On some questions of the history of Rus' (part 2) (29.04.2023)
The second part of Vitaliy Dribnytsya’s street dialogue with a Russian interlocutor. The key verifiable segment: the official imperial theory of a “triune Russian people” (Great Russians/Little Russians/White Russians), on which the 1897 census was also built, and the pre-modern confessional (rather than ethnic) meaning of the word “Russians”. The material supplements the analysis “Is the Ukrainian nation artificial”.
Key moments
- 00:49 The empire's official ideology of the late 19th – early 20th c.: a "triune Russian people" (Great/Little/White Russians)
- 01:23 The 1897 census: its columns derived from this theory; "Russians" in the broad sense
- 02:41 Until the 18th c. "Russians/Ruthenians" was chiefly a confessional (Orthodox) category, not an ethnic one
- 07:18 The layman fails to grasp historical dynamics: he assumes a name is unchanged from its first mention