This article was posted on the Kremlin website last Monday, July 12th, 2021. Direct Translation via Google Translate
Recently, answering a question about Russian-Ukrainian relations during the Direct Line, he said that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, a single whole. These words are not a tribute to some conjuncture, current political circumstances. I have spoken about this more than once, this is my conviction. Therefore, I consider it necessary to state my position in detail, to share my assessments of the current situation.
Let me emphasize right away that I perceive the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between parts of, in fact, one historical and spiritual space, as a great common misfortune, as a tragedy. These are, first of all, the consequences of our own mistakes made in different periods. But also the result of the purposeful work of those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity. The formula that is used is known from time immemorial: divide and conquer. Nothing new. Hence the attempts to play on the national question, to sow discord between people. And as a super task - to divide, and then play off parts of a single people among themselves.
To better understand the present and look into the future, we must turn to history. Of course, within the framework of the article it is impossible to cover all the events that have occurred over a thousand years. But I will dwell on those key, turning points that are important for us - both in Russia and in Ukraine - to remember.
Both Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are the heirs of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes in a vast area - from Ladoga, Novgorod, Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov - were united by one language (now we call it Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty. And after the baptism of Russia - and one Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice of Saint Vladimir, who was both Novgorod and the Great Kiev prince, and today largely determines our kinship.
The Kiev princely table occupied a dominant position in the Old Russian state. This has been the practice since the end of the 9th century. The words of Prophetic Oleg about Kiev: "Let it be a mother to Russian cities" - kept for posterity "The Tale of Bygone Years".
Later, like other European states of that time, Ancient Russia faced a weakening of the central power, fragmentation. At the same time, both nobility and ordinary people perceived Russia as a common space, as their Motherland.
After the devastating invasion of Batu, when many cities, including Kiev, were devastated, fragmentation intensified. Northeastern Russia fell into the Horde dependence, but retained limited sovereignty. The southern and western Russian lands mainly became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which, I want to draw your attention to, was called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia in historical documents.
Representatives of the princely and boyar families passed to the service from one prince to another, were at enmity with each other, but also made friends, entered into alliances. On the Kulikovo field, next to the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Ivanovich, the voivode Bobrok from Volhynia fought, the sons of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Olgerd - Andrei Polotsky and Dmitry Bryanskiy. At the same time, the Grand Duke of Lithuania Yagailo, the son of the Tver princess, led his troops to join Mamai. All these are pages of our common history, a reflection of its complexity and multidimensionality.
It is important to note that both the western and eastern Russian lands spoke the same language. Vera was Orthodox. Until the middle of the 15th century, a single church administration was preserved.
At a new stage of historical development, both Lithuanian Rus and the strengthening Muscovite Rus could become points of attraction, consolidation of the territories of Ancient Rus. History decreed that Moscow became the center of reunification, which continued the tradition of ancient Russian statehood. The Moscow princes - the descendants of Prince Alexander Nevsky - threw off the external yoke, began to collect historical Russian lands.
Different processes were going on in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the 14th century, the ruling elite of Lithuania converted to Catholicism. In the 16th century, the Union of Lublin with the Kingdom of Poland was concluded - the Rzeczpospolita of Both Peoples was formed (in fact, Polish and Lithuanian). The Polish Catholic nobility received significant land holdings and privileges on the territory of Russia. According to the Union of Brest in 1596, part of the Western Russian Orthodox clergy submitted to the authority of the Pope. Polonization and romanization were carried out, Orthodoxy was supplanted.
As a response, in the XVI-XVII centuries the liberation movement of the Orthodox population of the Dnieper region grew. The events of the times of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky became turning points. His supporters tried to achieve autonomy from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In the petition of the Zaporozhye Army to the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1649, it was said about the observance of the rights of the Russian Orthodox population, about the fact that "the Kiev governor should be the Russian people and the Greek law, so that he would not step on the church of God ...". But the Cossacks did not hear.
