The Story of the Ukraine
[Illustration:
MAP OF
UKRAINE]
The Story of
The Ukraine
CLARENCE A. MANNING
Assistant Professor of
East European Languages
Columbia University
[Illustration]
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
NEW YORK
Copyright 1947
_By_ PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY, INC.
15 EAST 40TH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
_Introduction_ 9
_Chapter I_
UKRAINE 19
_Chapter II_
RUS’ AND UKRAINE 24
_Chapter III_
KIEVAN RUS’ 31
_Chapter IV_
THE CULTURAL REVIVAL 45
_Chapter V_
THE KOZAKS 59
_Chapter VI_
BOHDAN KHMELNITSKY 73
_Chapter VII_
THE REVOLT OF MAZEPA 87
_Chapter VIII_
THE SPREAD OF KIEVAN CULTURE IN MOSCOW 106
_Chapter IX_
THE LAST ACTS IN POLAND 121
_Chapter X_
THE END OF KOZAK LIBERTIES 131
_Chapter XI_
UKRAINE AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 145
_Chapter XII_
THE AWAKENING IN EASTERN UKRAINE 155
_Chapter XIII_
THE SOCIETY OF SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS 164
_Chapter XIV_
THE REVIVAL IN GALICIA 172
_Chapter XV_
PROGRESS IN RUSSIA 184
_Chapter XVI_
DEVELOPMENTS IN WESTERN UKRAINE 195
_Chapter XVII_
BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND WAR 203
_Chapter XVIII_
THE FIRST WORLD WAR 210
_Chapter XIX_
UKRAINIAN INDEPENDENCE 216
_Chapter XX_
FOREIGN RELATIONS 227
_Chapter XXI_
THE REPUBLIC OF WESTERN UKRAINE 238
_Chapter XXII_
THE FALL OF UKRAINE 244
_Chapter XXIII_
WESTERN UKRAINE 255
_Chapter XXIV_
CARPATHO-UKRAINE 265
_Chapter XXV_
THE UKRAINIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 273
_Chapter XXVI_
UKRAINE IN WORLD WAR II 288
_Chapter XXVII_
THE FUTURE OF UKRAINE 301
The Story of the Ukraine
_INTRODUCTION_
In the spring of 1945, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was
formally accepted at the Conference in San Francisco as a member of the
United Nations Organization. This could not satisfy the aspirations
of the forty million Ukrainians who were suffering under Communist
yoke and were witnessing the attempt to eradicate from their country
all those principles of freedom and democracy for which they had so
long been struggling, but it did bring prominently before the public
opinion of the world that Ukraine was not the creation of a series of
propagandists but a nation with its own geographical area, its own
population, and its own history. The rulers of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics had thought fit to bring before the representatives
of the United Nations a situation that had been denied for centuries
by Russian officials and scholars. After long denying its existence,
the world was forced to acknowledge that Ukraine really did exist
and it will be impossible for students in the future to take again
the old widespread attitude that Ukraine is only a figment of the
imagination. It will be impossible in the future to write European and
world history, without taking account of this people which for good or
ill have inhabited their homeland for over one thousand years and have
taken part in nearly all the great movements of thought and action that
have swept over Europe.
There is no need to delve into prehistoric times and to endeavor to
identify the various tribes and cultures that have passed forgotten
into the composition of Ukraine. It is over one thousand years since
the first known dynasty was established at Kiev on the Dnyeper River
and the country was launched upon its historic course. It is nearly
one thousand years since monks from Constantinople, the imperial city
on the Bosphorus, were invited to Kiev and baptized the sovereign,
Saint Volodymyr, and his court and made Kiev one of the civilized
capitals of Christendom.
For two centuries the Grand Prince of Kiev was known and respected
throughout Europe, even though that Europe was very different
politically from what it is to-day. Constantinople which had given
richly of its culture to the new state in the east of Europe was
then the great centre of Christian civilization. All nations in the
West were looking at its wealth and power with admiration and with
envy, for there was none that could compare with it. The Western Holy
Roman Empire had just struggled to its feet under the rule of the
Emperor Otto I. Hugh Capet had just been crowned King of France and
was struggling to make his title valuable. The Norman conquest of
England had not yet taken place and the last Saxon rulers were trying
to hold their crown and to unify the country. Paganism still was rife
in large sections of Germany. The reforms of Pope Gregory VII in the
Roman Catholic Church were still in the future. All of western Europe
was slowly recovering from the Dark Ages which had prevailed since the
barbarian invasions of the fifth century.
Against this background Kiev shines as a great and progressive state.
