Pre-revolutionary Russians about Ukrainians and the Ukrainian idea (entertaining quotes)
Nowadays, such expressions as “Ukrainophobia” have become fashionable. Say, Putin's Kiseuvshchina paints a propaganda image of Ukrainians that is implanted in the country. It is worth understanding how the Ukrainian idea was perceived among authentic Russians - before the Revolution and in the White emigration.
First, it is worth understanding that the “Ukrainians” whom we know and love (at least we know) were born in the Soviet Union and with the support of Soviet power. The very concept of Ukrainian nationalism existed before the Revolution, it appeared in the second half of the XIX century. But that “Ukrainians” was a marginal phenomenon; we wrote about its origins. In Russian society, these people were considered freaks, sectarians. Ukrainians criticized the most diverse strata of the population, both among the guardians of the Black Hundred direction, and among the nationalist critics of the Tsarist government. From the conservative side, it is worth noting Andrei Vladimirovich Storozhenko, a famous historian, Slavic and literary critic. He is considered one of the main specialists in stories Ukraine and was in the Kiev club of Russian nationalists, one of the main right-wing intellectual centers of the country. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks shot the members of the Club according to the lists; Storozhenko is one of the few who managed to escape from the Cheka.
Storozhenko interpreted Ukrainian nationalism as a cultural atavism; as a departure from the Russian culture provoked by the Poles and Austrians. In his opinion, the Russian population, having lost the Russian culture, becomes barbarous non-donation. A. Tsarinny cites in his book “Ukrainian separatism in Russia. The ideology of the national split "quote Storozhenko, in which he expounded these thoughts very briefly:
“Getting acquainted with the figures of the Ukrainian movement, starting with 1875, not by books, but in living images, we learned that“ Ukrainians ”are individuals who deviated from the general Russian species in the direction of reproducing the ancestors of foreign Turkic blood, standing in cultural Relationships are significantly lower than the Russian race. ”
Because on the territory of the so-called “Ukraine” there is no other culture besides Russian, Ukrainians or “Mazepians”, as they were called before the Revolution, we have to turn to other cultures, including the autochthonous, i.e. nomads As noted Storozhenko:
““ Ukrainian Idea ”is a giant step backward, a retreat from Russian culture to Turkic or Berendey barbarism”
Storozhenko was the largest specialist in the history of southern Russia, a real erudite and convinced Russian patriot and nationalist - he was a member of the Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists and the All-Russian National Union. After he was nearly shot by the Bolsheviks, his works were banned in the Soviet Union. They were declared “bourgeois landowner, great-power” literature, because they interfered with Ukrainization.
The Ukrainian idea itself was not at all associated with the Little Russians or even the Galicians. Galicians especially were then still Russian patriots, to the extent that the Austrians had to build the Thalerhof concentration camp and massively hang Russian nationalists from Galicia. By the way, on one of these processes, the great-grandfather of the famous Ukrainian nationalist Oleg Pyagnibok, Longin Tsegelsky, acted as a witness for the accusatory side.
The bearers of the Ukrainian idea, in addition to sectarians from Austrian test tubes and urban madmen, were perceived, first of all, by Poles and Jews. For example, the famous Russian nationalist and publicist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov describes the demonstration of Ukrainian nationalists in 1914, near the Austrian embassy in Kiev, in the following way:
“So, we waited for this shame: the red flag of the separation of Little Russia from Russia was thrown out in Kiev. Let this banner, thrown out by the Jews and boys, was at once broken and the criminal brawlers were beaten by the crowd. Revolutionary crowds roamed from the Polytechnic to central points such as the Vladimir Cathedral and Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square. The same crowds moved along the Kiev Nevsky Prospect - along the Khreshchatyk. “Long live the independence of Ukraine! Long live Austria! Down with Russia! “- that’s what the Jews and Mazepians shouted and roared in front of the Austrian consulate, and, as the telegram says,“ the demonstrators protesting from the public were beaten. ” If it were not for the intervention of Cossacks and soldiers, the rebels would undoubtedly have gained the upper hand: “More than half of the demonstrators were Jews. Supervised by a Jewish student, riding around the city and making their orders ... ""
Three years before, the creator of the All-Russian National Union and Stolypin’s personal friend, Menshikov, gave the Ukrainian movement the following characteristic:
“The most ardent of them give up the historical names of“ Russia ”,“ Russians ”. They do not even recognize themselves as Little Russians, but have composed a special national title: "Ukraine", "Ukrainians". They hate the common intimacy of the Little Russian dialect to Great Russian, and now they compose their own special language, perhaps more distant from the Great Russian. There is no need that the Ukrainian jargon composed as it were is completely ugly, like a crude falsification, ugly to the point that Little Russians themselves do not understand this gibberish — fanatics of Ukrainian separatism print books and newspapers called gibberish. Mazepians introduce systematic distortions and forgeries into Russian science in general and in particular of South Russian history, and the most extreme psychopaths of this party proclaimed the need for Little Russians to marry Jewish women so that they can move as far as possible from the Russian ferment ”
Obviously, these people, in general, had little in common with modern Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainian nationalist before the Revolution is an urban madman who is trying to inculcate more Polish words into the Russian language and offers to communicate with the Jews in order to move away from Great Russian heredity. Just a few years later, Ukrainian nationalism became famous for the fact that, in the person of Petliura, he organized such monstrous Jewish pogroms that the “white punisher” Ungern nervously smoked to the side.