B. Khmelnitsky's appeals to Moscow followed, which were considered by Zemsky Sobors. On October 1, 1653, this supreme representative body of the Russian state decided to support co-religionists and take them under patronage. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Rada confirmed this decision. Then the ambassadors of B. Khmelnitsky and Moscow toured dozens of cities, including Kiev, whose residents took an oath to the Russian tsar. Incidentally, there was nothing of the kind at the conclusion of the Union of Lublin.
In a letter to Moscow in 1654, B. Khmelnitsky thanked Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich for the fact that he "deigned to accept the entire Zaporozhian Army and the whole Russian Orthodox world under the strong and high arm of his tsarist". That is, in appeals to both the Polish king and the Russian tsar, the Cossacks called and defined themselves as Russian Orthodox people.
In the course of the protracted war of the Russian state with the Commonwealth, some of the hetmans, the heirs of B. Khmelnitsky, sometimes "deferred" from Moscow, sometimes they sought support from Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. But, I repeat, for the people the war was, in fact, a liberating one. It ended with the Andrusov armistice in 1667. The final results were fixed by the "Eternal Peace" of 1686. The Russian state included the city of Kiev and the lands of the left bank of the Dnieper, including Poltava, Chernigov, and Zaporozhye. Their inhabitants were reunited with the main part of the Russian Orthodox people. For this region itself, the name "Little Russia" (Little Russia) was established.
The name "Ukraine" was then used more often in the sense in which the Old Russian word "outskirts" is found in written sources since the 12th century, when it was a question of various border territories. And the word "Ukrainian", judging also by the archival documents, originally meant border service people who ensured the protection of external borders.
On the Right Bank, which remained in the Commonwealth, the old order was restored, social and religious oppression increased. The left bank, the lands taken under the protection of a single state, on the contrary, began to develop actively. Residents from the other bank of the Dnieper moved here en masse. They sought support from people of one language and, of course, one faith.
During the Northern War with Sweden, the inhabitants of Little Russia did not have a choice - with whom to be. Mazepa's rebellion was supported by only a small part of the Cossacks. People of different classes considered themselves Russian and Orthodox.
Representatives of the Cossack elders, included in the nobility, reached the heights of political, diplomatic, and military careers in Russia. Graduates of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy played a leading role in church life. So it was during the hetmanship - in fact, an autonomous state formation with its own special internal structure, and then - in the Russian Empire. Little Russians in many ways created a large common country, its statehood, culture, science. Participated in the exploration and development of the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, the Far East. By the way, in the Soviet period, the natives of Ukraine occupied the most significant, including the highest posts in the leadership of the unified state. Suffice it to say that for a total of nearly 30 years, the CPSU was headed by N. Khrushchev and L. Brezhnev, whose party biography was closely associated with Ukraine.
In the second half of the 18th century, after the wars with the Ottoman Empire, Crimea became part of Russia, as well as the lands of the Black Sea region, which were called "Novorossiya". They were settled by people from all Russian provinces. After the partitions of the Commonwealth, the Russian Empire returned the western ancient Russian lands, with the exception of Galicia and Transcarpathia, which ended up in the Austrian, and later in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The integration of Western Russian lands into a common state space was not only the result of political and diplomatic decisions. It took place on the basis of common faith and cultural traditions. And again, I will especially note - linguistic proximity. So, even at the beginning of the 17th century, one of the hierarchs of the Uniate Church, Joseph of Rutsky, reported to Rome that the inhabitants of Muscovy call the Russians from the Commonwealth their brothers, that their written language is exactly the same, and the spoken language, although different, is insignificant. In his words, like the inhabitants of Rome and Bergamo. This, as we know, is the center and north of modern Italy.
