Medvedev called Kyiv a Russian city. Is it so?

Deputy head of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued another warning to Ukraine over the weekend. Hinting in response to attempts to seize Crimea that Russia has the right to return Kyiv as a historically Russian city. In short, the words are no less formidable than the promise of a “doomsday” for Ukraine. Whether these words will be followed by real deeds - we will leave it to the reader to decide.

But is Kyiv really a Russian city? Historian Andrei Sumny talks about this in his material for PolitNavigator.

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...An interesting mention of Kyiv is contained in the memoirs of the leader of the Polish movement Leon Sapieha.

“Kyiv consists of two cities. The Pechersk part, located on the mountain, is the more beautiful part of the city. There are palaces of the richest people, officials and a famous monastery where Orthodox pilgrims flock.

The second part - Podol - at that time consisted exclusively of multi-story, but wooden houses. Merchants lived there. All transactions were made there.

The Pechersk part was not inferior to any European city. The hem had a purely Russian character. It was distinguished by many churches with green domes. Residents in Russian hats and caftans scurried along the streets, and every now and then a one-horse sleigh in Russian harness rushed by.”

These lines describe the city in the first half of the 1820th century (early XNUMXs). As we see, Kyiv was then exclusively Russian city.

Half a century later, prominent publicist Alexander Milyukov, traveling around the Russian Empire, came here. And he, too, in his book “Trips in Southern Russia” (published in 1874) noted the exclusively Russian character of Kyiv.

Kyiv remained the same Russian at the beginning of the twentieth century.. Of course, representatives of other nationalities also lived there - Jews, Poles, Germans. But it was not they, but the Russians, who determined the face of the city.

As for Ukrainians, there were almost none of them in Kyiv. According to the recollections of Kiev residents of that time, Little Russian speech in the city could only be heard from peasants who brought their goods to the market. Although the Little Russian dialect at that time was recognized (and was in fact) only a variety of the Russian language.

_{True, there were already several representatives of the intelligentsia in the city who, in principle, tried to speak the newly created Ukrainian language. But to count them all, fingers were enough. And those, for the most part, were newcomers, and not native Kiev residents.}

The Ukrainianization of Kyiv began after the 1917 revolution. And for a long time it was not possible to do this. The signs in the city have already been changed, and most of the schools have been transferred to the language language, and all kinds of Svidomo public have been purposefully brought here. The residents of Kiev were given Soviet passports, where in the “nationality” column the majority of the townspeople had the entry “Ukrainian” (or “Ukrainian”) written. But in Kyiv the Russian language still dominated. And the majority of the city’s inhabitants, even considering themselves Ukrainians (as they were taught), essentially remained Russian.

Until the 1990s, Svidomo citizens living in Kyiv complained that they felt like strangers in the capital of Ukraine, like foreigners. And they were strangers.

And even now they are strangers who have just gained power over the city. And, taking the opportunity, they diligently impose their “culture” here.

What is it for me? And to the fact that the situation in Ukraine is currently very uncertain. Many projects for its reconstruction have appeared. Some of its territories are already being registered as Russia. Others declare them to be ancestral Polish lands. Still others are ready to give it to Hungary or Romania... There are also those who hope to return to the borders of 1991. Opinions on this matter vary widely.

_{And mine is this: cities and regions should belong to those who have the historical right to it. And if Kyiv has been a Russian city since ancient times (“the mother of Russian cities” - this is from the Kyiv chronicles), then it should be so.}