Lost Kingdom: a History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin by Serhii Plokhy
London: Penguin Books, 2018 (first published 2017) ISBN 9780141983134
This is an interesting and, even nine years after it's publication, timely book. Serhii Plokhy has delved into the murky waters of Russian nationalism with a view to explain its development to the uninitiated. To a great extent he has succeeded in unravelling the twisted skein of Russian, Belarussian and Ukrainian ethnicity, culture and history, in explaining why it matters, and how the different ways people interpret that history have a huge geopolitical effect that echoes down to today's world.
Plokhy begins this book with an overview of the beginning of a sense of Russian identity, when the Slavic people that became Russian, Belarussian and Ukrainian were under the rule of the Mongol Khanate, and follows on with the formation of Russia under the Tsars, and the gradual increase of territory that was Russian.
From the beginning, Russians were divided into three - "Great Russians" in what we today call Russia, "White Russians" in today's Belarus, and "Little Russians" in Ukraine. For centuries these three groupings despite at time being politically separated (for much of the time Belorussia and Ukraine were part of the Kingdom of Poland), saw themselves as one Slavic unity, with both White and Little Russia looking to their Great Russian counterparts for religious leadership, and recognising the Tsar as the overall sovereign to their people.
It was not until the Nineteenth Century that the question of nationality began to come to the fore, driven in some respects by the wider European milieu. The liberalisation that was slowly taking place in Russia awakened nationalist thinking, and the issue of what it actually meant to be Russian, as opposed to merely a subject of the Tsar. The nationalists based in Great Russia saw the origin of the Russian nationality beginning in Kyvian Rus, and including both Belarusians and Ukrainians. They cited history and the similarities between languages as the core holding them together as one.
It was just at this time that, in Ukraine in particular, a flourishing of the language and the belief that their Cossack heritage made them different to Great Russians gave birth the the thought that Ukraine could be a separate entity from Russia as a whole. This movement grew in fits and starts: at times repressed by St. Petersburg when it became problematic, but at other times supported, when St. Petersburg thought that a heightened sense of Ukrainian nationality could help destabilise their neighbours, who had many Ukrainians living within their borders.
This changing attitude to dealing with both Belorussia and Ukraine continued into the Twentieth Century and communist rule - at times when it was advantageous to the centre, the idea that Ukrainians and Belarusians were separate nationalities was promoted, and at other times repressed. Quite often, as Plokhy explains, it was Ukrainians and Belarusians that were engaging in the repression of their own people.
In the Twenty-First Century, the notion of a greater Russian people spread over three countries has fractured. Ukraine in particular has decided to go in a different direction to Russia (Belarus has stayed much closer to Moscow). Plokhy explains that, even though there may be many Ukrainians who's mother tongue is Russian rather than Ukrainian, they still feel that they are not Russian, but something different. Vladimir Putin on the other hand continues to think in Nineteenth Century terms, denying that there is any difference between the three Russias, with consequences we can all see.
If, like me, you are interested in the deeper politics surrounding the current turmoil in Ukraine, and indeed in how Russians think and behave, this book is worth reading. Plokhy moves through a lot of material in a thoughtful and digestible manner, and his conclusions are clear.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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