry with his ‘family’, while million of Ukrainians were living on sub standard rations. His rule in Ukraine was very reminiscent of Ceacescu’s in Romania. Being opposed to him doesn’t mean tha anybody is endorsing the likes of George Soros. Yanukovych’s brand of corruption was palpable, not the stuff that makes up tabloid type, imaginary conspiracy theories.
Save your vitriolic nonsense for somebody else, Averko, The quotes that I included above were made by Russians, not by your paranoid induced Banderite bogeyman. Here’s another Russian, M Sokolsky who weighs in on Nevsky’s dubious legacy:
Not enough? How about the Russian historian, Kedrov chiming in:
https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/history-and-i/alexander-nevsky-symbol-russia
Another classic ‘Averkoism’ that doesn’t quite come together? Keep em coming Mickey. You should collect all of them (hundreds) and have them published. 🙂
So, where’s our fearless leader and grand impressario, Mr. Karlin hanging out lately? Getting ever so close to 100 comments, and still not a squeak?…This is as good a place as any for him to ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’ and more fully explain his adherence to the type of pop-historical conception of the immutability of the ‘triune nation’ (or ‘quadrune nation’), that Kholmogorov presents to his eager adepts?
🙂
It only seems that way to you. I hate to admit this to you, for I know how sensitive you often are towards any sort of criticism, but I often find it very difficult to understand your writing style. Why, with your poor diction, incoherent grammar and over reliance on incoherencies known affectionately as ‘Averkoisms’, its a wonder that anybody can understand your brand of discussion. I know that you’ve matriculated a bachelor’ degree somewhere, but surely a refresher course in English basics may be in order (BTW, your reluctance to study the Russian language is quite understandable, and actually
one of the smartest moves you’ve ever made!).
The Yanukovych-Ceausescu comparison is in overall terms hyperbolic.
Yanukovych has had more in common with the existing status quo having a good deal of the political/oligarchic class in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine.
Ceausescu governed over a country with no expressed opposition whatsoever. The commonality between Ceausescu and Yanukovych is limited to opulence – keeping in mind that the oligarchs involved with Kiev regime controlled Ukraine don’t have their lifestyles/wealth exposed when compared to Yanukovych.
You once again link to a trashy anti-Russian ultra-nationalist venue. I don’t care on the ethnicity of the sources you give. I’m not so stuck up on ethnicity like AP and yourself. Among Russians, there’re some who’ve carried on like dupes. Screw ’em.
NOTHING in that screed you give successfully refutes my previous fact based points concerning the great historical figure Alexander Nevsky.
Regarding Alexander Nevsky and Kiev regime controlled Ukraine:
http://orthodox-world.org/en/i/17098/Ukraine/Khersons'ka-Oblast'/Schastlivoe/Church/Saint-Alexander-Nevsky-Orthodox-Church
By no means the only example to boot.
I realize that a simple mind like yours has problems with a basic understanding of reality.
Pretty rich coming from someone like yourself, who has difficulty in following a discussion and grasping basic points.
Let me know when you’ve formally appeared in a BBC like setting, in addition to being academically referenced. Meantime, your input at these threads is indicative of a feeble mind, cowardly hiding under an anonymous moniker.
Contrary to what you say, I’m actually very good at handling criticism, inclusive of sleazy taunts from the likes of yourself. In comparison, some others prefer the coddled route of not being legitimately challenged, while launching pot shots from a distance.
Nothing surprising, since the Bolsheviks have always advocated internationalism. Thus cultivating better trade relations with Turkey was more important than any chauvinist cult.
Ironically, the West generally seems to have preferred to deal with internationalist Bolshevism than any Slav nationalism. It is noteworthy that the Americans and the European Union prefer the soviet dinosaur Nazarbayev to Putin and Lukashenko.
Off-topic
https://twitter.com/DonutShorts/status/979463134850187264
Twitter thread about the Bernstein report on Tesla.
It appears that Tesla has attempted to fully automate vehicle manufacturing, in contravention of the lean production techniques employed by the rest of the industry.
Roger Smith attempted the same thing at General Motors in the 1980s with his “lights out factory” concept, which saw General Motors become briefly the world’s largest producer (and consumer) of robots. General Motors in a three year period spent as much on robots as the combined value (at that time) of Toyota and Nissan.
The concept failed and Smith’s successors adopted the Toyota Production System as did the rest of the automotive industry other than ultra high-end producers such as Ferrari.
It seems like Elon Musk decided he knows more about manufacturing than Toyota.
Tesla is likely headed for a very costly reboot of its entire manufacturing process.
And if it fails to raise capital to cover its ongoing cashflow problems, it will collapse and be acquired by a global OEM. Likely General Motors or Ford as their luxury efforts (luxury cars represent 50% of global automobile profits) are not succeeding outside of China.
Traditional automakers have their flaws, but if there is one thing they are good at it’s mass production.
Musk may succeed in hanging onto the gigafactory and become the lowest cost producer of batteries in the world. If not it will fall to Panasonic or perhaps BYD.
And no, I am not dumb enough to bet against Musk. Tesla can raise the capital they need despite the weakening market for their bonds by diluting existing stockholders.
The commenter @Polish Perspective is encouraged to respond.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZfnJxPX0AAxIRh.jpg
Note that this chart is somewhat misleading. The global dominance of German brands in the luxury segment means that they are not necessarily unproductive manufacturers as the chart implies.
I doubt Dr. Z lies awake at night worrying about the alarming number of hours required to produce each Mercedes Benz S-class.
Two tyrannical crooks brought down by their own respective masses has managed to put many a real journalist to work, pointing out the similarities, notwithstanding your own soft spot (soft in the head reservations) for Yanukovych:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/rebels-toured-palace-ukraine-presidential-compound-viktor-yanukovych
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140224-through-the-despots-keyhole
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/ukraine-yanukovych-family-business
https://tourofcommunism.com/2014/02/27/opulence-of-the-despots-yanukovych-vs-ceausescu/
NONSENSE. All of the opinions quoted, that rely on the exact same ‘fact based points’ that you do, offer a more reasonable interpretation of Alexander Nevsky. Sorry to have to pop your dogmatic and Russophilic conceptions and misconceptions, Mickey. 🙁
Also, reading over AP’s take on Nevsky above, I’d have to tip my hat to him as well.
Ukrainian identity is antithetical to civilisation. It is a return to primitivism and savagery. The images of barbarity that come from Little Russia that has temporarily adopted a false sense of identity are those of destruction and civilisational decay.
You would need more peremohas if you want to claim the validity of the Ukrainian project. Unfortunately, a Ukrainian project that is anti-Russian is destined to end in disappointment.
Yanukovych’s brand of corruption was flagrant, real, grandiose and quite despicable.
Previous and subsequent Ukrainian Presidents fortunately did not display such tendencies, I am led to believe.
Ukrainian identity is an entirely invented category with no historical precedence. That would not be anything wrong, if only their historical conception made any sense, and could explain the existence of Ukrainians by some historical continuity.
But Ukrainian historiography is unable to do that, it is unable to explain why those that were yesterday Russians are suddenly Ukrainians. Why is there a town named Rava-Ruska in Halychyna? Shouldn’t it be Rava-Ukrainska? Why was their Subcarpathian Rus that was renamed Carpathian Ukraine? The evidence of forcible Ukrainisation of a formerly Russian space is everywhere.
Ukraine is a project of those that felt Russia and the Russian nation are too strong. It was started by Polish nobility which rebelled against Russia, was continued in Halychyna by Austrians, and adopted later by Lenin. The average person in Ukraine never wins anything from this.
Some people may think that primitive nationalism of contemporary Ukrainian fascists is a victory over Russia. But this peremoha over Russia lead only to economic, educational, demographic, and territorial decline. And this is because Ukrainisation only offers caveman primitivism in place of a High Culture that in Ukraine was always Russian.
