On February 8, American TV presenter Tucker Carlson published an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the very beginning of the conversation, Putin asked the overseas guest: “Your basic education is historical, as far as I understand, right?” Having received an affirmative answer, the politician said: “Then I will allow myself - just 30 seconds or one minute - to give a little historical background.” Then the Russian president spent an hour retelling his vision of the last 13 centuries of Russian history - it is they, Putin is sure, that justify a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s current position in international affairs.
Historian Stanislav Mereminsky, at the request of “Verified”, selected a dozen quotes from transcripts of this interview on the Kremlin website and analyzed the mistakes, inaccuracies and manipulations made by Putin.
The Russian state began to gather as a centralized state, this is considered the year of the creation of the Russian state - 862, when the Novgorodians - there is a city of Novgorod in the north-west of the country - invited Prince Rurik from Scandinavia, from the Varangians, to reign. 862 In 1862, Russia celebrated the millennium of its statehood, and in Novgorod there is a monument dedicated to the country's millennium.
Here and further, Putin retells the so-called “Tale of the Calling of the Varangians,” preserved as part of the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years" In the form we know, this work was written in Kyiv at the beginning of the 12th century, but it is assumed that the “Tale ...” was preceded by unpreserved historical works of the 11th century. In any case, their authors lived 150–250 years after the supposed calling of the Varangians.
As noted in the encyclopedia “Ancient Rus' in the medieval world”, published in 2014 by a team of scientists from the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, “The Tale of Bygone Years” was considered a reliable description of the early history of Rus' only until the 19th century. Later studies of the text showed that it contains descriptions of individual historical events and processes (for example, interactions between Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Scandinavian ethnic groups in the area of the Volkhov River and Lake Ilmen in the 8th–9th centuries), which are flavored with a large number of fictional details taken from folklore, epic and myths. The existence of most of the rulers described in the early part of the Tale (Rurik, Oleg, Igor) is confirmed by sources external to the chronicle, however, the chronology used by its authors (including the key date - 862) is now unanimously recognized in the academic community as conditional. It is also impossible to confirm the family ties within the dynasty described in the "Tale...": there is no evidence that Igor was the son of Rurik, and Oleg, apparently, was a sovereign prince in Kyiv, but not a relative of Rurik, etc. Attempts to prove the origin of the Rurikids from a common ancestor using paleogenetics methods have so far brought very controversial results.
The next, very significant date in the history of Russia is 988. This is the Baptism of Rus', when Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Rus' and accepted Orthodoxy - Eastern Christianity. From that time on, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? A single territory, single economic ties, one language and - after the baptism of Rus' - one faith and the power of the prince. A centralized Russian state began to take shape.
The year 988 as the date of the so-called Baptism of Rus' (more precisely, the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich) is now recognized as the same conventional chronological marker as the year 862. Medieval sources present different versions about where and how Prince Vladimir was baptized. Conditionally allocate Kyiv and Korsun legends. The very spread of Christianity in the possessions of the Rurikovichs was a long process, stretching over many decades.
An obvious anachronism is the use of the term Russian state in relation to the realities of the 9th–13th centuries. The concept of Rus, often found in chronicles and other early sources (its etymology remains the subject of scientific debate), was first the name of the people, and later began to be used to designate the lands under the rule of princes from the Rurik family (parts of modern Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation). But more often this territory was called the Russian Land, and in Byzantine sources written in Greek - Russia. Title sovereign (sovereign) of all Rus' by analogy with the title of metropolitans, the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily II first began to use it in the middle of the 15th century; the title of Tsar of Rus', or Russia, was adopted in 1547 by his great-grandson Ivan the Terrible.
But the fragmented Russian state became easy prey for the empire that Genghis Khan once created. His successors, Batu Khan, came to Rus', plundered almost all the cities, and destroyed them. The southern part, where Kyiv was, by the way, some other cities, they simply lost their independence, and the northern cities retained part of their sovereignty. They paid tribute to the Horde, but retained part of their sovereignty.
As a result Mongol campaigns In 1237–1240, many of the largest cities of Rus' were indeed devastated, but not all of them. Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Polotsk and Turovo-Pinsk principalities remained intact. The real difference in the position of the princes in the north and in the south there wasn't: both recognized the supreme power of the khan, which was manifested, in particular, in the payment of tribute and receipt of a label (permission) to reign.