Its early rulers represented culture and civilization. It is small
wonder that Princesses of Kiev married into all the royal houses of
Europe, that the struggling princes and kings and emperors of the West
were only too proud and happy to be connected by ties of marriage and
of blood to the Grand Princes of Kiev, their superiors in wealth and
culture and enlightenment. Unless we realize this fact, we cannot
hope to understand the tragedy that swept over Ukraine when internal
dissension and the overwhelming attacks of the nomads of the steppes
and then of the Mongols weakened and destroyed a state that had seemed
secure and permanent but a short time before. We cannot understand
otherwise the political vacuum that developed in eastern Europe, when
early in the thirteenth century Rus’-Ukraine ceased to be the dominant
force along the great river valleys of the east and left its lands and
people to be the prey of one nation after another which for centuries
had not dared to question their will.
It was the tragedy of Ukraine that this collapse came at the very
period when the countries of the Roman Catholic West were struggling
to their feet. Those years when the Middle Ages were at their height
formed the darkest and most hopeless years in Ukrainian history. It
was the time when the old nobility were largely lost to the life
of the people and when in large numbers they accepted the Polish
language and Polish customs. The fall of Constantinople to the Turks
in 1453 deprived the people and their Orthodox Church of all contact
with Eastern Christian culture and left them helpless, with their
educational system in ruins, their political organization shattered,
and their economic life in chaos. Then, if ever, it seemed likely
that the country would be reduced to ignorant peasants destined to
be absorbed by their conquerors and to pass away among the forgotten
peoples of the world. The great movements of chivalry and the
Renaissance which prepared the way for modern Europe could have no
meaning for the helpless serfs and uneducated city people who formed
almost all that was left of the once proud state of Kiev.
It was then that out of these masses and the few nobles who still
retained the national spirit and tradition there grew the surprising
movement which revived the spirit of Ukrainian culture. It was then
that the unsettled conditions on the frontier, the bold and hazardous
life of opposition to the Asiatic invaders developed the Kozaks.
On land and sea they fought and the exploits of the heroes of the
Zaporozhian Sich with their wild and untamed democracy in the sixteenth
century fitted in well with the sturdy sea-dogs of England who were
proud to singe the beard of the King of Spain on all of the seven seas.
The era of Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, of the English
fight against the Spanish Armada in the reign of Queen Elizabeth
coincided exactly with the years when the Kozaks made their raids
against the Turks and the Tatars, when they dared to burn and plunder
the suburbs of Constantinople itself, and when the cry that the Kozaks
were coming was enough to spread the alarm through all eastern Europe,
wherever there was oppression and evil.
The sixteenth century was an era all over Europe when men dared to
fight and risk their lives for the religious and political ideas which
they respected and in which they believed. It was an era of religious
confusion and of change and although the problem in Ukraine was
different, the same spirit that a little earlier had sent Christopher
Columbus across the ocean, that inspired Cortez and Pizarro to conquer
the Aztecs and the Incas, that explored the New World under terrific
odds, saw the development of the democratic Kozak Host.
It was a glorious and a heroic period but it was costly in the blood
of Ukraine’s sons. They had no base of supplies, no formal government
on which they could lean, no resources behind them. They followed
their love of liberty, their disregard for death, their own elected
leaders and made their names forever memorable in the books of heroes
and of men of action. It was a true revolt of the human spirit against
oppression and tyranny. It was a time when men were so busy acting that
they had no inclination to think and to reflect. They were so conscious
of the need of winning freedom and of gaining wealth and power by their
heroism that they neglected much that would have helped them later.
So the struggle continued until in the seventeenth century Bohdan
Khmelnitsky, the greatest of the hetmans, endeavored to organize
the Host and Ukraine on a national basis. He exchanged letters with
Oliver Cromwell. He lived and worked at the time when the Puritans
were mastering the New England wilderness, when the Thirty Years War
was decimating Germany, when the first seeds of modern thought were
sprouting all over Europe.
Had he won his fight, had he lived a little longer to make Ukraine
really free, a restored Ukraine and the Thirteen American Colonies
would have appeared in history at one and the same time. The ideals of
popular rule would have taken root in two widely scattered parts of
the world. There would have been in Europe a free republic set up in a
strategic part of the continent, and the history of Europe would have
been changed.
It was not to be. In an evil moment, Khmelnitsky put the Kozak Host
under the jurisdiction of the Tsar of Moscow and from that moment on,
it was torn to pieces by the mutual efforts of Moscow and Poland. Step
by step, as the New World went on to increasing power and unanimity,
as the American colonies became conscious of their mutual interests
and of their growing strength, Ukraine fell into greater and greater
chaos. Hetman fought against hetman, instigated by foreign rulers,
and the great masses of the Kozaks, losing their own ideals, again
reverted to dissatisfied and impoverished peasants while their officers
tried to become aristocrats like the nobles around them. It was in
vain that Mazepa tried to rouse the Kozaks to revolt for Ukrainian
independence. It was in vain that one leader after another endeavored
to bring back the old spirit of unity and of cooperation. The power of
Moscow increased over the Kozak Host. More of the leaders were lost to
the popular cause and despair reigned throughout the land as Peter
the Great and Catherine tore away and abrogated the last of the Kozak
rights.
