This video concerns the events in Ukraine,
especially the history being used by Putin to justify the invasion of Ukraine. As a historian that also happens to be from
Eastern Europe (or Central Europe depending on how you choose to define it), I have, in
recent weeks, been asked on numerous occasions by friends, family, and strangers to explain
the historical statements made by Putin to justify his war. Many other historians have lately been in
the same position and, therefore, I think it would be prudent to make a quick video
addressing all of this. To help convey some basic facts about Ukrainian
and Russian history and to show how these facts are being altered by Putin to fit his
agenda. In 2021 Putin wrote an essay titled On the
Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians which, to summarize, basically gave multiple
historical justifications to the idea that Ukranians are Russians and Ukraine belongs
with Russia. This goes hand in hand with his previous statements
about Ukraine in 2014, or with his various speeches in 2022. The idea that Ukranians and Russians are basically
the same people is by far not a new one and it had existed in nationalistic Russian circles,
in one way or another, for centuries. To explain all of this, however, one has to
start with the polity that all modern Eastern Slavic nations trace their national, and often
ethnic, origins to. The Kievan Rus’. The Kievan Rus’ was an early medieval eastern
european polity existing roughly from the late 9th century, centered around the city
of Kyiv. I have already addressed the formation and
history of the Kievan Rus in my video on Early East Slavic History, so I won’t talk about
it in detail here. But, the important factor to comment on here
is that it would be wholly inappropriate to talk of the Kievan Rus’ as Russian, or Ukrainian,
or purely Slavic. The Kievan Rus’, just like many other early
medieval polities, was a multiethnic kingdom composed of many different people groups. There were Vikings from today’s Sweden called
Varangians, there where various Finno-Ugric tribes, various Eurasian Turkic, Iranian,
and other nomadic tribes, there was a Jewish community of traders, and even the various
Eastern Slavic tribes ,which were the majority population of the Kievan Rus’, saw themselves
as different from each other. There did not exist some kind of an universal
Eastern Slavic kinship (affinity), Slavic tribes were just as likely to fight each other
as they were to fight other people. Kievan Rus’ would eventually fall in the
first half of the 13th century due to internal fracturing and power struggles and external
invasion by the Mongols. Therefore, speaking of the Kievan Rus’ as
anything else than the product of its time, a kingdom of many, often bickering Eastern
Slavic tribes, a kingdom comprised of multitude of different peoples, a kingdom which slowly
fractured apart and was conquered by the Mongols, would be inappropriate if not outright wrong. In the 14th century and a bit in the 15th
century, most of what is today’s Ukraine, including Kyiv, was conquered by Poland and
Lithuania. For the next roughly 400 years these lands
evolved and developed in culture, language, art, etc. under Polish and Lithuanian control. During the same time the Mongols, or as they
came to be known in Eastern Europe, the Golden Horde, remained in control roughly east of
the Dnieper bend. Here the Mongols exerted power over the local
population and enforced tribute payments from the various local towns and villages. One of these towns was a wooden trading post
on the banks of the Moskva River, known as Moscow. Moscow over time became the center of an increasingly
powerful principality which bore the name of its capital city Muscovy. Muscovy eventually grew more powerful than
their Mongol overlords and through a series of conflicts became independent in 1480. From there Muscovy grew more and more powerful
with ever expanding military conquests. With this expansion Muscovy began to style
itself more and more as a kingdom of not a Rus’ people but of the Rus’ people. To explain, since the time of the Kievan Rus’
the word Rus’ was just used to identify all Eastern Slavs. It wasn’t supposed to denote any single
Slavic peoples, it was used just as a classification for all Eastern Slavic people. In essence the words Eastern Slavs today are
used the same way the word Rus’ was used back then. So Muscovy’s increasing styling of itself
as the nation of all the Rus’ meant that they began to create an idea that all Eastern
Slavs belong under their control. This is evident, for example, when in the
16th century Ivan the Terrible, following in his grandfather's footsteps, assumed the
title of “Tsar and Grand Duke of all Rus'”. No longer was Muscovi just Muscovi, a Duchy
of a single Rus' peoples, it was now the Tsardom of Russia, literally meaning the Empire of
all Rus’ people or, in other words, all Eastern Slavs. This way, the country that over time just
became known as Russia, could start to justify wars with their western neighbors in the name
of unifying all the Rus’. Even if all the Rus’, or all Eastern Slavs,
did not and still do not see themselves as the same people just like, for example, all
west Germanic speakers don’t necessarily see themselves as all the same people. By Muscovy styling itself as a polity of all
the Rus’, as Russia or Russia, it harkened back to the kingdom of the Kievan Rus’ and
