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“Yes, they are few. A rapidly increasing number of our people are so docile and feeble-minded that they scream their fanatical support of their leaders and their policies without taking a moment to understand historical and evolutionary truths about the issues that are tormenting them. Back in the day of the Soviet Union, some of our compatriots propagated the notion of ethnic revival in a delirious manner, hardly aware of their full genealogy. Permit to dwell on the sad case of Ukraine.”
“What about Ukraine now? Don’t we already know much about that frontier outpost and its inclination to choose leaders that are against everybody?” Mikhail Pugo intoned.
“My point, my dear comrades, is that Russians by nationality make up twenty-two percent of the population of this promising part of our revered motherland. You will also find ethnic Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Magyars, and other minorities in Ukraine, nationalities that cannot be ignored and should not be ignored. But what is the stupid Galician from Volhynia doing?”
“You tell us,” a shrilling voice in the crowd said.
“Of course, I will. Leonid Kravchuk is pressing ahead with his agenda of creating a Ukrainian Ukraine where the Ukrainian language and culture completely dominate as if there are no other unifying cultures in the land. Is that realistic, I ask you? Mustn’t non-Ukrainian speakers who also constitute ethnic Ukrainians, have a say in the direction of the country’s affairs? Tell me, I repeat. Is that realistic?”
“No,” Boris grunted.
“No, no, no, comrades,” Nikolai Mazepa affirmed.
“Of course, the answer is no,” Eno Gallinin said.
“I can’t even count the number of times I have ruminated this problem over while lying in my bed. Believe me, I always arrived at the familiar conclusion that Ukrainians are unaware of their historical origins. A millennium ago, the world knew Eastern Slavs as the people of Rus, otherwise called Kievan Rus. Yes, our ancestors were Rusyachie or Kievan Rusians. For centuries, the Eastern Slavs identified themselves to others as Rusyachie. Only with further probing down the years did they express themselves as Great Russians, White Russians, or Ruthenians, otherwise called Little Russians or what we know today as Ukrainians. Those three people from Rus are today’s Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian peoples respectively.”
“Isn’t Ruthenia a Latinized version of the name Rus?” Taidje interjected.
“Yes, comrades! Ruthenia was how the Catholic West referred to Rus. The Eastern Orthodox people led by the Greeks called Rus, Rossia, a transcription Muscovy took upon itself, later calling the empire that resulted from its expansion The Tsardom of Rus, otherwise called the Tsardom of Russia. By doing so, Muscovy claimed sovereignty over all the lands of the former Rus, even though the southern and western parts were under the control of Poland and Lithuania at the time. And since Galicia–Volhynia was the first part of the former Kievan Rus that attempted to create an independent entity after the Mongols invaded Kievan Rus, the people of Western Ukraine would like everybody to believe that they are the true successors of Rus or Ruthenia, as they would like to call it. After all, they were Catholicized during the many centuries that they were under Polish, Lithuanian, and Austrian rule.”
“What do you mean?” Taidje queried.
“The people of Galicia hold that Muscovy usurped the role of unifier of Rus. And to counter that more seriously, they are postulating this myth that the people of Moscow were never a part of Rus and that Muscovy did not start as an Eastern Slavic political entity. And to make their point even crazier, they hold that the Eastern Slavs of today’s Russia are different from those who were under the subjugation of the West for centuries. Based on their claim, Ruthenia does not extend to Russia. As a matter of fact, they are even trying to narrow it down by making Ruthenia and Ukraine synonymous, when you and I know that Ukraine means borderland, a reference made to the frontiers of Rus, which included Ryazan, Pskov, Lvov, Galicia-Volhynia, Zaporozhe, Podolia etc. at different times in our history.”
“Thank you, my dear comrade. You shed a lot of light on that hazy aspect of our history.”
Thank you, Comrade Taidje. To tell the truth, most of our people don’t know that we Ukrainians are descendants of East Slavic tribes that settled in the Don and Dnieper regions, just like our Russian and Byelorussian brothers. We had very little division among us until the advent of Polish and Lithuanian influence and control in what is our historical lands.”
“The damn chauvinistic Polaks set in motion the confusion that is haunting Eastern Slavs today! Now I understand why Gogol wrote Taras Bulba and extolled our Eastern Orthodox heritage. Hmm! I also see why Galicians and some Western Ukrainians don’t get the sacredness of the ties we share as children of the Rodina. They have been Polonized in their religion, in their language, and in their way of thinking,” Yury Turchuk said.
“I agree with you, Comrade Yury. Poland’s occupation of the western lands that are in Ukraine today did a lot of damage to our sense of oneness or unity! It caused a marked distinction between Ukrainians and their Eastern Slavic brothers of Russia and Byelorussia, even though we share a common Eastern Slavic root that is still strong today. If you pay attention to the different Ukrainian dialects, you will find that they are markedly influenced by Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Slovakian in the west and that they change as you move eastwards, to the point where the Ukrainian dialects in the eastern regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, and even Kharkov are basically Russian in content but Ukrainian in phraseology,” Nikolai Mazepa said.
“Syntax you mean?” Boris interjected.
“Yes, Comrade Boris. The morphology and phonology in Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian are basically the same. Foreign influences altered the syntax only.”
“The damn Polaks and Lithuanians,” Taidje growled.
“Come on, my Gilyak friend! Why do you take it so hard as if you are someone with Eastern Slavic roots as well?” Boris said with a laugh.”
“I feel Russian too. And I know that in years to come, one of my Gilyak descendants would have Russian blood too. The law of total probability is what I am hinging my argument on, Comrade Boris!”
“Ha, ha...ha-ha!” Boris guffawed, and then continued expressing his mirth as several others joined in the laughter, forcing a smile out of Taidje’s lips.”