Compared to how the current rulers of Ukraine live, Mezhigoriye of Yanukovych was a log cabin. Also, note how these Maidan supporters still talk about Yanuk 4 years after he was chased out. They have nothing to talk about since Maidan was otherwise a complete failure.
Still too butthurt. Crimeans feel good when thinking they were saved from pople like you.
Ukrnazis like Hack, and their entire ideology, is that of a sociopath…
Notwithstanding, he was a democratically elected president, overthrown in a coup that involved ultra-nationalists and corrupt oligarchs.
You mis-characterize reality with a “soft spot”, in conjunction with your subjectively inaccurate babble.
Leave it to you when it comes to giving a hat tip for crackpot history.
Concerning Alexander Nevsky and Onufry, the head of Ukrainian Orthodox Church:
https://eadiocese.org/news_171228_6.html
He hasn’t been replaced for doing such.
Likewise with the selective cherry pick of migration from Russia proper to present day Ukraine (brought up earlier at this thread) – as if there were no other prior migrations – never minding the migration going the other way (territory of modern day Ukraine to Russia).
Ukrainian state is a grotesque clique of gangsters and neonazis.
I know this guy is trolling, but..
And Russian identity is different?
Who were Russians yesterday? When Ukrainians’ ancestors were calling themselves by their old name Rus people, they were calling the ancestors of modern Russians Muscovites and regarding them as foreigners. They even slaughtered them, when given the chance.
For example, the Volhynian Chroniocles of the 15th century described the wars between Commonwealth forces led by prince Ostrozsky against the Moscow tsar as a war of Rus warriors against Muscovites. Rus was never used to refer to the Muscovite prince or his state.
Russians also didn’t figure out that the ancestors of modern Ukrainians were “Russians.” Russians referred to themselves as Rus people and their tsar as the tsar of Rus, but referred to Ukrainians as Poles or Lithuanians.
This idea of Ukraine and Russia being one nation is a modern fiction. This modern fiction is so inadequate that people like you have to succumb to conspiracy theories to explain why they don’t act like one nation.
The heart of your confusion is that you believe that Rus = Russia.
Do you also believe that Romanians = Rome, that the Greek-speaking Muslims of Turkey who are called Rum are also Romans, that the Romansch of Switzerland are also Roman?
Or is your confusion limited to Eastern Europe?
Which ones? I had no idea Ivan Mazepa or his followers, or Shevchenko, etc. were Polish nobility. Gogol was 1/4 Polish but I suspect you consider him to be a Russian.
Which Austrians? Somehow all the relevant cultural figures involved in that project are Ukrainians.
Naw, Ukraine is doing okay:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/ukrotriumph/
That must be why the part of Ukraine with the strongest Ukrainian identity is the part of Ukraine with the lowest crime rate, highest % of people with university education, highest life expectancy, lowest abortion rate, lowest HIV rate, etc.
The part of Ukraine with the weakest Ukrainian identity is the one that is the highest in all of those things.
Where are the savages?
Crime in Ukraine:
http://cripo.com.ua/i2/krym_rus%20(1).jpg
HIV prevalence in Ukraine:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg/400px-Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg
Life expectancy at birth in Ukraine:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/UkrLifeExpectancy.PNG
(Ukrainian nationalists seem to be the longest-living of all the eastern Slavs)
It’s not my confusion but yours. You want to say that Rus’ is not Russia, but how do you do it when both terms mean the same thing?
Ivan Mazepa had no idea about Ukrainian nationhood, and I am doubtful Shevchenko did either. But have you heard about the Khlopomany? No? Well, I guess we need to search for the origins of the rebranding that made Rus into Ukraine there.
The Austrian government supported Hrushevsky, and the development of Ukrainian identity to counter Russian influence.
Can you point to success in Ukrainian economy, education, demographics in the last 30 years? Can you even name worth while Ukrainian language literature of the past 30 years? Can you say Ukraine is a good to live at? How about economically, is it doing well?
Something you do not realise is that South-Eastern regions display this malaise because they happen to be most hit by civilisational decay that grips Ukraine. Halychyna and Zakarpatya are also economically depressed but they are sparsely populated, rural and rather insignificant. Maybe it is their rural primitivism that makes them less depressed over the whole situation.
These West Ukrainian regions want to convert the entire country to their primitive way of being. And this is what creates depression in regions that had a purpose as industrial centres of an empire. The mental purpose of an average Halychanin is to clean toilets and smell excrement.
Lviv has twice the population of Luhansk. Compare HIV rates, life expectancy, crime rates of these two places, Ukrainian Lviv and anti-Ukrainian Luhansk.
Western Ukraine is not sparsely populated:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MkbiuJCuROI/TTS8sT568cI/AAAAAAAAB7Y/2YDQKYgnNck/s1600/7497.jpg
Zakarpatiya is less nationalistic than Galicia.
You have failed again, as you do and will.
You believe fantasies and that’s why you fail before you begin.
A cherry pick on your part. Nevsky was a Kiev prince. Bogolyubsky had title to the Kiev throne. Part of Rus was under the subjugation of the Poles. It’s way off base to surmise that the free, independent part of Rus (a good part of the territory of today’s Russia) didn’t distinguish Poles from those under their occupation.
P0les en masse weren’t so gung ho on being part of the Russian Empire. The ancestors of modern day Ukrainians were nowhere near that level. This matter concerns the Rus period applying to modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus unlike Poland.
It’s a sheer fairy tale to pretend that Russians and Ukrainians are so differentiated from each other in the rehashed manner of your spin.
In point of fact, modern day Russia was part of Rus and emerged as the strongest and most independent of Rus territory.
Gogol positively identified with Russia, while having a regional (not national) pride in the part of the Russian Empire where he was from. A matter not so uncommon among Russian literary figures. Lermontov also expressed a regional pride in the part of the Russian Empire where he was from.
Mazepa was quite the opportunist. He wrongly calculated that Peter would lose to Sweden and its weaker Polish ally. Peter was quite loyal to Mazepa, who betrayed that trust.
Within reason, it has been surmised that Mazepa sought (with Swedish led help) to replace Peter as leader of the latter’s empire
Mazepa failed in large part because the people under his domain in the Russian Empire, didn’t go along with his betrayal. This earlier happened with Vyhovsky as well.
An example of where Kagarlitsky make sense:
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/mazepa-was-no-national-hero-he-simply-panicked-45377.html
Lviv has also not been attacked like Lugansk, which also had the misfortune of being under Soviet rule for a longer period and suffering the worst aspects of the post-Soviet period.
Thanks in good part to the Rusyn element there. A good number of them (whether in Ukraine or elsewhere) use Russian as an identifier over Rusyn or use both interchangeably:
http://www.acrod.org/
http://www.acrod.org/diocese/history/
You utilize fanastasies under the guise of not doing so.
Like I already said there is corruption and then there is CORRUPTION. The corruption of Merkel, May and Macron are nation destroying and virulently anti white, so what makes these so desirable to you?
Where did I make any reference that I was a fan of, much less desrous of Merkel,May and Macron? Don’t put non existent words into my mouth! 🙁
Since communism was never popular in Ukraine to begin with, and in fact imported from the Russian north, one could say that communism was a Russian accretion foisted down the throats of Ukrainians. And now, would you please explain to me how closer ties to Putinism* (another Russian invention) bodes well for Ukraine?
He so positively identified with Russia’ that he couldn’t wait to either go back to his native Ukraine or escape somewhere else like to Italy, etc:
So show me even one quote of his, in any literary work, where he shows his admiration for Russia or Russians? Just one? As far as I can see, he was a master of portraying the dark, primitive nature of the Russian people ‘ in his own words, he could see only “the coarse and ugly vulgarity of coarse and ugly people.” of St, Petersburg.
http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20033/52
Also noteworthy is the English-language media sympathy for Grudinin, observed by the Saker:
The only one presenting ‘crack pot’history is the supreme crackpot himself: Mike Averko.
