What made Ukraine historically a place of “borders and mixing”? But there was interaction between Ukrainian speakers throughout much of this history, and they developed a common identity, especially after the mid-19th century. They belonged at times to different states and realms. Among the speakers of Ukrainian and in the lands now comprising Ukraine, there were many different experiences. Putin claims that there’s not a Ukrainian history separate from Russian. Like Ukraine, there are plenty of states in Europe now that don’t have a long tradition of statehood. Mass Ukrainian nationalism emerged out of the traumas of the 20th century. “Putin claims that there’s not a Ukrainian history separate from Russian. There was no Ukrainian nation, just as there was no Russian nation in 1000 CE. So, to say that there was a Ukrainian nation in 1000 CE is an anachronism. Meanwhile, the history of the Ukrainian state probably cannot be traced back any earlier than 1918. Lenoe: The history of the Russian state, as opposed to the nation, can be traced back to roughly the 1450s in a principality called Muscovy. Ukraine as a state didn’t exist until the early 20th century.
Here the Rochester historian fact-checks several of Putin’s historical claims and discusses the ideas of nationhood and statehood, particularly with regard to Ukraine. But it’s also intertwined with Polish history, with the history of the Greek Orthodox Church, even Romanian history, and the history of the Turkic peoples on the Eurasian Steppe. Of course, its history is closely intertwined with Russian history, he adds. In short, Ukraine’s territorial and ethnic history is “complicated and complex,” Lenoe says. (University illustration / Michael Osadciw) Ukraine’s waxing and waning territory in the first half of the 20th century alone is “complicated and complex,” says Matthew Lenoe. He is currently finishing his third book, tentatively titled Emotions, Experience, and Apocalypse in the Red Army, 1941–1942. And there’s also no continuous line to be traced from this loose confederation to the Ukrainian state,” says Lenoe, who is the author of Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Harvard University Press, 2004) and The Kirov Murder and Soviet History (Yale University Press, 2010).
But there’s no continuous line to be traced from this loose river confederation to the Russian state. “When Putin says this is the heritage of these three Slavic peoples-in one sense, he’s not wrong. Putin also writes that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians share a common heritage-the heritage of a realm known as Kievan Rus (862–1242), which was a loose medieval political federation located in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and part of Russia. Instead, he argues, Ukrainian nationality was always an integral part of a triune nationality: Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian. In it, he elaborates on his assertion that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” as a precursor to and defense of Ukraine’s invasion.įor instance, Putin claims that Ukraine didn’t exist as a separate state and had never been a nation. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made several dubious historical arguments, most notably in his 5,000-word essay “ On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published on the Kremlin’s website in July 2021. While the history of the Ukrainian state probably cannot be traced back any earlier than 1918, Lenoe says “to be clear-today Ukraine is a nation state” where polling in elections indicates that the “vast majority of Ukrainians” want to preserve their independence.
Read the article online at the Washington Post (subscription required) or MSN.In an analysis for the publication’s “Made by History” section, Matthew Lenoe explains the dangers of mistakenly blaming Putin’s invasion on the “Third Rome” concept.
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