Abstract
In May 2000, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, under the approving eye of Moscow Patriarch Aleksii II, met near Kursk in a ceremony to mark the fifty-fifth anniversary of Soviet war victory, near the site of the great tank battle of 1943.1 The four celebrated the opening of a ‘Chapel of Unity’ of the East Slavic peoples in the church of SS. Peter and Paul. A ‘Unity Bell’ was hung in the chapel, decorated with images of St Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, (d. 1015), St Euphrosyne of Polatsk (c.1102–73), and St Sergii of Radonezh (b. 1314).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
1. Liudmila Romanova, ‘Stil’ politicheskogo simbolizma’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 4 May 2000. My acknowledgments to Serhii Plokhy, who has also used the Kursk meeting to begin an article on religious trends.
‘Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Belarusian President urge Slavic unity’, The Russia Journal, 28 June 2001.
3. For a critique of traditional Russian historiography of the era, see Edward Keenan, Rosiis’ki istorychni mify, Kiev, 2001.
For a modern commentary, see Nataliia Yakovenko, Paralel’nyi svit: Doslidzhennia z istorii uiavlen’ ta idei v Ukraini XVI–XVII st., Kiev, 2002, part three.
See the section ‘Kyiv – druhyi Yerusalem’ in Yakovenko, Paralel’nyi svit, pp. 324–30.
Alexii Miller, ‘Ukrainskii vopros’ v politike vlastei i russkom obshchestvennom mnenii (vtoraia polovina XIX v.), St Petersburg, 2000, pp. 31 and 37.
Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History from Rus to the Russian Federation, London, 2001, p. 522; Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, New Haven and London, 2000, p. 143.
8. David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism. Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956, Cambridge, MA, 2002, pp. 158–9.
9. The speech is reproduced in Bohdan Nahaylo and Viktor Swoboda, Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR, London, 1990, p. 95.
10. Dmytro Vedienieiev and Yurii Shapoval, ‘Chy buv Lavrentii Beriia ukrains’kym natsionalistom?’, Dzerkalo tyzhnia, 7 July 2001.
11. Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991, Cambridge, MA, 1998, p. 43.
See also, inter alia, Vera Tolz, Russia. Inventing the Nation, London, 2001, chapter eight.
13. Mikhail A. Molchanov, Political Culture and National Identity in Russian–Ukrainian Relations, College Station, Texas, 2002.
See, for example, the sites at www.eurasia.com.ru and www.rne.org and the Pamiat’ site at http://abbc.com/pamvat
This is the main theme of Solzhenitsyn’s essay The Russia Question at the End of the Twentieth Century, London, 1995.
Molchanov, Political Culture and National Identity in Russian–Ukrainian Relations, pp. 111 and 102.
Ihor Losev, ‘Ukrains’ki kompleksy rosiis’koi svidomosti’, Heneza , 1999, pp. 48–54.
See for example Fakty i kommentarii, 11 November 1999, and ‘V provintsii russkoiazychnoi’, www.slavonic.iptelcom.net.ua/vybor/province.htm, the site of the ‘Slavonic Party’.
Radio Russia, BBC SWB, SU 3083, 22 November 1997, pp. 14–15.
Yuri Slezkine, ‘The USSR as a communal apartment, or how a socialist state promoted ethnic particularism’, Slavic Review, 53(2), 1994, pp. 414–52.
From Solzhenitsyn’s interview in the Guardian (as translated from Der Spiegel), 18 March 2000.
Quoted in Oleh Hryniv, Spokuta malorosii: derzhavotvorennia bez paradoksiv, L’viv, 2001, p. 77.
Tolz, Russia: Inventing the Nation, p. 241.
24. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Rossiia v obvale, Moscow, 1998, p. 82.
25. Gennadii Ziuganov, Geografiia pobedy: osnovy Rossiiskoi geopolitiki, Moscow, 1998, pp. 256 and 252.
26. Aleksandr Rutskoi, Obretenie Very, Moscow, 1995, p. 34.
Serhii Syrovats’kyi, ‘Dukhovnoe edinstvo Sviatoi Rusi’, Komunist Ukrainy, 3, 2001, pp. 55–7 (p. 55).
Ziuganov, Geografiia pobedy, p. 256.
