Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
> I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century.
That has nothing to do with Russia vs Russian conquered territories, besides, France has Occitan, there is the German based dialects, Catalan, some Basque and a whole raft of others.
> Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Except that that didn't quite happen in the way you suggest. You could make a similar statement about Fries in NL or maybe Limburgs or Diets. And it would be just as much wrong.
> Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Sorry, are we on different planets or something? You mean: those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian and who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture?
> I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
They are as alike as the Dutch and the Belgians, we joke about each other but at the end of the day there is no hate and zero chance of a war.
> Occitan native speakers: Estimates range from 100,000 to 800,000 total speakers (2007–2012)
No assimilation and cultural genocide policy in any form. It has just dwindled to these numbers on its own. Also has no relation to the topic that we discuss. Don't forget to call whataboutism.
I gather that reflection is not a strong side of Western Europeans.
> those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian
That's called "a civil war", and that's how it viewed by many Russians and some Ukrainians. Indeed that's not a great condition to be in.
> who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture
Again, this accusation is coming from a proud member of a nation who eradicated a couple of cultures very recently. "While I had already been born" recently.
People of Donbass were fed up with Ukrainization to the extent that these two Republics do not have Ukrainian as co-official. But Crimea, and the "new territories" of Kherson oblast and Zaparozh'ye (whatever left of them, arguably) have Ukrainian as co-official. Crimea also has Crimean Tatar as co-official. If anybody wants they can study their language and their culture, including in schools. That's what was not permitted to Russians in many, many ex-USSR countries.
It is un-civil-ized genocidal war, by calling it civil war you are denying the existence of Ukraine as a state it's the same as saying you support this war and atrocities Ruzzian Federation commits and occupation of Ukrainian territories. Go and preach this on runet instead.
Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI
(Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is.
Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevsky [1] (1798) is first literary work published wholly in the modern Ukrainian language. Ivan Kotliarevsky lived in Poltava, East Ukraine [2].
Valuev Circular [3] (1863), Ems Ukaz [4] (1876) banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print. Religious books on Ukrainian were banned century before [5].
Census [6] (1897) maps Ukrainian language majority far beyond Ukraine current borders. Annexed by RSFSR, Russified by force. Continuum of ethnocide by Moscow.
Еней був парубок моторний
І хлопець хоть куди козак,
На лихо здався він проворний,
Завзятіший од всіх бурлак.
So you are saying this is not a dialect of Russian? Any Russian can understand 50% of this text right off bat, 80% after a day of effort and 95% after a week.
Nationalists like to draw fantasy maps. Want to see mine?
Roma, Romania, do you claim Italian is "Romanian dialect"? Muscovy was Rus colony, grew under Golden Horde, renamed in 1721. Rus Grand Prince Володимѣръ Свѧтославичъ — Ukrainian name Володимир (Volodymyr) not Moscow Владимир (Vladimir). Language of Kyiv can't be dialect of its former colonies language.
Slav languages are mutually intelligible. I've checked spoken Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian. Do you claim these are "dialects" of Moscow language?
Eneida translated to Polish:
Eneasz rzutkim był młodzianem,
Podobnym całkiem do Kozaków,
Radzącym z każdym złem spotkanym,
Zawziętszym nawet od burłaków.
Russian (Russish) language is recent development. First song in Russian language was publicly performed by Fedor Shaliapin as demonstration that Russian language can be used instead of French language in culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMCFALhS90c
Okay, okay, so? The point is, there's a hell of a lot of songs, books, science articles, movies, video games and other kinds of content in Russian now. It's standardized, everybody can read, speak and write it. Things are going around Russian language. It's an UN and UNESCO language. A lot of goodies.
So it makes sense that everyone who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian will be consuming Russian content 90% of time. Hence people no longer use Surzhik anywhere east of Kharkov (or Khabarovsk), even if some of their ancestors actually spoke it. It just don't make sense to do that anymore.
It does not help that literature Ukrainian has a lot of borrowings from Polish, Romanian and Hungarian and is not really accessible to people who did not visit Ukrainian state schools. However, Russian is very accessible to basically everybody in Ukraine and the rest of ex-USSR.
Regarding folk songs, people actually did a lot of digging in this area starting with late Soviet times, and now there's huge revival of folk music in Russia. Many contemporary pop or rock bands use Russian (Slavic, maybe even Ukrainian) folk motives in their songs, which are usually in Russian. By doing so, they enrich Russian culture, which I've started this comment from.
Ukrainian language with 1000+ years of history, is not a dialect of Russian (Russish) language, which is a very recent development, with so high number of words borrowed from Turk languages, that it makes hard for Russians to understand other Slavic languages, except Bulgarians, which are also have some Tatar origin.
Use of Russian language shrunk by 2x in last 30 years, while Ukrainian language increased by 2x in last 30 years. At some point, it will flip.
Regarding folk songs, just name one Russian folk song in Russian language, for which I will not be able to found author by 5 minutes of googling.
I'm not sure why I will be doing all that. A great Ukrainian folk song Zhuravel' was rediscovered by Chstyakov I believe, and is now fertilizing the Russian culture.
