CHAT: Hrushevs'kyj (was: Lucus)

--- Pavel Iosad skrzypszy:

> > > Yep. But please don't use the form _Volodymyr_ too often. It is the
> > > Ukrainian form of the (not exactly) Russian _Vladimir_ (my dad's name
> > > :-)), Old Russian _Volodimer(')_, and using it outside radical
> > > pro-Ukrainian circles is rather ridiculuous.
AFAIK it is quite common among Ukrainian historians in general, not only among
radical nationalists.

> > Well, I'm aware that it's the Ukrainian form, but I have to use one
> > form or another, and that's how I saw it first, in a book on Ukrainian
> > history (but not radically pro-Ukrainian by any means - _Borderland_,
> > by Anna Reid
>
> Well, that's for one thing totally incorrect linguistically, and anyway
> the attempts to see Ukraine as _the true Rus'_, and hence the
> Ukraininzation of history date to 1900-1910s, when Ukraine first
> achieved independence.
The problem with this kind of questions is that any answer automatically
includes a political statement. I'm convinced that the tendency to see Kievan
Rus' as an early example of Ukrainian statehood has its roots in two facts, not
to mention even the fact that the territory of Kievan Rus' coincides more or
less with the territory of contemporary Ukraine.

First of all, don't forget you are speaking about the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s.
In Eastern Europe, this was a period of national awakening, when nations
started to define themselves in respect to other nations. History played a very
important role in this process, especially for stateless nations like the
Ukrainians. A matter of major importance became the question, whether a nation
could be considered "historical", i.e. a nation with a history of statehood
(derzhavnist'); for some reason, such an early state was an important argument
to justify the existence of a new state. In the case of Ukraine, the two
obvious choices were Kievan Rus' and the Hetmanate. Later, the period of the
Ukrainian People's Republic, that emerged after World War I, and even the
unsuccessful puppet government of Jaroslav Stec'ko, were gratefully added to
the collection.

The second element that played a role, was the fact that Kievan Rus' had
previously rather been considered an exclusively Russian proto-state that had
naturally evolved into Great-Russia, while the Ukrainians, being nothing more
than a Russian offshoot, had no historic rights whatsoever to the Kievan
heritage. Calling Kievan Rus' exclusively Ukrainian, the Ukrainians were
definitely overreacting to this view, but it can at least be understood,
especially since in this part of Ukraine the Russians were the people they
wanted to be distuinguished from.

> Thus, Hrushves'kyj (the Ukrainian Prime Minister for a time, BTW) was
> the first AFAIR to use "Rus'-Ukrayina" (or was it Kotlyarevs'kyj?).
Hrushevs'kyj. But bear in mind that he was not a radical nationalist at all,
and the Ukrainian People's Republic (or Ukrainian National Republic, depends on
how you translate the word "narodnyj" was very explicitly of social-democratic
signature.

> I don't understand why people can't see the history of
> Rus' as the history of Rus', and not the history of Ukraine, Russia or
> whatever.
I fullheartedly agree! All I wanted to say is that I *understand* the Ukrainian
point of view.

> > There's a Ukrainian statue of him in London, on Holland Park Lane,
> > which uses that name, and Kiev's in Ukraine now, anyway.
IIRC Holland Park Lane is not far from the headquarters of the SUVB, the
Ukrainian diaspora organization in Britain.

> Hmm, are there any Ukrainian nationalists here? I guess they going to be
> the spooks of the list now, to join left-handed Lithuanians.
Does the above make me a Ukrainian nationalist? I don't think so, especially
since I'm not even a Ukrainian. I have always favoured the idea of Ukrainian
independence, though.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com