How Moscow Hijacked the History of Kyivan Rus

(This essay was first published in a collection by Yaroslav Dashkevych, PhD. History, “Learn to Speak the Truth with Non-Lying Lips” – K:Tempora, 2011, 828pp)

In creating their nation, Ukrainians need to examine and analyze their own history, based on truth, verified facts and historical events. For centuries under the rule of conquerors, Ukrainians were basically deprived of the opportunity to influence the formation of national awareness and the development of their history, with the result that Ukraine’s history was composed predominantly to the advantage of their conquerors. Especially troublesome is the question of the pretensions and demands of Moscow, and later Russia, concerning the historical legacy of Kyivan Rus.

Baptism of Rus-Ukraine 988 AD

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Euromaidan Exclusive: 2014 Reply of the Zaporozhian Kozaks to the Sultan (Putin)

Euromaidanpr has translated an eMail addressed to Vladimir Putin by the same Zaporozhian Kozaks who in 1676 composed their classic reply to Sultan Mehmed IV when he demanded their submission. (The 17th century original and historical backgrounds are included at the bottom.)

Zaporozhian Kozaks reply an eMail to Putin (2014)

 

O vile Defender of ‘Holy Russia’,
Thou Putin, most magnanimous mouse,
Before annoying peaceful neighbors,
Clean up the crap in your own house!

Your Moskva clansmen lurked in swamps
And worshiped stumps of trees,
Your forefathers groveled, crawled and kissed
The muddy boots of Khans with obedient ease.

The joke of Europe was the fable: your “Third Rome”…
And now “New Russia”?? Hey, what’s the matter,
Can’t keep your stories straight? (New drugs
Can help you stop hallucinating blather.)

The “Russian Empire” is just a wet dream,
All Lenin idols are crumbling down,
You’ll never get into Empress Catherine’s pants,
Thou withered, puny, inbred clown!

We SMSed the Prince of Darkness
For your accommodations – a heated room…
He said post-Perestroika Hell’s become quite civil,
But mangy worms like you and Patriarch Kirill
would cast a foul, repugnant gloom.

‘Old Nick’ won’t take you,
Even Beelzebub’s got some class…
Your Gazprom threats are useless,
Hell doesn’t give a damn about your gas!

The Evil One won’t even consider
The Super Bowl Ring you (like a street punk) stole,
But there are far more weighty sins
That suffocate your damned soul.

First off, you thief, return the glorious name
Of ‘Rus’ – Ukrainians’ pride and joy,
While Kyiv was the shining crown of Europe,
Moskva was only learning how to plunder and destroy.

Your Russia killed Ukrainians by the millions,
The Tsars, Emperors, Komissars, all hand-in-hand.
So tell Medvedev to wipe his filthy shoes
On Moscow’s doorstep, not in our cultured, Western land.

Maidan will shine for long hereafter,
Once you, your crooked mafia are long gone.
Democracy in Kyiv will flower – while Moscow
Will still be sighing for their ‘Empire’ and their Khan.

You leveled Grozny into dust,
You’ve turned the Chechens friends for life,
Some day they will return the favor,
We hear them sharpening the knife.

Politkovskaya wrote your profile portrait,
We tried to post it on FaceBook,
We tried to get the world to ‘Friend’ you,
Our Moderator said you’re a pathetic crook…

You squawked worse than a crow on YouTube
An out-of-tune rendition of “Blueberry Hill”,
Did your ‘green men’ tune the piano?…
What the hell is next, the “Barber of Seville”?

None too soon your term will end,
Your fellow Russians’ll boot you out the door,
Here’s a few jobs reserved for you –
If not, we can always find some more:

In Kyiv, you could scrub, wipe down
Yanukovych’s golden toilet bowls,
Imagine how high Kiselev will jump
At the spike in your approval polls!

Or maybe slicing ‘salo’ in a bar
Would fit your butcher qualifications?
(Perhaps you’ll lose your itch to carve
Vast regions from your neighbor nations…)

You’d better wait before applying
In Chechnya for that swineherd job!
We know it sounds appealing,
But they just might mistake you for the hog.

In Georgia, you can bottle pomegranates
And douse their sewers down with bleach,
In our Crimea, you can start collecting
The trash and bottles on the beach.

BTW, our Donbas miners send their love;
They always leave Crimea sparkling clean!
Don’t build casinos in Sevastopol;
Just play Russian Roulette with your carbine.

