The eternal Ruin. From Ancient Rus to Maidan
“Gomonila Ukraine,
Dovgo gomonila,
Dovgo, Dovgo shelter steppe
Tekla-Chervonil
Flowed, flowed th visohla.
Steppes are green;
Lie and lie above them
The graves are blued.
What about that temple? ... ”
T.G. Shevchenko, excerpt from the poem "Gaydamaki."
Dovgo gomonila,
Dovgo, Dovgo shelter steppe
Tekla-Chervonil
Flowed, flowed th visohla.
Steppes are green;
Lie and lie above them
The graves are blued.
What about that temple? ... ”
T.G. Shevchenko, excerpt from the poem "Gaydamaki."
Today’s events in Ukraine worry the masses not only in Russia and in nearby countries, but throughout the world. What caused such a heightened interest, considering that similar revolutionary processes were already taking place in other CIS countries, such as Kyrgyzstan? There are many answers to this question, but the most rational explanation for this is the civilizational and significant geopolitical position of Ukraine. These factors determine the distribution of political and cultural influences among the main players in the international arena in the Eastern European region. Meanwhile, one of the main features of the entire social and political life of Ukraine is its cultural and civilizational fragmentation, which passes through a crack throughout its historystarting with the collapse of the Old Russian State and the Mongol-Tatar invasion, which actually put an end to a single political and cultural space, ending the current national revolution. Analyzing this difficult question, we will have to plunge into the very depths of the centuries, because it is there that lie the causes of the eternal split of Ukraine, and there are also plots, interpretations of which will have colossal consequences.
Galician-Volyn principality founded by Roman Mstislavovich in 1199 year after the unification of Galicia and Volhynia, which Kiev was later joined, was considered the first state to pave the way to the connection of the Eastern Slavs with the Western European Catholic civilization. The prince dreamed of uniting under his power also the southeastern principalities, which at that time were in a state of cruel feudal wars. After the death of Roman Mstislavovich Galician-Volyn principality disintegrated, but his son Daniel Galitsky managed to revive it and continue the consolidation of the Russian lands under his rule. However, the Mongol-Tatar invasion put an end to his plans and put in front of him a cruel choice of civilization scale. The deterioration of relations with the Golden Horde and the desire for independence pushed him to seek support from the Catholic world. Pope Innocent VI offered him a royal title and a declaration of a crusade against the Horde in exchange for his conversion to Catholicism of Galicia-Volyn Rus. However, the crusade was no more than a declaration, and Prince Daniel broke off relations with the papal throne, while retaining the royal title, which was inherited by his descendants. Further, Galitsko-Volyn Rus due to the contradictions between the boyars and princes, as well as the internal economic crisis was divided between Poland and Lithuania in the middle of the XIV century, as well as Hungary and Moldova. The principality that has sunk into oblivion will become for the Ukrainian nationalists something of a ruined Jerusalem for the Jews, which confirms the existence of mythological thinking, “longing for a lost paradise” in people, regardless of the era in which they live. So, the soldiers of the SS division "Galicia" wore the coat of arms of Galician Russia on their sleeves and collars.
In the course of the confrontation of Lithuania with Muscovy and Sweden, Lithuanians were forced to conclude Krevsk Union with Poland (1385), thereby forming a powerful and extensive state of the Principality of Poland and Lithuania. Within this formation, there was a struggle between the Lithuanian and Polish noble families, during which the Polish influence became predominant. This radically changed the state of affairs in the Ruthenian lands, primarily in relation to the peasantry and in the religious sphere. During the period of Lithuanian domination, the peasants remained free, and the pagan Lithuanians were tolerant towards Orthodoxy, and, moreover, they learned a lot from the heritage of the Old Russian state, including legislation and the state language, because decrees were issued in Old Russian and a different administrative activity. The Poles began to lead a rigid linguistic and religious expansion, and after the Union of Lublin (1569) they completely fastened the peasants. From this point on, the Ruthenian language and culture begin to experience strong Polish influence, and the Ruthenian lands lose autonomy. Social and cultural contradictions are brewing in society, including among the Ruthenian nobility, who surrendered their political positions. Soon, scattered uprisings began to flare up, which did not differ in special scale and high organization, and therefore were quickly suppressed. Having failed in their struggle, the Ruthenians of noble origin abandoned their further attempts to liberate their people and began to adopt the culture and religion of the conquerors, forming the so-called “Ukrainian gentry”.