The current sociology of the relationship is beyond the scope of this work; but see for example A. V. Razumkov, ‘Mezhetnicheskoe soglasie kak factor natsional’noi bezopsatnosti Ukrainy’, in N. A. Shul’ha et al. (eds), Dialog ukrainskoi i russkoi kul’tur v Ukraine, Kiev, 1999, pp. 18–22. At p. 21, quoting both Ukrainian and Russian research undertaken in 1997, Razumkov reports that 61 per cent of Ukrainians had a ‘more or less positive’ attitude to Russians, only 6 per cent ‘more or less negative’. The figures for Russians’ attitudes to Ukrainians were, respectively, 53 per cent and 14 per cent.
See the paper’s website at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Embassy/2561/about-e.html
Oleksandr Maiboroda, Rosiis’kyi natsionalizm v Ukraini (1991–1998 r.r.) (Kiev: University of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, 1999), p. 22; quoting from the programme of the party Soiuz (‘Union’), in Hryhorii Andrushchak (ed.), Politychni partii Ukrainy, Kiev, 1998, pp. 376–7. Retranslated from the original.
Petro Symonenko, ‘Komunisty pro tserkvu ta ii rol’ u zhytti suchasnoi Ukrainy’, Holos Ukrainy, 26 May 1999; Oleksandr Hosh, ‘Sotsialistychnyi shliakh – shliakh vidrodzhennia krainy’, and Vladyslav Suiarko, ‘Relihiinyi i politychnyi klerykalizm’, Komunist Ukrainy, 2, 1999, pp. 17–24 and 41–8.
The official title of Filaret, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kievan Patriarchate) is ‘Patriarch of all Rus_-Ukraine’; caricatured in one ROC source as the ‘Metropolitan of Galicia and all Ukraine’, Father Tikhon (Zhiliakov), ‘Avtokefaliia na Ukraine: eto zlo’, Rus’ Pravoslavnaia, 9, 2000, p. 3.
34. From Patriarch Aleksii’s speech to the August 2000 Sobor, ‘Imet’ derznovenie i ne postydit’sia …’, Rus’ Pravoslavnaia, 9, 2000, p. 1.
Tikhon, ‘Avtokefaliia na Ukraine’.
Anatol Lieven, ‘Russia’s passive fury. The weakness of Russian nationalism’, Survival, 41(2), 1999, pp. 53–70.
See for example the web site of ‘Russian rebirth’, one of many ROC sites with good links, at www.zaistinu.ru and especially www.zaistinu.ru/ukraine. See also the networks Edinaia Rus’, at www.mrazha.ru and www.russ.ru
38. BBC SWB, 28 July 2001.
Stephen Shulman, ‘The Internal–External nexus in the formation of Ukrainian national identity: The case for Slavic integration’, in Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri (eds), Dilemmas of State-Led Nation Building in Ukraine, Westport, 2002, pp. 103–30 argues that the ‘East Slavic nation’ would potentially have more popular support.
Stephen Shulman, ‘Sources of civic and ethnic nationalism in Ukraine’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 18(4), December 2002, pp. 1–30.
41. Borys Oliinyk, ‘Khto zh tse nashu khatu rozvalyv?’, Tovarysh, 30, 2000. See also his poetry collection, Taiemna vechera. Poezii 1989–2000, Kiev, 2000.
Borys Oliinyk, ‘Gei, brat’ia slaviane! U nas put’ i sud’ba ediny’ (his speech at the Sobor), Komunist, 24, 2001. Oliinyk was one of three leaders of the group ZUBR (‘For the Union of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia’), along with Gennadii Seleznev, Chairman of the Russian Duma since 1999, and Leonid Kozik, then Deputy Prime Minister and representative of the President of Belarus in Russia. In 2001 the group could count on the support of 65 out of 110 deputies in the Belarusian ‘Palace of Representatives’ and 19 out of 450 in the Ukrainian Rada; Pavel Baulin, ‘Zelenoglazaia sestra Belarus”, Komunist, 21, 2001.
N. I. Kostomarov, ‘Dve russkie narodnosti’, Osnova, 3, 1861 (reprinted in Kiev by Maidan, 1991); ‘Mysli o federativnom nachale drevnei Rusi’, Osnova, 1, 1861 and Thomas M. Prymak, Mykola Kostomarov: A Biography, Toronto, 1996, pp. 104–8 and 110–11.
See Andrew Wilson, ‘The Communist Party of Ukraine: From Soviet man to east Slavic brotherhood’, in Joan Barth Urban and Jane Leftwich Curry (eds), The Left Transformed in Post-Communist Societies: The Cases of East-Central Europe, Russia and Ukraine, Lanham, 2003, pp. 209–43. For some typical Communist views, see Petro Symonenko, ‘Komunisty pro tserkvu ta ii rol’ u zhytti suchasnoi Ukrainy’, Holos Ukrainy, 26 May 1999, pp. 6–7; and Serhii Syrovats’kyi, ‘Dukhovnoe edinstvo Sviatoi Rusi’, Komunist Ukrainy, 3, 2001, pp. 55–7.