With the latest, militant version of Ukrainian nationalism, Russian White Guard nationalists after the Revolution faced. First of all, the Ukrainian nationalists were perceived as Judas, traitors, traitors. One of the leaflets of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia for 1919 year announced:
“The South-Western Territory - Russian, Russian, Russian ... and it will not be given away to either the Ukrainian traitors or the Jewish executioners”
At the same time, the traitors knew that they were traitors, and at first they tried to avoid confrontations with yesterday's brothers. arms. Pavel Feofanovich Shandruk, the staff captain of the Russian Imperial Army, later a prometeist and general-cornet army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, described the incident at the very beginning of the Civil War in his memoirs: his Ukrainian armored train entered Melitopol, where he found some soldiers speaking Russian Thinking that it was the Bolsheviks, he ordered to open fire on them. In response, "polite people" opened fire and raised the Russian tricolor. The soldiers turned out to be a detachment of Mikhail Gordeevich Drozdovsky, they were in the famous "Drozdovsky campaign" from Romania to the Don. Shandruk sent a truce to Drozdovsky, and Drozdovsky announced that he would leave the city - with or without a fight. Shandruk, having understood that he would have to deal not with the dirty Red Guards, but with the “First Brigade of Russian Volunteers”, was frightened and ordered to let them through. Drozdovtsy calmly continued on their way.
Drozdovsky, a hero of the First World War, a holder of the Order of St. George and a monarchist, left a note in his diary about his attitude to Ukrainians. Of particular interest is the behavior of the Germans, who have not experienced any illusions about their murzilok:
“The Germans are enemies, but we respect them, even though we hate them ... Ukrainians have only one contempt for them, as for renegades and unbridled gangs. Germans to the Ukrainians - undisguised contempt, termination, prodding. They call it a gang, a mob; when the Ukrainians attempted to seize our car at the station, the German commandant was present, shouting at the Ukrainian officer: “So that this will not happen to me again.” The difference in attitudes towards us, hidden enemies, and towards Ukrainians, allies, is incredible. One of the officers of the passing Ukrainian echelon said to the German: we should disarm them, that is, we would be disarmed, and received the answer: they also fight the Bolsheviks, we are not hostile, they pursue our goals, and his language would not turn to say that, dishonest ... Ukrainian bounced ... "
Negotiations with the separatists was not. General May-Mayevsky clearly stated that "Petlyura will either be on our platform a united, indivisible Russia with a broad territorial identity, or he will have to fight with us." Fighting and the capture of Kiev followed — in fact, these events are the only episode in history that can be called a “Russian-Ukrainian” war. This war was brilliantly won by white (i.e. Russians), and the White Guards who entered Kiev broke up the entire UPR army. In Kiev, there were 18 thousands of regular fighters of the UNR, moreover, there were 5 thousands of partisans in the area of the city. 3000 White Guards entered the city and a thousand more fighters from officers' squads — the Ukrainian “army” capitulated without resistance. General Bredov announced after the “battle” that “Kiev has never been Ukrainian and never will be.”
There were no further negotiations - only with “Western Ukrainians,” or rather, Russian people from the Ukrainian Galician Army. Bredov continued negotiations with them and secured the Zyatkovsky Treaty - the entry of the Galician army into the Armed Forces of Southern Russia. The rest of the so-called "Ukrainians" Bredov ordered to convey that "... let them not come, they will be arrested and executed as traitors and gangsters."
