Little Russia
Little Russia or Little Rus ( Russian Малороссия, Малая Русь ; Ukrainian Мала Русь ) is a historical name for the northern part of what is now Ukraine . It goes back to the medieval Byzantine terminology (Greek Μικρὰ Ῥωσία ), which differentiated between small Rus in the west and large Rus in the east. The latter term was understood to mean areas of the Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal and the Novgorod Republic . According to one version, this division had the meaning of Rus in the narrower sense and Rus in the broader sense (analogous to Magna Graecia ), since Kiev was historically the center of Rus. According to another version, this subdivision arose simply from the geographic size ratio of several Russian Orthodox eparchies in the 14th century (those under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the others).
The term Little Russia found a renewed distribution after the church union of Brest in 1596, when the part of the Ruthenian clergy of Poland-Lithuania , who fought against the decreed subordination to the Pope, emphasized the common roots with (Greater) Russia in numerous literary works. During the Khmelnitsky uprising and after the Russo-Polish War 1654–1667 , Little Russia was the main name for the areas of the Cossack Hetmanate in the Russian Empire , while their inhabitants were called Little Russians ( малороссы ).
This subdivision had no pejorative tinge, but from the late 19th century onwards it was perceived as disparaging by activists of the Ukrainian national movement. Instead, they began to successively popularize the term Ukraine as a country name, which had previously been used (in chronicles from the 12th century onwards with the meaning of borderland or marrow , since the 16th century more and more for the areas around the central Dnieper ), but had no ethnicity yet. The final suppression of the term Little Russia by the term Ukraine goes back to the Bolsheviks , who took the supposedly chauvinistic term out of circulation in the course of their nationality politics .
The term is still familiar today through the 2nd symphony by Peter Tchaikovsky , which is nicknamed the "Little Russian Symphony".
War in Ukraine
The separatists, who have been active in the war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, proclaimed a construct on July 18, 2017 under the name Little Russia , the territory of which was to consist of the territories of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic . An earlier name was also "New Russia". The territory has no intersection with the areas historically known as "Little Russia".
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Little Russia in the Etymological Dictionary by Max Vasmer (Russian)
- ↑ a b Andreas Kappeler : Brief history of the Ukraine. 2nd Edition. Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-406-45971-9 , pp. 21-22.
- ↑ pro-Russian rebels call new state of in time online on 18 July 2017. Retrieved on July 18, 2017