I did. I suggest you study Hitler's raise to power. I'm assuming you did. One word: Lebensraum.
Nazis justified their move East by claiming that their countrymen are prosecuted. Same way Russia annexed Crimea and eventually will annex eastern Ukraine.
Completely invalid argument. When Hitler moved East, he replaced the local population - killing it - with the Germans. 17 million Soviet citizens is the death toll of that expansion. Crimea returned after an illegal annexation to Ukraine (1954). Same with Novorossia (1922). I presume you never set foot there, or the locals would have shared a piece of their mind with you. Violently.
I don't think af_newbie and criptix can be helped. And no, Russia does not need to revise history - on the contrary, Russia foils the attempts of history revisions. The following is a historical essay for those, not blinded by hate and willing to think for themselves.
How Malorossia Was Turned into the Patch-quilt of Discord that is “Ukraine”http://stanislavs.org/how-malorossia-was-turned-into-the-patch-quilt-of-discord-that-is-ukraine/I am currently translating a larger documentary. Here I will present two fragments of the translated script, along with two still images, illustrating the points made there.:
What is “Ukraine”, “Ukrainian”? The revolt, headed by Bogdan Hmelnitsky started in 1648. After 6 years of war, in 1654, Periaslav Rada was signed. This is a document about reunification with the Moskovy State of a part of Western Rus, including Kiev and the territories of Zaporozhje county. It was signed by Czar Aleksei Mikhailovich Romanov.
My the way, the phrase “reunification of Ukraine with Russia” appeared first in the Soviet history texts in 1920s.
The historians knew perfectly well that in 1654 there was simply no such country as “Ukraine”. Those territories were called Malorossia. While the words “Ukraine” – Ukraina (slight difference in stress here, both words are the same) was used in Poland and Russia about borderlands. For Poles it is the lands of the middle Dnepr – the central regions of the modern Ukraine.
Anna Razhny:
In Polish it is called “pugraniche”. It’s the border in the cultural, national, political, even historical meaning. Ukraina meant for Rech Pospolitaja a far away border, a territory, where different ethnos could live. In this context Ukraina no longer exists in the present time.
For Moscow, on the other hand, at one time Ukraina meant Tula, Kashira, Serpuhov – that was the Oka-river Ukraina – the border with the territories, from where nomads came.
The word “Ukrainian” in the Russian language of that time, is a profession – a border guard (or someone, who lives on the border). While a resident of Kiev or Poltava was called a Malorossian.
Still frame above is a fragment of a dictionary entry. Judging by the revision of the Russian alphabet used, specifically by the letter “Ѧ”, this is a text from before the 1710 language reform of Peter I. The example usages are from Ivan the Formidable's texts of 1503. Here is a translation taking the pronunciation into account:
Ukrain’nik (Укpaиньникъ) – Noun, a resident of a border territory.
Ukrain’nyi (Укpaиньныи) – Adjective, as in “Ukain’nyi baron” – governor of a border territory.
Ukrainjanin (УкpaинѦнинъ) – Noun, a resident of a border territory.
How and when did the term “Ukraine” as a national designation appear? Ultimately Poland ceased to exist in 1795, when the large states performed the third division of the Polish lands.
Galicia, Zakarpatie (Transcarpathia) and Bukovina, populated by Russians, or as it was said then – Rusins (Ruthenians), came under Austrai-Hungary, while almost all of the Kievan Rus territories were taken by the Russian Empire.
That is how a large portion of the Polish population ended up in the Russian Empire.
The Poles are, of course, dreaming about resurrection of their beloved Poland – Rech Pospolitaja, and what is more, in the wider borders as they were before the partitioning.
All their ire and hatred is directed at Russia. The idea is like this: sow separatism on those lands, tear them away from Russia, announce that the people there are not Russian, but close to Poles.
In 1795 the Polish writer and historian Jan Potocki published historically-geographical fragments about Scythia, Sarmatia and Slavs. In that work, for the first time, Russians of Malorossia were called “Ukrainians”, a separate people, descendants of the Scythian tribe of Sarmatians.