It is striking and significant that it was in 1775, the very year when
the Americans rose in revolt against the British Crown in defence of
their liberties, that the armed forces of Catherine the Great destroyed
the Zaporozhian Sich and ended once and for all the old institution
that had carried Ukraine in the preceding century to a height
unparalleled since the early days of Kiev. When we compare the power
and population of the American colonies and of the Kozak Host in the
days of Khmelnitsky and then again in 1775, we shall see how the ideas
of liberty brought rich dividends to America and how the obscuring of
them by the actions of foreign rulers and internal discord wrought
havoc in Ukraine.
The old system perished just at the very moment when in the New World
those principles of individual initiative and of political liberty for
which the Sich and the Kozak Host had always stood were winning their
great triumph. It came to its end just as the American Revolution was
breaking out, just when the “shot heard round the world” at Concord
Bridge was ringing out a new appeal to mankind to fight and die for
liberty and for freedom. It came to its end just as the thinkers of
Western Europe dared to proclaim again the rights of man and the
eternal principles of justice and of law.
The old Ukraine disappeared just at the moment when conditions were
becoming favorable for its continuation, when the power of public
opinion was again being invoked to justify a struggle against tyranny
and oppression. It was only fourteen years before the French Revolution
was to carry into Europe itself those ideals and principles that men
had fought to win in the New World. It was by such a narrow margin that
Ukraine failed to be one of the states which could aspire to political
continuity, to the passing from autocratic domination to liberty with
its old forms preserved, with old traditions living in written statute
as well as in the memory of the people.
Then came the revival, but it was a slow and painful process, for
the Ukrainian leaders had to struggle for every concession from the
autocratic rulers who held the country. The very existence of the
country was denied, the name was abolished, the language was mocked as
an uncouth peasant dialect. Such a seer and a prophet as Shevchenko
had to pay for his devotion to his country with years of exile and
imprisonment in the Russian army. Yet step by step the struggle went
on. All through the nineteenth century, the demand for a true Ukrainian
solution of the Ukrainian question gained strength in the underground
of the consciousness of the people. The sense of unity in all branches
of the Ukrainian people, whether in Russia or in Austria-Hungary,
grew and spread. It was not spectacular. There could not be any open
proclamation of its hopes and its aspirations. There could be no open
economic strengthening of the people for their own good. Yet they
continued to work, to hope and to pray.
The First World War broke out and it ruined the two empires that
controlled Ukraine. The principles of the United States, the Fourteen
Points of Wilson, the message of self-determination for all peoples,
resounded through Ukraine and once more there was proclaimed in 1919
a united sovereign Ukrainian Republic. The ideals that the Kozaks had
had in common with the Americans two and a half centuries earlier once
again found their voice on Ukrainian territory and for a while it
seemed as if a final solution of the future of Ukraine had been
reached.
Again there came disaster. The democratic powers could never make up
their minds as to their course of action. A century and a half of
absence from the councils of the world, a century and a half of hostile
propaganda denying the very existence of Ukraine was too heavy a
burden for the restored Ukrainian Republic to carry. Ukraine found an
inadequate and a biased hearing abroad. The ghosts of the past were
present everywhere. The country had no influential friends. There was
no one to supply her with sufficient arms and ammunition. There was no
one to extend diplomatic support and Ukraine fell.
Communism backed by Moscow conquered the country and Ukraine became the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, included in the Soviet Union and
ruled by Russian Communists. The national spirit did not die. Millions
of the population perished in famines artificially created to break
their spirit. Those of the cultural leaders who remained loyal to their
belief and their traditions were executed or died by their own hand
to escape a worse fate. Millions of people were deported for no other
reason than their belief in their rights as human beings. Everything
was done to eat out the heart of the Ukrainian spirit and to give it a
Russian Communist aspect.
Then came the Second World War and Ukraine became a battleground to
be swept over by the German and the Red Armies. Again there came
devastation, deportations and executions. Both armies acted to
eliminate the native population and to stifle all national life and
thought. No one has yet estimated the cost in Ukrainian lives and
wealth but enough is known now to show that the old spirit of Ukraine
has not been eliminated. There are still people who live and hope that
Ukraine can be restored to its people. It makes no difference if all
the forces of propaganda are mobilized to call the patriots bandits.
Their struggle still goes on and even if it seems hopeless, it can
hardly be more so than many times in the past.
It is under such conditions that the world has accepted the Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic into the United Nations Organization. There
may be questions as to the motives that inspired this demand of the
Soviet Union. Yet once and for all it has answered the old charge
iterated and reiterated so often during the past centuries that there
is no Ukraine. Henceforth no historian will be able to accept the old
thesis that Ukraine is only a rough name for some Russian or Polish
provinces, that Ukraine was invented as a convenient tool for the
destruction of two empires and that it has no existence in fact, in
history, or in reality.
What of the future? That is dark and uncertain but the trend of
humanity toward the winning of freedom can hardly be stopped for long.