Of course, for many centuries of fragmentation, life in different states, regional linguistic features and dialects have arisen. The literary language was enriched at the expense of the folk language. Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Grigory Skovoroda, Taras Shevchenko played a huge role here. Their works are our common literary and cultural heritage. Taras Shevchenko's poems are written in Ukrainian, while prose is mostly in Russian. The books of Nikolai Gogol, a patriot of Russia, a native of the Poltava region, are written in Russian, full of Little Russian folk expressions and folklore motives. How can this legacy be divided between Russia and Ukraine? And why do that?
The southwestern lands of the Russian Empire, Little Russia and Novorossiya, Crimea developed as diverse in their ethnic and religious composition. Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Karaites, Krymchaks, Bulgarians, Poles, Serbs, Germans and other peoples lived here. They all kept their faith, traditions, customs.
I'm not going to idealize anything. Both the Valuevsky circular of 1863 and the Emsky act of 1876 are known, which restricted the publication and import from abroad of religious and socio-political literature in the Ukrainian language. But the historical context is important here. These decisions were taken against the background of the dramatic events in Poland, the desire of the leaders of the Polish national movement to use the "Ukrainian question" in their own interests. I will add that works of art, collections of Ukrainian poems, folk songs continued to be published. Objective facts indicate that in the Russian Empire there was an active process of development of the Little Russian cultural identity within the framework of the large Russian nation, which united Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians.
At the same time, among the Polish elite and some part of the Little Russian intelligentsia, ideas about the Ukrainian people separate from the Russian people arose and strengthened. There was no historical basis here and there could not be, so the conclusions were based on a variety of fictions. To the extent that the Ukrainians are allegedly not Slavs at all, or, on the contrary, that the Ukrainians are real Slavs, and the Russians, “Muscovites,” are not. Such "hypotheses" were increasingly used for political purposes as an instrument of rivalry between European states.
Since the end of the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian authorities have taken up this topic - in opposition to both the Polish national movement and Muscovite sentiments in Galicia. During the First World War, Vienna contributed to the formation of the so-called Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. The Galicians, suspected of sympathizing with Orthodoxy and Russia, were subjected to severe repression and thrown into the Talerhof and Terezin concentration camps.
Further development of events is associated with the collapse of the European empires, with the fierce Civil War that unfolded in the vast area of the former Russian Empire, with foreign intervention.
After the February Revolution, in March 1917, the Central Rada was created in Kiev, claiming to be the organ of supreme power. In November 1917, in her third universal declaration, she announced the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) as part of Russia.
In December 1917, representatives of the UPR arrived in Brest-Litovsk, where Soviet Russia was negotiating with Germany and its allies. At the meeting on January 10, 1918, the head of the Ukrainian delegation read out a note on the independence of Ukraine. Then the Central Rada in its fourth universal declaration proclaimed Ukraine independent.
The declared sovereignty was short-lived. Just a few weeks later, the Rada delegation signed a separate agreement with the countries of the German bloc. Those in a difficult situation in Germany and Austria-Hungary needed Ukrainian bread and raw materials. To ensure large-scale deliveries, they achieved agreement to send their troops and technical personnel to the UPR. They actually used it as a pretext for the occupation.
Those who today gave Ukraine under full external control should remember that then, in 1918, such a decision turned out to be fatal for the ruling regime in Kiev. With the direct participation of the occupation forces, the Central Rada was overthrown, and Hetman P. Skoropadsky was brought to power, proclaiming the Ukrainian state instead of the UPR, which was, in fact, under the German protectorate.
In November 1918 - after the revolutionary events in Germany and Austria-Hungary - P. Skoropadsky, having lost the support of the German bayonets, took a different course and declared that "Ukraine will be the first to act in the formation of the All-Russian Federation." However, the regime soon changed again. The time has come for the so-called Directory.
In the fall of 1918, Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed the West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR), and in January 1919 announced its unification with the Ukrainian People's Republic. In July 1919, the Ukrainian units were defeated by Polish troops, the territory of the former ZUNR was under the rule of Poland.