Potocki’s idea was very simple in its design: If Malorossian “Ukrainians” have nothing in common with Russians; if Malorossian “Ukrainians” is a separate people with its separate culture and history, then it follows that also Russia has no historical rights on the lands West for Dnieper, including Kiev. Then it follows that there is not gathering of Russian lands. It follows then that Russia annexed and occupied Malorossia/Ukraine.
Potocki’s propaganda was first and foremost directed at the Western reader, who traditionally had a very vague idea what is Malorossia, Raussia, Kiev, and where all this is found.
Pavel Kuzenkov:
We see very clearly how neighbours were calling these “Ukrainians”. Up until 20th century they were called Rus. Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, all who surrounded this territory, never were in doubt that what starts from Transcarpathia is “Rus”.
But it was the Polish publicists, who by the beginning of the 19th century turn a topographic term “Ukraina” into a name of a country. In 1801 the Polish bibliophile and publicist Tadeusz Czadzki published his work “About the name of Ukraine and the birth of Cossacks”. It was a new phase in forming of Ukranianism as an ideology. Tadeusz Czadzki further distinguished that Ukrainian Malorossians are not Russians, rather they are different people.
Czadzki started the history of Ukrainians from the horde of the “Ancient Ukros”, who according to him moved in the 7th century from somewhere in Urals, across Volga to the Drepr river. The fact that neither the Polish nor the Russian chronicles ever mentioned any “Ukros”, didn’t in the least bother Czadzki.
These theories may have remained as brain games of the intellectuals, if not for one “but”. Czar Alexander I, a liberal pro-Westerner, favoured the Polish nobility, considered it to be more educated and well-mannered, than Russian. During Alexander’s reign, Poles played an important role at the court, in the Academy. The Imperial Foreign Ministry was headed by an ardent russophobe Adam Czartoryski, and with his support the Poles got full control of the education system in Malorossia.
Czartoryski’s close ally was a priest and historian Valerian Kalinka, who wrote about Malorossia thusly: “This land is lost for Poland, but we must do it so, that it becomes lost for Russia too.”
The still frame above is a definition of “Ukraina”. Judging by the alphabet, and specifically the usage of the Latin letter “i” this text comes after the 1738 language reform of Peter I, when usage of double-dotted “ї” before vocals was abolished (single-dotted and double-dotted “i” and “ї” is what distinguished present day “Ukrainian” from Russian).
The beginning of the text translates as follows:
“Ukraina – thus were called the South-Western Russian lands of Rech Pospolitaja. This name was never official, it was used only in private conversations and became common in folk poetry. It is difficult to define the boundaries of the lands, known as “ukrainnyi”, more so that this name was not permanent and at different times covered varying stretches of land…
Recently, some of the Western-bread ultra-nationalists took up Tadeusz Czadzki’s segregation banner to a new low and started saying that Ukrainians and Russians are different people genetically, stating that Russians are not even Slavs… This propaganda was shot down in 2014 by a respectable study. I first learnt about it from the editorial column of Argumenty i Fakty. Here is a translated text of that note:
It was initially clear for any reasonable person that Ukrainians and Russians are brothers.
The recent massive and authoritative scientifically research proved: Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians do not differ from each other genetically.
Let’s say it at once: the scientists studied the DNA of the Ukrainians on the basis of the genetic material of the inhabitants of the western regions of the country, namely, the city of Lvov, with which we markedly differ in language and culture. But, as it turns out, not the origin. Thereby the allegations of the Ukrainian nationalists, who say that Russians, having moved from the territory of modern Ukraine, have so much mixed up with the Mongoloid race, and that they stopped being Slavs, is completely debunked.
However, as it was initially clear for any sensible person: Ukrainians and Russians are brothers. And let the borders, ideology, economic disputes divide us now – this is largely a consequence of the geopolitical game of Western politicians, who have managed to embroil us with each other. One just wants to exclaim along with the character of Kipling: “We are of the same blood!” But now, alas, we are unlikely to be heard hear – until someone (both inside Ukraine and abroad) harvest their own political dividends from our “brotherly spats”.
Full text of the above (there is more!) here:
http://stanislavs.org/how-malorossia-was-turned-into-the-patch-quilt-of-discord-that-is-ukraine/
