Pre-modern identity No. 3: "local" self-awareness (26.07.2025)
The third installment of the cycle. Dribnytsya explains the concept of “local” (tuteishi) self-awareness, described by the Belarusian ethnologists Chakvin and Tereshkovich: in the pre-modern era, most of the population regarded only the inhabitants of their own village or district as their own, and everyone else as outsiders. Above this local identity, the elite (princes, administration, priests, merchants) formed a “land-based” awareness (Kyivans, Chernihivians, Galicians). The chronicle term “land” (zemlia) is etymologically related to “country” (kraina) / “Ukraine.” A source for the article on the formation of pre-modern identity.
Key moments
- 03:31 The self-awareness of "locals" (Chakvin and Tereshkovich): people regard only the inhabitants of their own and neighboring villages as their own
- 05:01 Researcher Smith: even in Turkey before 1900, local identities mattered more than a pan-Turkish one
- 08:30 "Local" awareness was mostly that of the rural population; the elite formed a supra-local, land-based one
- 10:54 The execution of the Igorevichi in Halych in 1211 — the Galicians did not accept the incoming princes as their own
- 12:58 "Lands" = the modern concept of "country": zemlia (land) → kraina (country) → Ukraina; the term "land" appears from the second quarter of the 12th century