In April 1920, S. Petliura (one of the "heroes" who are being imposed on modern Ukraine) concluded secret conventions on behalf of the UPR Directory, according to which, in exchange for military support, he gave Poland the lands of Galicia and Western Volyn. In May 1920, the Petliurists entered Kiev in a wagon train of Polish units. But not for long. Already in November 1920, after the armistice between Poland and Soviet Russia, the remnants of Petliura's troops surrendered to the same Poles.
The example of the UPR shows how unstable were various kinds of quasi-state formations that arose in the space of the former Russian Empire during the Civil War and Troubles. The nationalists strove to create their own separate states, the leaders of the White movement advocated an indivisible Russia. Many republics established by Bolshevik supporters also did not imagine themselves outside of Russia. At the same time, for various reasons, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party at times literally pushed them out of Soviet Russia.
So, at the beginning of 1918, the Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Soviet Republic was proclaimed, which turned to Moscow with the question of joining Soviet Russia. A refusal followed. V. Lenin met with the leaders of this republic and urged them to act as part of the Soviet Ukraine. On March 15, 1918, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) directly decided to send delegates to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, including delegates from the Donetsk basin, and to create at the congress "one government for the whole of Ukraine." The territories of the Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Soviet Republic in the future mainly comprised the regions of the South-East of Ukraine.
Under the Riga Treaty of 1921 between the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Poland, the western lands of the former Russian Empire were ceded to Poland. In the interwar period, the Polish government launched an active resettlement policy, seeking to change the ethnic composition of the “eastern kresy” - this is how the territories of present-day Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and part of Lithuania were called in Poland. A harsh Polonization was carried out, local culture and traditions were suppressed. Later, already during the Second World War, radical groups of Ukrainian nationalists used this as a pretext for terror not only against the Polish, but also the Jewish, Russian population.
In 1922, when the USSR was created, one of the founders of which was the Ukrainian SSR, after a rather heated discussion among the leaders of the Bolsheviks, Lenin's plan for the formation of a union state as a federation of equal republics was implemented. In the text of the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR, and then in the Constitution of the USSR in 1924, the right of free withdrawal of the republics from the Union was introduced. Thus, the most dangerous "time bomb" was laid in the foundation of our statehood. It exploded as soon as the safety and security mechanism disappeared in the form of the leading role of the CPSU, which eventually collapsed from within. The "parade of sovereignties" began. On December 8, 1991, the so-called Belovezhskaya Agreement was signed on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, in which it was announced that that "the USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist." By the way, Ukraine has not signed or ratified the CIS Charter, adopted back in 1993.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the Bolsheviks actively promoted the policy of "indigenousization", which was carried out in the Ukrainian SSR as Ukrainianization. It is symbolic that within the framework of this policy, with the consent of the Soviet authorities, M. Hrushevsky, the former chairman of the Central Rada, one of the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism, who at one time enjoyed the support of Austria-Hungary, returned to the USSR and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences.
"Indigenousization" undoubtedly played a great role in the development and strengthening of Ukrainian culture, language, and identity. At the same time, under the guise of fighting the so-called Russian great-power chauvinism, Ukrainization was often imposed on those who did not consider themselves Ukrainian. It was the Soviet national policy - instead of a large Russian nation, a triune people consisting of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians - that consolidated the provision on three separate Slavic peoples at the state level: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.
In 1939, the lands previously seized by Poland were returned to the USSR. A significant part of them are annexed to Soviet Ukraine. In 1940, part of Bessarabia, occupied by Romania in 1918, and Northern Bukovina entered the Ukrainian SSR. In 1948 - the Snake Island on the Black Sea. In 1954, the Crimean region of the RSFSR was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR - in gross violation of the legal norms in force at that time.
Separately, I will say about the fate of Subcarpathian Rus, which after the collapse of Austria-Hungary ended up in Czechoslovakia. A significant part of the local residents were Ruthenians. Little is remembered about this now, but after the liberation of Transcarpathia by Soviet troops, the congress of the Orthodox population of the region called for the inclusion of Subcarpathian Rus in the RSFSR or directly in the USSR - as a separate Carpathian republic. But this opinion of people was ignored. And in the summer of 1945 it was announced - as the newspaper "Pravda" wrote - about the historical act of the reunification of Transcarpathian Ukraine "with its long-standing homeland - Ukraine."