its historical borders. Muscovite Russia went to great lengths to
try to convince people of Kievan Rus’ Muscovite Russian continuity, even though, as we discussed,
talking about the Kievan Rus in any other context than it being a product of its time
which got conquered by the Mongols would be wholly inaccurate. So, when Putin talks of Ukraine as a place
where Russia began on account of the Kievan Rus’, and, therefore, should be part of
today’s Russia; he is talking about a made up Muscovite Russian concept that regards
modern Russia as the successor to the Kievan Rus’ which has no actual basis in history. Early Modern Russia slowly, in multiple wars
and partitions between the mid 17th and early 19th century, conquered most, but not all,
the lands of today's Ukraine and Belarus away from the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia was hoping to assimilate all these
newly conquered Eastern Slavs into their idealized pan-Russian nation, despite many of these
Eastern Slavs often having a different language to the Muscovite Russians, different culture,
and different costumes, as they were influenced by the Poles, Lithuanians, and overall more
western ideology for centuries. These people were still Eastern Slavs, and
they still saw themselves as the Rus’, but not as Muscovite Rus’ or, in other words,
as Russians. Therefore when Putin in his speech on the
21st of February 2022 stated that “For a long time, the inhabitants of the historical
lands of the South-West of Ancient Russia called themselves Russians and Orthodox. This was the case until the 17th century,
when part of these territories were reunified with the Russian state.” he was wrong. These people identified as the Rus’, as
the Eastern Slavs, but not as Russians; and ever since the word Rus’ got appropriated
by the Muscovite Russians, the people living in today’s Ukraine had to start using other
identifiers. Like, for example, Ukranians. The name of Ukraine existed far before this
time but it was around this time it got more widely adopted due to the appropriation of
the name Rus’ by the people from Muscovy by the Russians. Despite all these factors, Russia tried very
hard, through Russification, to assimilate all the Eastern Slavs into what they called
the obshcherusskii narod, meaning one Russian peoples, to them all the Eastern Slavs, all
the Rus’, were the same people and, therefore, they should all be talking and acting as the
same people. In some areas this Russification proved to
be successful, for example, almost all Ukrainian high nobility assimilated into the Russian
aristocracy by the 19th century. However, in other areas, this Russification
backfired and, in opposition to it, during the late 18th and 19th century, Ukrainian
national consciousness consolidated more thoroughly and Ukrainian language was officially codified
by Ukrainian intellectuals. The continued survival of this Ukrainian national
consciousness in the 19th century proved extremely problematic to the Russian government. The Russian minister of interior P.A. Valuev said in 1876 that “permitting the
creation of a special literature for the common people in the Ukrainian dialect would signify
collaborating in the alienation of Ukraine from the rest of Russia … To permit the
separation of thirteen million Little Russians (That is what the Russians called Ukranians)
would be the utmost political irresponsibility, especially in view of the unifying movement
which is proceeding alongside us among the Germanic tribes.” In heed of this warning the Tsar forbade all,
with very few exceptions, literary publications and teaching in Ukrainian. The Russian empire also conducted a series
of forced relocations and overall sometimes violent suppression of Ukrainian people. Many Ukrainian thinkers, therefore, fled to
Western Ukraine which was part of the Habsburg Monarchy. Here Ukrainian culture and language wasn’t
suppressed as much, and, infact, it was seen by the Austrians as a beneficial counterbalance
to the Poles living in Austria. Therefore, much of Ukrainian literature of
the late 19th century came from Western Ukraine and this literature was often smuggled into
Russian controlled Ukraine which continued to be under harsh Russification pressure well
into the first world war. The Russian Empire lost the First World and
in the aftermath of this loss Russia fell into Civil war. Putin, again in his 21st of February speech
stated that “modern Ukraine was fully and completely created by Russia, more precisely,
Bolshevik and communist Russia. This process began almost immediately after
the revolution of 1917, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely
harsh on Russia - separating, uprooting part of its own historical territories. Nobody asked the millions of people living
there what they thought”. Now, taking aside the fact that, as we discussed,
Ukranians and Ukrainian identity existed far before 1917, some key events did happen during
this time and they did not happen the way Putin described them. When Russia lost the first world war to the
Central Powers in 1917, most of the area of what is today Ukraine fell under the control
of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. However, these countries never really had
time to consolidate power in this region and both soon surrendered to the allies. Therefore, there was a large powervacume in
Ukraine and so many different factions started to vie for control. The most successful of these factions was
