When Putin starts talking about Ukraine, which Lenin supposedly invented, or about territories donated by Stalin, we perceive this as propaganda nonsense - after all, we know much better than him and, most importantly, we are aware of the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, writes Vitaly Portnikov for the publication "

The following is the text in the original language. Prote at Putin’s words, he asked, addressed not only to us. The Russian president is desperately trying to explain why nothing has worked out in Ukraine. It would seem that there would be no special problems and there could not be. The size of the Russian population, which historically lived near the Russian Empire and the Soviet Socialist Republic, was large, and after the independence vote continued to vote for pro-Russian policies and. The President of Volodymyr Zelensky, who, for many years before this century, held Christmas concerts in Ostankino and starred in films released to both the Russian and Ukrainian audiences – was respected for these reasons.. So, from Putin’s point of view, Zelensky himself, like Kuchma before him, might be tempted by power or “overwhelm the nationalists”. Well, the people who took him - the “electorate” - have lost themselves! Why did neither 2004 nor 2022 succeed

In the rumors of Putin, there is a desire to shift the responsibility to the Bolsheviks, to Lenin, to the very structure of the Radyansky Union. Having really worked for Ukraine, Lenin?

Let's guess what kind of knowledge the burghers of the future Ukraine had in 1917.. The national movement in the territory of the Russian Empire was quite weak, in the Ukrainian provinces it traditionally relied on rural locality. Most Ukrainian politicians spoke about the cultural minority - about territorial autonomy in the warehouse of the new Russia.

1917 rivers having changed everything, before the positions of politicians who were thinking about territorial autonomy. The Bolshevik coup created the potential to vote out the new power. However, a large part of the population, who lived on the lands of the voted Ukrainian state, saved the imperial reputation. Moreover, it was divided both into henchmen and opponents of the Bolshevik rule.

After the military victory over their political opponents in Russia, the Bolsheviks tried to change the insecurity of the national rulers. This is how the idea of \u200b\u200bterritorial autonomies, which, during the period of occupation of the new powers, were implemented in what appeared to be Radian republics that were unlikely to enter the union with Red Russia, was abandoned. Stalin proposed to include the republics of Russia as autonomous entities - just as Tatarstan and Chuvashia are included in modern Russia. Prote Lenin under the influence, sokrema, head to the Radnarkom of the Ukrainian SSR Khristian Rakovsky, who did not want to lose the status of a kerivnik to the order of the sovereign Radyansk Ukraine, having settled on a different concept: republics are creating a new power.

In fact, it’s the same Russia under the new Viva, under the rule of one party. Formally, the citizens of Radyan Ukraine, who consider themselves Ukrainians, may think that living in the Ukrainian state is okay under the Bolsheviks. And for those who don’t have any Ukrainian information, nothing has changed: they just lived on the territory of the empire, so they will continue to live. And thus, nothing else will change for the philistines of Russia itself - they will continue to accept the unified power as great Russia under a different name.

After the death of Lenin and victory over his political opponents, Stalin, who, apparently, was the people's commissar of the right-wing nationalities, from the nationalization of life in the allied republics moved to unification. This paradigm will be changed by another world war, if power will require the support of all the peoples of the empire, and not just the Russians. In the fall of Ukraine, it is necessary to bring to the appearance of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (the hetman is no longer a feudal lord who protects the powerful people, but a fighter for their independence), to the tolerance of patriotic works of Ukrainian writers. After the war, this line is burning under the crust of the new Russification, and even before the attack of Germany, Stalin is working on a historical compromise, which Putin also remembers: the annexation of the western lands,. These people are also reluctant to refer to the artificial power with Ukrainian attributes, but without the Ukrainian substitution. For most of them, Ukraine is a power, and not a territorial unit, and this unites the new citizens of the Radyansky Union with those Ukrainians who have the same view of their country.

What to expect with others? Timi, for whom Ukraine was not so valuable?

These people of a small generation have lived in the Ukrainian RSR, which for them is part of the Radyansky Union - but not at all Russia. And even now the stinks are visible among the bastards of the Russian Russian Federal Socialist Republic, for whom Russia is everything in the Soviet Socialist Republic, from Estonia to Turkmenistan, and also for them Ukraine, especially and first and foremost, and also the “wheel”.