I’ve been presenting the opinions of learned Russian historians that take a dim view of Alexaander Nevsky. I’m sorry that these opinions differ from your own peudo intellectual ones. 🙁
As for Bishop Onufry, what does he have to do with our discussion?
Crimeans seem to feel some real ‘butthurt’ from their FSB masters. Freedom of speech Russian style under the new/old leader, Putler:
blob:https://ua.krymr.com/27c4bbb2-ec07-441b-80f1-012eb3eefe92
Petliura dabbled with the Bolshes, with Hrushevsky and Vynnchenko going to the Soviet side. The latter’s break with the Soviets didn’t end his leftist slant. A good number of the Russian Civil War era Galician Ukrainian army personnel ended up staying in the then newly created Soviet Union. Keeping in mind that the Galician Ukrainian Army en masse had agreed to come under the general command of the White Russians.
Say what you want, more Ukrainians fought on the Soviet side than for the UPA. I know several in this grouping who aren’t pro-Communist, while liking Russia/Russians. A good number of folks with Ukrainians roots were with the WW II period anti-Communist/pro-Russian Vlasov led army, including Sergei Bunyachenko.
I don’t know just how popular Communism was in Russia, seeing how it wasn’t democratically elected in. Communism takes advantage of dire situations, after which it can become difficult to oppose it. Soviet Communism (especially Lenin) did a good deal to defame Russia. The coercive Ukrainianization campaign of the 1920s being one such example.
The Russian tri-color and two headed eagle have replaced Soviet symbols, with Russians tending to take a more positive view of their country’s pre-Soviet achievements.
“Putinism” is a term, that includes some erroneous impressions.
You clearly don’t know this subject. As was a right of passage, many Russian high society types went to live in the West for a period as a kind of right of passage. When in the West, Gogol was typically in the company of patriotic Russians. I know the family of such whose recollections of Gogol have been passed thru the generations. He clearly wasn’t anti-Russian. In point of fact, Gogol returned to Russia, living in Russia proper (the territory of today’s Russian Federation).
His works speak out against Polish imperialism. As he grew older, he became even more patriotic towards Russia. You grossly misinterpret his works. Inspector General was a social criticism which the tsar at the time liked. Contrary to some misconceptions, many Russians can be proud of their country, while acknowledging its shortcomings.
You’ve referenced the trashy anti-Russian, ultra-nationalist Day venue. The point on Onufry visiting a church in Nevsky’s honor and the link concerning honors to Nevsky in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine contradict the crackpot historical overview of him.
Seeing what has transpired in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine (following the coup against Yanukovych), it’s crystal clear why the pro-Russian majority in Crimea (the majority of ethnic Ukrainians there included) remains supportive of being reunified with Russia.
As a follow-up to my comments 127, your “evidence”, is an out of context quoted discussion that hits home with me.
Awhile back, I had lunch with a Jewish friend at an eatery near the diamond district. There was a loud Orthodox Jewish group sitting by us. My Jewish friend said to me, let’s get away from these Jews – later adding that they periodically show up at that establishment.
Mind you this friend of mine is very pro-Israel and doesn’t take kindly to anti-Jewish bigotry.
In short, if Gogol were so anti-Russian, he wouldn’t be revered among many, if not most Russians, as the great Russian literary figure that he is.
BTW, I periodically come across some Ukrainian nationalist types who loathe Gogol for being (as they see it) subservient to Russia.
Most people just don’t realize what a twisted and contradictory person Gogol really was. I know that he had Russian friends as he did Polish ones too, but there’s no doubt that he felt closest to his Ukrainian friends and thought more fondly of Ukraine than he did of Russia.
Is it the Den’s fault that the negative view of Nevsky is supported by so many Russian writers and historians? And how in the world does Bishop Onufrey’ visit to a church named in honor of Nevsky contradict anything at all written about Nevsky, good or bad? I guess that this leap of reason can only be accomplished if you’re named Mike Averko! 🙂
So how do you explain the caustic remark that Gogol made (written in a letter of his to a friend in Ukraine), or do you somehow just wish it away?
This all sounds good, if one is completely ignorant of the history of Europe and similar fighting between peoples who later be known collectively as Germans, French, etc. In reality, it’s meaningless tripe.
Ukrainian Orthodox slaughtered the indigenous population of Chernigov (which was not ethnically Ukrainian) mercilessly, not so much Muscovites. So what’s next, are you going to tell me about the ancient hatred between Ukrainians and Belarusians? Spare me the BS.
That Kurbsky would have been treated as a foreigner is not surprising because of all the wars that had been fought between Russia and the Duchy of Lithuania. However, the fact that Kurbsky was able to relatively easily marry the daughter of one of the major Lithuanian princes suggests that he wasn’t seen as “too” foreign.
Kurbsky was also hardly the only moskal who crossed over into Lithuania or Poland-Lithuania and did OK for himself there. There were many others both before and after him. Some of them and their descendants occupied some of the most prominent positions in Poland-Lithuania and even Poland proper.
Some did but others – and this is important, because openly expressing such views was politically inexpedient and even dangerous in Poland-Lithuania – wrote that one people inhabits both “Muscovy” and the western Rus lands. These views were noticeable especially among Orthodox clergy, but some Polish authors also said the same.
You know that I don’t support the unification of Russia and Ukraine on the basis of this stuff. But I’m also against your mythologizing BS, which in the end is going to get a lot of Ukrainians killed.
He thought fondly of both which were part of the same entity.
From a pro-Russian/non-sovok site:
http://russiannobility.org/en/nikolai-vassilievich-gogol/
For clarity sake, I follow-up on that with a very appropriate comparison in 130.
An yes, Gogol had a sarcastic side to him that can be mis-interpreted. This happens with other cultures in other time periods. The bros in the hood using the N word doesn’t make them self haters.
Well said.
Once again, if Nevsky was such a bad guy, we’d be seeing all sorts of banning of his name among those in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine. That hasn’t happened – at least to a noticeable extent.
Nevsky wasn’t the only Rus prince to seek accommodation with the Mongols. There was a perfectly prudent basis for him to do that as previously noted here.
As is true with others, Russians aren’t monolithic. Enough of them think positively of Nevsky. They appear to be the majority over those taking the opposite view. The latter relate to the kind of Russian views disproportionately represented in English language mass media:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/11/slanting-against-russia-us-establishment-pastime.html
Tell me when the Day uncritically references mainstream Russians with mainstream Russian views on the kind of subjects discussed at these threads.
Whichever way you put it, Halychyna is an underdeveloped shithole. Maybe nationalism is what helps people cure the nihilism. However, I met people from Halychyna and they were miserable. Maybe they didn’t have AIDS, oh well…
Документ не існує
https://ua.krymr.com/27c4bbb2-ec07-441b-80f1-012eb3eefe92
This little piece of American government funded propaganda has no contents.
People here have yet to explain how people, who called themselves “Russians” not more than 100 years ago, suddenly became Velyki Ukry? I will refer everyone to the article above, it gives a fine explanation.
The inability to explain Ukraine on the part of some has led to this 14o comments long shitstorm. Well done! But to be clear, Gogol did not have an idea of Ukrainian nationhood. Ukrainian nation is an invented category which emerged in the latter part of nineteenth century. Strangely enough, it always finds support from enemies of Russia.
But is it of benefit to newly minted Ukrainians? Show me the benefits of this?
Even if your claim is true (it is not), the Russian choice is still far better. Your barks are the perfect example showing that going back to Russia was a right decision.
Don’t worry; Crimeans don’t miss the “freedom” people like you can offer to them.
