Mr. B1ack, <
news:qcv7k958jvbr3vvme...@4ax.com>
The 'true Ukraine' - i.e. the post-polonized descendants of
the ancient Kievan Rus - is the west, and partly the center
of the modern Ukraine, and the (rather weak) 'Ukrainness' of
the east and south is mainly the result of 'ukrainization'
of these regions during the (post-)Soviet times.
The delicate thing about the Ukrainian identity is, there
was no such identity (nor recognized language) before the
19th century. The Russians living within Poland considered
themselves (and were considered by the Poles) the (non-
muscovite) Russians, while the Russians under Moscow rule
were differed as 'the Muscovites'. On this map of Poland of
the 17 century <
http://is.gd/GBgS0V> one can see 'Ruskie'
(the 'Russian District' in then Poland) right around Lviv,
the today's core of the west-Ukrainian nationalism.
Since the late 18 century the Russians living in the former
Poland-governed regions within Russian empire began to
notice their cultural differences from 'the Muscovites', and
the nationalist sentiments aroused. The authorities of
imperial Russia tried to contain that. But the Bolshevist
policies after the 1917 revolt were the opposite, after the
revolt the Bolsheviks greatly supported nationalist movements
in the former Russian empire in exchange for loyalty to the
Soviet power. Thus the present-day Ukrainian nation, grown
within the Soviet republic of Ukraine, is the final product
mainly of the Soviet social engineering.
The Russians, in average, feel positive towards Ukrainian
identity. For example, the Ukrainian folk and pop singers etc
are popular in Russia, and public sincerely loves this stuff.
What the Russians don't like is the zeal of the west-Ukrainian
nationalists to maintain the Ukrainian identity on the basis
of hostile opposition to Russia. Here is the situation when
the ordinary people feel closer kinship, but the nationalist
politicians and masterminds are jealous of that, and they try
to deliberately denigrate and demonize 'the Muscovites', to
artificially incite hatred. This is not against the 'Putin
regime', the west-Ukrainian nationalism, in its current form,
clearly promotes ethnic hatred. Meanwhile, a lot of people of
the Ukrainian and Belorussian ancestry are living in Russia.
Most of them consider themselves Russians, as well as other
Russians consider them Russians, though their roots may be
easy visible by Ukrainian / Belorussian surnames (-enko(v),
-yuk, -yak) and some other attributes. That's in lesser extent
true for the Poles as well, there are quite many Russians of
the Polish ancestry in the present-day Russia; eg. the surname
endings like -vsky or -tsky, or -ich most often point to the
Polish (or Polish Jewish) origin. By my rough estimation
about 15 - 30% of the current Russian population are those
whose ancestors more or less long ago came from the lands of
the present day Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland.
The fact that the West didn't scruple to take part in these
rather ugly ultra-nationalist affairs in Ukraine shows that
the Western politicians share anti-Russian agenda in the
ethnic sense as well; they do camouflage it more skillfully
in comparison to Hitler though.