The southern part of the Russian lands, including Kyiv, began to gradually gravitate towards another “magnet” - towards the center that was taking shape in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was even called Lithuanian-Russian, because Russians made up a significant part of this state. They spoke Old Russian and were Orthodox. But then a unification occurred - the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. A few years later, another union was signed in the spiritual sphere, and some Orthodox priests submitted to the authority of the Pope. Thus, these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
Name "Lithuanian-Russian Principality" meets in modern historiography, but has never been official. In the constitutional documents of the 16th century, the so-called Lithuanian statutes, used option “Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogit” - according to the main ethnic and linguistic groups of subjects, as they were understood at that time. By unions, Putin means Union of Lublin 1569, which completed the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the church Union of Brest 1596.
But for decades, the Poles have been engaged in the Polishization of this part of the population: they introduced their language there, they began to introduce the idea that these are not entirely Russians, that since they live on the edge, they are Ukrainians. Initially, the word “Ukrainian” meant that a person lives on the outskirts of the state, “at the edge,” or is engaged in border service, in fact. It did not mean any particular ethnic group.
Word "Ukraine" (Old Russian "ukraina") has been found in chronicles since the 12th century, where it was used to designate a variety of border parts of the Russian land - at different times, for example, Pskov, Ryazan and Tula Ukraine were mentioned. Since the 16th century, the lands in the Middle Dnieper region, which were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, most often began to be called this way; from the 17th century, this word became the usual name for the territory of the Cossack Zaporozhye army, as well as the lands neighboring it.
Along with this, the geographical concept of Little Rus', or Little Russia, which came from Byzantine church terminology. Until the 19th century, most of the inhabitants of these territories called themselves “Rus” or “Rusyns”, often “Cossacks”; in official documents of the Russian Empire the name “Little Russians” was common. The ethnonym Ukrainian arose in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 16th century, and began to spread from the mid-19th century through the efforts of figures of the Ukrainian national revival (for example, the poet Taras Shevchenko).
A unified terminology did not take hold immediately: for example, historian Mikhail Grushevsky offered variant of the name “Ukraine-Rus” and the corresponding ethnonym. The names “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” became common after the February Revolution of 1917, when in April All-Ukrainian National Congress, and in November it was proclaimed Ukrainian People's Republic. Later in the USSR the ethnonym Maloros was announced chauvinistic.
And in 1654, a little earlier even, the people who controlled power in this part of the Russian lands turned to Warsaw, I repeat, demanding that people of Russian origin and the Orthodox faith be sent to them. And when Warsaw, in principle, did not answer them anything and practically rejected these demands, they began to turn to Moscow so that Moscow would take them in.
Russia did not agree to accept them immediately, because it assumed that a war with Poland would begin. Still, in 1654, the Zemsky Sobor - it was a representative body of power of the Old Russian state - made a decision: this part of the Old Russian lands became part of the Muscovite kingdom.
As expected, the war with Poland began. It went on for 13 years, then a truce was concluded. And just after the conclusion of this act of 1654, 32 years later, in my opinion, peace was concluded with Poland, Eternal Peace, as it was said then. And these lands, the entire Left Bank of the Dnieper, including Kyiv, went to Russia, and the entire Right Bank of the Dnieper remained with Poland.
The use of the term “Old Russian state” in relation to the 17th century is another obvious anachronism. Officially, the Romanov power was called the Russian, or Russian, kingdom, in Western sources often - Muscovy or the Moscow State, to distinguish it from the Russian lands within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The appeal of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the leaders of the Cossack Zaporozhye army to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654 was only one of the episodes (albeit an important one) that began in 1648 wars Cossacks against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In modern Ukrainian historiography she interpreted like a national revolution. At the same time, the idea of transferring to the citizenship of Moscow was not supported by all the Cossacks - some of the frequently changing hetmans during this period (for example, the son of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Yuri) were ready to remain under the citizenship of the Polish king, others (for example, Pyotr Doroshenko) were oriented towards the Ottoman Empire. The sphere of influence of the Turks at that time included Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region, and in 1672–1699 even Podolia (a region centered in the city of Kamenets-Podolsky in the southwest of present-day Ukraine and northeast of Moldova).
The Russian-Polish War of 1654–1667 ended Truce of Andrusovo, along which the border ran along the Dnieper, but some of the Cossacks did not recognize this agreement and continued to fight against the Polish king until 1676, not recognizing the power of Moscow. Eternal Peace between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire was concluded in 1686, when both countries were preparing for war against the Ottoman Empire.
