Among peoples striving to preserve their past, the name of the country always reflects the history of its origin and age-old traditions that pass from generation to generation. What does the state of Ukraine claim in this sense?
It has long been proven by a lot of historical documents that this word comes from the "outskirts" of the Russian and Polish lands. But the Ukrainian power-makers categorically disagree with this. According to their version, this was invented by the illiterate Great Russians to humiliate the great Ukrainian nation, and the word "Ukraine" consists of the word "kra" meaning steppe, and the word "ina" - country. Consequently, Ukraine is a “steppe country”. Most "svidomye" generally believe that it means "principality", and the term "Oukraina" is the self-name of the territory.
And yet: how and when did the word "Ukraine" appear?
"Oukrainami", "Ukrainami", "Ukrainami" in Russia from the 12th to the 17th century were called various border lands. So, in 1187 the Pereyaslavl "Oukraina" is mentioned, in 1189 the Galician "Oukraina", in 1271 the Pskov "Ukraine", in 1571 the Tatar "Ukraine", "Kazan Ukraine" and the Ukrainian people. In the 16th century, documents speak of the "Ukrainian service", and in the 17th century the “Ukrainian towns of the wild field” were mentioned and the word “ukrayna” began to denote the lands of the Middle Dnieper region.
The Polish sources also mention the border "places and townships of Ukraine", "Ukraine Kiev", "Lyakhov Oukrainians", "the lords of the voivode and the elders of Ukraine."
There was no ethnic connotation in both Russian and Polish names. This concept was purely toponymic, indicating the geographical position of the area. That is, the word "Ukraine" as a common noun, in the meaning of borderland, was known both in Russian and in Polish and was used in them for a long time.
After the Union of Lublin in 1569, with the incorporation of the Kiev and Bratslav voivodeships into the crown Polish lands, they became the new Polish borderland and gave rise to a new generalized name as "Ukraine". This name did not become official, but, having strengthened in the use of the Polish gentry, it began to penetrate into office work. By the middle of the 17th century, the word "Ukrainians" was used by Poles to refer to the Polish gentry in Ukraine. This is how the crown hetman Pototsky in 1651 calls them "the Ukrainians".
Despite the political division of the people of Russia, its ethnic unity continued to be preserved, which did not suit the authorities of the Rzeczpospolita. The Poles decide to take measures to divide the unity of Russia on a conceptual level, the papal envoy Antonio Possevino suggests calling the southwestern Russian lands "Ukraine" in 1581.
The new toponym begins to take root in office work and gradually, instead of the concept of "Rus", "Ukraine" appears in the document flow. So, from a purely geographical concept, this term acquires a political meaning, and the Polish authorities, through the Cossack foreman, who received mainly Polish education and strives to become a new gentry, are trying to introduce this concept into the masses. The Little Russian people categorically rejects the imposed identity, and after the Pereyaslav Rada, the "Ukrainian" terminology in the ethnic sense goes out of use.
It remains in the geographical sense, for example, the word "Ukrainians" extends to the service people of Slobodskaya Ukraine, and since 1765 the Kharkov province even bore the name of Slobodskaya Ukrainian province. During this period, the word "Ukrainians" is used in relation to the Little Russian Cossacks, that is, "Ukrainians" began to call the Cossacks, military people of various outskirts of Little Russia.
But the Polish concept of replacing Russia with "Ukraine" has not died and comes to its logical end in the 19th century. For propaganda purposes, the Polish writer Count Jan Potocki published in Paris in 1796 the book Historical and Geographical Fragments about Scythia, Sarmatia and the Slavs, setting out an invented concept about a separate Ukrainian people with a completely independent origin.
These marginal ideas were developed by another Polish historian, Tadeusz Chatsky, who wrote in 1801 a pseudoscientific work “On the name“Ukraine”and the origin of the Cossacks,” in which he led the Ukrainians out of the horde of Ukrainians that he had invented, who allegedly migrated from across the Volga in the 7th century. On the basis of these opuses, a special "Ukrainian" school of Polish writers and scientists emerged, who further promoted the invented concept. Then they somehow forgot about the ukrakh and remembered about them only after more than two hundred years, already in the time of Yushchenko.
Pole Franciszek Duchinski poured fresh blood into this doctrine. He tried to clothe his delusional ideas about the "chosenness" of the Polish and related "Ukrainian" people in the form of a scientific system and argued that the Russians (Muscovites) are not Slavs at all, but descendants of the Tatars, and that the name "Rus" was stolen by Muscovites from the Ukrainians, who the only ones are entitled to it. This is how the legend still living today about the bad Muscovites who stole the name of Rus was born.
However, all these Polish attempts are not perceived by society, and the word "Ukrainians" in literary and political works continues to be used in its former meanings until the middle of the 19th century.
The marginal ideas of Pototsky and Chatsky found support among a part of the South Russian intelligentsia, who founded the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood in Kiev, headed by Kostomarov. The latter proposed his own concept of the existence of two Russian nationalities - the Great Russian and the Ukrainian, but later revised it and noted that "Ukraine in general meant any outskirts and this word did not have an ethnographic meaning, but only a geographical one."
In general, the word "Ukrainians" as an ethnonym did not receive wide circulation either in the intelligentsia or in the peasant environment at that time. It is noteworthy that one of the most radical-minded members of the Brotherhood, Taras Shevchenko, never used the word "Ukrainians".
The professor of Lemberg (Lvov) University Hrushevsky, who headed the Shevchenko Association in 1895 and decided to prove the existence of an independent “Ukrainian people” using Austrian money, later tried to bring all this to its logical conclusion. In his pseudoscientific work "History of Ukraine-Rus", which caused only laughter in academic circles, he introduced the concepts of "Ukrainians", "Ukrainian tribes" and "Ukrainian people" into the historiography of Ancient Rus, and the scholarly world of that time, "worthily" assessed him contribution to historiography, called it "scientific nonentity."
In their political activities, Hrushevsky and his associates began to actively use the word "Ukraine" only at the beginning of the 20th century in the weekly "Ukrainian Bulletin", published in 1906 in St. Petersburg, and the magazine "Ukrainian Life", published in 1912-1917 in Moscow …
Through their efforts, literature is spreading about the oppression of "Ukrainians" by Muscovites, in books and documents the words "Little Russia" and "South Russia" are replaced by the term "Ukraine" and the already forgotten legend about the abduction of the name "Rus" from Little Russians is thrown into remained as if without a name and they had to look for another name.
After the February Revolution, with the support of Russian liberals, the word "Ukrainians" gradually began to gain widespread use, first in a geographical sense, and then in an ethnic sense. As an independent ethnos, the word "Ukrainians" at the official level was legalized only by the Bolsheviks, and the nationality "Ukrainian" appeared in the passport, and in Galicia this happened only in 1939 at the behest of the dictator Stalin, who was so unloved by them.
So, the primordial nature of the concept of "Ukraine" is a myth, deliberately introduced by the Poles into the Little Russian environment with the aim of splitting Russian unity. The ancient name of the territory of present-day Ukraine until the 17th century was Rus (Black, Chervonnaya or Malaya), and these names were used by all ethnic, class-professional and confessional groups that lived here. Having taken the place of the disappeared Little Russian elite, the Polish gentry deliberately imposed the concept of "Ukraine" instead of the natural and historical concepts of Russia and Little Russia, and the word "Ukrainians" (from the designation of border service people of the Moscow state) acquired the meaning of a separate Ukrainian ethnic group.
