Little Russian identity

Several archimandrites and Orthodox writers of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra where among the leading ideologists of the All-Russian unity and used the Little Russian terminology in the 17th century

The Little Russian identity was a cultural, political, and ethnic self-identification of the elite population of Little Russia (modern Ukraine) as one of the constituent parts of the Triune Russian people. The idea was also supported by the peasants, although the official term Little Russians (malorossy), was not in use among them with the own name Rusyny (русини) or Rus'kyi narod (руський народ) instead. The Little Russian identity combined Russian imperial culture with an attachment of the Cossack Hetmanate and its culture.

The beginning of the development of the Little Russian identity in the Cossack Hetmanate dates back to the late 18th century. A significant factor that promoted this process was the idea of equal national, social and religious rights for the Little Russian elite in the Tsardom of Russia which they were denied in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the second half of the 19th century, in order to counter the conception of an All-Russian unity, a Ukrainian national idea (Ukrainianism) emerged. Its characteristic traits were the denial of cultural and ethnic ties with Russia as well as Western political orientation. Also the new ethnonym was promoted instead of the widespread name Ruthenian (Rusyny; русини).. The struggle between the two projects of national identity lasted until the dissolution of the Russian Empire. The revolutionary events of 1917 led to a rapid strengthening of the Ukrainian national idea, which was backed by many Galicians (Western Ukrainians) who joined the political life in Kiev. Because of their adjacence to the Russian White Movement, political activists with Little Russian, and Pan-Russian views were among the social groups who suffered the most during the Revolution, and the troubles of the Civil War. Many of them were killed or were forced to emigrate.

After the end of the Civil War, the process of Ukrainian nation-building was resumed on the territory of Ukrainian SSR by the Bolshevik party and the Soviet authorities who introduced the policy of korenizatsiya with its regional specificity as Ukrainization. As a result, the term "Little Russian" was marginalized and remained in usage only among White emigres.

Emergence

As monuments of spiritual and literary culture of Western and Eastern Rus' show, the sense of unity of the Rus' lands remained vivid for a long period even after the political disintegration of Kievan Rus and the Mongol invasiont. Rus' chronicles often repeated the idea of an ecclesiastic, historical and dynastic unity of the Rus' lands as well as the necessity of their reunification. Moral and political rights of foreign states on Rus' lands were rejected.

The Little Russian political ideology emerged simultaneously to the revival of the Byzantine term Little Russia at the end of the 16th century in the literary works of the Christian Orthodox clergy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Numerous prominent Orthodox authors and hierarchs, such as Ivan Vyshenskyi, Zakharia Kopystenskyi, Yelisey Pletenetskyi or Job Boretsky strongly opposed the Union of Brest and polemicized with Roman Catholics and Uniates, developing the ideas of a big Russian Orthodox people. The Little Russian idea steadily gained support among Cossack leadership and Orthodox brotherhoods, which were subject to judicial, economic and religious discrimination, and repeatedly organized violent uprisings against Polish rule from the end of the 16th to the first half of the 17th century. Simultaneously, the image of an Orthodox Tsar who would protect the All-Russian people against the injustice of the Poles became widespread. Later, the existence of such sentiments facilitated the signing of the Treaty of Pereyaslav during the Khmelnytsky Uprising as well as the political integration of the Hetmanate into the Tsardom of Russia.

From the beginning on, the unification initiative came from the Little Russian side rathen than it was pushed by Russia. After the Pereyaslav Treaty the Hetmanate faced a civil war known as The Ruin between pro-Russian and pro-Polish forces. After the pro-Polish fraction lost in Kiev and the Left-Bank Ukraine, the Little Russian identity ultimately consolidated after already being strongly enrooted in ecclesiastic circles. An important milestone was the 1674 publication of the Kievan Synopsis by the archimandrite of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and the rector of the Kievan Theological School Innocent Gizel. In his work he described the dynastic succession between Kiev and Moscow as well as the existence of a Triune Russian people which has its origins in the ancient people of the Kievan Rus. Throughout the 18th century Synopsis was the most widespread and popular historical work in Russia.

Under the influence of the Kiev-born archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church Theophan Prokopovich the Russian Empire gradually became the object of primary idenitifiaction of Little Russians while Little Russia was considered as the local homeland which composes the Empire on the equal basis with former Muscovy. The Cossack elite looked for ways to legitimate its social status in the hierarchy of the Russian Empire to benefit from the perspective of attractive career possibilities. Supporters of the Little Russian identity considered the Russian Empire as their own state which they build up together with Great Russians. Among the sources of their loyalty were the long-awaited triumphs over the century-old adversaries of the Southern Rus: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire. Already in the 18th century many Little Russians held important political positions of the Empire: Chancellor Alexander Bezborodko, minister of education Pyotr Zavadovsky, general procecutor Dmitry Troshchinsky, Field Marshall and President of the Academy of Science Kyrylo Rozumovskyi, Field Marshall Alexey Razumovsky and others.

The Little Russian identity didn't aim at blurring local peculiarities as long as they didn't contradict the most important thing: the idea of a cultural and political All-Russian unity. Little Russians had not the opinion that they are "sacrificing" the interests of their local homeland to the Great Russians or that they have to abandon their identity in favour of the Great Russian.