Thus, modern Ukraine is entirely the brainchild of the Soviet era. We know and remember that to a large extent it was created at the expense of historical Russia. Suffice it to compare which lands were reunited with the Russian state in the 17th century and with which territories the Ukrainian SSR left the Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as an inexhaustible material for social experiments. They dreamed of a world revolution, which, in their opinion, would abolish nation-states altogether. Therefore, borders were arbitrarily cut, and generous territorial "gifts" were handed out. Ultimately, what exactly were the leaders of the Bolsheviks guided by, cutting the country, no longer matters. You can argue about the details, the background and logic of certain decisions. One thing is clear: Russia was actually robbed.
Working on this article, I was based not on some secret archives, but on open documents that contain well-known facts. The leaders of modern Ukraine and their external patrons prefer not to remember these facts. But for a variety of reasons, to the place and not to the place, including abroad, today it is customary to condemn the "crimes of the Soviet regime", including even those events to which neither the CPSU, nor the USSR, and even more so modern Russia have nothing to do. At the same time, the actions of the Bolsheviks to tear away its historical territories from Russia are not considered a criminal act. It is clear why. Since this led to the weakening of Russia, then our ill-wishers are fine with it.
In the USSR, the borders between the republics, of course, were not perceived as state borders, were conditional within a single country, which, with all the attributes of a federation, was essentially highly centralized - due, I repeat, the leading role of the CPSU. But in 1991, all these territories, and most importantly, the people who lived there, suddenly found themselves abroad. And they were already really cut off from their historical homeland.
What can you say here? Everything changes. Including - countries, societies. And of course, part of one people in the course of its development - due to a number of reasons, historical circumstances - may at a certain moment feel, realize itself as a separate nation. How should we relate to this? There can be only one answer: with respect!
Do you want to create your own state? You are welcome! But on what terms? Let me remind you here of the assessment given by one of the brightest political figures of the new Russia, the first mayor of St. Petersburg, A. Sobchak. As a highly professional lawyer, he believed that any decision should be legitimate, and therefore in 1992 expressed the following opinion: the republics - founders of the Union, after they themselves annulled the 1922 Treaty, should return to the boundaries in which they joined Union. All the rest of the territorial acquisitions are a subject for discussion, negotiations, because the basis has been canceled.
In other words, leave with what you came with. It is difficult to argue with such logic. I will only add that the Bolsheviks, as I have already noted, began to arbitrarily redraw the borders even before the creation of the Union, and all manipulations with the territories were carried out voluntarily, ignoring the opinion of the people.
The Russian Federation has recognized the new geopolitical realities. And she did not just recognize, but did a lot to make Ukraine an independent country. In the difficult 90s and in the new millennium, we provided Ukraine with significant support. Kiev uses their own "political arithmetic", but in 1991-2013, only due to low gas prices, Ukraine saved more than $ 82 billion for its budget, and today it literally "clings" to $ 1.5 billion of Russian payments for the transit of our gas to Europe. Whereas with the preservation of economic ties between our countries, the positive effect for Ukraine would amount to tens of billions of dollars.
Ukraine and Russia have been developing as a single economic system for decades, centuries. The depth of cooperation that we had 30 years ago could be the envy of the EU countries today. We are natural, mutually complementary economic partners. Such a close relationship is capable of enhancing competitive advantages and increasing the potential of both countries.
And it was significant in Ukraine, it included a powerful infrastructure, a gas transportation system, advanced shipbuilding, aircraft construction, rocketry, instrument making, scientific, design, and engineering schools of the world level. Having received such a legacy, the leaders of Ukraine, declaring their independence, promised that the Ukrainian economy would become one of the leading, and the standard of living of people one of the highest in Europe.