So LOL,
Thou Gottverdammte* KGB Drecksau*,
Thou limp-dicked Schlappschwanz*,
Go crawl back to your own Moscow.

Go stroke and fondle your judo boy-toys,
Go nibble your fish and veggie diet,
You ain’t no macho,
You’re scared to death of a little Pussy Riot!

Go shave your chest and kiss your horse,
Thou hairless, rat-faced loner –
The last Sultan we wrote at least
Liked women, and could pop a boner.

Our keyboard’s dim, our batteries are low,
The moon’s up high,
Time to break up our Kozaks meeting,
This date’s the same for you and I…
So here’s our final greeting:

‘Leck mich am Arsch’ *
And if that seems too harsh,
Well, here’s a send-off you can’t miss:
All our Ukrainian a-holes you may unisonly kiss!

     signed by:
Kyiv, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Crimea,
Odessa, Lviv, Donetsk, ‘NovoRossiya’ :-))
etc etc etc etc…..

 

– translated by Adrian Bryttan

– graphic art: Katya Mishchenko-Mycyk

---

 

German lexicon (Putin worked for KGB in Dresden):
Gottverdammte = God-damned
Drecksau = filthy pig
Schlappschwanz = candidate for viagra
Leck mich am Arsch = kiss my a**

---

Historical background to the 1676 letter and subsequent Ilya Repin painting:

An 18th century copy of the original letter (signed by “Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko and the whole Zaporozhian Host”) was found by an amateur ethnographer who handed it over to the famous historian Dmytro Yavornitsky. Yavornitsky happened to read it to a group of guests, including the renowned painter Ilya Repin. The artist had a great admiration for these Ukrainian freedom-fighters: “All that Gogol wrote about them is true! A holy people! No one in the world held so deeply freedom, equality, and fraternity.”

Repin made several studies and completed the most well known version in 1891, which Alexander III bought for 35,000 rubles, the highest sum ever paid for a Russian painting at the time. It is currently on display at the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.  Several full-size copies exist, including a famous copy by Paul Porfirov (Repin’s student} in the Cincinnati Art Museum. A second version, with different poses, was never completed and now is on display in the Kharkiv Art Museum.

Regarding the letter itself, the Zaporozhian (“za porohamy” – ‘behind the rapids’ of the lower Dnipro River) Kozaks had defeated Ottoman Turkish forces in battle. However, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed IV still wrote an arrogant, pompous and dismissive letter to the Kozaks demanding their submission:

Sultan Mehmed IV to the Zaporozhian Cossacks:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians — I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

–Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV

The Kozaks’ reply parodied the Sultan’s titles and mixed in, for good measure, a stream of invectives and vulgar rhymes. There are several translations and versions. The following is one of the tamer ones:

The Kozaks of the Dnipro to the Sultan of Turkey:

Thou Turkish Satan, brother and companion to the accursed Devil, and companion to Lucifer himself, Greetings!

What the hell kind of noble knight art thou,  that can’t slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The Devil voids, and thy army devours. Never wilt thou be fit to have the sons of Christ under thee: thy army we fear not, and by land and on sea we will do battle against thee.

Thou scullion of Babylon, thou wheelwright of Macedonia, thou beer-brewer of Jerusalem, thou goat-fucker of Alexandria, thou swineherd of Egypt, both the Greater and the Lesser, thou sow of Armenia, thou goat of Tartary, thou hangman of Kamenetz, thou evildoer of Podoliansk, thou grandson of the Devil himself, thou great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld and, before our God, a blockhead, a swine’s snout, a mare’s arse, a butcher’s cur, an unbaptized brow, and the crick in our dick. May the Devil take thee! That is what the Kozaks have to say to thee, thou basest-born of runts! Unfit art thou to lord it over true Christians!

The date we write not for no calendar have we got; the moon is in the sky, the year is in a book, and the day is the same with us here as with thee over there, and thou canst kiss us thou knowest where!

Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.

 

 

 

‘Censorship’ or Sanity? – Blocking Enemy Russian Agitprop on Ukrainian TV FAQ

Imagine if the Japanese had ‘merely’ surrounded Pearl Harbor in 1941, invaded with 30,000 soldiers, issued ultimatums to American troops, took over U.S. ships, beat up international journalists, bulled through a ‘referendum’ under military occupation and finally, annexed Hawaii… Can anyone seriously doubt these actions would likewise have been considered an act of war by FDR and the United States?