the Ukrainian People's Republic established by the Ukrainian Directorate. The Ukrainian People's Republic would, in
1920, symbolically unify with the West Ukrainian People's Republic which was established in
the Ukrainian lands formerly controlled by Austria-Hungary. This idea of a finally unified Ukrainian state,
however, never really came to fruition as the Ukrainians who sought independence had
to fight many other groups, like Ukranians who didn’t want independence, or Poles,
or White Russians, or the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic which was created and supported
by the Russian Bolsheviks, etc. This entire complicated situation ended in
the 1920s when the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was conquered by the Poles, and the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with the help from the Russian Bolsheviks, won
the Ukrainian civil war against the Ukrainian People's Republic, and other Ukrainian factions. As you can see Ukraine wasn’t created by
Lenin in 1917, there where genuent tries to form an independent state of Ukraine in the
post war period which, in the end, failed on account of the Bolsheviks. “Nobody asked the millions of people living
there what they thought” because what many of them thought was that they wanted an independent
Ukraine. The mere fact that Lenin along with the Bolsheviks
established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic shows just how different Ukrainians
were to Russians. The Russian Bolsheviks simply couldn’t have
controlled Ukraine by merely annexing it. The Bolsheviks had to establish and support
an internal Bolshevik movement within Ukraine in order to gain control of it. After winning the Ukrainian civil war with
the help from the red army the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic joined the USSR. The way the new Russian Soviet state was going
to be run was a matter of STRONG debate among the Bolsheviks. In the end a federative solution was chosen. In accordance with this solution a “People's
Commissariat of Nationalities”, or just Narkomnats for short, was created; whose job
was to make the most accurate federale divisions within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
or just USSR for short. It is this body that Putin refers to when
he talks about “What was the point of transferring to the newly, often arbitrarily formed administrative
units – the union republics – vast territories that had nothing to do with them?” But this is inaccurate, as Geoffrey Hosking
states in in his book Russia and the Russians, “They [the Narkomnats] drew on censuses,
historical studies, and ethnographic, geographic, and linguistic surveys to try to determine
as accurately as possible the ethnic composition and degree of the national development of
the territories over which the soviet state was assuming sovereignty.” They were definitely not creating “arbitrarily
formed administrative units”. With that said, as Lenin died and Stalin took
control over the USSR, things changed. For one, a more direct centralization of power
occurred and the “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” or just Russia for short,
which was the largest and most dominant political power in the USSR, came to, for all intents
and purposes, dominate the whole of USSR and all its other constituents. In the context of centralizing power, in Ukraine
specifically, Stalin’s infamous purges often targeted the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
as one of his “principal aims was to disrupt ethnic patronage systems and break down local
resistance to orders from Moscow.” On top of that his economic reforms caused
one of the worst famines in history called the holodomor which disproportionately affected
minorities in the USSR like the Ukrainians, Khazaks, Tatars, etc. There were also many killings, imprisonments,
and forced resettlements of Ukranians who refused to comply with the Soviet state. The Western Ukranians in Poland were faring
slightly better than their eastern counterparts but not by a lot. Ukranians were often looked down upon by the
Poles especially after Poland had to fight the West Ukrainian People's Republic over
land which the Poles deemed as rightfully theirs. Due to this negative Ukrainian sentiment in
Poland many laws were created that hindered Ukrainian social development and resettled
Polish farmers in areas populated by a Ukrainian majority. All this resulted in that, when WW2 started
and the Nazis began to occupy Eastern Europe, Ukranians welcomed the Germans as their liberators. Putin referred to this in his declaration
of war speech stating that “They (the Ukranians) will undoubtedly try to bring war to Crimea
just as they have done in Donbass, to kill innocent people just as members of the punitive
units of Ukrainian nationalists and Hitler’s accomplices did during the Great Patriotic
War.” This statement, again, is not completely true. Yes, Ukrainians did initially welcome the
Germans as liberators, and yes there where Ukranians who collaborated and helped the
Nazis but that isn’t the full picture. For one, every occupied country in Europe
had some Nazi colaboraters. The French, the Slovaks, the Czechs, the Poles
even though they like to deny it, and even the Russians all had Nazi collaborators. However, these collaborators do not represent