For a thousand years Ukraine has shared in the vicissitudes of European
and Christian civilization. It will continue to do so and if in the
future Ukraine does not receive its just dues, if the Ukrainians fail
to win the benefits of the Four Freedoms, it will be only because
history has reversed itself and mankind in the midst of unparalleled
scientific development has lost its hopes, its aspirations, and its
power of moral advancement.
To-day the name of Ukraine is once again upon the map of Europe. There
it will stay. The Ukrainian spirit is not yet free but it has proved
itself imperishable in the past and it will continue to remain so in
the future. That is the point of the study of Ukrainian history and of
this attempt to picture the past and the present of the country’s life,
in the hope that it may throw some light upon the future.
CHAPTER ONE
_UKRAINE_
Ukraine is often called the granary of Europe and its natural wealth
has long made it the object of envy of all of its neighbors and of all
aggressive peoples in the eastern part of the continent. At the same
time its geographical position has made it of pivotal importance in all
of the European combinations, whether for war or peace.
What then is Ukraine and where is it situated? In the simplest
definition it is the area which is bounded by the Black Sea on the
south, the Carpathian mountains on the west, and the Don River on the
east. To the north its boundaries are far less definite, for there
is no natural barrier and the northern section merges more or less
imperceptibly into the southern part of the area inhabited by the Great
Russians. This boundary has changed with the passing of the centuries
but it has remained surprisingly constant when we consider the involved
political history of eastern Europe.
The country occupies the southernmost of the great belts of land that
stretch across Europe and Asia on the great plains of the east. That
is the belt of the steppes, wide expanses of level rolling country,
with the celebrated and enormously fertile black earth regions which
have been cultivated more or less continuously for over three thousand
years. To the north in the Great Russian area is found a broad belt of
forest land that covers the greater part of the old Russian Empire but
Ukraine itself is ideally fitted by soil and climate to be a prosperous
agricultural area which will offer an abundant living to hardy and
rugged people who are not afraid of physical labor.
The greatest extension of the country is from east to west, for it
is far narrower from north to south, but despite all this Ukraine is
a large country with an area of some 200,000 square miles and under
favorable conditions it could easily support its population of some
forty million people, most of whom speak the Ukrainian language, live
according to the Ukrainian mode of life and are conscious of their
national character.
Across it from north to south flow most of the great rivers that empty
into the Black Sea. There are the Dnyester, the Dnyeper and the Don,
three great highways between central and northern Europe and the Black
Sea. Ukraine lies squarely across their path and hence it comes about
that the country controls all the arteries that lead into the Black Sea
and from there through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. It gives
the land a tremendous economic position which its own people and their
conquerors have never undervalued.
That favorable position contains within itself the source of danger.
Unfortunately at no time in their history have the Ukrainian people
moved sufficiently to the north to occupy the head waters of these
streams and to take control of the rivers that flow to the north into
the Baltic. The people there have always looked with envy at Ukraine;
they have always tried to descend these rivers, usually broad and
sluggish, and to take possession of the fertile plains which they saw
stretching in all directions.
Ukraine is the natural highway between the east and west. For centuries
before recorded history begins, the nomad tribes pushing westward from
central Asia found these same plains the most accessible and convenient
road to Europe. Long before there came a national consciousness in
the area, long before any existing European country even dreamed of
coming into being, warriors mounted on small fast horses poured across
this region, carrying their culture into Europe and making their way
eastward again with the spoils of the west. Likewise invaders from the
west sought access to the territory for the purposes of carrying their
raids into the east and of returning home with the riches of the Orient.
Trade followed the same general route. No one attempts to estimate
when the trading caravans on their way from western China and central
Asia to the early trading centers of Europe first passed across the
territory for purposes of peace as did the military groups for war and
plunder.
Thus, at an early date, Ukraine was at the crossroads of the world. The
Scandinavian Vikings were but following in the path of many peoples
who sought to emphasize the route from north to south, exactly as
others travelled from east to west. Kiev as the central point in these
crossroads had a trading importance that was unequalled by any place
except perhaps Constantinople, where sea-borne traffic added to the
wealth of the population and offered a simpler outlet to the rest of
the world.
It is small wonder then that Kiev as a trading center can trace
its origin before the dawn of history and that the area around it
was inhabited from the earliest days of man in Europe. It is small
wonder that Ukraine developed into a powerful and independent state
long before the countries to the west and that it was one of the
richest daughters of the Byzantine Empire. It is small wonder that
for centuries the wishes of the rulers of Kiev were to be considered
throughout all of eastern Europe.
Yet the very accessibility of the country and the lack of definite
boundaries to the north and to a lesser degree to the east cast upon
the rulers of the land gigantic problems of self-defence. They had to
be constantly alert, lest armed raiders harry their country and plunder
the population and the rich grainfields.
Geographically Ukraine occupies one of the most important portant
locations in Europe. It is a position well adapted for the organization
of a powerful state which is vitally interested in the development of
communications with the outside world. A Ukraine developed for the
benefit of her own people and playing her part in world organization
would have been a stabilizing factor for much of Europe. It would have
ended many of the most violent disputes that arose as one neighbor
after another claimed her territory, and sought to build their own
greatness and permanence on her ruins.