Petro Symonenko, ‘Krestovyi pokhod protiv Ukrainy’, at www.kpu.kiev.ua/Arhiv/si011205.htm dated 5 December 2001.
Quoted in Olexiy Haran’ and Serhiy Tolstov, ‘The Slavic triangle. Ukraine’s relations with Russia and Belarus: A Ukrainian view’, in Arkady Moshes and Bertil Nygren (eds), A Slavic Triangle? Present and Future Relations Between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2002, pp. 75–94, at p. 91, note 47.
Joan Barth Urban, ‘Kommunisticheskie partii Rossii, Ukrainy i Belorussii (bezuspeshnyi poisk edinstva v raznobrazii)’, in Dmitrii Furman (ed.), Belorussiia i Rossiia: obshchestvo i gosudartsvo, Moscow, 1998, pp. 393–415.
Its website is at www.belarus.net/church/gener_1.htm
‘Vystuplenie Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’. A. G. Lukashenko v Gosdume Rossii 27 oktiabria 1999 g’., www.president.gov.by/rus/president/Speech/duma99.shtml
‘Vystuplenie Prezidenta Respubliki Belarus’.
From speeches given on Independence Day in July 2002 and in April 2003; www.president.gov.by/eng/president/speech/2002/02den.html and www. president.gov.by/eng/president/speech/2003/message. The author is grateful to David Frick for pointing out that the president’s website (by the time of access on 9 June 2003) contained a much more eclectic section on Belarusian history. See www.president.gov.by/eng/map/ist1.shtml
Haran’ and Tolstov, The Slavic Triangle, p. 76.
Valentin Yakushyk (ed.), Politychni partii Ukrainy, Kiev, 1996, p. 120. Andrii Shkil’, Viter imperii. Zbirnyk stattei z heopolitiki, L’viv, 1999.
‘Ukrains’ka imperiia, yak factor vyzhyvannia Slov”ians’koi tsyvilizatsii’, http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/5331/ukrimp.html. See also www. una-unso.org
See Ola Hnatiuk, Poz˙egnanie z imperium: Ukrai’nskie dyskusje o toz˙ samos’ci, Lublin, 2003, part VI.
Markus Osterrieder, ‘Die Kultur des slavischen Ostens und der Schatten von Turan,’ Das Goetheanum, 79, 2000, pp. 28–31.
Yurii Lypa, Rozpodil Rosii, L´viv, 1995 (reprint of the 1941 edition), pp. 57 and 54.
Usevalad Ihnato˘uski, Karotki narys historyi Belarusi, Minsk, 5th edn, 1991, pp. 25–6.
59. David Marples in his article ‘National awakening and national consciousness in Belarus’, Nationalities Papers, 27(4), 1999, pp. 565–70, recommends Pazniak, ‘O russkom imperializme i ego opasnosti’, Narodnaia hazeta, 15–17 January 1994 as a guide to his views on this question.
60. Rainer Lindner, ‘Beseiged past: National and court historians in Lukashenka’s Belarus’, Nationalities Papers, 27(4), 1999, pp. 631–47 (p. 633), quoting Ermalovich; ‘Tsi by˘u starzhytnaruski narod?’, in Z’mister San’ko, 100 pytannia ˘u i adkaza˘u z historyi Belarusi, Minsk, 1993, p. 5. See also Lindner, Historiker und Herrschaft : Nationsbildung und Geschichtspolitik in Weissrussland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Munich, 1999.
Lev Gumilev, Ot Rusi k Rossii. Ocherki etnicheskoi istorii, Moscow, 1992.
Brat´ia slaviane, 18, 2001. See also http://slavica.maillist.ru/abakumov
Blair Ruble, Money Sings: The Changing Politics of Urban Space in post-Soviet Yaroslavl, Washington, DC, 1995, pp. 127–9.
For the text, see Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 2000.
65. Patriarch Volodymyr, then head of the UOC (KP), Pravoslavnyi visnyk, 1993, pp. 10–11.
Molchanov, Political Culture and National Identity in Russian–Ukrainian Relations.
67. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity, London, 1991, p. 14.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilson, A. (2004). Rival Versions of the East Slavic Idea in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In: Slater, W., Wilson, A. (eds) The Legacy of the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524408_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524408_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51377-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52440-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)