No need to be so vitriolic in your responses. You’re right, the Ukrainian idea in its modern exponent crystallized by the end of the nineteenth century, although this process started in earnest during the first part of the same century. Of course, it didn’t first materialize on the chalkboards of some nameless Austrian or Polish benefactors, as some here might like to pretend. The Ukrainian nation had its first big impetus from the large Slavic Polianin tribe that inhabited most of the Central part of what is today Ukraine. This same tribe played a major role in the development of the Rus Empire. And an empire it was indeed, that slowly spread to the NorthEast, where the Finno-Ugric element played a large role in the development of what would later be known as the Muscovite Duchy and later morphing into what we now know as Russia. In the 17th century, the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate state gave even more impetus for the rise of a separate Ukrainian nationality. Of course this is an oversimplification of a long process. For a more complete rendition of the complete story (before the 19th century though) I’d suggest that you read Serhii Plokhy’s excellent treatise on the subject. No need to shell out the big bucks to purchase it. Here’s the complete book in pdf format. (Since Karlin doesn’t have any books within his library devoted to Ukrainian history, this is for him as well) Happy Easter!
http://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/8713/file.pdf
Concoctions based upon imagining ancient Slavic tribes as Ukrainian, or some long process of differentiation are of course needed to build a justification for a national project. But it could also be said, with the same merit, that peasants were duped into becoming Ukrainians by individuals interested in weakening Russia that took advantage of Russia’s weakness.
Good counterexample is France, where nobody created a Provencale nation to fight French chauvinism. Question is, would Provance be better off outside France today? What makes anyone think Ukraine is doing better outside Russia with her invented identity?
On the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, many if not most Cossacks have been among the more pro-Russian of elements. Cossacks from Ukraine and elsewhere came to the support of the overwhelmingly pro-Russian Pridnestrovie when it was attacked by M0ldova. On the subject of Cossacks and ties to the territory of modern day Ukraine, I’m a fan of Krasnodar born Anna Netrebko, who is of Kuban Cossack origin.
Happy Palm Sunday!
Utterly one sided. Fails to mention the Kiev Metropolinate or Moscow’s Church of England style departure from the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. Innhose days there was no nationality but much religion.
All nationalist identities have been invented in the last 500 years. Most in the last 200.
Most Ukrainians I meet in Russia have been supporters of Sakashvilli. And the refugees I met from Lugansk were not keen on the ovorussian project. 1.5 m have left for the Ukraine. Most of the ones who fled to Russia were young men of fighting age.
Catherine’s German historians invented the slavs and in particular the “Rus” as one people with a Teutonic origin in Kiev. Lomonsov invented literary Russian for her by updating the then current Old Church Slavonic with Muscovite peasant speech.
Greece? Japan?
Also what is a nationalist identity? Is this a typo or do you mean something distinct from a national identity?
I will diminish both Kiev and Moscow bypointing out that Novgorod was founded before Kiev.
LPNational or nationalist where I come from they are about the same. Byzantine Greece was not a nation. Greek nationalism developed as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Being Greek speakers of Orthodox faith did not make, say Crimean or Abkhazian Greeks part of Greece but they identified with Greek culture. Even the Pontic Greeks were not considered part of Greece unlike, say Greeks in Izmir.
Japan’s island status and homogenous status makes it a tough case. Korea, not protected by the sea alternated between Empire and regional kingdoms within a broader culture.
India is more my case. There was no national identity until a cadre of British educated Indians appeared. Pakistan still rejects an Indian identity. Norway, or Czechia or most of the Balkans are all post Napoleon. The Arabs still don’t have very well defined nationalis or nationalal identity beyond whatever the current dictatorship is trying to impose. I need more time than I have to develop this but it is hardly an original point by me.
Actually, the analogy between the Arabs under Ottoman (Imperial Russia) rule and modern Arab nationalism is worth developing. Were Syrians and Saudis ever one people?
Czech national sentiment of a distinctly anti-German kind played a conspicuous role already during the Hussite wars in the early 15th century. And Balkan states like Serbia or Croatia do have at least some connection to the medieval kingdoms of that name (yes, I know, 19th century nationalists supposedly “invented” whole traditions, but something like the Serbs’ Kosovo Polje obsession couldn’t have resonated if it didn’t have some connexion to genuine popular memories).
Most of the European nations in existence today can be traced in some form to the early/high middle ages. England certainly has existed since at least the 10th century, and Germany since about the same time.
The modernist thesis pushed by people like Hobsbawm is massively exaggerated.
It makes a lot of plain sense to consider the Slavic tribes (and any non-slavic ones too) when considering the ethnogenesis of the Ukrainian people. That’s the way modern history works. You start where you are today, and work your way back to look for answers.
This is off topic, but it’s about Russia
To the Russians here:
From what I am reading, it appears that Putin will not be making any major economic reforms in his new term. Do you agree that this is the case? Is Russian media making any hints that reforms might be coming?
If it’s true that Putin doesn’t want to liberalize the economy, is this because he doesn’t believe economic liberalization or is it because he is worried it would weaken him politically?
If Putin isn’t going to make major reforms, then why does he even want to serve another term?
Is there widespread demand among the population Russia for economic liberalization?
Novgorodian history belongs to Russia by being a fully absorbed part of that state, far north of Kyiv. How does its history diminish either Kyiv or Moscow? BTW, the Rus state was a loosely organized empire comprised of some 12 or more principalities. These principalities formed their own ‘foreign’ policies, raised their own armies and more often then not waged war amongst themselves. They never had enough time to coalesce into one ‘nationality’ and today we have three separate ones. Wishful thinking by some will never turn back the time clock and create something that never was.
The Czechs did not exist as a nation until nineteenth century. They can’t still figure out a name for their country, hence “Czechia”…
Does it? Where did Volodymyr the Great come from? To divide Rus into geographically Ukrainian territories sounds stupid and ahistorical.
We have historical records from antiquity of ancient Greeks proudly emphasizing the fact that they spoke the same language and worshiped the same Gods. The fact that the barely Greek Alexander was able to unify the Greeks in a common enterprise spoke to a common heritage.
The decline (disappearance?) in nationalist sentiment under the Romans and later Ottomans perhaps simply spoke to the good opportunities for Greeks in both empires.
India is considerably different in that there is no clear Indian nationality. It makes about as much sense as talking about a European or white nationality, None the less the nation building project appears to be working, though there’s a distinct lack of pride (too many Indians tell me that India sucks).
The Scandinavian countries have all had distinct identities for a thousand years, and the Swedes had to conquer Norway after being awarded it precisely because Norwegians did not want to be ruled by Swedes.
I can’t speak to a boring country like the Czech Republic, but it certainly seems much older than Napoleon.
I tried finding Ukrs in antiquity and failed.
The English – well more than a millennium. Tombs in The English and Their History makes a solid case for that.
The French – About a millennium.
Russians – Ergo, see Kholmogorov’s translated article Mammoths and Patriots on the Russian Plain.
Azar Gat makes a great case in general for the antiquity of many of today’s great nations.
There are claims that it was the French revolution of whatever that set off nationalism. This is nonsense. French national sentiment that they were ruled by anti-French foreigners was one of its contributory causes.
From page 45 of that book written by someone who isn’t in the pro-Russian leaning category:
What language (or languages) did the Slavic population of Kyivan Rus′speak? The answer to this question is extremely important to the modern debate on who has the best claim to Kyivan Rus′– the Russians, Ukrainians or Belarusians. Linguists seem to agree that all three modern languages form a group separate from the West and South Slavic languages.
Contradicts someone saying that Ukrainian is closer to Polish than Ukrainian is to Russian. In another instance, that very same person didn’t deny that Russian is closer to Ukrainian than Russian is to Ukrainian.
Hey Abbot!!
You’re addressing that to someone who had indicated not having a problem with Ukrainian nationalists revising Gogol’s Taras Bulba by putting the word “Ukraine” in it.
Nope. It was a Novgorod prince who resettled in Kiev around the time of the academically termed “Kievan Rus” (Rus). Bogolyubsky credited with founding Suzdal had title to the Kiev throne. Nevsky was a Kiev prince. Periodic instances of civil strife (which you highlight) was evident elsewhere among entities otherwise having close ties.
