Ukrainian royalty?

[Dekameron]

The guy was obviously trying to be politically correct for a very simple reason, the period that he describers is a time when nations did not exist at all, there were no Poles, no French, no English, there were ethnic groups like the Poles - Polans Saxons, Normans and so forth, it was a period of states ruled by singular figures not nations.

National awareness as such starts forming in Europe in different periods, Poles develop it in the period of teutonic wars, Spaniads in the process of unification and French in the 100 years of war, the process solidifies later on using various conflicts as catalysts but at the period you bring forth there are no nations there is a social class division and people define themselves by being vassals of a certain ruler rather than people from a certain land.

What the guy did in the text was replace "Ruthenian" with "Ukrainian" and then forwarded much completely irrelevant text about the activities of the local rulers which prove that ruthenian princess were a smart and competent bunch but nothing beyond it.

As for older european states they can claim that they had kings and princess at this time because their states maintained continuity, at that time their existed Duchy of Poland, Holy Roman Empire and so on and so forth, none of these countries had nations but they did have states that later developed nations.

As for Ruthenian princess they eventually blended into Polish nobility later on they've mingled into russian nobility and to a lesser extent austrian one, some of them became independent but still they typically took on one of the surrounding nations culture, thats because the ruthenian cities evolved into this.

The point of all this is that its not the case that there was some ancient ukrainian state that seized to exist and then returned as modern Ukraine, there was a collection of Ruthenian duchies that evolved into an elite that identified itself with one of the local powers, there is no continuity between modern day Ukraine and ancient Ruthenians.

Moden Ukraine has its earliest beginning in Sich Zaporoska when Cossacks made an attempt at Cossack run state which later evolved into modern ukrainian national awareness but ancient Ruthenians in time became Poles, Russians, Cossacks and the majority of the population was forced into serfdom, high end ruthenian culture blended with its neighbours while low end ruthenian culture died in serf villages, the medieval ruthenian civilization that you mentioned met a dead end and thus you cannot be their inheritors.

[Dekameron]

Also i would like to adress Chmielnicki who is a pivotal figure for the history of modern Ukraine but he himself was not Ukrainian, notice that his demands towards Poland while of religious and political nature were to benefit Cossacks not Ukrainians.

From polish "kozaczyć" to cossack meant to escape on Ukraine in search of freedom, Cossacks were outcasts and refugees from all nations surrounding Ukraine, they were a political and social class, predominantly Ruthenian but being Ruthenian was not a prerequisite, Cossacks can ceirtanly be counted as predecessors of independent Ukraine but they themselves had no intention of building a nation as such, their actions and seccesion from Poland was caused mostly by bloody arrogant behaviour of the polish magnates rather than actuall desire to create an independent state, also Cossacks were not a nation, never had an intention of creating one either.

Chmielnicki was defending a political and social class not an ethnicity, all that seriously undermines this text that strikes me as more of a kind political word than a factual analysis.

[dobko]

How could a similar people be called by two different names: Ruthenians and Ukrainians? The answer is a historical one and as we know, history is often written by the victors of wars and geopolitics. Thus, these terms (and even a history of Ukraine itself) come to us by way of foreign interpretation, namely Polish, Austrian and Russian interpretations.

You'll often see the terms Ruthenia and Ruthenians to mean what we now know as Ukraine and Ukrainians in popular genealogical resources such as Naturalization Papers, Immigration records, Passenger Lists, and Census returns. Thus, a basic understanding of history is in order to understand these various terms.

Thus, the Ukrainian people were split between Poland and Russia. The term Ruthenian continued to be used for the western Ukrainian people. In the Russian Empire, the term Ukrainian, meaning "on the borderland" was used.

There was a conscious effort on the part of Russian and Poland, then subsequently the Austrian Empire, to keep the Ruthenians from acknowledging their common ties with the millions of Ukrainians living across the border in the Russian Empire. The Austrian Empire, being a multi-national empire, often played the Poles and Ruthenians against each other to keep both in check thus maintaining its own control in the region.

