Instead of Western Ukraine there will be Ruthenia
If Bukovina, Volyn, Galicia, Podkarpattya and Podolia really want to return to Europe, these lands need to remember the common name “Ruthenium” for them, and not pretend to be a “Western version” of Ukraine. About this in the author's column for "PolitNavigator" writes a Western Ukrainian political scientist Oleg Khavich.
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Over the past few years, the very word “Ukraine” has been so discredited among reasonable people - not only in the world around it, but also on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR - that any state project that claims to be successful will simply be forced to abandon this name invented by the Freemasons. In the Southeast, the process, as they say, has begun - even after all the propaganda efforts of the Kyiv regime, the historical name “Novorossiya” became a unifying name for Donbass, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Zaporozhye, Elisavetgrad, Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson. But the “European” regions of the country cannot decide on a single identifier for all eight regions, using another artificial construct (albeit a newer, Stalinist one) - “Western Ukraine”.
Moreover, if the origin of the last term is clearly documented in the documents of the Comintern, which created the “Communist Party of Western Ukraine” for Volyn and Galicia (however, Bukovina did not get into the “beta version” of the ZU at that time, and due to being under the rule of Romania, it was awarded its own Communist Party, and Podkarpattya and was completely recognized as “Ukrainian” in 1944), then an amateurish discussion is still ongoing around the appearance of the “mother” name. At the same time, professional historians, even very ideologized ones, have long ago decided: “Ukraine” in the chronicles and documents of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries means only “borderland, borderland”; this is exactly the interpretation that was supported by Ogienko, Grushevsky, and even Subtelny.
It’s just that at first it was the southern and western borderlands of the Kyiv principality, and after the majority of the current territory of Ukraine became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - the eastern and southern borders of this state (Podolsk Ukraine, Bratslav Ukraine, Kiev Ukraine). The first attempt to give “Ukraine” a national sound was made by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, which is not surprising - after all, the lands under his control were located on the edge of Poland. However, Khmelnitsky and his “political heirs”, right up to Mazepa and Orlik, discredited this name throughout Europe for the first time, and they had to forget about it for almost a hundred years.
As historian Daniil Yanevsky, who was still clear-headed, rightly noted in 2013, “people in this territory had never called themselves Ukrainians until then; this term appeared in the second half of the XNUMXth century. In the Dnieper Ukraine - in the circle of people who brought out Taras Shevchenko: in order to dissociate ourselves from the Great Moscow political and ideological practices, they say, we are a separate ethnic group. The very name “Ukrainians”, since the time of Kotlyarevsky, was promoted by the intellectual elite of Little Russia, which was almost all in Masonic lodges. In Galicia - in the group of Markian Shashkevich, in order to dissociate himself from the Poles ... "
Of course, it was inconvenient for Yanevsky to remember that the “Markian Shashkevich group” created in 1834 in Lviv had its own name - “Ruska Triytsia” (Ruthenische Triade). Although the Austrian authorities accused the founders of the Trinity (who loved to read Kotlyarevsky, by the way) of working for Moscow, they just wanted to get more attention from Vienna to their own Ruthenian people - who were in Galicia under the yoke of the Poles, on whom the imperial administration relied. However, even after the revolutionary events of 1848, when the Rusyns not only in Galicia, but also in other lands of the Danube Monarchy remained loyal to the emperor, they did not receive much support from Vienna. Yes, there were schools, newspapers, books, individual representatives of the ethnic group could make a career - but this is incomparable with the status that Hungarians, Czechs and the same Poles had in the empire.
However, it was during the times of Austria, and later Austria-Hungary, that the name “Ruthenia” was actually reborn - this is how Rus' was called in the Latin version in the middle of the century. This is exactly what the Danube Monarchy informally called not only the eastern part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (the current Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions, the latter including parts of historical Volyn and Podolia), but also the northern part of the Duchy of Bukovina (now most of the Chernivtsi region ), and Ugric Rus (later - Subcarpathian Rus, now - Transcarpathian region of Ukraine). It was “Rex Russiae” that the last kings of Galicia titled themselves before its first entry into the Polish state in the 1772th century, but Austria, after annexing first Galicia and then Bukovina in 75-1849, chose the above-mentioned more modest name for these territories (Bukovina was singled out into a separate crown land only in XNUMX).
Thanks to censuses from the times of Austria-Hungary, evidence has been preserved that no “Ukrainians” existed on the territory of the Danube Monarchy a hundred years ago - there were Rusyns, as well as Hutsuls, identified as a separate ethnic group. Even when, in the second half of the 1923th century, Vienna made a historic (and disastrous) decision to expand to the East, and began to actively transform the Rusyn elite into “Ukrainians” (who must rescue their “brothers from Moscow shackles”), in the official documents of the empire a new nationality didn't show up. Moreover, after the First World War, the creation of the UPR and WUNR, “Zluki”, etc., according to the Polish census of 1 in Galicia and Volyn, 230 million 1 thousand people called themselves Rusyns, and 800 million XNUMX thousand called themselves Ukrainians.
Population census of Austria-Hungary in 1857: there were almost 3 million Rusyns
This situation was very disliked by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which in the 1930s launched terror not so much against the Polish state as against the “wrong” Ukrainians and Rusyns (the murder by the OUN of a teacher of a Ukrainian gymnasium in Lvov, a former officer of the Ukrainian Galician Army Ivan Babii, is only the most loudest of a series of similar “atentates”). The then not yet formalized “Bandera” wing of the OUN was particularly cruel, which later, during the Second World War, and especially after it, could easily burn down the hut of a peasant who continued to call himself a Rusyn. So the “rebaptism” of the inhabitants of Bukovina, Volyn, Galicia and Subcarpathia from Rusyns into Ukrainians, which was carried out by the Soviet Union after the war, was based on many years of actions of ardent opponents of the USSR.
