For me, the surprising part was learning how many Russian people I know have parents or grandparents who were born in Ukraine.
I knew that Soviet Ukraine had ~50 million people. Almost 20% of the USSR, and a bit less than France, Italy, or the UK at the time. I knew that Ukraine was one of the most developed and densely populated parts of the USSR, and of the Russian Empire before that. I had some idea how the borders had moved over time, and how the cultural boundaries were ambiguous as a consequence. I just had not realized how often that ambiguity would show at individual level.
At the individual level, the boundaries are really blurry. I'm a Russian. I know many Ukrainians. Often, when you meet a Ukrainian, you'll never know that they are, in fact, from Ukraine, unless you ask. Sometimes their pronunciation ("г" as "h" instead of "g") would give them away, but other than that, there are practically zero differences — especially cultural ones.
We really are mostly the same people and we should really be friends. Everyone would benefit from that. It's a shame that the ambitions of one person are splitting us apart like that.
They assume if the other people know russian language and understand their culture it means everything else is the same. But lots of nations in that region in addition to understanding russian language and culture have their own.
A and that is why it can never be said that we are the same people.
At a minimum such statements and observations come as the result of ignorance - there are not many russian people that I know that would come and visit Ukrainian museums or ask for a tour or ask a question about Ukrainian history.
If you have settled world view and don’t try to learn of course you will not see counterexamples of what you believe in IRL and you would just write decades old cliches like “we are the same people”
I can't fault you for taking it as hostility and ignorance, considering the present circumstances, but it doesn't have to be that way.
The United States is a nation of nations, and while the same ignorance of local history is broadly true, there can be brotherhood despite that. I'll admit, though, that the US is showing some fraying of those bonds.
“brotherhood” seems like a fancy word used in propaganda. It’s too high level and too abstract.
You don’t start with “brotherhood”.
A you start with respect. Respecting your neighbor. Respecting people practicing some different religion, or having different sexual orientation, or speaking different language, or practicing different traditions.
“brotherhood” is about recognizing that we are all human despite all the differences in the ways we live.
First do that. And that is fundamental difference between the US and russia.
Heh, it's kinda stereotypical that a Russian citizen wouldn't notice the difference between themselves and Ukrainians.
From my perspective as a foreign observer, the average Russian tends to be much more badly behaved than a Ukrainian. When I hear someone speaking Russian being very loud and obnoxious, violent, lacking manners, showing little empathy and lots of entitlement, 9/10 (I'd say always but maybe I'm forgetting something) it's a Russian citizen, not a Ukrainian.
I'm speaking as a Russian ethnic who's not a Russian citizen.
Is there any good source on the topic of "г" pronounced as "h" instead of "g"? I've studied Russian as a second language and once got into an argument over whether Russian has the equivalent of "h" because "x" is pronounced as "kh", which is harder than "h". Does this phenomenon have some name, as googling didn't turn out much?
It's hard to describe in writing, but I'll try. There's no "h" sound, like the one where you just exhale, neither in Russian nor Ukrainian. The Russian "г" is hard, like "g" in "get". The Ukrainian equivalent to that is "ґ", but their "г" is something in between, closer to "kh". The fact that many English-language reports about the war do transliterate "г" as "h" in Ukrainian toponyms doesn't help, but it's as close as one could reasonably get to the real Ukrainian pronunciation.
There's so much no such sound that I've seen Hebrew and Arabic transcribed into Russian with the character "h" for that sound.
> Does this phenomenon have some name, as googling didn't turn out much?
Certainly not a formal one. Хэканье? Or maybe simply украинский акцент?
The Ukrainian г is a voiced glottal fricative, IPA /ɦ/. This is as the English /h/ sound but voiced. Southern Russian dialects use /ɣ/, a voiced velar fricative, which is pronounced like /ɦ/ but further forward in the throat. East Slavic dialects turn Proto-Slavic /ɡ/ more into /ɦ/ the further south you go.