You’d be hard pressed to find the modern nation state concept anywhere at that point in time. That doesn’t deny the ties bonding modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus with Rus, in conjunction with the Russian Empire and Soviet periods of togetherness.
This background explains (among other things) what’s noted at this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_Orthodox_Church
Sorry, should read as:
In another instance, that very same person didn’t deny that Russian is closer to Ukrainian than Russian is to Polish.
You’re (and Anon too) trying to conflate a dynastic family’s (the Riurikovichis) patrimony with modern day nationalism. LOL! The Hapsburg family placed members of its family throughout Europe from Spain to the High countries to Austria – this doesn’t offer any proof of one unified nationality.
Charlemagne ruled over a huge Empire in Western Europe at roughly the same time. Today we have both neighboring Germany and France where there was once one medieval state.
In the German and French slaughtering, there were typically religious differences; both Rus in the Commonwealth and Rus in Moscow were Orthodox; here, the differences were /national cultural.
The Chronicles of the Rus lands witrhin the Commonwealth referred to the Rus lands within the Commonwealth as “All the Rus lands” and inhabitants of Moscow as Muscovites. Evidence is rather clear. Not only did they explicitly regard each other as foreign and of a different nation, but they treated them as such. You have to try to twist things to try to present a different picture.
Marriage between Poles and Rus was even more common. So according to your logic Poles were less foreign than Muscovites for the Rus of the Commnwealth.
Nonsense. P-L authorities claimed leadership of Rus. They also tried to take Muscovy. As rulers of Rus they would have had the same motivation to claim that Muscovy was Rus and the same people as themselves as a reason to take it, as Muscovites later did when they claimed Rus lands of the Commonwealth. But they did not deny the obvious.
You must mean the 1428 eulogy Eulogy for Vitold where clergy did refer to both Rus within the Commonwelath and within Moscow as Rus. However a few decades later this was revised and in the revision the Muscovites were recategorized and placed in the same group as other Orthodox non-Rus such as Moldavians and Bulgarians.
Let me guess…you’re the guy on the left, and Leos Tomicek the one on the right? You two were once the Alpha and Omega of Kremlin stoogery! Have you stayed in contact with Levko lately? He seems to have totally given up on his Putler cheer leading career since moving back to Bohemia?…
Nationalism is different from tribalism, or the recognition that one is different from one’s neighbors, speaks a different language, etc. Nationalism generally adopted the names of pre-nationalist entities but it is incorrect to ascribe these identities to the past. Neither people of England 1,000 years go fighting against Viking raiders of Norman invaders, nor Indian or African tribesmen resisting European encroachment could be considered “nationalists.”
We see this reflected in the behavior of states that later became nationalistic ones. Pre-nationalistic Russia crushed Rus-speaking peasants in favor of non-Rus nobility who owned and persecuted them. Pre-nationalistic Poland considered Ruthenian and Lithuanian nobles as “Poles” but disenfranchised 90% or so of the Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic population.
That’s just tribalism and the recognition that others are different and foreign. We don’t think of the Pequots or various Indian tribes fighting against European settlers as “nationalists.”
Nationalism was invented during the time of Romanticism and thus was very keen on incorporating ancient states into its traditions.
Correct. But that doesn’t mean that people were nationalists at those times. Had Lothringen survived into the 19th century there would probably have been a codified language, be some sort of Lothringian nationalism and would have taken for granted the ancient existence of the Lothringian “nation.”
The conservative Hungarian John Lukacs also considers nationalism to be a modern invention.
They were “duped” into speaking a standardized form of their own speech and of belonging to a nation centered on their own territory. Would duping them into becoming someone else have been better?
You just show that in your mind have low crime rate, low HIV rate, large urban population, low abortion rate makes a place an “undeveloped shithole.”
I recall having read (in the 14th century volume of the New Cambridge medieval history iirc) there was discernible Greek national sentiment in the 14th century Byzantine empire…at that time it was merely a Greek rump state, so the earlier universal empire stuff didn’t make that much sense anymore. Among other things it involved a positive reevaluation of ancient Greeks…Hellenes (once a negative term for pagans) became “our ancestors” even for Orthodox bishops, with Thermopylae and the like being seen as part of the national story.
Obviously such processes of national identity formation are rarely clear-cut, and many in history must have ended at an early stage, but the idea that national sentiment didn’t exist at all before the 19th century seems very misguided to me.
Similar background to Hobsbawm and many other modernists… émigré/son of émigrés with roots in East central Europe and of (partly or wholly) Jewish ancestry, traumatized by Nazism and the various nationalist excesses of the early/mid-20th century, so inclined to regard nations as a pernicious modern invention and to romanticize multinational empires supposedly held together by Catholicism and dynastic loyalty as a better alternative. Maybe not totally wrong, but at least a massive simplification of the historical record.
Of course, there were plenty of abortive state/nation building processes. One of the various Burgundies might have become a nation if it had survived. Nations aren’t eternal or inevitable. But that doesn’t mean they’re merely a modern “invention”.
It’s probably a question of definition what you regard as nationalism/tribalism. “Tribalism” is something I’d associate with hunter-gatherers or other pre-literate societies.
Okay. OTOH, such a background would make someone much more familiar with the differences between nationalism or conservatism. That both a leftist Marxism (Hobsbawm) and a reactionary conservative (Lukacs) from central Europe view nationalism as a modern invention may be due to each person’s similar personal experiences, or it may also reflect the fact that it is a truth. The ultra-nationalist Nazis were opposed not only by people like Lukacs (who is half-Jewish) but by completely non-Jewish reactionaries such as Claus von Stauffenberg.
Would you consider the Aztecs who fought the Spanish invaders to be “Aztec nationalists”, the Conquistadors to have been “Spanish nationalists,” the Moors whom the Spaniards had earlier defeated to be “Moorish nationalists?” I wouldn’t. But later nationalists incorporated these peoples into their belief systems. Modern Mexican nationalists celebrate the Aztecs, who wouldn’t have recognized them. In cases of greater linguistic/cultural continuity, it might get more muddled. But the massive extent to which German Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other over religion and for their particular kings or dukes (often doing so alongside non-German allies) strongly suggests an absence of a real nationalistic self-concept.
Sometimes it gets funny. The Rus, in the first centuries, were Scandinavians who forced Slavs to provide tribute and sold large masses of them into slavery to the Arabs (so many, the Arabs referred to the Volga river as the slave highway). Modern Russian nationalists, descendants of those Slavs, use their symbolism as their own when claiming these Rus as part of their 1,000+ year old heritage.
The likes of AP any yourself give overly broad analogies that leave out the noticeable differences, which have been brought up here.
Talk about nonsense, the Polish dominated “P-L “sought to takeover all Rus territory as imperialists. Meantime, for perfectly valid reasons, most Poles and Lithuanians don’t see their history as so akin to Rus, along the lines of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
That’s a PC revision of what was previously evident prior to the foreign occupations of Rus.
More BS from you. There were Communist Poles who did the Soviet bidding. Would you say that they represented the majority of Poles?
Throughout history, dupes have been evident. The Poles clearly sought to have the Russian Orthodox Church, eliminated with Roman Catholicism becoming predominate in the Rus land that they attacked. The Poles sought all the help they could get on that.
Any stats? The marriage between Russians and Ukrainians seems much greater than Russians and Poles.
Was never so cherubic. LT rocks.
What’s the common element there?
Stauffenberg was a German nationalist himself (one of the reasons why establishment Germany would rather forget him nowadays).
I’m obviously biased about those questions. I don’t deny that nationalism can have really horrible consequences, the first half of the 20th century in Europe is ample proof for that. So there certainly is a need to moderate and tame national sentiment. And I’m certainly not someone who wants to go back to intra-European conflicts over territory or to ideas of supposedly perennial conflict between Germanics and Slavs or Germanics and Latins etc. So there is a lot to be said for emphasizing the common elements of the European heritage, be they of classical, Christian or Enlightenment origin, and not just indulge some narrow-minded cult of the nation.