Then, during the time of Catherine II, Russia returned all its historical lands, including the south and west.
As a result sections of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, 1793 and 1795, between the Russian Empire, Prussia and the Austrian Habsburgs, this state ceased to exist. In this process, both diplomatic blackmail and military force were used (for example, in suppressing Polish uprising 1794). Almost all the lands received by the Russian Empire had never previously been part of the possessions of the Moscow Grand Dukes or Tsars from the Rurik and Romanov dynasties, and some (for example, the territory of modern Lithuania) did not belong to the Russian land of the era of the early Rurikovichs. However, the government of Catherine II really used the rhetoric of gathering previously “snatched” Russian lands. As for Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region, acquired by the Russian Empire as a result of wars with the Ottoman Empire 1768–1774 and 1787–1791, then they basically also never were part of the Russian land of the Rurikovichs.
Before the First World War, taking advantage of these ideas of Ukrainization, the Austrian General Staff very actively began to promote the idea of Ukraine and Ukrainization. Everything is clear why: because on the eve of the world war, of course, there was a desire to weaken a potential enemy, there was a desire to create favorable conditions for ourselves in the border zone. And this idea, once born in Poland, that the people living in this territory are not entirely Russian, they are supposedly a special ethnic group, Ukrainians, began to be promoted by the Austrian General Staff.
The national-cultural, and then the national-political movement developed in the 19th century in parallel on the Ukrainian lands both as part of the Russian Empire and in the possessions of the Habsburgs (in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria). The idea of Ukrainian nationalists solely as agents of Austro-Hungarian military intelligence actively spread Russian nationalists during the First World War. In fact, at that time all the warring parties sought to work with possible separatist movements on enemy territory for their own purposes. For example, both Russia and other Entente countries had contacts with the Czech national movement, but this does not mean that the Czech people were invented just over a hundred years ago by the Russian or French General Staff.
Theorists of Ukrainian independence also emerged in the 19th century, who spoke about the need for Ukrainian independence. But, it’s true, all these “pillars” of Ukrainian independence said that it should have very good relations with Russia, they insisted on this. Nevertheless, after the revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks tried to restore statehood, and a Civil War broke out, including [the war] with Poland. A peace was signed with Poland in 1921, according to which the western part, on the right bank of the Dnieper, again went to Poland.
Putin (again) does not mention the proclamation in November 1917 of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which in 1919 waged a war both with the Red Army and with the white Armed Forces of the South of Russia under the command of Denikin. Nominally, this state entity ceased to exist after the signing Riga Treaty 1921 between the Soviet republics (RSFSR, Belorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR) and Poland. According to it, not only Galicia (previously part of Austria-Hungary, where it was proclaimed in 1918) came under the control of Warsaw. Western Ukrainian People's Republic, then abolished by the Polish authorities), but also some former parts of the Russian Empire (in particular, the west of the Volyn province and the Grodno province).
In 1939, after Poland collaborated with Hitler, and Poland collaborated with Hitler, and Hitler proposed - we have all the documents in the archives - to conclude peace with Poland, a treaty of friendship and alliance, but demanded that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the main part of Germany with Königsberg and East Prussia. After World War I, this part of the territory was given to Poland, and the city of Gdansk replaced Danzig. Hitler begged them to surrender peacefully, but the Poles refused. But nevertheless, they collaborated with Hitler and together began to divide Czechoslovakia.
So, before the Second World War, when Poland collaborated with Germany, refused to fulfill Hitler’s demands, but nevertheless participated with Hitler in the division of Czechoslovakia, but since it did not give up the Danzig corridor, the Poles nevertheless forced it, they played too hard and forced Hitler to start the Second World War with them. Why did the war start on September 1, 1939 from Poland? She turned out to be intractable. Hitler had no choice in implementing his plans to start with Poland.