It should be noted that even in Russian, /ɣ/ used to be the more common pronunciation throughout the Empire until the end of the 19th century or so, due to the influence of Church Slavonic (in which it is also /ɣ/). And it's still preserved in modern standard Russian in some words, such as бог (god) - /boɣ/.
History is full of similar peoples fighting wars. But it's not just one person either, the Brat movies don't exist in a vacuum, do they? Voldemort is enabled by a base and a system.
I disagree with you. Ukranian and Russians are not the same people. It is this type of thinking that Ukranian people are same is what got us in today's soup. And it's a shame of not one person's ambition but of Russian ideology in general and years of acceptance of it. Putin is a reflection of the society not the other way round. So, stop deflecting blame and accept responsibility.
If Ukranians cannot be Russians then all Russians are Ukranians. It's as simple as that to me. But I accept now that people have the freedom to choose whatever nationality they want to be, even if it appears irrational. Similarly restrictive though, nobody is allowed to be Russian in Ukraine now and since this whole mess began.
I've already stated that in my opinion everyone can chose their own nationality, I don't get why your response is contrary in conclusion to what I just had written.
The message is very different. The Russian government propaganda boils down to "we would have won this war already if The West™ wouldn't supply Ukraine with weapons that they then use to commit the utterly terroristic acts of taking back their land". Or "we aren't all that different which means Ukrainians shouldn't have their own sovereign state". Or "Ukrainians are Russians who just forgot about that and are now on a misguided path of western influence, we're here to remind them of their Russianness". You get the idea.
Wars aren't usually faught because people are different. Even in bitter ethnic conflict there is often an underlying cause that isn't really about the people being different.
Think of it as England and Ireland. The Wikipedia category [0] is massive, but there's a difference between how the Irish and the English view their two nations. A modal Englishman could say, "the English, the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish built the British Empire together, we should all be proud of what we did", but a modal Irishman would reply, "no, thanks, we didn't need your empire and we don't need your patronizing fraternization". The fact that both of them have a grandparent from Derry and a grandparent from Norfolk wouldn't matter at all.
Ukraine is currently undergoing the same kind of national divorce. Ukrainian roots don't matter, what matters is that one supports the idea of Ukraine being a distinct nation with its own way.
Interesting - I never attributed that to moving borders. USSR had a pretty mixed society with many people moving between different republics during their lifetime (especially in the 40-60s). Don’t think borders changed much during that period.
The cultures are close enough that when people move, the second generation is often completely assimilated culturally even if they remember the origin of their parents.
It's not just about borders. Ukraine has some Russian Empire's/USSR's most fertile land. It was facing serious overpopulation (i.e. peasants with no land to work on) in the end of the 19th century, while Russia had a lot of unpopulated land in Siberia and the Far East, facing imperial Japan and potentially China.
Ukrainian peasants were offered free land and transport if they moved east in an attempt to solve these two problems, and many used the opportunity.
My mother is Russian. My father is Ukrainian. I never saw any difference between those cultures other than Ukrainian language being a funny version of Russian. I never had any issue communicating with Ukrainian people and then didn't have issues understanding me either.
I don't believe there's ANY difference between Russians and Ukrainians. To me it's the one nation and that's about it. Ukrainian-Russian war is a civil war fueled by the West, it's not the first civil war in this world and won't be the last I guess.
I am Ukranian and I am strongly disagree with you. First of all don't call Ukranian language funny version of Russian. Second "civil war" - is the war between citizen in the same country. Now answer on 2 questions:
- who crossed the border of independed country?
- where is the war going on?
Yes, there are of course a lot of similarities between Ukranians and people in Russia, as there are between Ukranian and Polish people or between Polish people and people in Check Republic.
It's not very relevant to tell people of Ukraine what they should be thinking or identifying as. Even the very first narodniks of the Russian Empire realized the big cultural differences between Ukrainians and Russians. Estonians and Finns are very similar in ways regarding culture and language, yet distinctly different as well. You wouldn't deny Estonia's existence and relegate it to some mistake made by Trotsky in 1918 when he failed to conquer the nation.
