Polish film director Jerzy Hoffman recently attended the Molodist Film Festival in Kyiv. That means he had something to show. Hoffman presented the first part of his cinematographic trilogy, Ukraine: The Birth of a Nation. Millions of his Ukrainian fans and opponents regard his movies as signposts to national self-identification and the perceptional paradox of a Polish artist.
Jerzy Hoffman comes from that generation of Poles who realized that Russia has always won when Poland lost. They discovered this truth only after five long centuries of wars against Ukrainians. They understood that, fighting against us, they would always be oppressed, occupied and dependent. They came to learn that countries that have enjoyed a friendship with Ukraine have also enjoyed greatness. Such was the case with Poland, Russia and even Romania, which has also entertained ambitions to annex part of Ukraine.
Hoffman said he failed to keep his promise to never make a movie at his own expense, but that he'd been inspired and provoked by former President Leonid Kuchma's book, Ukraine Is Not Russia. The Polish film maker admitted that he was surprised that Ukrainians, this great nation with millennium-old European roots, had to prove to the Poles and Russians that they were not servants or little Russians, but the descendents of the original Rus. Their territories around Kyiv were once referred to as Greater Rus, while the lands in the Carpathians were known as Little Rus. We had to prove that the name of Great Rus had been 'borrowed' by the people of Muscovy after they had annexed Ukraine and labeled its people as little Russians.
Now it is quite a challenge to find sources and pin point the actual time of our appearance. Scholars claim that the roots of Ukrainians have been lost in the obscurity of millennia. We consider ourselves to be the descendants of the Trypillyans, who lived on this land from the third to the fifth millennia BC. Between the Ukrainians and the Trypillyans, there were other peoples such as the Scythians, the Sarmatians and probably even the Huns. We definitely know that our predecessors were the Antes. Perhaps they were the pre-Slavs. They were definitely not Ukrainians. Rather they gave rise to the Rusych and the Rusyn, who were the ancestors of modern Ukrainians. There are written records that prove this.
The Rusyn, who occupied the territory of Kyiv Rus, began to call themselves Ukrainians when they needed to position themselves separately from the Russians, who called them Little Russians. As a means of self preservation and cultural distinction, the Rusyn insisted: We are not little Russians but Ukrainians, and our land is called Ukraine. The Russians loved this name, Ukraine, for it sounded like the Russian word okraina, or outlying land. However, the name Ukraine appeared much earlier and predates the founding of Moscow altogether (mid 12th century).
By the time Ukraine began to consistently be called Ukraine, the country bordered on Poland, the Tatar Khanate and the Muscovite Principality, providing a buffer zone between the Christian and Islamic worlds, on the one hand, and a border between European civilization and the vast Asian expanse on the other. Not much has changed. In this sense, the perception of it as an outlying territory or frontier land has a certain sense and logic.
By the way, the Rusych, who lived west of the Carpathians, who were never included in the Russian Empire and who were not familiar with the embarrassing name of little Russians, did not need to position themselves separately and still called themselves Rusych. The Poles, who came to occupy the western principalities of Galicia and Volyn, did not regard the Rusych as a separate people because that would have equated to admitting to occupying Ukrainian lands. The Poles used to stress that they were similar to the Rusych but not the same. Instead they treated them as slaves and servants.
Due to Polish and Russian subjugation, the Ukrainians could not become a title nation on their own land. Their language had a similar fate. The Poles and the Tsarist government in Russia spared no effort to eradicate the Ukrainian tongue. Perhaps no language in the world has been prohibited and declared non-existent so many times. When the Russian authorities failed to ban it, they mocked it as the corrupt uttering of villagers or primitive people. By the way, this stereotypical attitude toward our language as something second-rate and crude is still shared by Ukraine's urban population. Ukrainian was censored so much because it was the last remnant of the people's ethnic distinction, which was difficult to control.
Vladimir Vernadsky, one of the most prominent Russian scholars and scientists of the 20th century, said that even the progressive Russian intelligentsia aimed to assimilate Ukrainians to the dominant nation and to eradicate their dangerous self-identity.
Historians associate the formation of the Ukrainian nation with the appearance of our language. However, this process has no exact timeline, which leads some scholars to believe that the great Kyivan princes of the 10th and 11th centuries were really Ukrainians.
Mykhaylo Hrushevsky, Ukraine's first president and a prominent historian, wrote that the history of Kyiv Rus was definitely a "history of the Ukrainian nation, and its continuation was the Cossack era and the period of Ukraine's revival."