the majority of the population in these countries. The initial Ukrainian sentiment towards the
Germans as their liberators quickly faded away as it became clear that the Nazis saw
the Ukranians, along with other Slavs, as inferior human beings, as Untermenschen. Reichskommissar Erich Koch, who was in charge
of governing occupied Ukraine, stated “There is no such thing as a free Ukraine. Our aim is to ensure that Ukrainians work
for Germany.” To this aim “Abled-bodied men and women,
including adolescents, were rounded up and deported to work as slaves in German factories
and mines. Anyone who resisted was publicly hanged as
an example. Several million citizens of the occupied regions
[of the USSR] worked for or collaborated with the Germans, either as soldiers or as civilians,
but that was usually because the alternative was violent death.” Many Ukrainians became sick of being occupied
by the Poles, the Russians, and the Nazis and formed partisan groups which at their
height consistet of over 100 thousand people. These partisan groups were often loosely unified
and some groups waged guerrilla warfare against all occupiers like Poles, Soviets, and Germans
while others collaborated with one of the factions against the other ones. Flip flopping between the factions was also
not uncommon. The goal of all these partisan groups was
to create, in one way or another, some kind of an independent state of Ukraine. To achieve this goal they fought with sometimes
inexcusable brutality with SOME (but not all) partisan groups conducting ethnic cleansing. Some of these partisan groups continued to
operate after the war ended, fighting well into the 1950s. So when Putin stated in his declaration of
war speech “that the people living in territories which are part of today’s Ukraine were not
asked how they want to build their lives when the USSR was created or after World War II.” they were not asked because they didn’t
want to be part of the USSR. In both instances, as we saw, there was active
military opposition to Russian, and other countries’, rule in Ukraine. After the second world war ended Ukraine was
subject to harsh crackdowns by the Soviets including imprisonments, killings, deportations,
etc. as they retaliated against the actions of the Ukrainian partisans. When it comes to Crimea, this area was historically
inhabited by the Tatars, a turkic language speaking peoples. However, by the end of WW2 they were dubiously
charged with supporting the Nazis and where either killed or deported to mostly Khazakstan. The depopulated Crimea was then resettled
by some Ukranians but mostly Russians. So when Putin talks of Crimea as being Russian,
it's only Russian because most of its indigenous Tatar population was killed or deported. Crimea was originally under Russian control
but it was then given to Ukraine in 1954 by Krushchev. There are multiple reasons as to why Krushchev
gave Crimea to Ukraine but ultimately the most important factor was that it did not
matter. Crimea was still in the USSR just under a
slightly different administration. As William Taubman states, Krushchev never
even thought of the future ramifications of such a decision as he most likely couldn’t
have imagined a future where Ukraine would not be part of some kind of a Russian state. With all that said, after the death of Stalin,
the cold war period finally brought some relief to Ukraine. This is not to say that Russification efforts
went away, no, but they did become more passive. For example, like giving preferential treatment
in the government or the work place to Russian speakers over Ukrainian speakers. Active Russification, like the aforementioned
resettlement of Ukrainians, became, largely, a thing of the past. Although, with that said, any kind of formation
of nationlistic Ukrainian movements during this time was still harshly cracked down upon. Ukraine during this time also saw large-scale
industrialization. This industrialization was often followed
with an influx of Russian migrant workers mostly to cities like Kyiv, Luhanks, Kharkiv,
etc. This, along with the centuries long Russification
efforts, meant that Ukraine, by 1990, had a sizable native Russian speaking population. Native Russian speaking, however, did not
and still does not always mean Russian identifying. There are plenty of native Russian speakers
in Ukraine that identify as Urkanians and the majority of Ukranians can speak Russian. By one 2010 poll, 76% of Ukrainian citizens
could speak Russian despite only around 17.2% of citizens identifying as Russian. When it came to the breakup of the USSR the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, under pressure from its citizens, declared independence
in August of 1991. That same year, in December, the new country
of just Ukraine held an independence referendum. The voter turnout was 84.2%, and out of those
people 92.3% voted for independence. There wasn’t a single county, or Oblast,
that had an anti-independence majority, even Crimea, the oblast with the largest percentage
of native Russian speakers, voted in favor of independence with a voter turnout of 60%. On top of that Ukraine along with USA, UK
and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. This treaty guaranteed to the new country
of Ukraine that the other signatory countries “reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine … to
respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” and that they also “reaffirm their obligation