Ukrainians speak Ukrainian, Russians speak Russian. It's true that due to being bilingual, Ukrainians can consume Russian content, but saying they have the same culture is kinda like saying Austrians and Germans have the same culture because they speak the same language.
Interestingly enough, historically, Russia's culture was "Ukrainianized" around the 17th and 18th century, being heavily influenced by Kyiv's culture (influences can be seen if you look at the history of painting, music, architecture). But that's another topic.
I'm going to argue with you because I'd say culture is a very abstract and complex thing and is not, lets say, as simple as culture in a civ game.
Looking at your example.. a German can go to Austria and will understand 95% of the language spoken and probably 99% in Wien. Sometimes there are different languages within a country like in Switzerland, is Switzerland now culturally divided or one culture even though they speak four to five languages there? Also one would get regional differences of the same language like dialects, and it might even go down to the lowest common multiple like words that only you and your friends/family use.
Next: Many Ukranians do speak Russian and some Russians speak Ukranian. If you use language as the canon for culture definition then yes, Germans and Austrians share the same culture because both speak German.
I never heard that Russia's culture was Ukranianized. After the moscowians kicked the Mongols out of the region around the 14th century Moscow became the center of power. I would be happy if you could cite me some source of this.
Well, I can keep going. One possible definition of culture is "stories that we have in common". Ukraine has its own literature (in the Ukrainian language, but not only), its own music, its own religious cult (Kyivan Patriarchate, rather than Moscovian), a very different political model, different personalities, different role-models.
> If you use language as the canon for culture definition
I'm not, I was simply dispelling from the start the idea that speaking the same language means having the same culture. By that rationale we could say that USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Malta and India have the same culture, which would be ridiculous.
> I never heard that Russia's culture was Ukranianized... I would be happy if you could cite me some source of this.
So glad you asked. I'll provide two sources (well, one and a half) that can't be suspected to have any bias against Russia, and after that I'll let you do your own research.
One is Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who once wrote: "Таким образом, старая великорусская, московская культура при Петре умерла; та культура, которая со времен Петра живет и развивается в России, является органическим и непосредственным продолжением не московской, а киевской, украинской культуры." - http://www.hai-nyzhnyk.in.ua/doc2/1928.trubeckoi.php
> After the moscowians kicked the Mongols out of the region around the 14th century
Haha. You're oversimplifying to make it look like a rosy battle for independence, when in fact Moscow simply enhanced its power by opportunistically backstabbing its neighbours and being the main collaborators of the Mongols. As an example, Moscow was an ALLY of the mongols when putting down the Tver rebellion. That is how Moscow managed to increase its power and become the dominant force in the area; in modern terms - by being a collaborator with the occupant. Sorry, I guess they forgot to mention this in school.
Edit: perhaps this is something they teach you in school - around the time of Peter the Great, a series of reforms were introduced to Westernize Russia, and many people refused to comply because they believed it to be against the cultural and religious norms by which they and their ancestors lived. This clash led to persecutions and an exodus, with many people fleeing Russia in all directions. Descendants of those people (Old Believers, but not only) still live, to this day.
So in a sense, the Old Russian culture, the authentic one, only lives in a few places around the world outside of Russia, whereas the current so-called Russian culture in fact originates from the West and Ukraine. Вот это поворот!
> Well, I can keep going. One possible definition of culture is "stories that we have in common". Ukraine has its own literature (in the Ukrainian language, but not only), its own music, its own religious cult (Kyivan Patriarchate, rather than Moscovian), a very different political model, different personalities, different role-models.
I recall you saying there were "big" cultural differences and this is what I disagree on from personal experience.
> So glad you asked. I'll provide two sources (well, one and a half) that can't be suspected to have any bias against Russia, and after that I'll let you do your own research.
Both sources you sent are Ukranian sites... I was hoping for some serious book or wikipedia where we could have a neutral look at it. I'm sorry but your claims are silly and I no longer regard you as proficient in this topic.