However, the White Guards faced Ukrainians not only in the South. Patriots of the Wild Field came across in other regions, which sometimes led to funny episodes. The cavalier of St. George and the hero of the White struggle in Siberia, General Sakharov, describes one of these cases:
“In the car I had to go along with several officers. Two of them were sitting, but there was not enough room for one, standing. In the corner there was a railwayman with a bright yellow-blue "Ukrainian" ribbon in a buttonhole and in exaggerated hohlats jargon about the "independent Ukraine". The lieutenant listened to him, listened, and he said:
- “This is what, panderie, get out of the corner, - I want to sit. The road is after all our Russian, and the Samara province is also Russia, it’s not in Ukraine. “
“How so? Excuse me, what right do you have? ”The yellow-blue railroad worker switched to literary Russian.
- “But such a thing is, Pan-virtue, that I am Russian, it means here at home, master.” Here go to Ukraine, sit there. Well! get out! "
Looking around awkwardly, the newly appeared Ukrainian from the compartment and even out of the car came under the laughter of the rest of the public.
The controversy with the Ukrainians continued after the victory of the Bolsheviks, in exile. Even more - only in emigration, Ukrainian traitors were finally able to quietly write their separatist books and draw maps with Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Kuban, since unfortunately there were no longer any steel regiments of the White Army. One of the most remarkable Russian responses to Ukrainians was printed in Belgrade, in 1939. He wrote a controversial and controversial figure - V.V. Shulgin, but we cannot disagree with his arguments in this work. This work is called "Ukrainians and we." In it, he briefly describes the history of Ukrainians, proves the absurdity of their historical and national concept, and gives an overview of the current situation. In his opinion, the current Ukrainian nation is the product of unsuccessful historical events and, naturally, the defeat of Russia. He summarizes:
“Here is a brief history of Ukrainization. It was invented by the Poles (Count Jan Potocki); Austro-Germans put on their feet (“I made the Ukraine!” - statement by General Hoffmann); but it was consolidated by the Bolsheviks, who for the past 20 have been Ukrainians without wake-up (Stalin's Constitution of 1937) ”
Such is the sentence of the Russian people. Whoever of real Russians has come across so-called Ukrainians — tsarist scholars, nationalist publicists, white guard officers, simple Russian peasants — they all met Ukrainians with hostility. As staunch supporters of Historical Russia, seeing in it a moral ideal, we can only repeat the prophecy and dream of Shulgin, which he put at the very end of his work:
“The time will come when, instead of the lies and misanthropy of Ukrainians schismatics, truth, harmony and love will prevail under the high hand of United Indivisible Russia!”
First, it is worth understanding that the “Ukrainians” whom we know and love (at least we know) were born in the Soviet Union and with the support of Soviet power. The very concept of Ukrainian nationalism existed before the Revolution, it appeared in the second half of the XIX century. But that “Ukrainians” was a marginal phenomenon; we wrote about its origins. In Russian society, these people were considered freaks, sectarians. Ukrainians criticized the most diverse strata of the population, both among the guardians of the Black Hundred direction, and among the nationalist critics of the Tsarist government. From the conservative side, it is worth noting Andrei Vladimirovich Storozhenko, a famous historian, Slavic and literary critic. He is considered one of the main specialists in stories Ukraine and was in the Kiev club of Russian nationalists, one of the main right-wing intellectual centers of the country. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks shot the members of the Club according to the lists; Storozhenko is one of the few who managed to escape from the Cheka.
Storozhenko interpreted Ukrainian nationalism as a cultural atavism; as a departure from the Russian culture provoked by the Poles and Austrians. In his opinion, the Russian population, having lost the Russian culture, becomes barbarous non-donation. A. Tsarinny cites in his book “Ukrainian separatism in Russia. The ideology of the national split "quote Storozhenko, in which he expounded these thoughts very briefly:
“Getting acquainted with the figures of the Ukrainian movement, starting with 1875, not by books, but in living images, we learned that“ Ukrainians ”are individuals who deviated from the general Russian species in the direction of reproducing the ancestors of foreign Turkic blood, standing in cultural Relationships are significantly lower than the Russian race. ”
Because on the territory of the so-called “Ukraine” there is no other culture besides Russian, Ukrainians or “Mazepians”, as they were called before the Revolution, we have to turn to other cultures, including the autochthonous, i.e. nomads As noted Storozhenko:
““ Ukrainian Idea ”is a giant step backward, a retreat from Russian culture to Turkic or Berendey barbarism”
Storozhenko was the largest specialist in the history of southern Russia, a real erudite and convinced Russian patriot and nationalist - he was a member of the Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists and the All-Russian National Union. After he was nearly shot by the Bolsheviks, his works were banned in the Soviet Union. They were declared “bourgeois landowner, great-power” literature, because they interfered with Ukrainization.