The term Ruthenian is also used for a group of people living in the Carpathian mountains. These East Slavic peoples are also referred to as Rusyns or Carpatho-Rusyns. You'll also see terms like Lemko (Carpatho-Rusyns in Poland), Hutsul and Boyko. This group of people were dominated by the Hungarians, who were especially cruel to their non-Magyar subjects.

So, if your ancestors come from the immediate region of the Carpathian Mountains, the term Ruthenian would mean Rusyn or Carpatho-Rusyn. If your ancestors come from what is today Ukraine but not in the mountainous region, the term Ruthenian would mean the same as Ukrainian.

Keep in mind that there are some that believe the Rusyns (Carpatho-Rusyns, Boyko, Lemko, Hutsul) are simply a regional variation of Ukrainians.

Myself being of Ruthenian/Austrian descent have been taught that we are Ukrainian, even though we have living relatives that are Polish, Russian, Hungarian....etc. In my personal opinion, if traced back far enough.... we are the same people.

[Dekameron]

The problem here is that you are interpreting a history of an ethnic group at a certain georgraphical region as a history of the nation.

However that ethnic group never developed its own state or a nation, its elites willingly merged with Polish elites untill the two were indistinguishable and that was it, the end of ruthenian culture peacefully assimilated and transformed.

Now centuries later Cossacks begin to revolt, Cossacks are not synonymus with this previous ruthenian culture, in fact they're opposed by the once ruthenian elites who are just as interested in keeping serfdom as Poles are.

The point here is that the medieval culture died assimilted and Ukraine had to start somewhere else, it started with the Cossacks who while they didnt give a penny about Ukraine as such still laid foundations for the political consciousness needed to create a nation.

So if the ancient ruthenian culture got assimilated and its descendants in fact opressed the Ukrainian peasantry and Cossacks along with Poles and someone else ( Cossacks ) had to rise, how can you trace yourself to a culture that basically joined with Poland dying out in the process.

Ethnicity does not equal nationality, for example Polanie was a pre-polish slavic tribe but they were not Poles, in the same fashion medieval Ruthenians were not Ukrainians.

[dobko]

9th century Rus' people established state centred on Kiev and adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity 988. 1199 Reunification of southern Rus' lands, after period of fragmentation, under Prince Daniel of Galicia-Volhynia. 13th century Mongol-Tatar Golden Horde sacked Kiev and destroyed Rus' state. 14th century Poland annexed Galicia; Lithuania absorbed Volhynia and expelled Tatars; Ukraine peasants became serfs of Polish and Lithuanian nobles. 1569 Poland and Lithuania formed single state; clergy of Ukraine formed Uniate Church, which recognized papal authority but retained Orthodox rites, to avoid Catholic persecution. 16th and 17th centuries Runaway serfs known as Cossacks (�outlaws�) formed autonomous community in eastern borderlands. 1648 Cossack revolt led by Gen Bogdan Khmelnitsky drove out Poles from central Ukraine; Khmelnitsky accepted Russian protectorate in 1654. 1660�90 �Epoch of Ruins�: Ukraine devastated by civil war and invasions by Russians, Poles, and Turks; Poland regained western Ukraine. 1687 Gen Ivan Mazepa entered into alliance with Sweden in effort to regain Cossack autonomy from Russia. 1709 Battle of Poltava: Russian victory over Swedes ended hopes of Cossack independence. 1772�95 Partition of Poland: Austria annexed Galicia, Russian annexations included Volhynia. 1846�47 Attempt to promote Ukrainian national culture through formation of Cyril and Methodius Society. 1899 Revolutionary Ukrainian Party founded. 1917 Revolutionary parliament (Rada) proclaimed Ukrainian autonomy within a federal Russia. 1918 Ukraine declared full independence; civil war ensued between Rada (backed by Germans) and Reds (backed by Russian Bolsheviks). 1919 Galicia united with Ukraine; conflict escalated between Ukrainian nationalists, Bolsheviks, anarchists, White Russians, and Poles. 1921 Treaty of Riga: Russia and Poland partitioned Ukraine. 1921�22 Several million people perished in famine. 1922 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) became part of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 1932�33 Enforced collectivization of agriculture caused another catastrophic famine with more than 7.5 million deaths. 1939 USSR annexed eastern Poland and added Galicia-Volhynia to Ukrainian SSR. 1940 USSR seized northern Bukhovina from Romania and added it to Ukrainian SSR. 1941�44 Germany occupied Ukraine; many Ukrainians collaborated; millions of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews were enslaved and exterminated by Nazis. 1945 USSR annexed Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia and added it to Ukrainian SSR, which became a nominal member of the United Nations (UN). 1946 Uniate Church forcibly merged with Russian Orthodox Church. 1954 Crimea transferred from Russian Federation to Ukrainian SSR. 1986 Major environmental disaster caused by explosion of nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, north of Kiev. 1989 Rukh (nationalist movement) established as political party; ban on Uniate Church lifted. 1990 Ukraine declared its sovereignty. 1991 Ukraine declared independence from USSR; joined newly-formed Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

