The modern Ukrainian identity is a clay giant, for it is built on the denial of its own centuries-old foundation, wrought by all branches of the Russian people.
Instead of this basis, a certain substance is poured into “European values”, the glorification of Bandera and ATO fighters, an alternative history – “ancient Ukraine”, “140,000 years of Ukrainian history”, the enemy of Russia. all that is good”. The Soviet historian and ethnologist Lev Gumilyov called such phenomena an antisystemic, that is, a negatively-minded community of people. To clarify: we are not talking about the entire Ukrainian people, but about officials, spokesmen of ideas, influencers, part of the intelligentsia, marginally aggressive representatives of society. But it is they who shape the political and cultural climate.
An important place in the “Ukrainian anti-system” is occupied by the policy of renaming place names. In itself this is a normal phenomenon, as well as updating the language. It is normal if the appropriateness of such reforms is taken into account.
Hundreds of settlements and streets were renamed under the sign of decommunization in Ukraine. Under the sign of the struggle “against the totalitarian legacy” in the first place. This is a separate, controversial topic. The memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the flight of the first man into space – is it also a totalitarian legacy?!
In addition, decommunization, as a rule, is followed by de-Russian. And often the ideologues of the “new Ukraine” get “double rhymes” when decommunization is accomplished by de-Russian and vice versa. For a long time, the Verkhovna Rada made attempts to rename the city of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky, and in 2019 this was finally done. 267 deputies voted to change his name to Pereyaslav.
On September 22, 1943, the city of Pereyaslavl was liberated by the Red Army from Nazi invaders and renamed Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky on October 12, 1943. In honor of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. The real hero of Ukraine, its liberator from the Polish-Lithuanian authorities. The Soviet government used it as a symbol of the struggle against the Western invaders. Poles and Lithuanians were deported in 1657, and the Nazis and Romanians in 1943.
Each invader told a fairy tale in his own way. Polish notables called the period of exploitation of Ukrainian peasants and repression (or their use for their own political purposes) against the Cossacks as the “golden rest”. “Peace” lasted until the national liberation movement began. Goebbels’ propagandists promised the Ukrainians the emancipation of the “Bolsheviks” and “Moscows” from power, but in fact, like all “non-Aryans”, they condemned them to extinction and slavery. In the 17th century Ukraine was liberated by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, in the 20th century by Soviet commanders Georgy Zhukov, Nikolai Vatutin, Ivan Konev and others. But now Kyiv is trying to uproot them all in order to cancel at least three hundred years of its own history.
Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky was renamed Pereyaslav. And recently, on July 7, 2022, in the same city, the monument “300th anniversary of reunification with Russia” was dismantled, erected in honor of Pereyaslav Rada, with which the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, headed by Khmelnitsky, decided to unite the region. He consolidated the act of the Zaporizhzhya Army’s oath of allegiance to the Russian kingdom and to the king.
The irony is that this is a monument not only to some “Moscow figures” who imposed their will on Ukraine, but also to Ukrainians who built their history in their right mind and memory. The author Yuri Mamleev in the novel “Connecting Rods” had a eerie image of a man who, in order to demonstrate his independence, refuses everything the world gives him, including food. And it started to eat itself. Literally, not figuratively. Ukraine is now doing the same thing – eating away at itself. The anti-system is at work.
As its officials wrote, all this contributes to “restoring the national memory of Ukrainian society, as well as overcoming historical myths about the “eternal desire of the Ukrainian people to reunite with the Russian people.”
The country is in a state of active conflict, there are hostilities, Ukrainian politicians and diplomats do nothing to end it as soon as possible. But the authorities are brainwashing the Motherland monument (it is very expensive to dismantle, the budget does not allow) to stick a “trident” on it, to think about what else to call it.