> Haha. You're oversimplifying to make it look like a rosy battle for independence, when in fact Moscow simply enhanced its power by opportunistically backstabbing its neighbours and being the main collaborators of the Mongols. As an example, Moscow was an ALLY of the mongols when putting down the Tver rebellion. That is how Moscow managed to increase its power and become the dominant force in the area; in modern terms - by being a collaborator with the occupant. Sorry, I guess they forgot to mention this in school.
Something general to mention.. People from the 14th century and from Peter the Great are long dead. It's the people that live today that make up a nation. It's more about to which culture you want to belong to, not so much about where you have been born or which language you speak.
EDIT: Having rewatched the crashcourse video I can now mention that because of the Mongols many Rus (this is how the people called themselves living in the Kievian Rus) moved to Moscow. So while we could agree that Ukraine influenced Russia back then, it would be wrong, because neither did Ukraine or Russia exist at that time, only the slavic Rus, one people.
> I recall you saying there were "big" cultural differences
I didn't, it was someone else who made the claim, but as far as I can tell it's true. It's also true that there are great similarities, but at the end of the day the two countries are different, and have been for a long time.
An Englishman could say "I don't see big cultural differences between us and the Scots or the Irish, we're the same people", but that would be very ignorant. Just like Ukraine and Russia, simply because they share some cultural elements, doesn't mean they're the same people, the same country or have the same culture or history. In fact, the deeper you dive, the more differences you find.
But I can see that when you're not looking, it may appear that the differences are minor. I can't speak to your personal experience, but from my point of view (I'm not a citizen of Ukraine or Russia; in fact I'm a Russian ethnic), there are significant differences between the two populations, not just culturally.
> Both sources you sent are Ukranian sites...
Really? Confirmation was literally a Google search away. I put in the effort to find the sources and you couldn't confirm them?
Confirmation of source #1, from a non-Ukrainian website. For context, since you couldn't be bothered to look it up, Nikolai Trubetzkoy was a Russian linguist and historian who founded morphophonology. The passage I quoted is reproduced in this book (but I'm pretty sure you can find it in German books too, if you're curious):
Hmm, sounds like an extremely lossy compression. Using this type of hand-wavy abstraction of details we can indeed conclude that not only are Russians and Ukrainians the same but also Belorussians, Latvians and Moldavians.
> It's more about to which culture you want to belong to, not so much about where you have been born or which language you speak.
Most people don't actively seek to make this choice, they simply live their lives and belong to a culture or another, so this is a bit of a red herring.
> It's the people that live today that make up a nation.
Couldn't agree more. That said, it's been 30 years since USSR collapsed, 30 years of free Ukraine. Even assuming that in USSR, Russia and Ukraine were the same country and people (reductio ad absurdum), in these last 30 years Ukraine had its own parallel history to Russia's, and are a different country with a different culture. You'd be hard-pressed to find Russians who know the name of the Ukrainian president that preceded Zelensky. Or Russians who can tell you anything about the history of Ukraine. "Same people"? I think not.
We're quickly headed to the point where there'll be fewer Ukrainians who remember living in USSR than Ukrainians who don't. As time goes on, this cultural link that was created in USSR is weakening more and more, up to the point where it will remain in some nostalgic minds of old people.
But you'll also find many old Ukrainians who are less nostalgic about USSR, and will be quick to point out that for them, USSR (well, Russia) was always the oppressor.
> I don't believe there's ANY difference between Russians and Ukrainians
Russians are slaves sent to fight a war in another country. Ukrainians are free people who want to stay free. It has been like this for hundreds of years, ever since Muscovy started expanding like a cancer.
I'll give you a spoiler - Ukraine will NEVER AGAIN be a part of the Muscovyan empire. Enjoy living with that thought.
I knew that Soviet Ukraine had ~50 million people. Almost 20% of the USSR, and a bit less than France, Italy, or the UK at the time. I knew that Ukraine was one of the most developed and densely populated parts of the USSR, and of the Russian Empire before that. I had some idea how the borders had moved over time, and how the cultural boundaries were ambiguous as a consequence. I just had not realized how often that ambiguity would show at individual level.