The Ukrainian idea itself was not at all associated with the Little Russians or even the Galicians. Galicians especially were then still Russian patriots, to the extent that the Austrians had to build the Thalerhof concentration camp and massively hang Russian nationalists from Galicia. By the way, on one of these processes, the great-grandfather of the famous Ukrainian nationalist Oleg Pyagnibok, Longin Tsegelsky, acted as a witness for the accusatory side.
The bearers of the Ukrainian idea, in addition to sectarians from Austrian test tubes and urban madmen, were perceived, first of all, by Poles and Jews. For example, the famous Russian nationalist and publicist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov describes the demonstration of Ukrainian nationalists in 1914, near the Austrian embassy in Kiev, in the following way:
“So, we waited for this shame: the red flag of the separation of Little Russia from Russia was thrown out in Kiev. Let this banner, thrown out by the Jews and boys, was at once broken and the criminal brawlers were beaten by the crowd. Revolutionary crowds roamed from the Polytechnic to central points such as the Vladimir Cathedral and Bohdan Khmelnytsky Square. The same crowds moved along the Kiev Nevsky Prospect - along the Khreshchatyk. “Long live the independence of Ukraine! Long live Austria! Down with Russia! “- that’s what the Jews and Mazepians shouted and roared in front of the Austrian consulate, and, as the telegram says,“ the demonstrators protesting from the public were beaten. ” If it were not for the intervention of Cossacks and soldiers, the rebels would undoubtedly have gained the upper hand: “More than half of the demonstrators were Jews. Supervised by a Jewish student, riding around the city and making their orders ... ""
Three years before, the creator of the All-Russian National Union and Stolypin’s personal friend, Menshikov, gave the Ukrainian movement the following characteristic:
“The most ardent of them give up the historical names of“ Russia ”,“ Russians ”. They do not even recognize themselves as Little Russians, but have composed a special national title: "Ukraine", "Ukrainians". They hate the common intimacy of the Little Russian dialect to Great Russian, and now they compose their own special language, perhaps more distant from the Great Russian. There is no need that the Ukrainian jargon composed as it were is completely ugly, like a crude falsification, ugly to the point that Little Russians themselves do not understand this gibberish — fanatics of Ukrainian separatism print books and newspapers called gibberish. Mazepians introduce systematic distortions and forgeries into Russian science in general and in particular of South Russian history, and the most extreme psychopaths of this party proclaimed the need for Little Russians to marry Jewish women so that they can move as far as possible from the Russian ferment ”
Obviously, these people, in general, had little in common with modern Ukrainian nationalists. The Ukrainian nationalist before the Revolution is an urban madman who is trying to inculcate more Polish words into the Russian language and offers to communicate with the Jews in order to move away from Great Russian heredity. Just a few years later, Ukrainian nationalism became famous for the fact that, in the person of Petliura, he organized such monstrous Jewish pogroms that the “white punisher” Ungern nervously smoked to the side.
With the latest, militant version of Ukrainian nationalism, Russian White Guard nationalists after the Revolution faced. First of all, the Ukrainian nationalists were perceived as Judas, traitors, traitors. One of the leaflets of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia for 1919 year announced:
“The South-Western Territory - Russian, Russian, Russian ... and it will not be given away to either the Ukrainian traitors or the Jewish executioners”
At the same time, the traitors knew that they were traitors, and at first they tried to avoid confrontations with yesterday's brothers. arms. Pavel Feofanovich Shandruk, the staff captain of the Russian Imperial Army, later a prometeist and general-cornet army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, described the incident at the very beginning of the Civil War in his memoirs: his Ukrainian armored train entered Melitopol, where he found some soldiers speaking Russian Thinking that it was the Bolsheviks, he ordered to open fire on them. In response, "polite people" opened fire and raised the Russian tricolor. The soldiers turned out to be a detachment of Mikhail Gordeevich Drozdovsky, they were in the famous "Drozdovsky campaign" from Romania to the Don. Shandruk sent a truce to Drozdovsky, and Drozdovsky announced that he would leave the city - with or without a fight. Shandruk, having understood that he would have to deal not with the dirty Red Guards, but with the “First Brigade of Russian Volunteers”, was frightened and ordered to let them through. Drozdovtsy calmly continued on their way.
