HISTORY OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE
http://www.ukraine.com/forums/showth...?threadid=4486
I have linked The _Last Word's opening post on a thread he initiated to serve as an offest to the pro-Polish anti-Russian west Ukrainian nationalist spin dominating this forum.
I personally know a RUSSIAN whose parents emigrated to America from Galicia in the early 19 hundreds. One of the first things his family did was reconvert to the RUSSIAN Orthodox Church out of the belief that the Uniate influence was part of a foreign occupation hostile to the Kievan Rus legacy.
A few years ago on the North American produced weekly Ukrainian emigre show Kontakt, one of the Ukrainian nationalist hosts discussed a trend of how Uniates were seeking to become more closer to Orthodox ritual.
Gogol was a Russian-Ukrainian, whose epic Taras Bulba heroically depicts the RUSSIAN struggle against Polish occupation.
I justifiably don't accept this crapola about how comparatively more freer and democratic Polish occupation was over Russian governed Ukraine. During the Soviet era before WW II, yes, Poland was freer. Still, this didn't stop people like Bandera from committing acts of terrorism against Polish officials.
As for this garabge about suppressing the Ukrainian language, Russian was the language of the Russian Empire. In schools and other government run sectors, Russian was the utilized language. However, outside these structures, people were able to utilize other languages. This explains why these languages survived to the degree they did.
When discussing contemporary Ukrainians, there's also the Skoropodsky model (named after a Russian Civil War Ukrainian Cossack noble, who headed a short lived Ukrainian government), which identifies with a Ukrainian background, while proudly feeling a unified kinship with Russia. Many such individuals have Great Russian ethnic backgrounds to go along with their Ukrainian one. Within this grouping, a simultaneous feeling of being Russian and Ukrainian is evident.
I personally know that this spirit is even greater in present day Belarus.