Sikorski

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Was Igor Sikorski a Russian?

http://www.sikorskyarchives.com/siksky2.html

even though this page states wrong "born in Kiev, Russia"

this means he was Ukrainian! LOL :-) this page is so frigging wrong, Kiev is Ukraine, so Sikorsky is Ukrainian.

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Since he left after those acursed commies came, and at that time Ukrian WAS part of Russia pluse he never stated anything about beliving Ukrain's aren't Russian and his Spiritual writtings (he wrote them because he was a pious Orthodox Christian) the facts state he was Russian!

When Sikorskiy was born, Kiev was a Russian city. Actually it always was Russian. BTW, name "ukranians" for those who lived in malorossiya was invented by communists in 1918. Such ethnicity have never existed before revolution. We were one nation.

[Admiral_Kolchak]

Sikorsky was a Russian, probably with some Polish/Ukrainian roots.
He spoke Russian as a native language and even in USA was a layman of Russian Orthodox church.


PS Overall I agree with Alex Ivanov about Ukrainian nation, however the process of inventing Ukrainian separate identity in order to divide Russian nation started much earlier than Bolshevik revolution with creation of Greko-Catholic Ukrainian church in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (late 16th-18th centuries), and promotion of Ukrainian nationalism in Austrian Galicia (19th century).

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I TOTALY agree with you guys how I learned about Ukriane being Russian was when I read the life of St.Vladimir first Clergy Martyr of the coounist yoke.

[Voyager13b]

Originally posted by Alex_Ivanov
When Sikorskiy was born, Kiev was a Russian city. Actually it always was Russian. BTW, name "ukranians" for those who lived in malorossiya was invented by communists in 1918. Such ethnicity have never existed before revolution. We were one nation.

Alex,

I agree that Igor Sikorsky is identified as having emigrated from Russia, but I don't think that was a political comment on his birth city. The fact is that he escaped the Soviet system to put down roots in America, and that most Americans didn't know the difference between Ukraine, Estonia, Bulgaria, or Russia at the time. To use the city of his birth to try and prove or disprove the status of Ukraine as a seperate nation is silly.

Sikorsky was a great and determined self made engineer. His legacy is built upon what he did, not where he was born.

You have stated that Ukraine didn't exist before the revolution in the past, and that the idea of a seperate State was born during the revolution. That is pure nonsense. Ukraine was certainly under the control of greater Russia before the revolution, but information didn't flow like it does today, and Ukraine and Russia had different cultures, as well as different languages. Many Ukrainians looked at Russia as their oppressor long before the revolution was hatched. The way you describe Ukraine and Russia as one big happy family before the revolution is little more than wishful thinking.

Some of my relatives from Ukraine moved to America as early as 1903, looking for opportunity, and the only languages they spoke were Ukrainian and some Polish. Likewise, the Russian part of my family only spoke Russian. That doesn't sound like a unified country to me. Ukraine had it's own language, alphabet, and literary culture long before Lenin was born. Depending upon where you lived in Ukraine, you might have been comfortable with Russians and their language, or you might have only read about them in books.

The revolution is what really made Ukraine and Russia one nation. The Ukrainians didn't like it, but Ukraine was important to Moscow, and it was assimilated into the grand collective under penalty of death. History isn't black and white all the time, and the history of a land mass as vast as that occupied by the Soviet Union can never be correctly stated in a few lines of text, or a slogan declaring that they were always one people.

Ukraine and Russia had serious issues for centuries. Ukraine had a brief period of independence from Russia at the time of the revolution (which was crushed), and quickly acted to re-establish it's independence when the Soviet Union collapsed. That kind of desire stems from a long social memory, and not only in reaction to years of Soviet domination.

It would be better to say that Russia used to possess Ukraine, rather than to say the two States were always one.

Voyager