But I also reject the denial and denigration of any national traditions that has become so common throughout Western Europe (certainly in Germany). And if there’s one group I’ve really come to despise and loathe, it’s “conservatives” who regard it as their main task to combat nationalist right-wingers. In effect they’ve paved the way for Europe being overrun by endless streams of Africans and Muslims, for the end of Europeans as a race and as a civilization. On the most crucial of all contemporary issues they’re absolutely no different from the most deranged of left-wing utopians. It’s no accident that Merkel’s Christian Democrats in their overwhelming majority go along with Merkel’s open borders policies, because that’s the logical endpoint of anti-national “conservatism”.
Actually, why not? Obviously “nationalism” may be a somewhat anachronistic term for people with Stone age technology and without writing, but they fought for their way of life and collective freedom from foreign domination, what could be more nationalist than that?
It’s of course somewhat more difficult with Spanish conquistadors as adherents of a universalist faith since there’s a potential tension between that and national sentiment…but in reality I don’t see how it can be doubted that there was a Spanisn national identity in the early modern era (obviously infused with strong notions of Spain as a bastion of militant Catholicism against Muslims and Protestants…but chosen nation motives of a religious kind are common in European nationalisms after all).
As for the Moors, no idea, but nation formation processes in the Islamic world haven’t been as successful as in Europe for various reasons (geography, the dominance of despotic empires etc.)…imo one of the reasons why that part of the world is so dysfunctional.
Civil wars are always among the most cruel of conflicts, doesn’t mean a concept of Germany as a nation was unknown (it was called “the Holy Roman empire of the German nation” in the early modern era for a reason after all; the humanists in the early 16th century were also already intensely nationalistic and used Tacitus’ Germania for such purposes). Of course Germany wasn’t a nation state though since its political development since the 13th century had been one of increasing fragmentation, but that’s a somewhat different issue.
His nationalism seems to have been more conservative/reactionary in nature; he was a very Catholic aristocrat. This is probably why the modern historians don’t celebrate him much.
Nazism was vulgar, modernistic populism that became genocidal. It was normal for a conservative to oppose it.
The famous Horst Weseel anthem included the lines: “The SA marches with calm, steady step. Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries March in spirit within our ranks.”
National traditions are beautiful expressions of humanity.
It depends on which ones. Nazis are loathsome, people trying to maintain their traditional way of life are correct and to be respected.
To be a nationalist requires the idea of a “nation” (a people with similar blood, historical story, and language) and of the assumption that this idea of “nation” is a central political organizing principle (rather than one’s king, one’s city-state, or one’s faith). Therefore neither Aztecs, nor Spanish Conquistadors (who fought for God and King, not the glory of the nation of Spain) were nationalists. Nationalism required toppling the traditional idea of the centrality of monarchs, aristocrats, chiefs, elders, or religion and replacing them with the new idea of the “people.” Some of these old ideas could survive under nationalism, but they were reformulated as national institutions, expressions of the national will, etc. Before one served one’s king, now one’s king stepped aside served the nation as its figurehead. Churches became nationalized and used the national languages of the common people, rather than universal languages. Etc.
It is not enough to view someone as a stranger and to not have him rule one’s territory, to be a nationalist.
You are autistic and struggle to communicate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things. However, you are also neither well-informed nor particularly interesting or intelligent (if you took the WAIS, I’d guess a 95 full scale IQ score with a high information subtest score). This makes it not worthwhile to engage in detailed discussions with you.
I may use your posts to make points for other readers but will generally not be bothered to engage in conversations with you. Do not assume my lack of responses to your posts indicates agreement with you or any kind of concession to what you attempt to claim. Good luck, and carry on.
Stauffenberg wasn’t opposed to Nazism from the start, he welcomed the nomination of Hitler as chancellor in 1933 and only gradually became repelled by Nazism. He later did feel genuine revulsion at Nazi mass murder and the general criminal character of the system (even though by today’s standards he was undoubtedly racist and antisemitic, as mainstream historians like to point out). But one of the chief motivations for his opposition to Nazism was not least the disastrous situation Hitler had led Germany into, and a desire to preserve Germany’s national existence…he certainly wasn’t in favour of unconditional surrender to Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Genuine Nazis are a total fringe element today. If such groups ever gain any influence again, it will be as a reaction to the insane mass immigration project aided and abetted by mainstream “conservatives”.
Sure, the popular element has gained in importance over the last two centuries, but ideas of common descent and culture as the basis of community were certainly important even before, they are intrinsic to human nature. And they’re not necessarily opposed to dynastic rule or religion imo.
Anyway, you might want to read the book by Azar Gat AK has already mentioned (“Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism”)…even if one disagrees with its thesis (and some of its arguments may well be overdrawn), it’s an interesting discussion of those issues and makes a far better critique of the modernist thesis of nationalism than I could hope to achieve in this comments’ section here.
One can also mischievously argue that HGs are proto-nationalists.
Strong us/them mentality (names of many tribes literally translate as “our people”), permanent war, mass mobilization, Fuhrerprinzip (tribal “big men”), etc.
I thought it was more in the sense of “the people”…meaning that they consider themselves to be the only real people, the only real humans…
But yes, the thesis that national/nationalist sentiment is a consequence of our evolution in hunter-gatherer groups and tribes makes a lot of sense imo…for me this means that such impulses may need to be moderated, but attempts to declare them completely illegitimate and overcome them through utopian/dystopian schemes like the current open borders madness are misguided, anti-human, and fundamentally evil.
Actually, you exhibit signs attributed to autism, by repeating the same erroneous things without directly answering the fact based counters. Ditto your obsessively boring delivery. Cherry pick all you want, to fit your subjectively convoluted views, like comparing the Brits in India to Russians and Ukrainians.
Recent history involves more-decent conservatives being being outmaneuvered by modernist radicals. We see this with the Bolshevik takeover of Russia and with the German aristocracy and military waiting too long to do something about Hitler, though fear of Bolshevism contributed to this.
Open Nazism is illegal in Germany. I could be wrong, but don’t the National Democrats flirt with Nazism, to the extent that is legally allowed?
I agree that people were conscious of similarity in speech and custom (although nationalism has made this more evident by promoting mass literacy in standardized national languages at the expense of local dialects). But could you imagine, prior to the onset of modern nationalism, Spaniards rising up against their Hapsburg king Charles V in the name of the Spanish people? The 17th century German people, Catholic and Protestant, overthrowing the monarchs whose states shed so much German blood, in favor of a united German state for the German people? There doesn’t seem to have been any popular movement for such things, as there would be in the 19th century.
Here is a Spanish historian, Junco:
Since 1808 we speak of nationalism in Spain: ethnic patriotism became fully national, at least among the elite. This was unmistakably the work of liberals. The modernized elites used the occasion to try to impose a program of social and political changes. Their method was to launch the revolutionary idea of the nation as the holder of sovereignty. This idea of sovereignty is believed to have mobilized the Spanish victoriously against a foreign army and against collaborators of José Bonaparte, regarded as non-Spanish (afrancesados). The Spanish liberals turned their victory on the battlefield to an feverish identity of patriotism and the defense of liberty: as the Asturian deputy Agustín Argüelles when he presented the Constitution of 1812, “Spaniards, you now have a homeland.”
The enemy of this stuff was Carlism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlism#Ideology
Similarly, in Austria-Hungary there was opposition of various nationalists (including German) to the conservative Habsburg monarchy. You know German history far better than I do. Would you consider Frederick the Great, who though the German language was only fit for speaking to his horse, to be any sort of German nationalist (obviously he has been adopted later by them)? In Russia, initially, nationalism was championed by liberals who found it outrageous that Orthodox eastern Slavs Rus should be owned by Catholic Polish nobles, or civil administration heavily staffed by Baltic Germans. The idea that the state was the property of the Russian, and only Russian people and that the government was duty-bound to these people (rather than Russia being the Tsar’s patrimony and the people his servants, in accordance with tradition) was a new one.