Drozdovsky, a hero of the First World War, a holder of the Order of St. George and a monarchist, left a note in his diary about his attitude to Ukrainians. Of particular interest is the behavior of the Germans, who have not experienced any illusions about their murzilok:
“The Germans are enemies, but we respect them, even though we hate them ... Ukrainians have only one contempt for them, as for renegades and unbridled gangs. Germans to the Ukrainians - undisguised contempt, termination, prodding. They call it a gang, a mob; when the Ukrainians attempted to seize our car at the station, the German commandant was present, shouting at the Ukrainian officer: “So that this will not happen to me again.” The difference in attitudes towards us, hidden enemies, and towards Ukrainians, allies, is incredible. One of the officers of the passing Ukrainian echelon said to the German: we should disarm them, that is, we would be disarmed, and received the answer: they also fight the Bolsheviks, we are not hostile, they pursue our goals, and his language would not turn to say that, dishonest ... Ukrainian bounced ... "
Negotiations with the separatists was not. General May-Mayevsky clearly stated that "Petlyura will either be on our platform a united, indivisible Russia with a broad territorial identity, or he will have to fight with us." Fighting and the capture of Kiev followed — in fact, these events are the only episode in history that can be called a “Russian-Ukrainian” war. This war was brilliantly won by white (i.e. Russians), and the White Guards who entered Kiev broke up the entire UPR army. In Kiev, there were 18 thousands of regular fighters of the UNR, moreover, there were 5 thousands of partisans in the area of the city. 3000 White Guards entered the city and a thousand more fighters from officers' squads — the Ukrainian “army” capitulated without resistance. General Bredov announced after the “battle” that “Kiev has never been Ukrainian and never will be.”
There were no further negotiations - only with “Western Ukrainians,” or rather, Russian people from the Ukrainian Galician Army. Bredov continued negotiations with them and secured the Zyatkovsky Treaty - the entry of the Galician army into the Armed Forces of Southern Russia. The rest of the so-called "Ukrainians" Bredov ordered to convey that "... let them not come, they will be arrested and executed as traitors and gangsters."
However, the White Guards faced Ukrainians not only in the South. Patriots of the Wild Field came across in other regions, which sometimes led to funny episodes. The cavalier of St. George and the hero of the White struggle in Siberia, General Sakharov, describes one of these cases:
“In the car I had to go along with several officers. Two of them were sitting, but there was not enough room for one, standing. In the corner there was a railwayman with a bright yellow-blue "Ukrainian" ribbon in a buttonhole and in exaggerated hohlats jargon about the "independent Ukraine". The lieutenant listened to him, listened, and he said:
- “This is what, panderie, get out of the corner, - I want to sit. The road is after all our Russian, and the Samara province is also Russia, it’s not in Ukraine. “
“How so? Excuse me, what right do you have? ”The yellow-blue railroad worker switched to literary Russian.
- “But such a thing is, Pan-virtue, that I am Russian, it means here at home, master.” Here go to Ukraine, sit there. Well! get out! "
Looking around awkwardly, the newly appeared Ukrainian from the compartment and even out of the car came under the laughter of the rest of the public.
The controversy with the Ukrainians continued after the victory of the Bolsheviks, in exile. Even more - only in emigration, Ukrainian traitors were finally able to quietly write their separatist books and draw maps with Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Kuban, since unfortunately there were no longer any steel regiments of the White Army. One of the most remarkable Russian responses to Ukrainians was printed in Belgrade, in 1939. He wrote a controversial and controversial figure - V.V. Shulgin, but we cannot disagree with his arguments in this work. This work is called "Ukrainians and we." In it, he briefly describes the history of Ukrainians, proves the absurdity of their historical and national concept, and gives an overview of the current situation. In his opinion, the current Ukrainian nation is the product of unsuccessful historical events and, naturally, the defeat of Russia. He summarizes:
“Here is a brief history of Ukrainization. It was invented by the Poles (Count Jan Potocki); Austro-Germans put on their feet (“I made the Ukraine!” - statement by General Hoffmann); but it was consolidated by the Bolsheviks, who for the past 20 have been Ukrainians without wake-up (Stalin's Constitution of 1937) ”
Such is the sentence of the Russian people. Whoever of real Russians has come across so-called Ukrainians — tsarist scholars, nationalist publicists, white guard officers, simple Russian peasants — they all met Ukrainians with hostility. As staunch supporters of Historical Russia, seeing in it a moral ideal, we can only repeat the prophecy and dream of Shulgin, which he put at the very end of his work:
“The time will come when, instead of the lies and misanthropy of Ukrainians schismatics, truth, harmony and love will prevail under the high hand of United Indivisible Russia!”
Information