Alexei Bayer: The roots of Russia’s disdain for Ukraine
Abraham Lincoln opened his Gettysburg Address with these famous words: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation...”
What he had in mind was that the United States as a nation began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 - as well as a century and a half earlier, when a group of English Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620.
All nations have a story to tell how they came into being. Some are rooted in ancient history while others, including numerous new nations that arose on the ruins of European colonial expansion, tie their emergence to more recent events. But whether mythical or historical, those origins are always connected to the land those nations inhabit.
Not so Russia. It may be the only major nation to locate its origins in a foreign country. Every Russian school kid learns that his country’s history began on the banks of the Dnipro, in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
It is as if Americans had decided to trace their history back in the time of William the Conqueror or the War of the Roses.
This may seem like a minor thing, but it explains a great deal in the average Russian’s attitude toward Ukrainians. If Russia is a direct descendant of historic Kyivan Rus, how can another nation equally trace its origins to it - a nation, moreover, still occupying the same territory?
Thisis where it all comes from: the stubborn conviction in Russia that the Ukrainian language is, at best, a corrupted form of Russian or, at worst, an artificial construct made up by the Austrians in order to divide the single Russian people.
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Alexei Bayer