The National Democrats pretty much are Nazis. But they’re a fringe party and totally unimportant today…and they never were really important anyway. They managed to enter some state legislatures from the 1960s onwards (which always led to huge shock and concern), but could never even get the 5% necessary in federal elections to enter the Bundestag.
Well, there was this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Comuneros
Granted, the nature of that revolt is disputed, may of course make more sense to regard it as a typical defense of ancient liberties against an early modern monarchy set on centralization.
But I don’t think “national” considerations were always absent even in pre-modern rebellions, e.g. one of the grievances of the opposition to the English crown led by Simon de Montfort in the mid-13th century was the king’s favoritism towards foreigners (yes, I know, ironic given that de Montfort was originally a foreigner himself, but somehow he managed to become the champion of the English)…and this wasn’t just a barons’ affair, but there was at least some popular element as well.
No, there wasn’t a mass movement for such ideas, but at least a few intellectuals entertained such notions (that is conceiving of Germany as one nation, arguing for common defense against enemies…there were no calls for overthrowing established hierarchies as far as I know; e.g. I’ve already mentioned the humanists in the early 16th century, who also were very anti-French; somewhat comparable to Machiavelli in Italy with his call for Italy to be united in defense against foreign invaders).
iirc the anti-French resistance during the Peninsular war was led not least by priests.
But yes, I’m somewhat aware of the conflicts between liberals and Carlists in 19th century Spain, and the idea that nationalism was a liberal project (Stanley Payne is a proponent of that view iirc). But tbh I don’t know enough about the intricacies of Spanish history to write much about that.
Of course not, Frederick cared only about Prussia.
Anyway, I’m not even sure we’re completely in disagreement…I wouldn’t deny that nationalism wasn’t the dominant political organizing principle in Europe (at least not always and everywhere) before the 19th century. But I don’t think it can be claimed that national sentiment didn’t exist at all or was completely irrelevant.
Well I wish the best for Ukraine.
This process will be very, very slow though – in the decades to reach a good level.
The only reason Poland developed so fast, was that they got vast transfers of hundreds of billions of dollars of free money from the EU – and the EU won’t repeat this with Ukraine.
Their historically recent 1.5% – 1.8% makes them like the US Greens or Libertarians in popularity. Not quite fringe. Good to see the freaks are down to .1% in 2017.
I think we mostly agree. I think that nationalism had at its basis the universal recognition of one’s close people being different form other people if the the speech, religion,. etc. were different. This made old tribal or religious wars usable ingredients for later nationalistic historical constructions and the transformation of successful pre-nationalistic figures into “national heroes” (as was done to Frederick the Great). But I wouldn’t go so far as to describe “nationalism” prior to the late 18th century – though one could perhaps see some stirrings and previews in isolated cases such as among some German intellectuals earlier.
The danger is on both sides though.
We also have very strong instincts to be welcoming and friendly to outsiders. That is also an inbuilt instinct, which is difficult to shake. The Christian view is as instinctive as the anti-Christian one.
I know looking at myself. It is difficult nowadays to make myself feel racist towards individuals of different nationalities – and I would say is typical of people who are no longer teenagers, and have travelled and met interesting people of different backgrounds.
I also remember as a youth, the first time I saw a black person – and I tried to cross the street to avoid them.
Neither of these instincts – to hate outsiders, or to love them – is going to teach you reality of the situation or be a good guide to action.
The latter instinct, for example, (to be friendly to outsiders to your country/culture) shouldn’t draw any conclusions on immigration policy.
Let’s say, countries and cultures which are thousands of years of development behind (e.g. Africa relative to Europe), are not going to succeed as a whole if you let them in – regardless of whether you love or hate those cultures.
The primitive cultures are in many ways more easy to romanticize than our own – Jung has written a lot about his charming experiences in Africa, where he clearly admires such cultures (just as a modern man might admire Ingliizm, or various other primitive cultures – the Vikings for example).
Despite his personal affections for Africans, anyone who read Jung’s views on African culture, is not going to believe that he would propose that Africans (who need their own songs in order to work, etc), would adapt to life in his Swiss village, or that he would believe it would be good for either Swiss or Africans themselves, to bring them in. Again, neither instinctive emotion (to hate outsiders or to love them, as Jung did) is really relevant to that observation, and the correct view (as always in complicated issues) is provided not emotions, but knowledge, empiricism and reason.
Hear, hear. I’d like to know what people think about this.
Hear, hear!
I’ve been reading your comments here about the general evolution of nationalism with much interest. I was hoping that you could narrow your focus back to the topic at hand, and offer a critique of Khlomogorov’s opinion about the ‘artificiality’ of the Ukrainian nation, and his inference that this division was primarily of Polish or Austrian origin. I’m sure that you’ve given this topic plenty of thought:
This strikes me as a series of half-truths. He correctly states that Poles and Austrians had their interests and acted accordingly, but ignored that Russians also had their interests and acted according to those. There was indeed a separation of eastern Slavs from each other but he calls it “artificial” (as if, it would be natural for people separated for centuries and with massive differentiating foreign influences to remain similar to each other in the end).
Ultimately there were a people in the territory we now call Ukraine, with their own language, their own shared experiences, their own common descent. The local elites had various ideas about who they were, and the three neighboring powers sought to mould these ideas in correspondence with their own interests, each by promoting certain factions whose ideas were amenable to their interests, from amongst the local “nation-builders.”
Austria, allied with Russia, wanted to reduce the power of the local Poles and to prevent the Polonization of the entire Galician population, so it promoted Russophile activists from among the Galicians. When Austrian relations with Russia soured, it switched to helping Ukrainophiles (many of whom were exiles from the Russian Empire). Russia, in order to limit the power of local Polish elites and stop the process of Polonization, initially supported anti-Polish Little Russian activists in their nation-building activities. Later it turned on them, tried to force them to become Great Russians, and in reaction most of them became anti-Russian Ukrainophiles.
Success seems to have ultimately rested on the story that most corresponded to reality. Ukrainians are neither Poles nor Great Russians, and efforts to turn them into either of those groups failed. The Russian state strangled the mostly realistic Little Russian movement, the Ukrainian one was left by default.
BTW Ukrainians were not unique in this. In the Baltics, Russia did for Estonians and Latvians what Austrians did for Ukrainians. Wishing to reduce the power of local German elites and perhaps prevent Germanization, Russia provided help to local Latvian and Estonian national activists. I wonder if Russia played a similar role in Finland vis a vis Swedish or German elites there. This does not, of course, mean that Latvia or Estonia (or Finland) are artificial nations created by Russia.
German Reader: a white American boomer on DailyKos left the following comment:
Do Western Europeans know how much they are idolized by American liberals?
Tell him it’s supposed to be “Das ist das Ende”.
Hilarious! Many Germans feel the same way about Merkel, you needn’t look far on German internet sites to find people who talk about emigration and fleeing before the “refugees” take over.
I would still be interested in getting a job in Germany, which has some very nice cities, culture and companies (I haven’t learned German though, so it’s not serious).
The negative trends, of which migrants is one, are very long-term. Germany is still years behind situation in France – and France quality of life has not exactly fallen dramatically, on any statistical level (getting killed by a Jihadist – unpleasant as fate it is – is unlikely enough to be factor in immigration in any – legal! – immigration decisions).
This said, this idiot in comment of Greasy William, who would want his kids to immigrate – and from the US, the country with an even higher quality of life.