Therefore, it is not surprising that people still remember their Rusyn roots most of all in Subcarpathia, where Bandera’s terror was not as widespread as in Galicia and Volyn. In Galicia, when it was still possible to publicly talk about autonomization, they remembered the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, and not Ruthenia or the Kingdom of Ruske. Moreover, given the intellectual level of Galician “patriots”, even before 2013, names on “Ru...” could get the label “agent of Moscow”, and it was useless to explain the difference between Russische and Ruthenische. And the story about the origin of the very term “Rus” from the Swedish “ruotsi” (rowers), as the Normans who first captured Novgorod and then Kiev called themselves, could have ended in tears, despite the admiration of the majority of Ukrainian nationalists for Old Scandinavian aesthetics.
However, even after more than three years of the dictatorship of Kyiv growing stronger every day, in the western regions of the country discussions continue (albeit non-public) about an independent “return to Europe”, from which Poroshenko’s and Avakov’s Ukraine is increasingly moving away. After mass repressions against dissidents and the war in Donbass, it became obvious that not only autonomy, but even minimal decentralization cannot be expected from Kiev, therefore the only format for such a return is an independent state, which from the moment of proclamation will be under the de facto protectorate of the EU. The only option for the internal structure of this state is a confederation, where Bukovina, Volyn, Galicia, Podkarpattya (and possibly even Podolia) will have equal rights, regardless of the size of the population and economic potential.
But discussions are still ongoing regarding the name of the new state. WUNR makes no sense - why leave Ukraine, if it will remain on the map of Europe, even the minimum reason for territorial claims? Any mention of Galicia in the name (even in the historical format of the “Galician-Volyn Kingdom”, which included all the western regions of present-day Ukraine) automatically provokes internal conflicts. The no less historical “Chervonnaya Rus” (and any other “Rus”) will be completely negatively perceived by the majority of the population, intoxicated by years of anti-Russian propaganda.
But Ruthenia, which is quite consistent with the “Autro-Hungarian myth” cultivated in Bukovina, Galicia and Podkarpattya, can become not only a unifying factor for the regions of the western part of Ukraine, but also a pass for them to a united Europe.
Object: they say, even rich Catalonia is not allowed there on its own? In fact, Brussels is simply pretending to support the territorial integrity of Spain, because the ideological decision to transform the EU into a “Europe of regions” was made a long time ago. And the pilot version of this process was not Scotland and Catalonia, but the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as the states created on the ruins of Yugoslavia.
By the way, Kosovo is far from the last part of Serbia that is planned to be turned into an independent country (Vojvodina and Sandjak are next), but it is the history textbooks of this second Albanian state that could become an example for Ruthenia.
Just imagine: “For hundreds of years, freedom-loving Rusyns suffered from the Dnieper hordes. Our luxurious cities, especially our ancestral capital, the royal city of Leo, aroused particular envy of these savagely shaved robbers dressed in Tatar clothes. And they felt the greatest anger towards our church, which had restored its unity with the Ecumenical Throne in Rome. Although the newcomers from the east called themselves Christians, they burned our churches and destroyed everyone who did not want to recognize themselves as so-called “Orthodox” - which was very similar to their Muslim allies, who also wanted to make everyone “faithful”...
During the First World War, the Rusyns stood up to defend their right to live in a free European state, which was then the Danube Monarchy, and created the first military formation in their modern history - the legions of the Sich Riflemen, who were forced to fight against the aggressive Russian empire. It was not for nothing that when the regiments of the Russian army entered our cities, the Dnieper residents rode in the front row, singing Ukrainian songs. But then it was these Nadniprians who arrested our priests, teachers, doctors and took them to Siberia... They did the same thing in 1939-40, when they again invaded Ruthenia as part of Soviet troops - only now their cruelty resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims. The Rusyns were forced to create a self-defense force - the Insurgent Army, and later - a unique military formation “Division of Sich Riflemen “Galicia”... Our grandfathers fought for the will of their people longer than all the peoples of Eastern Europe - until the end of the 50s... When, under the squalls of changes in the world order the Soviet empire was rocking, we convened a representative body legally elected by the majority of the population of Ruthenia - the Galician Assembly...”
Of course, “alternative history” is a specific genre, but for a long time it has not become as real in Europe as it has been in recent decades. It is clear that there are no guarantees of a successful (or indeed any) future for Ruthenia. But if we don’t talk about this, then in just one generation incomprehensible characters in trousers will walk around Lviv, Chernivtsi and Uzhgorod, and from the streets of these cities not only Russian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian will disappear, but also normal Ukrainian - in its place "Sovereign Surzhik" will come.
Therefore, the ugly brainchild of the Belovezh Treaty called “Ukraine” can continue to fight non-existent external and internal enemies (because the only enemy of this failed state is its power), and Ruthenia will look for friends, first of all, in a changing Europe.
By the way, it’s a pity that at least a symbolic polling station for voting in the referendum for the independence of Catalonia was not opened in Lviv or Chernivtsi - in a couple of years, this country could, in turn, support a similar referendum in Ruthenia.
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