There is no point in wondering if the Radyansky Union knows that on June 1, 1991, it was the fate of Ukrainians with a clearly expressed administrative-territorial identity to vote the same way as Ukrainians with national-political. And it’s hard to marvel at what Russians marvel at, literally everyone - from Gorbachov and Yeltsin to the plumber in Nizhny Tagil. And not because they don’t suspect about the founding of Ukrainian nationalists. They just suspect - there is a stink here, in Lvov and Kiev. Ale їх definitely less. Why did everyone else vote, why did they “enjoy”? Russians don't understand. What is more important is that which even the Ukrainians themselves cannot understand. Ukrainians with a national-political identity respect that voting bags are a triumph of the national idea. And Ukrainians, with their administrative-territorial identity, respect that they voted obediently simply because Ukraine is not Russia. And then we need to live as we lived and have good lives with Russia - just as it was otherwise? That's why they created the SND.

Well, Ukrainian independence itself became possible because people with different motivations supported it. For some, Ukraine was a national power. For others - the country, which for decades lived in the administrative cordons of the Ukrainian RSR. The stench differed in the food supply of Ukraine. However, they turned on the power supply, and it is their fault. And in a completely different way - as it may seem.

In the coming ten years, all these groups will live under powerful paradigms, never trying to understand each other. Russians will begin to forget about their first breast, lead to the collapse of the Radyansky Union until the dominance of Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich in Belarus and turn to the idea of a united country, where Ukraine will immediately become part of the allied power, and. Even in the Russian political mentality, a chauvinistic vision still prevails, in which the intellectual compromise of the Radyansky Union is a pardon, and the Russian Empire of pre-Radyansky hours is an ideal. Ukrainians, with national-political plans, strive to become a true Ukrainian-centric power, to become a part of Europe and to be under which the Ukrainian national and Ukrainian cultural. We have offended our Maidans - about this. And the Ukrainians should push forward with the administrative-territorial councils so that they all become aware of them. So that they lived in a comfortable country, as needed - they earned pennies in Moscow, lived in Italy and France, spoke in my own language as they should, and went to church without fussing, Russian won. And so that we are aware of those Ukrainians whom they respect as nationalists.

Those who do not distinguish between Russians and Ukrainians with administrative-territorial identity are encouraged to believe.

The divisions in the former Ukraine are actively victorious in almost all presidential and parliamentary elections, politicians and political strategists, ahead of the Russian ones. In the 2019 elections, administrative-territorial identity is once again becoming a political choice for an important majority of citizens. Before the elections, presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky looked respectfully and praised the law on language. The conflict with Russia already seems close to completion, and even without “nationalists”, with Moscow in control, it will be easy to settle down. You have literally everything to believe. The virtually unique beginning of the great war has literally no one to believe. It's starting to start. I reiterate that at a critical moment, when it comes to the founding of Ukraine, Ukrainians with a national-political identity will unite with Ukrainians with an administrative-territorial identity against. Putin does not understand what Gorbachov did not understand, who, before the referendum, in his first interview with the Ukrainian TV station, campaigned to vote against independence, - this country is valuable for all of us,.

But this does not cover the fact that both before and after the war we live in the country, where there are two identities - national-political and administrative-territorial - from a distance.

Ukrainians continue to marvel at their national-political identity, young people are starting to speak Russian, going in thousands to Max Korzh concerts and crying for Monetochka. It’s surprising that these people, in essence, are deprived of Russian culture, as they didn’t hear anything about Bulgakov or Kirkorov.

Ukrainians, from their administrative-territorial identity, wonder about something else: why “nationalists” cannot calm down. Even though no one cares about speaking Ukrainian, listening to Vakarchuk or “Boombox”. It is now time to impose Ukrainian language on everyone else?

One can only be sure that the generation that has experienced the war at the same time will be more calm about these cultural issues than the people of the pre-war period, because they are united by extensive testing,.

But I don’t dare to talk about what a post-war Ukraine could be. I would like that none of us knows, if the war ends, in what cordons the Ukrainian state will exist, what number of its population will be and people from which regions of this state will be.

However, those who live in a state of such dissimilar identities need to accept it as a fact. We can see the infusion of national political identity through the paths of the state’s cultural policy. Let us understand that we are still on the road to the emergence of the Ukrainian national identity from the marginality into which the empires drove it. The administrative-territorial identity of Ukrainians will not be achieved until the end.

Ukraine, in which national-political identity will be not just important, but united, is on the right of no immediate fate.

We can continue to talk about what our power is. However, the majority of Ukrainians, however, testify to the supply, which is due to the fact that Ukraine may be in May..