I agree with your commentary and would only add a bit more (for anybody else interested in the topic) regarding the trajectory of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, that had it first initial resonance in the Eastern and Central part of Ukraine, not in Western Galicia. It was in places like Kyiv, Polatva and even Kharkiv that the Ukrainian hromada movement reflected the mood and aspirations of intellectuals and the common folk to put forth something that, as you put it, was based on something sound, realities on the ground:
These successes were met with fierce pressure from the imperial Russian center (Ums Ekase, Valuev circular, etc) and only helped to solidify and spread the movement elsewhere, including eventually Galicia. Kind of analogous to the Ukrainian response to Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine, starting in 2014. Russia’s leaders never seem to learn, the more pressure they put on Ukraine to conform to the imperial model, the more hesitant the Ukrainians become to comply with their wishes.
Bad comedy and/or history. Has anyone ever produced an actual written transcript of the aforementioned “Ums Ekase”? The matter concerned a prohibition of material coming from the Habsburg part of what’s now modern day Ukraine to the Russian Empire. Some Russian Empire based Ukrainians supported this move on account of an increased anti-Russian bias in such material.
Did the “Ums Ekase” actually include Russian Empire Ukrainian material and if so by how much? Just how long did the “Ums Ekase” last? Upon a quick perusal, these particulars aren’t addressed in CIUS leaning circles – along the lines of giving Carte Blanche to a very historically challenged revisionist view of Gogol, among some other issues, which a good number of sovoks and JRL court appointed Russia friendlys don’t appear so well versed on. Note that there’s an early 1900s Russian Empire census, acknowledging considerable use of the Ukrainian language – a far cry from trying to censor it outright.
Another stretched out analogy given on the past with the present. This one concerning the pro-Russian response (in the former Ukrainian SSR, Russia and elsewhere) to the coup against Yanukovych, that was followed by increased anti-Russian actions in Kiev, which in turn prompted Crimea’s break with the former Ukrainian SSR. The particulars are noted at the end of this piece:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/twisted-history-against-russia-and-serbia/5390154
A virtually bloodless Crimean reunification with Russia – especially when compared to the Kiev mayhem which (contrary to some folklore) wasn’t exclusively provoked by the then Ukrainian government.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/03032014-humanitarian-intervention-undertaken-in-crimea-analysis/
It’s not hyperbole to note that Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev, is on record for advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Russian majority from Crimea. In comparison, Putin is on record for favoring a multi-ethnically tolerant Crimea, inclusive of his condemning the collective WW II Soviet era deportation of Crimean Tatars by the USSR. Can imagine the toxic mix of Dzhemilev and pro-Bandera Ukrainians from outside Crimea creating havoc in the area. Noting that the majority of Ukrainians in Crimea support Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
Somewhat similarly, a noticeable number of the Donbass based rebels (leadership included) are born on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR and have surnames suggesting a Ukrainian background.
Corrected edit –
The matter concerned a prohibition of material coming from the Habsburg part of what’s now a part of modern day Ukraine to the Russian Empire. Some Russian Empire based Ukrainians supported this move on account of an increased anti-Russian bias in such material.
Although I could only spot one bona fide Averkoism in your messy and disjointed response Mickey, as they say, ‘good luck, and carry on!’:
Everything you write seems to be a ‘stretch’ Mickey. Seriously!
Radians’kyi knyhar 1930, quoted in Luckyj 1990, pp 24–25. A full version, with five points addressed “for the Ministry of the Interior”, five “for the Ministry of Education”, and one “for the Third Section [secret police] of His Majesty’s Supreme Chancellory” is published in Magocsi 1996, pp 372–3, translated from Savchenko 1970, p 381.
Perhaps:
I wonder if Russia played a similar role in Finland vis a vis Swedish or German elites there.
Partially , Yes. Not very aggressively, though. During the late 19th century Russian authorities supported Finnish nationalists (so-called Fennomans) against largely Swedish-speaking old nobility and bureaucracy. Some prominent Fennoman leaders were trusted with significant government positions and even ennobled (J.V. Snellman, Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen, Eliel Soisalon-Soininen…). In return, many Finnish nationalists (so-called “Old Finns”) were rather conciliatory towards Russian government. Younger generation of Finnish nationalists ( “Young Finns”) was much more hostile towards perceived threat of Russification of autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland (1899-).
Welcome to Africa…
This article is…well, unsatisfactory. I would recommend Billington’s encyclopedic survey (for those who have a spare time to read) & a more recent book by Robert Service (not great, just satisfactory):
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KCLBxSruL._SX316_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51M%2BdtYEDTL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
What you quote clearly indicates banning material from outside the Russian Empire – something I noted. It also confirms that the ban wasn’t complete within the Russian Empire – something I suggested as a possibility. It doesn’t indicate for how long this stated policy took effect – once again noting an early 1900s Russian Empire census, openly acknowledging noticeable use of the Ukrainian language – a far cry from an entity seeking to brutally censor a language.
Given some of the sleazy antics that have existed over the course of time (like what we’re seeing from the UK government and some others with the Skripal poisonings), it’s not unreasonable to seek a further substantiation of what’s quoted (coming from an authentic document)is authentic and not a fabrication. I know of instances of quotes attributed to people which are completely false.
Troll all you want. I stick to reality, premised on facts, fact based opinions and basic common sense.
Following up on 208, keep mind that paper laws/edicts weren’t always so effectively enforced.
Africans – or traditional African cultures – are probably healthier than Western culture in some aspects, in terms of not giving a shit and enjoying life in the moment.
I cannot imagine this is going to be very adaptive to immigration in countries like Switzerland though.
Even after century in America, they were bringing over the need for singing in order to motivate for work.
Also, within the Empire itself. What’s the matter, can’t you read??
The law was promulgated in 1876 and wasn’t rescinded until the Empire fell apart and the commies took over. Which goes to show you that even under such a hostile atmosphere, the Ukrainian language was the organic choice of the Ukrainian people, and its usage could never be eliminated
Good luck, and carry on! 🙂
Regarding comments 208 and 210, the following hasn’t been proven false:
Lemme know if something substantive comes up. BTW, the Whites had a policy of having Russian as a national language, with Ukrainian as a local language. In fact, Ukrainian was spoken among some Whites. Surmised from this policy is a graduated progression of tolerance – noting that the world at that time was much different.
Well, metaphorically…..yes. But, if you just for a moment take it literally …
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/the-particularism-of-white-morality/
………..
What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right
Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town. Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health. That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, “a fecalized environment.”
In plain English: shit is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country. Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.
……….
Senegal was not a hellhole. Very poor people can lead happy, meaningful lives in their own cultures’ terms. But they are not our terms. The excrement is the least of it. Our basic ideas of human relations, right and wrong, are incompatible. […]
Take something as basic as family. Family was a few hundred people, extending out to second and third cousins. All the men in one generation were called “father.” Senegalese are Muslim, with up to four wives. Girls had their clitorises cut off at puberty. (I witnessed this, at what I thought was going to be a nice coming-of-age ceremony, like a bat mitzvah or confirmation.) Sex, I was told, did not include kissing. Love and friendship in marriage were Western ideas. Fidelity was not a thing. Married women would have sex for a few cents to have cash for the market.
What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death. Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives. Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees.
…………..
The Ten Commandments were not disobeyed – they were unknown. The value system was the exact opposite. You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives. There are some Westernized Africans who try to rebel against the system. They fail.
……………
…………
It may all be true – at the same time the text seems to have been written with a narrow-minded viewpoint, in the typical style of the American redneck (which, on the intellectual level, appears to constitute majority of the American population).
All this said, Africans are indeed from a different universe, and contact with West, is as if people from four or five thousand years ago suddenly were transported to the present day.
Good luck, and carry on! 🙂
Your autistic version of Rain Man.
you should know!
You’re absolutely right, given what I’ve seen from the likes of yourself.
Pretty much nobody to my knowledge speaks the standardised form in the vernacular. There is a class of movnyuki, who have a good command of the language. Some smarter types do well, and the rest speak bad Ukrainian, surzhik kreole, and Russian. The standardised form is an artificially created language that requires state coercion to be implemented. I would say the peasants were not duped into using a language that is not natural to them, they were forced.