No, it's other way around. Russian (Russish) language was based on Russian Church-Slavonic language, which is based on Old South-Slavonic language. Ru with many words borrowed from Ukrainian (Russian) language.
For example, Ukraine holds word record by number of folk songs, while I was able to found none of folk songs in Russian (Russish) language after years of searching. Folk songs exists in Russia Federation, but they are not in Russian (Russish) language. Cuban Cossack Choir - folk songs are in Ukrainian language, Ural Cossack Choir - Ukrainian, for example.
You're mixing written versus spoken language. Russian people largely cannot understand any Ukrainian when spoken. Polish people on the other hand can make out bits of Ukrainian.
So you are saying that similar repressive policies were not implemented in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan? Is there any research into comparative severity of policies?
As far as I know, Russian peasantry was absolutely not spared in the collectivization, making for the bulk of immediate casualties. And why would Stalin care about them? Was he Russian?
I merely question your claim about Russians having a positive attitude towards Ukrainians and their language. Having subjugated them by famine and other forms of mass-scale terror and murder, Russians allowed Ukrainians to use their language... how magnanimous.
No, there is no comparative study of the effects of repressive policies, because starving millions of people to death and not allowing outside help in (read "The Russian Job" by Douglas Smith) is not practiced on such scale anymore, even by Russia. The Wikipedia page on Holdomor quotes orders to subjugate Ukraine regardless of cost. That in itself negates any notion of Russians having a "super positive attitude" towards Ukraine. Do you know why "(...) you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991."? Because it was not possible while Stalin was alive. It was not possible, because it was Stalin who gave orders to subjugate Ukraine at any cost.
Why would USSR have this famine in Russia and Kazakhstan if the goal was "to subjugate Ukraine"? Indeed why would it even suddenly need subjugating if it was part of Russian state for at least two centuries.
If you have any complaints about Stalin, you can mail them to Georgia, and indeed I'm the first one to do the same.
In terms of vocabulary, the Ukrainian language is the closest to Belarusian (16% of difference), and the Russian language to Bulgarian (27% of difference).
After Belarusian, Ukrainian is also closer to Slovak, Polish, and Czech than to Russian – 38% of Ukrainian vocabulary is different from Russian.
Germans distinguish between prussians and bavarians? What are you talking about. Yes there are distinctions by state and where you're from. But the distingtion (apart from the occasional joking Fischkopf or Pazi) is nonexistent. Much less than states in the US.
As an active mushroom hunter (living in Russia), can confirm that it is likely.
Mushroom gathering is extremely popular here, so experienced mushroom hunters are looking for second and third tier mushrooms, which are not that edible and have nasty mimics.
So there is a moment when you confuse a champignon to a death cap, or Kuehneromyces mutabilis(summer stump mushroom) to Galerína margináta(deadly as the death mushroom), or parasol mushroom to fly agaric.
Especially if you have bad eyes.
Source: mushrooms in my stomach that I gathered and ate today.
Is it a sarcasm?
We have tens of people dying from mushroom poisoning each year.
Usually with stories like "grandma fried some mushrooms, whole family died, dad in coma".
I am just Russian who live in Russia and have some local context here.
You are free to call me a troll, but I think you are just devaluing opinions that you don't like.
At least I can speak about local mushroom eating traditions and dangers from first hands - I do it from childhood.
>Ask the people living in Georgia, Ukraine, and occupied Chechnya about how much "restraint" Russia has shown them.
Actually people from Chechnya are fighting for Putin now. And the government of Georgia resist attempts to draw it in war with Russia like crazy, so they also appreciate the peace with Russia.
>Would you deem tweets that encourage donations toward Ukraine's military defence to be "promoting war"?
Actually this is promoting war. Because if you are donating to someone who is at war, you are participating in this war.
Some people just think that Russians will never come and ask them why did these people give money to kill their brothers.
Also it works like a promo. First you are supporting someone with tweets. Then you are sending money. Then you are sending weapons. Then they send you to the battlefield, because You know, it's very important to support Ukraine.
I guess it's true that there would be no more war if everyone just rolled over any time a tyrant wanted to conquer a territory. But I think you can agree that wouldn't mean an end to the worst aspects of war, correct? Once the tyrant conquers, the death and oppression doesn't abate. At some point, people have to fight back, and we call that war.
No one wants to be in a war except malignant psychopaths like Putin. But once you are, the only way back is through.
> The profit from EU gas market actually covers any possible costs of any EU involvement in Ukrainian crysis, except maybe nuclear strike by France.
So how much is the life worth of six conscripted Russian soldiers in an APV killed by an NLAW? I struggle to understand how you've done the maths. Furthermore I believe that the Russian Federation's current issues are not wholly money but ability to produce the complex components required for new armour.
You're valuing the impact of a citizen as the compensation paid for their death. You're not factoring in the long-term support of widows, the impact on fatherless children, future birth rate, social unrest or loss to GDP for the jobs they had before their lives were thrown away for nothing in the Donbas.
Ukraine and Russia were same country like almost forever. No one sane was expecting a war between them.
Don't underestimate ability of polititians to screw things up.