Besides that, the country is rich. Its fertile soil is an almost
inexhaustible resource. For millenia her fields have yielded wheat and
the black earth, often several feet in depth, is still not exhausted.
There is hardly a staple crop, with the exception of cotton, that is
not adapted to the climate. Her soil is richer than that of any of her
neighbors. It yields copious returns for the labor of her inhabitants.
In the past centuries wheat, sugar beets and many other crops including
fruits, have been produced and exported for the welfare of her
neighbors and little or no attention has been paid to the welfare of
the inhabitants of the country.
As if this were not enough, Ukraine possesses an almost inexhaustible
supply of mineral resources. The coal and iron mines which have been
exploited during the last century have been among the most important
in the Russian Empire. The industries of the Russian Empire and then
of the Soviet Union were long dependent upon the raw materials which
came from this section of the continent. There is oil in the west.
This mineral and that are found in commercial deposits and it is now
realized that the mineral resources of the country are fully equal to
the wealth that lies buried in the fields.
The land with such natural gifts is inhabited by a thrifty, industrious
population who have shown in peace and in war their love of liberty
and a proud, stubborn independence which has all too often degenerated
into a factionalism that has broken the hearts of many of the wiser
leaders. It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that the people of
the plains have often found it more difficult to unite for a common
cause than have the people of the mountains, who are more or less
isolated in their narrow valleys. It has been easier to separate them
and to divide their interests; once damage has been done to their
organization it has been harder to repair. That is now and has been
in the past the great weakness of the population. Once the fabric of
the state was shattered in the early days, Ukraine, always aspiring to
recover her lost unity, found it very difficult to achieve. The cities
were unable to dominate the country. The peasants were interested in
their several local problems and the foreign invaders far too often
were able to manoeuvre them at will and to block those measures which
alone could unify the land and enable the population of the villages to
meet them on an equal level.
All this has made Ukraine throughout the ages a land of wealth and of
sadness, a land thirsting for liberty but again and again debarred from
obtaining it. Here are all the resources, human and physical, that are
needed to produce a great state, while untoward factors have worked
against it and kept the land in turmoil.
CHAPTER TWO
_RUS’ AND UKRAINE_
Perhaps no single circumstance has done more to confuse the opinions of
the world about Ukraine than the strange confusion that has taken place
over the name of the country. The old name definitely and clearly was
Rus’ but that name has been preempted by the northern offshoot of Rus’,
Russia, and the people have been compelled for the sake of clarity to
adopt another local title, Ukraine, which was early applied to a part
of the country.
The origin of the word Rus’ is obscure but we can trace it back in
history well before the Christianization of the country, for it appears
in the records of the Byzantine Empire early in the ninth century
A.D., and the treaties made between the Emperors of Constantinople and
the Princes of Rus’ show that the name referred to a very definite
political entity, but as they do not concern questions of boundaries,
we are not able to define accurately the territory to which they refer.
Yet it is clear that Rus’ in its essence referred to the valley of the
Dnyeper River, the southern part of the Varangian Road by which the
Scandinavian Vikings penetrated from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
For centuries scholars have been debating the origin and meaning of
the name. Since the earliest passages that are preserved in the Rus’
language are clearly old Scandinavian, there has been a prevailing
opinion that Rus’ was the name of one of the Scandinavian tribes that
spread over Europe during the eighth and ninth centuries. They appeared
along the Dnyeper about the same time that the Normans were settling
in France, and like them they adopted the language of the population,
which in this case was a race speaking an East Slavonic language.
Historians have been inclined to connect this with the old legend of
the conquest of Kiev and Novgorod by Rurik and his two brothers, who
were invited to rule the country because it was a rich land and there
was no order in it. It is an old fable common to many lands and places,
but there is no evidence as to its truth and if there were, we would
still be far from knowing the actual meaning of the word.
A not less vocal group has felt that this story was not too dignified
and has sought some other origin. Many have regarded it as a Slavonic
borrowing from Iranian or they have tried to find some place name which
could serve as a source. It is all in vain and for all intents and
purposes we can only go back to recorded history and accept the fact
that when that history first became definite, the word Rus’ was applied
to the population of the Dnyeper valley and of the valley of the
Volkhov that formed the northern end of the Varangian Road. Kiev on the
south and Novgorod on the north were the two fortresses on this line of
transport and they formed the two centres of the earliest Rus’.
Yet even then Kiev was the more important of the two, for it lay not
only on the north-south route but also on the east-west road from
central Asia. It was then called the capital of Rus’ and as we learn
more of the settlement of the country, we realize how the area of Rus’
expanded until it covered with rare exactness the territory between the
Carpathians and the Don that forms the modern Ukraine.
