2022.02.22 民族神话是如何煽动冲突的

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Andrei Zorin, a professor of Russian at the University of Oxford, explains how national mythologies foment conflict
Russians see Ukrainians as brothers. But families sometimes break apart

Feb 22nd 2022



Political leaders tend to believe that they take their own decisions. In fact, they are often dragged into action by the course of events, and enslaved by popular mythology that they themselves have promoted. With conflict looming between Russia and Ukraine, it is therefore important to understand the history of the two countries’ relationship. Fundamental differences exist between their historical mythologies, and between how they view themselves and each other.

In a televised address to the Russian nation on February 21st President Vladimir Putin all but declared war on the Ukrainian government in Kyiv. To the bewilderment of many observers, Mr Putin has recently become an amateur historian and started writing essays about Russia’s past. His address drew on the most important of those, published last summer, in which he insisted that Russians and Ukrainians are of the same Slavic nation. This revived thinking from before the revolution of 1917 which applied the term “Russian” indiscriminately to Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians. It defined them respectively as Velikorosy, Malorosy and Belorusy (Great, Little and White Russians). The Soviet regime got rid of those titles, but retained and enhanced the traditional notion of “brotherly” relations between the countries, with Russians playing the role of elder brothers.


Today, when Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of a major war, that idea of kinship may seem preposterous. Yet few conflicts are as deep and irreconcilable as family feuds. The omens are especially bad when one of the “brothers” believes in his natural right to be in charge of the whole family and the other is independent-minded and rebellious. Remember the Bible, where human history begins with a fratricide.

The family tensions between Russia and Ukraine are aggravated by a dispute over their heritage. Russia’s understanding of history idealises Kyiv as “the mother of all Russian cities”, and the source of Russia’s religion, culture, alphabet and a network of dynastic and military connections. The huge statue of the Kievan prince Vladimir, who baptised Old Rus, was erected in 2016 near the entrance to the Kremlin. If this claim on Kyiv’s past were to be renounced, not only would Russian history be shorter by at least a quarter of a millennium, but Russia would also, more importantly, be deprived of its European identity.

Russia’s historical narrative is to a large extent defined by miraculous transformations that turn even the most humiliating defeats into apocalyptic triumphs. The traditional stories of major Russian wars–be it against the Poles in the 17th century, the Swedes in the 18th, the French in the 19th or the Germans in the 20th–all follow the same pattern. After initial defeats that put the country on the brink of utter ruin, a strong leader mobilises the nation and imposes a devastating defeat on the enemy.

Mr Putin appears to be exploiting this tradition. Over the past 20 years his propaganda has attempted to convince Russians that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not their country’s liberation from communist dictatorship but “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. And that this was caused by dastardly Western intrigue. The implication is that this “catastrophe” should once again be turned into a glorious victory. That process supposedly started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. The reunification of the broken Slavic body, by bringing Belarus and Ukraine back under the protection of Great Russia, as the Kremlin imagines it, would crown Mr Putin’s triumph.


The Ukrainian identity could hardly be more different. It has been built in contradistinction to that of “Moscals”, as Ukrainians once called their northern neighbours. Whereas Russia’s historical narrative is built on the notion of a powerful autocrat, Ukrainian political imagination is shaped by the legacy of the Zaporozhskaya Sich. This Cossack military democracy navigated between three major powers–Russia, Poland and Turkey–for over 200 years and managed to sustain its own independence until the alliance with Moscow signed in 1654 by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky, the elected leader of the Sich, gradually sucked Ukraine into Russia’s orbit.

For more than three centuries Ukrainians made spectacular careers in Muscovy, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, holding positions of ministers, church metropolitans, governors, generals and cult figures. Even today many leading Russian officials were born in Ukraine and carry distinctly Ukrainian surnames. The price of such successes was the suppression of the original Ukrainian national, cultural and linguistic specificity regarded in Russia as a sort of stubborn and eccentric superstition.

