“If you shoot the past with a pistol, the future will shoot at us with a cannon” – this popular expression is attributed to the unifier of Germany Otto von Bismarck, the national poet Abutalib Gafurov and the British Prime Minister Churchill. Soviet writer Rasul Gamzatov referred to Gafurov and even made these lines as an epigraph to his book “My Dagestan”. But in fact, any politician, any person on whom the fate of millions depends, should always keep these words in mind.
Today the whole world is unraveling the fruits of unlearned lessons. Everything that happens in Ukraine today is, in the short term, the result of the Maidan of 2014, the fruits of the incomplete degassing/dissolution of Ukraine in the middle approach, and in the far distance, the result of Polish mythology. Ukraine, which began in the 16th century and became official in the 18th century. Originally, “oukraina”, “vkraina” is an old Russian place-name denoting the border region, the land on the edge of the principality. In 1581, the papal envoy in Eastern Europe Antonio Possevino proposed to call the southwestern lands of Russia “Ukraine”, and the Commonwealth (Poland) authorities happily agreed. It was no longer linguistic, but political. In the 16th century, most of Ukraine was part of Poland, and Belarus – Lithuania.
Right-bank Ukraine, Volhynia and Podolia were incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1772-1795. This is the result of a process initiated by the liberation movement of Bogdan Khmelnytsky £. In 1796, Count Jan Potocki wrote and published “Historical and geographical fragments about Scythians, Sarmatia and the Slavs” in Paris. He defined Ukrainians as:
“The inhabitants of the frontier, which we also call the Little Russians or the people of Little Russia, consisted of several tribes, the most notable of which were in two branches – the Polyans and the Drevlyans.
Potocki is often called the founder of Ukrainian identity, but at his core he is an amateur historian, an avid dreamer. Trying to find out who lived on the territory of Little Russia, Herodotus refers to Pliny, Jordan. Introduces the term Les Ukraineiens, but more often in the sense of “people of little Russia”. For the first time, he identified Russians living on the southwestern borders of the Russian Empire as Ukrainians or “frontier people”. Already in 1801, the Polish historian Tadeusz Chatsky proposed the idea that the Ukrainian people had nothing to do with the Slavs and allegedly descended from the ancient Ukrainians. That’s when the seeds of discord were planted.
The truth about the “Old Ukrainians”
In fact, the “ancient ukry” has nothing to do with Ukraine. Uker (Ukranen, Ukrer, Vukranen) goes back to the Balto-Slavic word vikru, etymologically meaning “agile”. This is a union of Slavic tribes living in the northern regions of modern Germany and Poland in the early Middle Ages. Their descendants live in the north-east of Germany and partly in the north-west of Poland, they have no identity of their own.
In fact, Jan Potocki made a scene by introducing the term Les Ukrainiens, but by that he didn’t mean an independent ethnic group.
Tadeusz Chatsky wrote his fantasy “placing” the German ukrov on the territory of Little Russia. Polish ethnographer and historian Franciszek Duchinsky went further than anyone else and got so immersed in alternative history that he developed his own version of the “Turanian theory” (in short: assumed to be a crossing branch between Finno-Ugric peoples, Caucasians, and Mongols). ), accordingly, the Russians do not belong to the Slavs, but of Turkic origin. Dukhinsky worked for British intelligence in the Crimean War, was an ardent Russophobic during the Second Empire, who was in demand in France, where anti-Russian sentiment was fostered there. When the Second Empire fell and France went to rapprochement with Russia, everyone forgot about Duchinskiy. But the theses remained.
● First thesis: the world is divided into Aryans and Turanians. Aryans are masters of life, Turanians are slaves.
● Second thesis: Moscow adopted the name “Russia” illegally, the real Russia is Ukraine, not Moscow. Enough?
● Third thesis: Europeans are Aryan, Poles are Aryan. Ukry bypasses the Turanians. For Europe, if they face Russia, they will be proud Aryans.