It is by no means certain that the princes who went to the north and
east into the territory of the various Finnic tribes and founded
those centres which were later to be the heart of Moscow thought of
themselves as forming part of Rus’. They are recorded in the ancient
Chronicles as returning to Rus’, and the area to which they return is
consistently that of Kiev and of Ukraine. The same is true of the area
of Novgorod, which practically broke away from the south and went its
own way after the trade between Kiev and the Scandinavians fell into
abeyance and the merchants of Novgorod worked with the Baltic area and
to the northeast.
Later the region around Kiev came to bear the title of Mala Rus’,
Little Russia, but this was clearly not a sign of inferiority. It was a
common system of the past. In Poland the area around Krakow was called
Little Poland to distinguish it from the Great Poland away from the
nation’s capital. Ancient Greece was called Greece to distinguish it
from Magna Graecia, that great area of Sicily, south Italy, the shores
of Asia Minor and the Black Sea, where Greek colonies had been planted
in the barbarian world.
It was not until 1169, when Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky definitely
decided to transfer the centre of the state to the northeast, that we
have definite proof of the connection of the word Rus’ in any form with
the northern principalities that were to form the origin of Moscow.
Then he carried away with him the head of the Orthodox Church and
attempted to create in another area a state of Rus’. Yet he did not
find it too satisfactory and for some centuries the word almost dropped
out of use in the north as the Princes of Moscow preferred to name
their country after their capital. Russian historians of all ages and
of all schools of thought have always spoken of the Grand Principality
and Tsardom of Muscovy as the name of the country until the seventeenth
century.
Rus’ remained, except for official titles of the Tsars of Moscow in
their most formal aspects, as the name of the area around Kiev. The
Princes of Galicia who assumed the title of Kings of Rus’ in the
thirteenth century used it to assert their lordship over the area that
had fallen into the hands of the Tatars. They still continued to call a
citizen of their lands a Rusin and the adjective that was used for it
was Rus’sky.
On Muscovite territory there came other changes, for during these years
Moscow developed a sharp aversion to Kiev and everything for which
it stood. The whole tradition of the Third Rome, which was hostile
to everything outside the land, taught that Moscow was the centre of
Christian civilization and that Kiev, like Constantinople and like
the First Rome, had definitely fallen into heresy. Now and then the
tsars might employ the word Rusia, but even this was too much of a
concession for their stubborn pride and it was not until Tsar Alexis in
the seventeenth century began to nourish hopes of recovering the area
around Kiev that he gave any significance to the use of the word Rus’.
In fact it was not until the time of Peter the Great that the name
Rossiya--Russia--came into common use and even then Peter introduced
it with the idea of asserting his power as a European sovereign and he
did it against the usage of the European states, which continued to
refer to him as Tsar or Emperor of Moscow. Even later the great poets
of the eighteenth century continued to use the adjective Rossiysky and
the ordinary form that was employed during the nineteenth century, i.e.
Russky, was of rare occurrence.
Through the centuries, regardless of the ups and downs of the two
states, of the political issues of union and disunion, there remained
a sharp differentiation between Moscow and Rus’. It was not until
Moscow saw itself in a position to make itself the heir of Kiev in the
eyes of the world that it preempted very definitely the name of Rus’,
proclaimed that Rus’ was Russia, and dangled it before the eyes of the
world to win belief that both Kiev and Moscow belonged together under
the aegis of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In earlier ages Moscow had been content to seek the support of Rus’
on the basis of the Orthodox religion, when it desired to secure
cooperation. Then it was Orthodox Moscow and Orthodox Rus’ against the
Roman Catholic Poles and Lithuanians. That idea could not appeal in the
eighteenth century, when Peter was manifesting little interest in the
traditional religion of the people and was trying to change all the old
established customs. A new basis had to be found and this new equation
was the result. The injustice of the action was appreciated even by the
Poles, who had maintained to the end of their national existence their
control of the province of Rus’. An Encyclopedia put out by the Polish
National Committee during the First War (Vol. II, No. 5, p. 867) summed
it up well. “In very deed, Russia stripped Ukraine of everything; she
even appropriated its very name of ‘Rus’ (Ruthenia), she annexed its
history of pre-Tatar times, she declared the language was a Russian
dialect.” It is a clear statement of conditions.
Yet even that was not the only cause of confusion, for in the
Austro-Hungarian provinces which were stripped away after the division
of Poland, the government of the Hapsburgs carefully created for the
people the name of Ruthenians. This was but a Latinized form of the
name Rus’ and was at first used merely in Latin correspondence. Early
travellers spoke of Ruthenia as extending from near the region of
Prague in Bohemia to the land of the Tatars. It was not to remain long
in that range of activity for with the development of the Union of
Brest Litovsk, and the growing loss of the leaders of Rus’, Ruthenia
and Ruthenians came to be used as a mark of inferiority and of
contempt. It was used to separate these people from the Poles and from
their other neighbors in Austria-Hungary.