“The story you were about to tell, Comrade Ivan!” Taidje said with a shrug.
“You see, comrades! We didn’t have time on our side in the historical evolution that was taking place before the demise of our great country. Time would have bridged those differences caused by alien powers. Time could have bridged those differences even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had that stupid Galician-Volhynian not become Ukraine’s president. Ah, comrades, he feels little about our mutual solidarity and compatibility. After all, his region was under the control of Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Czechoslovakia until this century,” Nikolai Mazepa cried.
“The grief of our times,” someone commented from the far end of the tavern.
Nikolai Mazepa brooded for a moment and then continued. “I don’t think I’m going off on a tangent on this one. Isn't it true that a disturbing percentage of Ukrainians are unaware of our history; isn’t it true that they are unaware of the fact that for four hundred years, we khokholi shared a common history with our Bulbash and our Moskal or katsap brothers? Did you know that we shared a common history as one nation and one people called Russkie, in what was Kievan Rus at the time? What if Kievan Rus instead of Muscovy had survived the Mongol onslaught and grown to become the Rus Empire, otherwise known as the Russian Empire?”
“The Mongols stopped that from happening. So why even imagine something like that?” Boris said.
“Stretching my imagination, that’s all. Had Kievan Rus evolved into the Russian Empire, the discriminating voices of Russo-phobic Western Ukrainians would have been absent today. Hmm, comrades! The Mongol hordes did a devastating job on our land and derailed our common history with the invasion and destruction of Kievan Rus. Most of the present-day confusion emanates from their conquest. Nonetheless, much of the blame goes to the feeble-minded usurpers who hijacked Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and then decided to draw from the little differences that arose during those years or centuries our lands were separated from one another, all caused by foreign powers. Yes, comrades, they failed to draw from the things we share that make us a single nation in the Western sense of the word.”
“Khokhol, Moskal, katsap, Bulbash! Some would call those descriptions ethnic slurs, but I am okay with them. Comrade Nikolai, I like the way you used those funny words in referencing our Eastern Slavic brothers. When I said Slavic brothers, I meant those who identify themselves as Ukrainians, Russians and Byelorussians,” Mikhail Pugo said with a mocking smile.
“Forget about Comrade Pugo here. You were about to say something important,” Taidje interjected, fixing his eyes on Eno Gallinin.
“Oh, comrades! It is sad,” Eno Gallinin assented.
“Of course, it is sad!” Nikolai Mazepa affirmed. “I’m a Don Cossack. We Cossacks have been greatly assimilated into the ways of life of what became Byelorussia, Russia, and Ukraine. We are the most lost of all the Soviet peoples if nationality or any other form of identification is considered the basis of classifying people. Some Cossacks from Ukraine join hands with exclusionist Ukrainians and stir the ugly pot of nationalism as if they are unaware of the fact that the bulk of their Cossack brothers is in Russia. I support Comrade Temudin in his similar assertion of Tatars in the autonomous republic.”
“Saboteurs, saboteurs, saboteurs,” Boris muttered with quivering lips.
“Saboteurs, they certainly are,” Nikolai Mazepa growled in a dejected manner and then clenched his fist. “What good shall those heads of state of the former Soviet Republics do to the people they deceived with their rhetoric and now profit by lording over?”
“It is pathetic,” Boris said, paused, and then continued. “I pity the ethnic Ukrainians who do not reside in Ukraine. Fifteen percent of ethnic Ukrainians are accepted as citizens in other parts of the former Soviet Union. Comrades, they love the lands of their births or adoption with the same fierceness as their compatriots in those lands. Like any other settler population, they were overwhelmingly against the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. I’m sure they would have even fought for its preservation had they been asked to decide on it. Didn’t we all witness their high level of support for Gorbachev’s proposal to reform the Soviet Union into the Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics? Didn’t our people manifest their support in the all-union referendum in 1991, something you and I know was a progressive manifestation that Boris Yeltsin and his collaborators sabotaged?”
“Stop mentioning the name of that muzhik who betrayed his origins for the illusion of a capitalism he knew little about,” Taidje interjected.
“Yes, Comrade Taidje; yes, my dear comrades. Yeltsin is a whim. He led the leaders of the other Soviet Republics into dishonoring our people’s vote against the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Now, what is my point on this one?” Boris intoned.
“You tell us,” an unknown voice in the crowded tavern hollered.
“All I’m trying to say is that Ukrainians residing in the other former Soviet Republics are the most realistic Ukrainians. Yes, my dear comrades; those Ukrainians do not see themselves as different from their Russian brothers. You can call them Little Russians if you want to. After all, that’s how we of the south have been known for centuries.”
“It is similar to the way we try to get over our divisive history in the hands of foreign powers by calling ourselves White Russians. I don’t buy the ridiculous notion that the whiteness of our Rus is because we are devoid of Mongol blood in our veins,” Natasha Goncharova, the Byelorussian with the knack for reproducing the works of Chagall said, raising her head above the crowd in an effort to be conspicuous. She was immediately hushed down by several murmuring voices that did not approve of her utterances.
“Comrade Boris was up to something important,” Ivan Gamuchin, the head-scratching Krasnoyarsk-born Yenisei Ostyak said in a loud voice.
“Yes, yes…yes,” the crowd affirmed.
“We shouldn’t be harsh to our Comrade Natasha. In fact, there is a high degree of truth in her words. Truth be told, she had a strong point. There is always a nucleus around which we can build something cohesive. If Russia is the nucleus around which little, white, pink, and other words are attached or compounded by the people of our lands to identify themselves, then so be it.”...
Culled by Janvier T.Chando, author of THE UNION MOUJIK, “ Ukraine: The Tug-of-war between Russia and the West https://amazon.com/dp/B0B2T4XWWD/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_YWGHMQF2P1RE0PPJXH0…
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