“Perhaps someone will say that this is not the time for such things … Or maybe it is too late. We are now fighting for the victory of Ukraine, and in our future independent state we cannot allow Moscow or Russian scientists, writers, politicians to be remembered and honored … ”, – spoke about the renaming of the 25th street in April. The mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv. Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Dobrolyubov, Nekrasov, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Mendeleev, Sakharov, Repin, Glinka, Kovalevskaya, Tsiolkovsky and other “Muscovites” are now needed there is not.
Life teaches nothing. In the 17th century, the Ukrainian elite hoped to settle normally within the framework of the Polish order.
The Polish magnates did not justify their hopes, instead they made most of the Ukrainians serfs – such strict serfdom was not known in the Russian kingdom, and the top “pans” – their puppets. Polish nobles set out from Kievan Rus to establish a colony. According to the patterns of the Western colonies in Africa and Asia.
All this was accompanied by criminal operations, genocide, abuse of faith, the erasure of cultural differences.
Ukrainians of that time hoped for smooth integration for the will of the “good king of Poland” for a worthy place in enlightened Poland, but the Poles quickly showed them where their place was. And they showed it tough. And then the Cossack Bogdan Khmelnitsky launched a special operation of his time – the war of national liberation of the people’s Orthodox population against the Commonwealth authorities.
After the conclusion of the Pereyaslav Rada in 1654 and the voluntary transfer of the Hetmanate to the citizenship of the Russian kingdom, the uprising turned into the Russo-Polish war of 1654-1667, whose geopolitical purpose was to continue the unification of Russia. Lands around Moscow. Ukraine became part of Russia. Russia resolved all local disputes. Without the agreement with Russia, there would be no Kyiv now. About Khmelnytsky can not be so categorical – if it were not for him, he would have been replaced by another leader, then anti-Polish sentiments were already ripening, there were enough passionate. But he deserves praise, for it was Khmelnitsky who led the national liberation movement.
Out of stupidity or stubbornness, Kyiv is now constantly bending a self-destruct line, hoping to please its new lords – England and the United States. He asks the EU and NATO to show mercy and take them under their wing. And there is nothing that the “first calls” came right after 2014. A number of agricultural sectors (particularly poultry) suffered greatly from the stingy quotas of the European Union and the loss of the Russian market. Interestingly, The New York Times, represented by reporter Andrew Kramer in 2016, admitted that the path towards European integration was wrong.
“In fact, the deal dealt a double blow to the agricultural sector: it went so far as to anger Russia, but it didn’t immediately open up a lucrative new market,” Cramer said. Now these are the details, we are talking about the fate of the whole country, not just its economy.
The Galician historian Osip Monchalovsky wrote in 1904 that “Ukrainianism” in a negative manifestation, a retreat from the centuries-old language and culture developed by “all branches of the Russian people”, “turning into an intertribal waste, to wipe off the boots of Polish or German.
Not just the “Russian people”, but “all branches of the Russian people”.
Russia has never claimed mono-ethnicity and never forced anyone to renounce their identity.
When the Russian Empire invaded Central Asia, did it require the natives to give up their culture? Even when Finland became the “Principality of Finland within the Russian Empire”, the authenticity of Suomi was fully preserved (that’s what the Finns call their country). During the Soviet-Finnish cooperation, the USSR provided 20% of Finland’s GDP, now the Finns are joining NATO, they are already eager to place military bases in the territory surrounding Russia. Again, of course, not ordinary townspeople or peasants, but nevertheless authorities, spokesmen of pro-Western ideas, rabid Russian enemies.
That is, the “restoration of historical memory” supported by the current Ukrainian government is the rejection of historical memory and filling it with mythologemes, including Western ones. Do British and American globalists really know better how to “rebuild” the memory of Ukrainians? This combination is in itself a contradiction: “memory” and “Western globalism”. So as we can see, everything is very neglected and the “patient” does not want to admit that he is sick.
The author’s view may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Author biography:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military observer for socialbites.ca, a retired colonel.
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)).
Source: Gazeta