Throughout the Hapsburg lands, Ruthenia became the common term. There
was Ruthenia proper and then there was White Ruthenia, Red Ruthenia,
Black Ruthenia, all sections inhabited by various branches of the
people that had once dominated in Kiev. In the nineteenth century it
was almost the only term allowed in the province of Galicia, as the
ancient Halich was now named. It was the term that had to be employed
by Franko and the writers around him, if they were to be allowed even
moderate relief from the censorship.
Under such circumstances, with the old name Rus’ taken over by the
Muscovite Russians and the name Ruthenia forced upon part of the race
by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is small wonder that the people
themselves turned to the other title of Ukraine. It was an old word
which is first found in literature about the year 1187, to denote that
portion of Rus’ on the left bank of the Dnyeper facing the Polovtsy.
By 1213, two years before the signing of Magna Charta in England, it
was applied to the exposed sections of the country on the right bank
of the same river. The word means the “Frontier,” the Borderland, and
it originally referred to that section of Rus’ which lay facing the
no-man’s land where Slav and Turk and Tatar struggled for mastery. It
was the land where the Kozaks developed and it is small wonder that the
people, faced with the loss of their traditional name, selected this
term which bore witness to the most heroic period of their history.
Its choice is intelligible and it was made certain when the poet
Shevchenko in his _Kobzar_ and _Haydamaki_, and many other
poems, emphasized again and again that “Ukraina’s weeping.” The word
made its way despite official prohibition, for to the Russians the
land was always Little Russia and to the Austro-Hungarians, Ruthenia.
Ukraine might occasionally be used to include the two sections but
it was always dangerous. There was always the possibility that the
censors would object and punish the bold author as an advocate of
separatism.
Yet it triumphed. As the First War drew to its close, Ukraine became
more and more the common appellation and after the Russian Revolution
and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, it became the term that was used
to apply to ancient Rus’ almost universally. There was no one now to
continue the old nomenclature and it was as Ukraine and under the
Ukrainian banner that the Republic fought in 1919 and 1920. It was
under this title that the Soviets conquered the young country and
deprived it of its independence and it was under this title that they
introduced it to the United Nations Organization.
All this may seem a petty linguistic and philological dispute, and it
has been presented as such by all the enemies of the Ukrainian people.
Yet as is so often the case in such discussion, the mere debate about
words has veiled a deeper psychological and social division. It has
been used to ignore the fact that the differences between Rus’ and
Russia are not passing and superficial, but that they go to the very
depths of the psychology and thought of the people, they concern the
attitude toward the world, toward civilization and human rights; and
to-day with a world in confusion the difference between Russia and
Ukraine is summed up in the use of the national names. Ukraine exists
to-day on the territory of ancient Rus’, where it has been since the
dawn of history and where it will remain.
CHAPTER THREE
_KIEVAN RUS’_
The actual history of Kievan Rus’ commenced in 862 with the accession
to power of Rurik and his brothers. From this time we can trace a
consistent history of the realm. Although during the rest of the ninth
century there is much that is still obscure, we are on safer ground
when we come to his son Oleh. Yet we would be very wrong to think that
this was the real beginning of history for even the Chronicles that
emphasize the role of Rurik make it abundantly clear that Kiev was
already in existence and was a place of prominence both militarily and
commercially.
It is tempting to go back and endeavor to trace the earlier inhabitants
of Ukraine. It is extremely dangerous, for we lack all written
sources and are forced to depend upon the results of archaeological
investigation and we can scarcely be sure that the differences in
culture did not cloak differences in languages and perhaps considerable
changes of population.
We know that there were human inhabitants of Ukraine from the
Paleolithic or Old Stone Age on. We can be sure too that the site
of Kiev was inhabited during the ages for there has been found a
Paleolithic settlement in Kiev itself. Yet only an enthusiast would
hold that this settlement was Ukrainian in the sense in which it is
used to-day. Scholar after scholar has commented upon the fact that
some of the early dwellings of the Neolithic Period bear striking
resemblances to the poorer types of Ukrainian peasant homes. They have
noted that the figures on the vase of Chertomlyk and on other remains
from the Scythian period, approximately the fourth century B.C., show
physical types which are still met with in Ukraine. At the same time
the accounts of the Greek authors and the names of the Scythian rulers
which they have preserved have nothing Slavonic about them.
This is not surprising. It is often forgotten that the ancient
conquerors usually formed a relatively small and compact group who
extended their control over the native populations. In part they killed
or enslaved the people. In part they fell under the influence of the
women of the conquered tribe. But there were rarely concerted and
consistent attempts to wipe out completely the original population.
Undoubtedly through the ages there remained in Ukraine descendants of
the earliest inhabitants, but they were completely submerged in the
changing culture that developed through the centuries.
Perhaps we are on firmer ground when we come to the periods after the
sixth century, when the Slavonic tribes began to appear in the area.
The Byzantine historians speak of the Antae and the Veneti and make it
clear that they did speak Slavonic. Yet even these names are replaced
by many others and we can hardly decide which of them finally attained
the mastery. The Chronicles give us many names and allude to various
differences in culture and traditions but we know too little about any
of them to determine exactly what these differences really meant.
