Not Ukraine, but Russia

[Danger-boy]

Continued from: http://www.russia.com/forums/showthr...?threadid=6470

As regards the language of the 1571 letter from Kiev, you are presuming something we don’t know about. However, if the speakers call their language Russian, it’s Russian all right.
Comparing it to modern Russian, like you do, is inappropriate. Modern Russian is 20th century. It underwent several developmental stages since the 16th century, nevertheless, that letter is very understandable to a modern-Russian speaker.

In fact, there is South Slavonic and West Slavonic group -- and Russian stands much apart from the point of view of vocabulary. Ukrainian and Belarussian are archaic.And much closer to the language Kyivites spoke in this year of yours when they asked for the favor.

Don’t give for a fact what you imagine in your dreams.
Modern Russian corresponds closer than others to the Old Russian in its vocabulary, grammatical structure and overall characteristics, as V. M. Rusanovsky points out. Mongol (Turko-Tatar) words contributed to Russian not more than they contributed to Ukrainian, which has over 200 such words. Also, Ukrainian, in some regions, has close to 100 Hungarian and 100 Romanian words. Moreover, according to philologist Georgy Maidanov, there are almost 2,000 Polish words in Ukrainian! Today’s Ukrainian formed as a result of these Polish, Turko-Cuman and other infusions into the Old Russian language.
Russian developed independently. The Tatars did not live with the Russians, but only came to collect taxes, and even that was done by the Russians themselves.
In western Russia, (the Ukraine, Belarus) under foreign occupation, Polish nobles owned up to 90 percent of the land and dominated in the political, economic and cultural spheres. The subject people had regular contact with their Polish conquerors, as is evident from the 1571 letter. The Russians there, especially in the countryside, were dependent like slaves on their Polish pani and adopted many words from their foreign masters.

In the 15th-16th centuries, there were not three groups of dialects, as you say, but one Russian language and two dialects: Russian-Polish and Russian-Lithuanian. In northeast Russia, the language developed without massive Polish contributions, and today it still has more similarities with the language of Kievan Rus than modern Ukrainian does.

In 1509, a church council at Vilna established strict rules regarding clergy morality and wrote them down. According to Ukrainian scholar D. N. Bantysh-Kamensky, the language of these rules already included a foreign admixture of Polish, which is evident in words, like shkoda, zrushi-ti, z’ihatisya do mitropolita, vchiniti and others. (History of Little Russia, Kiev, 1993, p. 61)
This Polish linguistic “invasion” continued over time, and today you have a mix of Russian and Polish in the Ukraine. Linguists and philologists have a term for this, it’s called a dialect. Ukrainian is a Russian-Polish dialect, even though it was officially given a status of language at the beginning of the 20th century.

Lithuanians the same as Moldovans were in fact conquered by culture of the old Rus'. Problems in this transethnic community only started with Poles coming to powerin the area and Vatican looking for new rents out East.

Don’t fool yourself, the old Russian culture was systematically eradicated by the catholic Poles. In the cultural sense, the Ukrainians distanced themselves from Old Rus and came to resemble their Polish masters more. Northeast Russia, on the other hand, continued in the political, cultural and religious traditions of Kievan Rus.

It could be most logical to call Russian Federation a Muscovite Federation and yet historical truth is not always reasonable.

Keep dreaming, just don’t drown in your drool.

And people living on this territory never called themselves Ukrainians and started doing so only when when ethnic-national consiousness stated to avake in mid-19th century.

Yes, they never did. In Galicia, they called themselves Rusyni. In 19th and 20th centuries, the Austrian authorities started cracking down on those who called themselves that, and instead were giving support to those who called themselves Ukrainians.
Regarding the ethnic-national consciousness, if it did exist, here’s an enlightening 20th century quote from a Memorandum by D. Saunders, a British Political Intelligence analyst, May 1918:
“Were one to ask the average peasant in the Ukraine his nationality, he would answer that he is Greek Orthodox; if pressed to say whether he is a Great Russian, a Pole, or a Ukrainian, he would probably reply that he is a peasant; and if one insisted on knowing what language he spoke, he would say that he talked "the local tongue." One might perhaps get him to call himself by a proper national name and say that he is "russki," but this declaration would hardly prejudge the question of a Ukrainian relationship; he simply does not think of nationality in the terms familiar to the intelligentsia. Again, if one tried to find out to what State he desires to belong -- whether he wants to be ruled by an All-Russian or a separate Ukrainian Government -- one would find that in his opinion all Governments alike are a nuisance, and that it would be best if the "Christian peasant folk" were left to themselves. All the big landowners and practically the entire Christian population of the towns speak either Polish or Great Russian.... As a rule it sufficed for the Ukrainian peasant to leave his village community in order to lose his marked provincial peculiarities and his dialect. The larger part of the bureaucrats and the school teachers and priests speak Great Russian though they are very largely Ukrainians by birth. Even when going as unskilled labourers to the towns the Ukrainian peasants changed into Great Russians... The Ukrainian nationality of the peasant in the Ukraine is linguistic to some extent, but it rests mainly on the intense class consciousness of the peasant....”

As you can see, the peasants’ awareness of their language and ethnic consciousness was not as refined as that of the intelligentsia, the city dwellers (who mostly spoke Russian, and still do), that’s why they fell under their Polish magnates’ linguistic influence more easily.

Judging from your words Danger-boy, neither do you know what nationalism, nor Russia are

I humbly turn to you to “enlighten” me with your fantasies about my country

Btw. I am not West Ukrainian, I am half-Eastern and half-Russian. Therefore it is strange to accuse me of ethnic nationalism.

Ok, sorry. I “accuse” you of HALF-ethnic nationalism.

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There is some logic in the statement that Russia robbed Ukraine of the name

You need to seek professional help.