Problem Danzig, or Polish, corridor remained a stumbling block in relations between Germany and Poland throughout the interwar period. However, historians, including Russian ones, are in solidarity in the opinion that German proposals to Poland regarding the Danzig Corridor, expressed in 1938 and early 1939, were blackmail aimed at turning Poland into a satellite of the Third Reich and its subsequent disappearance as an independent state. For example, here's how they are assessed in 2009, on the air of Echo of Moscow, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of MGIMO Mikhail Narinsky: “Of course, the Polish leadership made many mistakes and miscalculations during this crisis of 1938–1939 - this is no secret, and some Polish historians recognize these miscalculations and mistakes, in particular the behavior of Poland during Munich Agreement and the crisis around Czechoslovakia... But nevertheless, it must be said that Hitler’s demands regarding Poland, which began to be presented just after Munich, in October 1938, and were then fully set out in early January 1939... were aimed at turning Poland into a satellite of Nazi Germany, at the complete loss of Poland’s independent role in European politics, and, from my point of view, these demands can in no way be called either justified or fair. It seems to me that the merit of the Polish leadership of that time was that Poland became the first country to actually reject this Hitler’s pressure, dictatorship, and on January 8, 1939, at a meeting of the Polish leadership at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, it was decided to reject Hitler’s demands, and I think that this does honor to the then Polish leadership.”
It is noteworthy that MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov, who still holds this post today, participated in the same program. Ahead of the Russian presidential elections in March 2024, he became one of Putin's confidants, and previously entered to the group of authors of a new unified history textbook. In 2009, Torkunov did not try to argue with his colleague; on the contrary, he agreed that Hitler’s claims to Poland had no basis and, even having accepted these demands, Poland would not have been able to maintain independence from the Third Reich.
At the same time, Stalin insisted that these republics that were being formed should be included as autonomous entities, but for some reason the founder of the Soviet state, Lenin, insisted that they have the right to secede from the Soviet Union. And, also for unknown reasons, he endowed the emerging Soviet Ukraine with lands, people living in these territories, even if they had never been called Ukraine before. For some reason, during its formation, all this was “infused” into the Ukrainian SSR, including the entire Black Sea region, which was received during the time of Catherine II and, in fact, never had any historical relation to Ukraine. Even if we remember, let’s go back, 1654, when these territories returned to the Russian Empire, there were three or four modern regions of Ukraine, there was no Black Sea region there. There was simply nothing to talk about.
According to All-Russian Population Census 1897, the Little Russian (that is, Ukrainian) language was the native language of the majority of residents in most of modern Ukraine (excluding Odessa and Akkerman districts of the Kherson province, Crimea, as well as the Donetsk district of the Don Army Region). At the same time, speakers of the Little Russian (Ukrainian) language made up the majority (in some cases, the overwhelming majority) of the population of a number of territories included in the RSFSR in the 1920s, and since 1991 - the Russian Federation. These are, for example, parts of the present Krasnodar region (Temryuk, Yeisk and Ekaterinodar departments of the Kuban Cossack Army Region), Stavropol region (Medvezhensky district of the Stavropol province), Kursk, Belgorod and Voronezh regions (Putivlsky, Sudzhansky and Grayvoronsky districts of the Kursk province, Bogucharsky district of the Voronezh province). The Soviet administrative borders drawn in the 1920s did not quite correspond to the ethnolinguistic ones, but the realities of the 17th century, when the word “Ukraine” had a completely different meaning than in the 20th century, had nothing to do with it.
After 1922, the borders of the Ukrainian SSR changed several more times. In September 1939, Soviet troops entered the territory of Poland and occupied its eastern part, which was included in the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics. Some of these lands were previously part of the Russian Empire, others (Galicia) were not. Later, the Ukrainian SSR also included Chernivtsi region (torn away from Romania by the USSR in 1940) and Transcarpathian region (according to the agreement between the USSR and Czechoslovakia in 1945). In all these territories, at the time of inclusion into the Ukrainian SSR, Ukrainians made up the majority of the population. Finally, in 1954 from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR was transferred Crimean region, Soviet authorities referred to “common economics, territorial proximity and close economic and cultural ties between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR.” Speaking about Crimea, one cannot ignore mass deportation from there the Tatars (19% of the inhabitants of the peninsula according to census 1939) and representatives of some other nations during the Second World War, which significantly changed the composition of the population. In 1989, Ukrainians were already over 25% of Crimean residents, twice as much as in 1897.
[In 1991], I think the Russian leadership proceeded from the fundamental principles of relations between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, there is a common language, more than 90 percent there spoke Russian...
By census In 1989, Ukrainians made up 72.6% of the population of the Ukrainian SSR, Russians - 22%. At the same time, 33% considered Russian their native language, and about 45% were fluent in it (which is not surprising, given the state status of the Russian language in the USSR and its compulsory study in schools). By 2010, two decades after Ukraine gained independence, these indicators fell to approximately 28% and 31% respectively.
Cover photo: kremlin.ru
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