to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine”. All of this in exchange for Ukraine giving
up its nuclear weapons which it inherited after the breakup of the USSR. With that said, this newfound independence
did not mean Ukraine was completely leaving Russia behind. Ukraine still remained a close ally of Russia
for the next couple of decades. However, a slow change started to happen in
the 21st century. A large majority of Ukrainian people increasingly
started to look westewards while some Ukrainians, and especially Russian leaders, wanted Ukraine
to remain a close ally of Russia, just like BelaRus did. These divisions of opinion then lead to all
the events that occurred in 2014 and are happening now. Lastly, I will talk about languages in Ukraine. The language laws that have been adopted by
Ukraine since the 2014 crises have been swayed by increasing Ukranian nationalistic sentiment. The threat of Russia in the 2014 crisis made
Ukraine rethink it’s quite by-lingual stans on the Russian and Ukrainian languages, after
all as stated before 76% of Ukranians could speak Russian, and Russian was still sometimes
used by ethnic Ukranians for communication. However, the increasing threat of Russia to
Ukraine made the use of Russian fall out of favor, and, therefore, its language status
became increasingly sidelined in favor of Ukrainian. With three controversial language bills passing
in 2014, 2017, and 2019. Despite Putin's claims “to protect people
who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime” specially as he refers
to the language laws. This is not the case. The language laws were harsh, and that’s
why their passing to law was controversial, but they by no means are casuing a genocide
or an active eradication of Russian, or any other minority language in Ukraine. Russian, along with 17 other languages, is
still a recognized minority language in Ukraine and as such it can still be taught in schools,
used for plays, newspapers, music, books, etc. it just can't no longer do that in place
of Ukrainian. Meaning news-sites in Russian will also have
to have a Ukrainian version, schools teaching Russian will have to also teach Ukrainian,
and, perhaps, most controversial “students are only given the right to study ‘the language
of the respective indigenous people’ rather than in the language of their minority”. With that said, other things like theater
shows can remain in Russian, or any other minority language, and minority language book
stores can operate just as normal. In the end, yes, the language laws are harsh,
and there was a backlash against them in Ukraine, and in neighboring countries, but they are
not “bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime”. The people who are actually oppressed the
most by the Ukrainian language laws aren’t Russians but Rusyns living in Transcarpathia
(or Ruthenia). This is because despite Rusyn being recognized
as a minority language in most Eastern European countries, in Ukraine, it is only seen as
a Ukrainian dialect and, therefore, not worthy of a minority language status. So, unlike Russian, it does not get the privileges
of publishing its own books, teaching its own classes, printing its own newspapers,
etc. As Elaine Rusinko states “Today in Ukraine,
Rusyn newspapers do not enjoy any support from the government, unlike the publications
of many other national minorities, and Rusyns are not even allowed to establish Saturday
or Sunday schools where they might be taught their own language” and culture. What is interesting here is that Putin in
his paper On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians did mention Rusyns as distinct
from Ukranians and allegedly even supports Rusyn independent movements. But all of this is purely a political play
by Putin and the goal of all Rusyn movements at the moment is not to “secede from Ukraine,
but to restore autonomous status within its framework.” In the end Ukraine is not a saint, ironically,
there are no saints in history, but all the historical statements used by Putin as propaganda
to justify the current war are, as shown, historically inaccurate. Putin’s statement of “I think that the
Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one single people” pedals centuries old
Russian propaganda of a unified Rus’ people despite such a thing never existing in history. To anyone who has been effected or knows people
who have been affected by the war in Ukraine and are trying to escape to neighboring countries,
in the description of this video, I have tried to give as many links and phone numbers to
Polish, Slovak, Romanian, etc. organizations that are trying to help all the Ukrainian
refugees. Hopefully this video was helpful in dispelling
some of the falsehoods outhether about the history of the Ukrainian and Russian relations. Of course, this video could not have been
all encompassing but I tried to at least address all the major points. As always there's more information and corrections
in the pinned comment. You can also download my scripts for free
on my Patreon which has all the sources in it. This video is not monetized because I didn’t
want it to be. However, this video, along with all the other
videos on my channel, has been brought to with the support of my kind Patreons. Special thanks to this month's deity tear
Patron Daniel Garza. As always, my name is M. Laser and stick around
for history.