The peasants, in contrast to the nobility, were less susceptible to assimilation, and therefore preserved their cultural identity and self-consciousness. The brutal exploitation forced some of them to flee from their landlords down the Dnieper to the border of Wild Field itself, where they settled in the villages of local hunters and fishermen. They had to repel the constant raids of the Crimean Tatars and Turks, and soon they themselves began to go on predatory campaigns against their opponents. Such a state of affairs was beneficial to the Polish-Ukrainian magnates, since the local residents actually guarded their possessions from Muslim raids. This is how the Zaporizhzhya Sich appeared and the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks were formed, whose cultural heritage formed the basis of the concept of the Ukrainian nation. The Cossacks became the spokesmen for the will of the non-polonized part of the Ruthenian lands, and therefore their numbers continued to grow steadily. Having strengthened their campaigns against the Tatars and Turks, at the end of the 16th century, the Cossacks began a struggle against the Polish authorities, during which they achieved an improvement in their legal and political position. The relations of the Cossacks with Russia were distinguished by their ambiguity, because they participated in the Polish intervention 1609-1618. to Muscovy, during which they were distinguished by a particular tendency to robbery, looting and cruel treatment of the local population. However, by the middle of the 17th century, military-political ties with Russia were strengthened, as evidenced by the Azov Seat, during which Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks jointly defended the Azov fortress from the Turkish siege.
It is interesting that among the Cossack elders opinions about international politics were very different: in addition to the supporters of the Polish and Russian directions, there were even those who considered the citizenship of the Turkish sultan acceptable. Such a fluctuation in international relations will be typical for Ukrainians throughout their subsequent history up to the current events. The uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, supported by Russia, besides the fact that it liberated most of Ukraine from the Poles, created an autonomous, but subordinate to the tsar, semi-state formation. However, things did not go so smoothly. The Vilna truce of Muscovy and Poland part of the Cossack elders and the hetman himself was perceived as a betrayal of the struggle for the liberation of the “Ruthenian” lands, which were still part of Poland. Because of this, after the death of B. Khmelnitsky in the glorious lands of Kievan Rus, another schism occurs: Hetmanate split into Right Bank and Left Bank (loyal to the Tsar), and this schism was accompanied by civil war. Soon the Right Bank Hetmanate fell after hetman P. Doroshenko abdicated, and Poland again seized the Right Bank Ukraine, forcing the Cossacks to serve the king. This period of Ukrainian history was called “Ruin”. But soon the Andrusovo truce after the next Russian-Polish war, the Ukrainian lands were almost completely reunited. The betrayal of Hetman Mazepa (1709), who was originally an Orthodox Polish nobleman, was in essence the last attempt to escape from the influence of Russia, however, most of the Cossacks made their civilization choice not in his favor. For their part, the Russian tsars made it impossible for Ukrainians to break away from the Eastern Slavic integrity that was created: Peter I actually deprived the Sich of autonomy, and Catherine II completely destroyed it, and the Cossacks resettled in the Kuban. These measures for a long time prevented the emergence of Ukrainian statehood, born in the crucible of wars with the Ottomans and Poland. Measures to subordinate, and then the collapse of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, were purely political and managerial in nature, because the Cossacks, for all their loyalty to the Russian throne, still remained extremely unstable and inclined to change their political preferences depending on the situation. The dissolution of the Sich became an excellent reason for Ukrainian nationalist historians to speak almost of the genocide of the Ukrainian people with “cursed Muscovites”, trying to impart a national color to these events.
Minor parts of the Old Russian state continued to be part of Poland (Galicia, Volyn) and Hungary (Uzhgorod), which then came under the rule of Austria after the partition of Poland at the end of the 18th century. It turns out that before the 20th century, these parts of Ukraine were cut off from the rest, which explains their cultural identity. Galicia and Volyn are particularly Europeanized. Most of the inhabitants of these regions profess Uniatism. Uniatism is the recognition of the power of the Pope while preserving the Orthodox rite, this form of Christianity contains the same duality and synthetics that are inherent in Ukraine. Just look at the architecture of the historic part of Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk to feel the strongest Polish and German influences on local culture. However, with all this influence, the Ukrainians retained their separateness and self-consciousness. This was facilitated by the hard feudal oppression from the Poles, who laid down on the shoulders of the peasants and caused an increase in self-consciousness, resulting in mass rebellions of the Haidamaks in the 18th century. These events will be celebrated in Ukrainian literature XIX and will also form the foundation of Ukrainian identity. It is worth noting that the Russian Empire during these uprisings behaved completely "not fraternal", helping the Poles in its suppression.