[Illustration: Taras Shevchenko in 1840
(Self portrait)]
[Illustration: PROF. MICHAEL HRUSHEVSKY]
It was apparently the Rus’ of Kiev who finally were able to extend
their control over the other Slavonic tribes and to organize the
new state. The moving spirit in this seems to have been a group of
Scandinavians but they could not have been numerous enough to displace
the Slavonic character of the people. It was not long before the rulers
came to have Slavonic names, like Svyatoslav. In the tenth century he
sought to extend his control over the northern Balkans and may have
dreamed of moving his capital south of the Black Earth region. Yet he
was finally killed by the Pechenegs, perhaps at the instigation of the
Byzantine emperor, John Tsimiskes. After that, though there might be
outbreaks between Constantinople and Kiev, relations were on the whole
peaceful.
At almost the same time Christianity made its appearance. It was only
natural that the most aggressive missionaries came from Constantinople,
for the commercial ambitions of Kiev led it to the Black Sea in which
the Byzantine Empire was supreme. Queen Olha, the mother of Svyatoslav,
had become an Orthodox Christian in the middle of the tenth century
but paganism was still too strong for her to convert the druzhina, the
leading warriors and counsellors of the king, and a half century was to
pass before the country was definitely converted under Volodymyr, or
Vladimir.
In the beginning Volodymyr, as a younger son of Svyatoslav by one of
his numerous concubines, had become the ruler of Novgorod. He was thus
able to secure new levies of Scandinavian troops from the North and
to win the throne of Kiev. In his early life he led a pagan revival
but he was apparently much interested in matters of religion and was
dissatisfied with the pagan cult. According to the legend of the
chroniclers, he sent embassies to investigate the Jewish religion of
the Khozars, Mohammedanism, and the Christianity of the Germans and
of the Greeks of Constantinople. The envoys were most impressed by
the splendor of the services in the great Church of St. Sophia and on
their return Volodymyr decided to seek baptism from the Patriarch of
Constantinople.
It required some time to bring this about, but in 989 all difficulties
were finally removed and the Grand Prince and his druzhina were
definitely baptized. Volodymyr at once cast the idols of Perun and the
other pagan gods into the Dnyeper and from that time on, he became
a zealous Christian. Without delay he built the first of the great
Churches of Kiev, the Church of the Tithe (Desyatinnaya) and for this
he employed the services of Greek architects.
Kiev became speedily a small scale replica of Constantinople. The Greek
monks introduced into the country Byzantine culture, architecture,
and methods of thinking. The Metropolitan of Kiev was a Greek. Yet
there was no attempt to force the Greek language upon the people. The
Church services were held not in Greek but in the Church Slavonic
language, which had been developed by Saints Cyril and Methodius a
century earlier. His piety and zeal for the spreading of Christianity
won Volodymyr the title of saint and hence it came about that his name
appears in the religious services and in the Chronicles as Vladimir,
the Church Slavonic form of Volodymyr.
From the moment of Volodymyr’s conversion to Christianity and the
appearance of the Church Slavonic language, the deep darkness that
covers the history of Kiev and Rus’ begins to disappear. The monks
engaged in the task of preparing the conventional Chronicles have given
us confused views of the earlier history in which truth and romance
are strangely mixed, but from this moment we can begin more clearly to
trace the history of the country.
At this time Constantinople was the civilized centre of the Christian
world and Kiev soon became one of its choicest spiritual and
intellectual children. The rulers of Kiev and the upper classes of the
population were on a far higher cultural level than were most of the
rulers of western Europe. Education flourished. This does not mean
that there was anything similar to our modern methods of widespread
education and literacy, but larger classes of the population were
affected than in the still barbaric countries of the West.
The traditional idea that Kiev and Rus’ were backward for the time
can hardly be maintained. Kiev and its rulers held an honored place
throughout Europe. The members of the royal family married into
the family of the Emperors of Constantinople. Other members made
matrimonial alliances with the Saxon royal family of England, with the
Kings of France, with Poland and Hungary. In the eleventh century,
the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches had not yet taken
place, although there were strong signs of its approach and nothing
but distance existed to keep Kiev and Rus’ from being swept into the
general development of European Christian civilization.
The Grand Princes of Kiev were incomparably richer than many of the
rulers of the West. They had direct connection with Constantinople,
the greatest of the Christian markets, and they also could trade with
the Eastern lands. Wealth flowed in. The Byliny, the folk epics, which
preserved traditions of the greatness of Volodymyr and his court, his
associates like Ilya of Murom, Dobrynya Nikitich, and the remainder of
the heroes, never weary of speaking of golden Kiev and of the wealth
and generosity of Kiev’s ruler. There may be exaggeration but there
is enough other available material to show that the rulers and the
upper classes imitated as best they could the luxury and splendor of
Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperors.