Some Vikings got a country together around Novgorod and Kiev in the ninth century, that Russians like to think of as the origins of their nation. In the history books, it’s always referred to as Kievan Rus’, with an apostrophe. What’s the apostrophe for and does it affect the pronunciation? Is it a way of transliterating a “soft sound”?
That apostrophe transliterates a Cyrillic letter that looks like b. It’s called miagkii znak, the “soft sign.” It indicates a palatalized consonant. (A palatalized consonant that isn’t followed by a front vowel like e or i, since with those vowels the consonants are automatically palatalized.)
Actually, many Russians DON’T like to think of the Kievan Rus as the Viking beginning of Russia, despite what is in the Russian Chronicle. I forget what their theory is about the origin of Russia, but the old theory is that the Swedes started Novgorod and Kiev as trading posts on the way to Constantinople, which they tried to conquer twice and then were made into a special “Varangian” guard for the emperor. Now what I want to know is, why was the tsar called the “tsar of ALL the Russias.” How many Russias were there. And number two, why is where Russia started: Novgorod, Kiev, now called “THE Ukraine” and do Ukrainians think they are Russians or something special?
Later the Russians and the Swedes fought on Lake Ladoga or one of those up there near Novgorod, and the tsar Alexander Nevsky won, as depicted in the Eisenstein movie ALEXANDER NEVSKY. That Novgorod area is also home to the Ingrians and another people called the Votes and was under Sweden even later than the Nevsky period, I think.
Ukraine has been referred to in English as “the Ukraine” for some time. (I am not sure why since the Russian language has no articles, IIRC.) When Ukraine separated from the U.S.S.R. as an independent nation, they requested that languages using articles *not prefix the name with “the.” So “the Ukraine” (political region of U.S.S.R.) is now known (in English) as the nation “Ukraine.”
Do they believe they are special? Do you know any people/nation/group that does not believe they are special? I have not heard of any claims of ethnic superiority coming from Ukraine, although there are probably various ethnic Russians, Belorussians, Poles, Georgians, etc. who may occasionally find themselves the targets of some muted hostility just as any minority ethnic group may.
don willard writes:
Well, I can think of at least three counted presently: Great, or Black Russia (Russia proper); White Russia (Belarus), and Little, or Red Russia (Ukraine). If we further suppose that we are to count the formerly independent principalities of Vladimir, Rostov, Tver, Novgorod, etc., as separate “Russias”, we can come up with quite a bunch.
Incidentally, Novgorod isn’t anywhere near Ukraine; it’s up by Estonia (Alexander Nevsky was never, as best I can remember, grand prince of Kiev).
**True, Russian has no articles, but my WAG is that the definite article was affixed to the name in English because Ukraina means “borderland” in Russian, hence in English “the borderland”.
Incidently, at the same time that Ukraine requested that countries not prefix the country’s name with “the”, thay also asked Russians to change the preposition used from “na” (na ukraine = in the borderland/in the Ukraine) to “v” (v Ukraine = in Ukraine, unambiguously).
Ukrainians, especially those in the eastern areas that were long under Polish/Hapsburg rule, quite definitely do not consider themselves to be Russians. They may grudgingly admit to coming from a common ancestral group, but will insist that they are quite a separate nation from the “Moskaly” (roughly translatable as “Muscovite bastards”:))
Indeed. I was teasing a little bit.
Plenty of theories, up to and including French merchants, but I was alluding to the fact that the Russian state is not continuous with, and has little in common with, Kievan Rus’.
Not Russians, anyway. Ukrainians clearly distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians, and between the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The language of Kievan Rus’ (and later of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) would have been Old Byelorussian, also known as Ruthenian or Rusinian. This developed into modern Ukrainian and Belarussian.
On the Neva, hence the “Nevsky”. The Ingrians were under Sweden until much later, when the Swedes were roundly defeated by Peter the Great.
Such a confusing part of the world. I always thought the Ruthenians or Red Russians were the people of Western Byelorussia, the area conquered and incorporated into Poland under Casimir III, and were considered distinct from the Byelorussians proper.
Also hibernicus, just as an aside, the phrase, “…when the Swedes were roundly defeated by Peter the Great…” seems a little off somehow. I know that was the end result 
. But frankly poor Peter’s army lost just about every major battle in the Great Northern War but the last one. And they didn’t lose them by a little, they were thrashed. The problem for the Swedes was that Charles XII was such a tactical wunderkind, that he failed to realize his shortcomings. Both as a strategist and as a politician. The only reason the Swedes found themselves in the position to lose at Poltava was because they were ground down and Charles was overconfidant in his own ( admittedly impressive ) ability to work wonders on the battlefield and fight his way out of any situation, no matter how precarious. Why not? It had always worked before. Of course there’s always that first time 
.
- Tamerlane
Confusing indeed. I think the “Red Ruthenia” conquered by Kazimierz was in what is now Ukraine. I think in the 20th century Ruthenians mainly live in western Ukraine near the Slovak border (and in fact some of this territory used to be in Czechoslovakia). But I have come across the name “Ruthenian” used for the ancestor language of Ukrainian. I don’t know if there were any “Byelorussians” at the time of Kazimierz.
There are also Ruthenians on the Slovak side of the border, also known as Carpatho-Rusyn people. They are one of Europe’s least-known minorities. When Slovakia was still part of Czechoslovakia, they were a minority within a minority, condemned to deep obscurity. Nowadays their struggle for recognition and self-identity has come out of the shadows (for all that anyone in the outside world has noticed) and without looking I bet there are already several Carpatho-Rusyn home pages on the web.
hibernicus: Thanks for the correction 
. I should have looked at the map more carefully. I knew the city of L’Vov was involved, but I didn’t know if that was in the Ukraine or not.
So when was the term ‘Byelorussian’ coined to distinguish them from Ukrainians and Russians ( or Great Russians, or whatever term is now being used )? Was it a case of only gradual ethnic separation ( as I’ve heard was the case with the West Slavs ) and at one point there was no distinction?
For that matter when did a distinct identity for the Ukrainians emerge? Pre-Golden Horde? I know there appears to have been two ( fairly closely related and likely with Iranian intermixtures) large tribal groups among the South Slavs that separated out into the Sebs/Croats ( classical Slaveni? ) on one side and the Bulgars/Macedonians ( classical Antes? ) on the other. Was there a similar process at work in Russia?
Sorry for the bomabrd of questions .
- Tamerlane
Indeed there are:
http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org, although this page seems to be down temporarily (?)
I think this is more than a little debatable. The language spoken in Kievan Rus’ goes by various names, but I’ve never heard it referred to as “Ruthenian”. In any case, it’s generally acknowledged to be the common ancestor of all three major East Slavic languages (Ukranian, Belarussian, and (Great) Russia), as well as the various interesting offshoots like Ruthenian and Lemko (Polish Rusyn).
The word Ruthenian (Rusyn), by the way, just means an inhabitant of Rus’, or in other words, a Russian (in the broadest sense). When the Russian empire started taking an interest in them in the 19th century, the Rusyny in the Hapsburg Empire identified themselves with Great Russians with no reservations, and bemoaned their allegedly ‘degenerate’ dialect.
A lot of the confusion I think comes from nationalists (of all stripes) trying to force the discrete ethnos-based nation-state concept onto an area of the world that has historically been part of various multi-national empires (Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Polish-Lithuanian) and has never had easily identifiable boundaries between languages, but rather a broad spectrum of dialects intermixing and shading one into the other. That’s part of what makes the history of this region so fascinating, the multiplicity of groups and tribes and languages called different things by different people.
The loose confederation that was Kievan Rus’ included large parts of what is now European Russia, including the area around Moscow. Moscow was then just a minor village, but nearby Vladmir and Suzdal were major principalities.
As for when the separation in identities took place, it was a long slow process; Ukranians will always choose the earlier dates (say, the Polish-Lithuanian conquest of western Ukraine) for the final separation, while some Russians would say, oh, 1991. As late as 1917, the official Russian view was that Ukranian (Little Russian) was a peasant dialect/bastardisation of the ‘one true Russian language’, and was no more worthy of recognition as a separate language than was, say, Scouse or Geordie in Britain.
This site http://www.bartleby.com/65/ru/Russlang.html says “Ukrainian texts can be distinguished from Russian by the late 13th cent., but Belarussian does not definitely appear as a separate language before the 16th cent.” However, one could argue that in the 13th century one could easily distinguish London from Wessex dialects in written sources. All depends where you choose to draw the line betwixt a dialect and a language.
I don’t know exactly when the appellations for the various “Russias” came into use, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the term “Great Russia” was a Muscovite invention (15th century? 16th?), to distinguish them from the other (obviously not-so-great) Russias temporarily under the control of others.
Well, it took me a while to find a cite for this, but Norman Davies has a diagram in “Heart of Europe” labelled “Slavonic Languages”.
Under “East Slavonic Group” (ruski) he has Ruthenian and Great Russian. Ruthenian then further subdivides into Ukrainian and Byelorussian. Under Ukrainian he lists as dialects West Ukrainian (Galician), Sub-Carpathian, Hutsul, Bojko and Lemko in one group, and East Ukrainian in another.
In the text he says (of Poland-Lithuania):
I know Davies isn’t a linguist, so you can decide for yourself how credible this is.
Yeah, one one thing, for a fact: there is no such language as “Tartar.” He is obviously no linguist to make that error. The name is Tatar.