● Fourth thesis: “The Russians are closer to the Chinese than the Ukrainians.” So, according to Dukhinsky, the Chinese are also Turanians, slaves.
This is the 19th century and already “Ukraine is Europe”. In the context of these theses, the term “moscal”, which is an expressive ethnonym, an expression of an ethno-cliche, is used. This is how soldiers of the Russian army, regardless of ethnicity, were called in the XVII-XIX centuries. And this was also the name of Russian officials and Moscow merchants. For Dukhinsky and other Russian enemies, the word “Moskal” has taken on a distinctly negative connotation.
Everyone forgot about Dukhinsky, the word “Dukhinshchina” became a household word. Even the historian Nikolai Kostomarov, who wrote the book “Two Russian Nations”, in which he drew the differences in mentality between Russians and Ukrainians, avoided such concepts and did not write that these were completely different peoples after all. Dukhinsky is dead, but his work lives on.
Then there was the Western Ukrainian historian Mikhail Grushevsky. He wrote that ancient Russia was the first stage in the history of Ukraine, and the vile “Moscows” deceived and betrayed the Ukrainians. The most interesting thing is that Grushevsky was born and grew up in Russia, speaks and writes Russian. He died in 1936, when the Bandera ideology flourished, and his ten-volume work became the corresponding foundation. At the end of 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN – an organization banned in the Russian Federation) was created, from which the notorious Stepan Bandera came. The myth created by the Poles hit them with a boomerang: the activities of the organization were openly anti-Russian, anti-Soviet, anti-Semitic and anti-Polish. On March 26, 1943, the Volyn massacre broke out, initiated by the OUN-UPA (the organization was banned in the Russian Federation), in which from 20 to 100 thousand Poles died. Why do Poles, who take an anti-Russian stance today, do not remember this genocide? Because the ideological structure does not allow it.
So the “great Ukraine” project, this Pandora’s box has been opened for decades and now cannot be closed. We almost talked about the brightest representatives of scientific thought, many of them were blind, someone pursued a selfish interest – to make money from the political technologies of that time. And then Bandera politicians got involved – the first boss of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, his colleague Andrey Melnik, Stepan Bandera – an icon of the movement, philosopher Dmitry Dontsov, who introduced the term “active nationalism”, Uniate Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Bandera journalist Ulas Samchuk and others. When Soviet identity ended in 1991, the myth of the “great Ukraine” was revived, rising from the ashes for more than a decade and finally permeating the highest echelons of President Viktor Yushchenko’s power. Also, “Accelerated Dialogue with NATO” and now hundreds of Western political technologists are reworking the old song in a new way.
Petr Yushchenko, brother of the ex-president of Ukraine, who calls himself a “historian”, remembered the “former Ukrainians”, initiating the thesis that Ukraine is part of the “golden fund” of leading civilization. According to his version, even the ancient Greek philosophers spoke Ukrainian. There is not a single piece of evidence, not a single reference to historical sources – but why? Professional political technologists laugh at these fairy tales by imitating the “great Ukraine” in their training manuals, but cynicism allows them to use the myths for their own purposes.
Today, the achievements of alternative historians and political scientists are used for very specific ideological purposes. And it all started with a timid attempt by a layman to explore ethnos. “Shooting” from a pistol in history comes with the standard bearers, M777 howitzers, Javelin, NLAW missile systems and other weapons that the alliance supplies to Ukraine.
The author’s view may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Author biography:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military observer of socialbites.ca, a retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-aircraft Missile School (1976).),
Air Defense Military Command Academy (1986)).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile battalion (1980-1983)).
Deputy Commander of the Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment (1986-1988)).
Senior officer of the Air Defense Forces Main Staff (1988-1992)).
General Staff Main Operations Directorate Officer (1992-2000)).
Graduate of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003)),
Editor-in-Chief of the Military Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015)).