At the end of the XVIII century, for the first time, the literary work “Aeneid” appeared, using the popular Ukrainian language as a literary, written by I. Kotlyarevsky, who lived in the territory of the Russian Empire. His business was continued by many other representatives of the emerging intelligentsia of Ukrainian origin. The genesis of Ukrainian nationalism, which may seem strange to someone, developed according to a completely classical pattern: first, a manifestation of interest in folk culture and the formation of a literary language based on the folk (T.Shevchenko’s creativity is an example), then on this basis the concept of the nation is created — the emergence of a secret Cyril and Methodius Society in Kiev, a political program which demanded the liberation of Ukraine from the power of Russia. And then the practice follows; part of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and the peasantry supported the Polish uprisings, during which they hoped to gain independence and overthrow the oppression of the serfs. Note that all this happened exactly on Russian territory. In Western Ukraine, which was ruled by Austria-Hungary, similar processes took place at the same time. Western Ukrainian nationalism has one remarkable feature, unchanged up to the 20 century: a significant part of its ideologues were children of Greek Catholic priests. The national movement of Ukrainians of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was divided into two main opposing directions: “narodovtsy”, advocating an independent Ukraine, and “Muscovites” who did not recognize the existence of the Ukrainian language and dreamed of “a single Russian nation from the Carpathians to Kamchatka”. These Russophiles were actively supported by the Russian Empire and were pursued by the Austrian authorities. During the First World War, almost all of them were destroyed in concentration camps, while the Germans fought against the Russian army on the side of the so-called “usus”, or “Ukrainian Sich Riflemen”.
The author of the anthem of Ukraine, which today is the state one and under which was escorted to the last journey of a UNA-UNSO fighter killed on the Maidan, was characteristically a Uniate priest. An interesting verse, which is present in the original version of the hymn:
"Oh Bogdane, Bogdane
Glory our getmane!
На-що віддавъ Украіну
Moskal trash ?!
Schob return and honor
Bark heads
Let's call Ukraine
Vrnim sinami! ”
As we can see, the Ukrainian identity of the Austro-Hungarian model is based on the opposition of the “Muscovites”. Today it is one of the main tenets of Ukrainian nationalism, in order to make sure of this, it is enough to listen to the recent Maidan speeches of Irina Fahrion, a former party member of the CPSU, who suddenly became a radical supporter of “independence” and a member of the Verkhovna Rada of the Freedom Party. In one of them, she openly declares that “Muscovy” is the enemy of the Ukrainians “number one”. Western regions are traditionally more politically active than the eastern, and therefore the presidents of Ukraine have to listen to them. A significant part of the first participants in the clashes with the "Berkut" were the residents of Western Ukraine.
As in the 17th century, Ukraine is an oligarchic state, but the center of power is shifted to the East from the point of view of the economy. Due to the industrial development of the South-East, all large business is located there, while only the agricultural sector is developed in the western regions. During a meeting with the newly-emerged representative of big business, the country's president, Leonid Kravchuk, asked them a question: “What kind of Ukraine do you want to build?”, But did not receive a clear answer. With all the economic power of the East, he remains politically passive. However, these ideas do not have significant support among representatives of Eastern Ukrainian regions, and sometimes they meet resistance. Today, this is explained not only by the fact that there are more Russians among them and traditionally strong Russian cultural and linguistic influence, but also their strong Sovietization. If they take part in anti-government speeches at all, it is usually solely due to dissatisfaction with corrupt government, and not a heightened national identity. In fact, “Ukrainianship” in Ukraine is a matter of purely self-awareness, because even the most radical Ukrainian nationalists can meet many people with Russian names and surnames, while speaking exclusively Ukrainian and even chanting “Muscovites with knives!” Without experiencing no cognitive dissonance from apparent contradiction. In short, the border between Russians and Ukrainians exists only in the head. More M.A. Bulgakov in the “White Guard” ridiculed the opportunists who changed Russian names into Ukrainian and suddenly became “Sirii Ukrainians” in order to please the Petliura power.
Observing what is happening in Kiev, the Russians were divided in opinions and occupied different sides: on the one hand, there is a national revolution taking place that nationalists dream of, on the other hand it is its participants, professing sometimes completely Russophobic ideas. We must give ourselves an impartial report that as long as the Ukrainian identity exists, among the part of its carriers will be the rejection of Russians and Russia without fail. Ukraine will always contain elements of Western European civilization, which will forever crack in its territorial and civil integrity. Perhaps we are present at the demise of the neighboring state, created from culturally diverse elements, and soon after its collapse its parts will draw almost constant poles of Eastern European politics. For us, the most important thing is to extract valuable experience from what is happening and not to rush to conclusions.
Information