Ukrainophobism of Russian czarism and its political consequences

Abstract

The article analyzes the origins of Russian Ukrainophobia. Concepts revealed: Moscow – the Third Rome, Kyiv – the Second Jerusalem. The historical factors that determined the need for Moscow to control Kyiv in order to maintain chauvinist ideological mythologies about the political and spiritual succession of Moscow from the key political and spiritual centers: Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Kyiv are substantiated. The latter was considered not only the heir to Jerusalem, but also the capital city of Russia, interpreted by the Kremlin as the mother of Russian cities, and Russia itself as the cradle of Slavic "brotherly" peoples. The falsification of historical facts by the Kremlin has been investigated. The creation of myths about the artificial separation of the unified Ukrainian and Russian people until the middle of the 17th century. Russia’s transformation of the Pereyaslav Rada, which was an ordinary agreement between Hetman B. Khmelnytskyi and the Moscow tsar, into the realization of the centuries-old dream of the two peoples before reunification. The reasons for the constant attack of tsarism on the autonomous rights of the Ukrainian people, the destruction of its political system, economic structure, language, culture, and consolidation of the local population have been clarified. Efforts to unify and bring Ukrainian lands into compliance with Russian standards of existence. The attempts of the Ukrainian people, especially its leading Cossacks, to resist the policy of assimilation of the Ukrainian people and the importance of the latter in the process of transformation of the Moscow kingdom into the Russian Empire are revealed. The cultural component of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples was studied. The high level of education of Ukrainians and their orientation towards Latinized Western European culture has been proven. The educational backwardness of the Russian people and the positive influence of representatives of Ukrainian culture on Russian culture are revealed. The Kremlin’s constant desire to erase its historical past from the historical memory of the Ukrainian people is analyzed. Suppression of the Ukrainian national liberation movement on the territory of foreign countries. Systematic prohibition of the Ukrainian language. Artificially imposing the terms Malorossi, Novorossi and banning the terms Ukraine, Ukrainians on Ukrainians. The imposition of the myth about the dialecticism of the Russian language on the example of the so-called Little Russian dialect and the destruction by Russian tsarism of the Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukrainian lands during the First World War. It is noted that the very ignoring of the Ukrainian national question became one of the reasons for the Russian revolutions during the years of tsarism. The Ukrainophobia of the Russian tsarism did not allow the realization of imaginary mythologies and the destruction of the Ukrainian people, but to a large extent determined the demise
of the empire.