Khazars

[Lubomyr Onyshkevych]

This is a very interesting question you are posing. No source that I ever
came across mentions any influence of the khazar culture on Ukrainian
culture. Neither seem there to be toponyms taken from Khazar on the
Ukrainian territory (there certainly are a lot in the Kuban region).
Neither is there much khazar blood in Ukrainians.
This is probably due to the fact that there really was no common border
between Khazaria and Kievan Rus'. They faught wars, but they were really
far apart.
The story with the pechenegs, polovtsi, and other turkic tribes is quite
different. They lived close to each other, fought, made treaties, took
captives, intermarried, traded etc - so there is a wealth of traces of
these people in Ukrainian culture and place-names. There must be also a
lot of their blood in Ukrainian veins. The same goes (doubly so) for
tartars and turks.
I would rate the cultures which influenced Ukraine most in this order:
Byzantine, tartar, polish, turkish, russian, lithuanian, greek, and then
everybody else. Don't forget also varangians.
Lubomyr

[Dan K.]

Lubomyr:

I don't think that your order of inluence is quite accurate.
Where in modern Ukraine do you find Tatar culture? Are you
talking about Sixteenth century Kozak sharavary, which is Turkish
if anything? As for Byzantium, the main thing which has REMAINED
to this day is the Orthodox form of Christianity. Now Kyivan Rus
was very heavily indebted to the Byzantines culturally, but if
you look at modern day Ukraine, I don't see much that has survived
to this day. Unfortunately, it is the Soviets who have heavily
affected much of modern Ukrainian culture and it will take a few
years for the Ukrainian people to be de-Sovietized, and for them to
continue to build a new Ukrainian culture based on the past and
present. In my opinion, I think that it will be the West Europeans
who will most influence modern Ukraine in the near future.
(May God spare Ukraine from too much American culture.)
But Tatar blood in Ukrainian veins, I don't see much of
it, if anything, I think that there is probably much Ukrainian
Kozak blood in the Tatars.

Regards, Dan K.

[Lubomyr Onyshkevych]

As to the influences on Ukraine by various cultures:
I did not count or mention modern West-European and American curtural
influences - that goes without saying. Of course, I should have mentioned
Renassance and Baroque/Roccoco styles, Impressionism, Surrealizm,
Futurism, Cubism etc.
But as to the Byzantine influence: in my estimation, no other culture had
such a profound influence on Ukrainian culture. You can not talk about
Ukrainian architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, writing, science,
scholarchip, etc - without starting with Byzantium. With the
Christianity (not orthodox - we got the religion before the schizm!)
came: alphabet, books, all art, theater, music, schlarship, philosophy,
science... The Byzantine elements soon blended with Ukrainian, but still
exist everywhere. Can you imagine an Ukrainian icon without Byzantine
elements?
The only other instance of similar cultural transplantation was the
comming of buddism to Japan, and with it: writing, art, architecture,
poetry, artifacts, philosophy etc - from China. Buddism did not originate
in China, but came to Japan clothed in Chinese culture, the same as mid-
eastern Christianity came to Ukraine in Byzantine-Greek trap[pings.
Lubomyr