Jerzy Hoffman adheres to this point of view in his trilogy. However this belief, although supported by ample scholarship, is at odds with the artificial theory of Russian chauvinists, who claim that the Ukrainian people have no national past and are only a sub branch of the Russian people.
The concept of Ukrainian-Russian-Belarusian unity was developed to justify an alliance between the three nations. In his 1997 book, The Fundamentals of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, Alexander Dugin writes that, as a state, "Ukraine does not have any geopolitical sense. It has no universal cultural messages, no geographic uniqueness and no ethnic exceptionality. Its historical meaning is reflected in its name - Ukraine, which means okraina or outlying territory."
This is not the view of just one author. This is the opinion of many radical leaders and official historians of modern Russia. It is easy to understand why the Russians support this concept. They are realistic and pragmatic. They understand that Russia, with its vast territory and natural riches, cannot be regarded as an empire or superpower without Ukraine. Its grandeur can only be crowned with Ukraine. So all Russian patriots, which is the majority of Russians because they love their state leaders, are against anything that threatens their country's grandeur.
For example, in the official history of Russia you will not find any references to the almost three-century-long period between the Tatar yoke in the 13th century and the appearance of Muscovy.
In fact, several Kyiv principalities were defeated by the Mongols, but life did not end. Very soon, Rusych principalities united with the Great Lithuanian Principality and later with the Polish Kingdom. This initial confederation of principalities enjoying equal rights was rather efficient. Its military power was based on Rusych and Lithuanian warriors. Kyiv Rus laws were used as a legal foundation for the state. The Rusych language was also widespread. Together they managed to defend their independence in battles against Tatar and German invaders. At that time, the economy and education of these principalities prospered.
Russian-Soviet history seems to conceal these facts. However, critics of Jerzy Hoffman's movie, which depicts this period, will not remain silent.
At the very end of this period of productive cooperation, the Cossack movement emerged. It was a military force to defend the territories and liberties of free people. The cause of the Cossacks’ appearance was the expansion of United Poland, which was being used by the Catholic Church to spread its influence into Orthodox lands. Of course there was much resistance. Several spontaneous rebellions turned into a national revolution headed by Bohdan Khmelnitsky in 1648-1654.
By the time the 'civil war' had ended, Ukrainians had confirmed their right to be a nation.
However, their search for allies to reinforce their newly re-established statehood made Ukrainians sign a treaty with Moscow. Scholars still argue whether it was an annexation or a union. What is clear is that it was a voluntary alliance and that there was no violent subjugation. Whatever it was, Moscow spared no effort to hold Ukraine in its friendly brotherly embrace.
While Poland resorted to violence to keep control of Ukraine, Moscow acted more effectively and craftily. Cossack generals were granted titles, Cossack warriors were paid money for their service, and peasants were not subjected to serfdom as they were in Russia and Poland.
And this relationship continued until Hetman Ivan Mazepa made an attempt to free Ukraine from Russian hegemony during the Russian-Swedish War. Mazepa and some Cossacks sided with King Charles XII of Sweden. During the Battle of Poltava, they were defeated by Tsar Peter the Great.
After that fateful battle, Moscow stopped courting the Ukrainians and started to demonstrate its Asiatic nature. The population of the hetman capital Baturin was annihilated. The city was destroyed, Cossack estates were plundered and Ukrainian lands were turned over to Russian nobles. The Zaporizhzhyan Sich was razed to the ground and peasants were made into serfs. Ukrainian books were banned, and Mazepa was declared a traitor to the Tsar and the people. He was also anathematized. And although the old hetman's portrait is printed on ten-hryvnya banknotes, churches of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine still condemn him. Ukrainians honor Mazepa as a fighter for their country's independence. The title Mazepivets was offensive and humiliating for almost three hundred years, and those who bore it were potential candidates for exile to the GULAG camps of Siberia.
All these facts were briefly and artistically narrated by Jerzy Hoffman, an expert in the history of the Eastern Slavs. In the first part of his trilogy, he criticizes Poles who take offense at being called the equals of Ukrainians, Ukrainians who think their ancestors were greater than the ancient Greeks or Romans, and Russians whose only argument is force and self-confidence. Hopefully, the trilogy will make us respect Hoffman as a great Slav and encourage Poles, Ukrainians and Russians to live in peace and unity.
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