Greater Russia
Greater Russia ( Greek μεγάλη Ῥωσία, Latin Russia (Ruthenia) magna or maior , Russian Великая Русь or Великороссия ) is the historical name for northeastern Rus . It originated in the 14th century on the basis of church terminology in Byzantium , when the six southwestern Russian eparchies of the Russian Orthodox Church , which were under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , were referred to as Little Russia and the remaining twelve as Greater Russia. The distinction between Little and Greater Russia also followed the ancient principle of differentiating between the heartland (in this case the area around Kiev ) and the colonized areas in the broadest sense (see Magna Graecia ).
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Greater Russian areas around Moscow were also called Ruthenia alba (White Rus), before this name was primarily carried over to what is now Belarus . After the initially purely geographical dimension, which was also reflected in the title of the tsars in the 17th century (tsar and grand prince of all the Great, Small and White Rus), the distinction between Greater, Small and Belarus was given a linguistic and linguistic approach in the following centuries ethnographic dimension. The Great Russians were viewed as an independent branch of the all-Russian nation within the framework of the conception of the Triune Russian People .
After the October Revolution , the terms Greater and Lesser Russia were branded by the Bolsheviks as bourgeois-nationalist and chauvinist remnants of the old regime and erased from linguistic usage. From then on there was only talk of Russia and Ukraine .
See also
literature
- Соловьёв А. В. Великая, Малая и Белая Русь // Из истории русской культуры. - М., 2002. - Т. 2. - № 1. - С. 479-495