But nostalgia for that past independence was never fully extinguished. The ideal of the Zaporozhskaya Sich lingered on. It was present even in the hearts of communist apparatchiks, such as Leonid Kravchuk, the last leader of Soviet Ukraine and the man who took it into independence in 1991.

Russia’s leaders have never come to terms with the idea of Ukraine as a separate nation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they saw its drift towards the West as a betrayal of Russian-Ukrainian familial ties. And yet, however permanent such sentiments may seem, they have changed in the past.

Consider how Russian state and church propaganda accused the Poles of betraying the brotherhood of Slavic Orthodox nations following Polish uprisings in the 19th century. Russia accused the Poles of being seduced first by the Vatican and then by revolutionary France. At the same time, for liberal Russians critical of the authorities, Poland was the embodiment of the European world and thus a subject of adoration.

Today Poland is predominantly perceived in Russia as just another foreign country. Ukraine has replaced Poland in Russia’s consciousness and similarly divided Russian society. As with Poland in the 19th century, the jealous animosity that many Russians experience today towards their unfaithful “brothers” in Kyiv can be seen as the inchoate recognition of the Ukrainians as a separate nation.

History has unlimited resources to teach its lessons even to the most stubborn students. I am all but sure that the majority of Russians, and their leaders, will eventually learn to accept Ukrainian independence. Alas, that prediction will be of little comfort to those who have to bear the cost of their obstinacy today. ■

Andrei Zorin is a professor of Russian at the University of Oxford.



牛津大学的俄语教授安德烈-佐林解释了民族神话是如何煽动冲突的
俄罗斯人将乌克兰人视为兄弟。但家庭有时会破裂

2022年2月22日



政治领导人往往认为他们自己做出了决定。事实上，他们经常被事件的进程拖入行动，并被他们自己所宣传的流行神话所奴役。随着俄罗斯和乌克兰之间的冲突迫在眉睫，因此了解这两个国家的关系历史很重要。两国的历史神话之间，以及两国对自己和对方的看法之间存在着根本性的差异。

2月21日，弗拉基米尔-普京总统在对俄罗斯全国的电视讲话中，几乎向基辅的乌克兰政府宣战。令许多观察家感到困惑的是，普京先生最近成了一名业余历史学家，开始写关于俄罗斯历史的文章。他的讲话借鉴了去年夏天发表的最重要的一篇文章，其中他坚持认为俄罗斯人和乌克兰人属于同一个斯拉夫民族。这恢复了1917年革命前的思维，即把 "俄罗斯人 "一词不加区分地应用于俄罗斯人、乌克兰人和白俄罗斯人。它将他们分别定义为Velikorosy、Malorosy和Belorusy（大俄罗斯人、小俄罗斯人和白俄罗斯人）。苏联政权摆脱了这些称号，但保留并加强了国家之间 "兄弟 "关系的传统概念，俄罗斯人扮演着兄长的角色。


今天，当俄罗斯和乌克兰处于一场重大战争的边缘时，这种亲属关系的想法可能显得很荒谬。然而，很少有冲突能像家庭恩怨那样深刻和不可调和。当其中一个 "兄弟 "相信自己有掌管整个家庭的天然权利，而另一个则思想独立、叛逆时，预兆就特别糟糕。请记住《圣经》，人类历史是以自相残杀开始的。

俄罗斯和乌克兰之间的家庭紧张关系因其遗产纠纷而加剧。俄罗斯对历史的理解将基辅理想化为 "所有俄罗斯城市之母"，以及俄罗斯的宗教、文化、字母和王朝与军事联系网络的来源。2016年，在克里姆林宫的入口附近竖立了基辅王子弗拉基米尔的巨大雕像，他为旧俄罗斯进行了洗礼。如果放弃对基辅历史的这一要求，不仅俄罗斯的历史将缩短至少四分之一个千年，而且更重要的是，俄罗斯还将被剥夺其欧洲身份。