The Little Russian identity was not the only form of self-identification that existed in Ukraine prior to the emergence of the Ukrainian national identity. The supporters of hetman Ivan Mazepa who betrayed Peter the Great and went over to the Swedish king Charles XII favoured the Khazarian myth. It told that the "Cossack people" originates from the old Khazars and thus are not related to the Russians. This version is also described in the Orlyk Constitution. In the late 18th and the early 19th century a certain popularity had the ideas of the History of the Rus book which promoted the view of different origins of Little and Great Russians. Despite all these alternative views the majority of the spiritual, cultural and political elite of Little Russia identified itself with the Little Russian idea. It freely and easily integrated into the complex and multilayer structures of the Russian Empire and later of the USSR.

Rivalry with the Ukrainian idea

Russian Empire

Novelist Nikolay Gogol is often considered as one of the most achetypical representatives of the Little Russian identity"We Little Russians and Great Russians need a common poetry, a calm, strong and everlasting poetry of truth, goodness and beauty. The Little and the Great Russian are the souls of twins who complement each other, who are closely related and equally strong. It is impossible to prefer one of them at the cost of the other"

In the second half of the 19th century an alternative identity project emerged which was called Ukrainianness (українство). The naming referred to the term Ukraine which in the earlier times designated the border region south of Kiev inhabited by the Cossacks. The characteristical traits of the new political ideology was the growing rejection of any cultural and ethnic ties with Russia and the political orientation towards the West. The basis of Ukrainianness was laid by members of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, led by Nikolay Kostomarov.

Anatoly Savenko was one of the most prominent Little Russian political activist in Kiev prior to WWI

With the support of local authorities, the Ukrainianness got particularily rapid development on the territory of Galicia which belonged to Austria-Hungary. The rivalry between the Little Russian and the Ukrainian identity which intensified in the period prior to World War I had the character of a local Kulturkampf and terminological war. The rhetorical battle was led for the cultural heritage of Little Russia and the identity of many key figures such as Taras Shevchenko. Hot polemics inflamed about historical issues, personalities and the interpretation of Little Russia's history. One of the most influential supporters of Ukrainianness was Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, the author of the large monography "History of Ukraine-Rus". He created and promoted the theory that Ukrainians and Russians had a separate ethnogenesis and tried to prove separate development of both peoples throughout the whole historical period. His views were largely criticized by prominent historians and writers such as Agafangel Krymsky or Andrey Volkonsky. One of his direct critics was the Kievan Slavicist Ivan Linnichenko who wrote an open letter to him and tried to show that the history of Ukraine and Russia is not separable.

A British ethnic map of Europe (1923)

Also in the linguistic question the "Little Russians" and the "Ukrainians" had strong differences. While the first ones considered the literary Russian language as a common creation and spiritual value of all three Russian branches and spoke of a Little Russian dialect, the last ones promoted the views that Ukrainian is an autonomous language and made big efforts to standardize it as soon as possible.

Soviet Union

The Little Russian identity remained dominant among elites even in the revolutionary years of 1917-1921. However, with the beginning of the Bolshevik policy of Ukrainization, which was the local form of the Korenizatsiya policy, the Little Russian identity was declared 'antiquated and illegitimate'. In the 1920s Bolshevik internationalists used the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR as "exhibition pavillons" of their nationality policy, hoping to gain sympathies of the disadvantaged East Slavic population in interwar Poland. At the same time they hoped to ultimately weaken pan-Russian imperialism in a society that was represented by their adversary in the Russian civil war: the Imperial Russian White Movement. The Bolsheviks had the largest credit in the realization and consolidation of the Ukrainian identity project. In the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union (1926) the registration of people as Little Russians was restricted, and people in the Ukrainian SSR had to choose between the Ukrainian and Russian nationality or even were automatically registered as Ukrainians. The term 'Little Russian' remained in usage only among some White emigres.

Although the antiquated Little Russian identity gave way to the new ethnonym Ukrainian, and the conception of a triune Russian people was replaced by a new conception of brotherly but separate peoples, certain elements of the Little Russian identity persisted. One characteristic trait of the Ukrainian national movement such as a strict Western orientation was rejected by the Soviet authorities. The Ukrainian nation was regarded as "brotherly" to the Russian, and the striving towards political unification with the Russians was described in Soviet history books as the leitmotif of Ukrainian history. In the described way the Soviet ideology combined elements of Ukrainian and Little Russian identities. From the Ukrainanness they took the terminology and the claim that Ukraine had only the status of a colony under the Tsarist regime.

Present times

In the period of glasnost and perestroika as well as after the independence declaration of 1991, elements of Little Russian identity came under increased pressure. Representatives of the hard-line Ukrainianness which existed in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, USA and Western Europe got the possibility to exert influence on the societal processes in Ukraine. Also a shift in the ideological basis was suitable for the elites in their task to build up a new national state.

Numerous historians and political scientists share the view that the Little Russian identity still lives in parts of the Ukrainian society despite the fact that today is has no clear definition, political organisation and terminological specification. As a symptom of this they see the political split of the country. Some scientists call the Little Russian identity a forgotten but not disappeared alternative for their national self-identification.

Reception

Nowadays, some Ukrainian authors consider the Little Russian identity as a sociological complex of reduced patriotism among some parts of Ukrainian society, because Ukrainian areas being part of Russian Empire for a long time.

See also

• Western Ukrainian Russophiles

Literature

• Kohut Z. The Development of a Little Russian Identity and Ukrainian Nationbuilding // Harvard Ukrainian Studies. — 1986. — 10. — H. 3/4. — P. 556—576.
• Мацузато К. Ядро или периферия империи? Генерал-губернаторство и малороссийская идентичность // Ab Imperio. — 2002. — № 2.