A long history of a people who knew who they were from the very begining. They never gave up and PERSEVERED. You may not recognise the nation Ukraine (in your version of history) but myself and millions of others, do.

[Dekameron]

Dobko with all due respect we're getting nowhere, you post these texts that prove absolutely nothing at all, by Ukrainian serfs the author means people who lived in Ukraine as a geographical region and thats it.

I completely agree that Cossacks were the cornerstone of Ukrainian nationality and that 18 century see's the birth of the actuall nation but before that the people are ruthenian, later they will become Belarussan, Ukrainian or Russian but at the time they were ruthenian with no actuall connection or continuity with modern Ukraine.

They spoke ruski language which was used in Lithuania, western Russia and Belarussia as well, they didnt have any specific culture barring rudimentary relgious iconography since everyone educated adopted the culture of the local powers, they werent even ethnically Ukrainian since Ukraine of today is a serious mix of polish, jewish, ruthenian, russian and is monolithic only in name and polithical bonduaries.

Ukraine doesnt have any royalty and we can trace its history some 150-170 years back when Ukrainians realised themselves as a nation and thats is, making Ukraine some ancient nation is ridiculous, its like saying that U.S is 5000 years old because Indians used to live there.

You have as much connection to ancient Ruthenians as an average USA citizen has to Native Americans.

[dobko]

In the mid-14th century, Galicia-Volhynia was subjugated by Casimir the Great of Poland, while the heartland of Rus', including Kiev, fell under the Gediminas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the Battle on the Irpen' River. Following the 1386 Union of Krevo, a dynastic union between Poland and Lithuania, most of Ukraine's territory was controlled by the increasingly Ruthenized local Lithuanian nobles as part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At this time, the term Ruthenia and Ruthenians as the Latinized versions of "Rus'", became widely applied to the land and the people of Ukraine, respectively.



By 1569, the Union of Lublin formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from largely Ruthenized Lithuanian rule to the Polish administration, as it was transferred to the Polish Crown. Under the cultural and political pressure of Polonisation much of the Ruthenian upper class converted to Catholicism and became indistinguishable from the Polish nobility. Thus, the Ukrainian commoners, deprived of their native protectors among Ruthenian nobility( see above definition of what Ruthenian means), turned for protection to the Cossacks, who remained fiercely orthodox at all times and tended to turn to violence against those they perceived as enemies, particularly the Polish state and its representatives. Ukraine suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot, pillage and capture slaves into jasyr.



In the mid-17th century, a Cossack military quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Host, was established by the Dnieper Cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom Poland had little real control of this land (Wild Fields), yet they found the Cossacks to be a useful fighting force against the Turks and Tatars, and at times the two allied in military campaigns However, the continued enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility emphasized by the Commonwealth's fierce exploitation of the workforce, and most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox Church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland Their aspiration was to have representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry. These were all vehemently denied by the Polish nobility. The Cossacks eventually turned for protection to Orthodox Russia, a decision which would later lead towards the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state and the preservation of the Orthodox Church and in Ukraine.



In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir Left-bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia, Western Ukrainian Galicia was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire. Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ukrainian elite and the Cossacks never received the freedoms and the autonomy they were expecting from Imperial Russia. However, within the Empire, Ukrainians rose to the highest offices of Russian state, and the Russian Orthodox Church. At a later period, the tsarist regime carried the policy of Russification of Ukrainian lands, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in print, and in public.