俄罗斯的历史叙事在很大程度上是由奇迹般的转变来定义的，即使是最屈辱的失败也会变成世界末日般的胜利。俄罗斯重大战争的传统故事--无论是17世纪对波兰人、18世纪对瑞典人、19世纪对法国人还是20世纪对德国人--都遵循同样的模式。在最初的失败将国家置于彻底毁灭的边缘之后，一位强大的领导人动员全国人民，对敌人进行了毁灭性的失败。

普京先生似乎正在利用这一传统。在过去的20年里，他的宣传试图让俄罗斯人相信，苏联的解体并不是他们国家从共产主义独裁统治下获得的解放，而是 "20世纪最大的地缘政治灾难"。而且，这是由卑鄙的西方阴谋造成的。言下之意是，这场 "灾难 "应该再次被转化为光荣的胜利。这个过程据说始于2014年对克里米亚的吞并。正如克里姆林宫所想象的那样，通过将白俄罗斯和乌克兰重新置于大俄罗斯的保护之下，重新统一这个破碎的斯拉夫体，将为普京先生的胜利加冕。


乌克兰人的身份与此截然不同。它是在与 "莫斯科人 "的身份相对立的情况下建立起来的，乌克兰人曾这样称呼他们的北方邻居。俄罗斯的历史叙事建立在一个强大的独裁者的概念上，而乌克兰的政治想象力则是由Zaporozhskaya Sich的遗产所塑造的。这个哥萨克军事民主国家在三个大国--俄罗斯、波兰和土耳其之间游走了200多年，并设法维持了自己的独立，直到1654年，由Sich的当选领导人Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky与莫斯科签署的联盟，将乌克兰逐渐吸进了俄罗斯的轨道。

三个多世纪以来，乌克兰人在莫斯科、俄罗斯帝国和苏联取得了惊人的事业，担任了部长、教会大主教、总督、将军和崇拜者的职位。即使在今天，许多俄罗斯的主要官员都出生在乌克兰，并带有明显的乌克兰姓氏。这种成功的代价是压制了乌克兰原有的民族、文化和语言特性，在俄罗斯被视为一种顽固和古怪的迷信。

但对过去独立的怀念从未完全熄灭。Zaporozhskaya Sich的理想仍然存在。它甚至存在于共产党人的心中，如列昂尼德-克拉夫丘克（Leonid Kravchuk），他是苏联乌克兰的最后一位领导人，也是在1991年带领乌克兰走向独立的人。

俄罗斯的领导人从未接受过乌克兰作为一个独立国家的想法。苏联解体后，他们认为乌克兰向西方的漂移是对俄罗斯-乌克兰家族纽带的背叛。然而，无论这种情绪看起来多么永久，它们在过去已经发生了变化。

考虑一下俄罗斯国家和教会的宣传是如何指责波兰人在19世纪波兰起义后背叛了斯拉夫东正教国家的兄弟关系。俄罗斯指责波兰人首先被梵蒂冈，然后被革命的法国所诱惑。同时，对于批评当局的自由派俄罗斯人来说，波兰是欧洲世界的化身，因此是崇拜的对象。

今天，波兰在俄罗斯主要是被视为另一个外国。乌克兰在俄罗斯的意识中已经取代了波兰，同样也分裂了俄罗斯社会。与19世纪的波兰一样，今天许多俄罗斯人对基辅不忠实的 "兄弟 "的嫉妒敌意，可以看作是对乌克兰人作为一个独立国家的不成熟的承认。

历史有无限的资源，即使是对最顽固的学生也能学到它的教训。我敢肯定，大多数俄罗斯人，以及他们的领导人，最终会学会接受乌克兰独立。唉，这种预测对那些今天不得不承受他们的顽固行为所带来的代价的人来说，将是一个小小的安慰。■

安德烈-佐林是牛津大学的俄语教授。