“KREMLIN SEWAGE”: RUSSIAN TV DISINFORMATION CHANNELS IN UKRAINE

In addition to armed military occupation and loss of territory, Ukraine has been deluged with Russian ‘news reports’, studio talk shows, blog and Youtube sites which knowingly present fake and untrue stories. There are three target groups for Russian disinformation: their own citizens, low-information Ukrainians, and the uninformed world opinion. Their unprecedented feverish rhetoric continues to openly advocate a breakup of the Ukrainian state and stokes widespread paranoia.

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 2

How Russia ‘fought against fascism’ – from 1920 until 1941 

Soviet and Nazi officers

For more than twenty years, Moscow’s closest ties in Europe were with Germany – starting in 1920 when Berlin supplied intelligence about the Polish Army to the Soviets. (And twenty years later, Stalin returned the favor when he had his radio stations in Minsk broadcast signals to the Luftwaffe to guide them to their Polish targets.) Everyone now knows about the secret 1939 Nazi-USSR Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, but even as late as October, 1940, Stalin was still  negotiating terms to join the Tripartite Pact with Italy, Japan, and Germany.

Karl Radek, fervent Stalinist and one of the authors of the new Soviet Constitution, wrote

“… only fools could imagine we should ever break with Germany… No one can give us what Germany can.”

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 1

The F-word is almost entirely meaningless today. “Fascism” has mostly become a perjorative word, used as an insult – and a scare tactic by Russia meant to paralyze opponents. In 1944, George Orwell wrote

“almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist'”.

It is now probably the most misused and overused term of our time.

“Anti-fascists” = fascists

But even more, it is becoming clear how “the fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists” ( a quote attributed to Winston Churchill). A quick look at the ‘antifascist’ crusaders in Moscow will suffice: police state in Russia, murdered opposition journalists, information monopoly on its own citizens, brutall suppression of its own minorities, military invasions of neighboring countries in “its sphere of influence” etc….

Four Myths about Stepan Bandera

by Artyom Krechetnikov, BBC Russia, Moscow

The figure of Stepan Bandera is once again in the spotlight, in connection with the revolutionary developments in Ukraine. Moscow commentators and participants of pro-Russian demonstrations in Crimea call the new government of Ukraine “Banderites” after Stepan Bandera, portraying  him as the devil incarnate.

In the estimations of observers, the followers of of the leader of OUN/UPA constitute only one minute segment of the “Orange” movement, but they attract a lot of attention because of their radicalism and excess. In real politics, they do not have any chance of affecting the policies of the government. This is just a scare tactic meant to discredit the proponents of European Orientation.

“Crimean Referendum! Separation!” – but where is Diversity and Tolerance? Crimea and Minorities in Ukraine FAQ

As a Crimean ‘referendum’ threatens dismemberment of Ukraine, American ideals of ‘Strength through Diversity’ and ‘E pluribus unum’ have gone unmentioned in the media – even though, unlike in the Russian Federation, all minorities in Ukraine continue to openly enjoy legal rights and official encouragement in all their activities. The newly-baked claims of some Russians in Crimea about “persecution” of minorities have not been borne out. Here are the facts about all minorities and their status in Ukraine, especially Russians and Crimea.

Ukraine and Russia “share a long and common history” FAQ

 

“A shared long and common history” implies Ukraine and Russia are somehow like Siamese twins – in their origins, historical development, and in their current values and outlooks. These assumptions are often repeated by the media, but closer examination reveals crucial substantive differences.

1. Common origins? For more than 300 years, ‘Moskovia’ was…  ‘Moskovia’

This is key for proper understanding… up until the early 1700s, most maps, government documents and all other records throughout the territory of present-day Russia proclaimed themselves “Moskovia” (Muscovy). All the people considered themselves Moskovites. But in trying to kick-start his country into contemporary Europe, Peter the Great searched for a more imposing pedigree (the word “Moscow” means “swampy or dark waters” in the ancient Finno-Ugric language).

Russian Minority Language in Ukraine FAQ

Media stories about “Russian minorities who fear for their language rights and that they fear persecution under Ukraine” continue to circulate following the Kyiv Revolution. On 3/1/2014, Christiane Amanpour casually mentioned on CNN that the new Ukrainian government had “banned” the Russian language. Banned?… Nothing could be further from the truth.

Fact versus myth:

1. Ukraine is not ‘divided’ by language.

Russian is used and understood by almost all citizens in Ukraine. Most YouTube posts from Maidan were in Russian and many activists spoke in Russian to reporters. Most of the ‘Comments’ supporting Maidan posted to TV and newspaper websites were also in Russian.