Slovo o polku Igoreve, Rus'/Rossija

[Markus Osterrieder]

We should never forget that the conscious and unconscious mind of
medieval man was so different from ours. Can we accept that rusalki, all
kind of natural spirits, spectres, the deceased, were as "natural" as the
terms "nation", "state" itd for us moderns? They were daily experience.
There is the famous example of the 13th century peasant village
Montaillou in the County of Foix (Occitania, Southern "France") where you
had a special person who had to regulate the communication between the
recently deceased and their relatives. He was not a priest (the village
being under cathar influence anyway).

It is nothing but the mythology of modern historiography in the service
of patrotism/nationalism to describe identity and political reign of
medieval man in terms of "state" (there *is* a very concise background of
the original Italian term "lo stato" and the French "l'etat") and
"nation". Even languages are always apt to confusion. Just think what is
in the Slavic term "naROD". The same for the German "Volk". And the
"people", "le peuple", "populus", the "plebs"?

Who lived in Rus'? You had many different tribes. Slavic ones, Baltic,
Finno-Ugrian, Germanic (Scandinavian), Turk, Iranian tribes, Jews,
Armenian and so on. There was a Ruling Dynasty, an arising common written
language in various idioms, and the Church. The whole identity with
rus'kaja or rus'skaja zemlja was based on the Dynasty and Pravoslavie.
There were massive transplantations of settlers from different tribes all
over the history of pre-mongolian Rus'. Until the 19th century, the
notion of "tutajshi" was a very common one among the *peasants* (not the
elite) when they had to describe the "national" identity.

Historiography in this question is still stuck in this 19th century
concept of "national history", and this is a "fable convenue". Only
compare this with the mythology of "French history", "la nation
francaise", for example. It commonly starts with Charlemagne which is
complete nonsense. "La France" was but "la couronne" for a long time, and
even then, "l'ile de France" was reduced to very restricted parts of
today's Northern France. Even worse is "German History"! There is this
endless debate going on how to call the whole thing: History of the
Germans, the German-speaking lands, of "Germany"? In reality, it is
always an artificial construct up to a certain point in time (and even
then it happens more in the mind of the historian). Is there a Germany
today? Well, there is one German state, but this doesn't say much about
the minds of its inhabitants...

It is an important task for researchers to examine conscientiously the
use and the transported meaning of terms like "Rus'", "rus'kyj",
"russkij", "Rossija", "rossijskij", "Rossijane" in every period of time
and in every region *without* any pre-fixed concept, any "nationalistic"
purpose (like "nationbuilding") or political ideology. And the results
should NEVER serve ideological goal.

I remember a conference about Nationalism in East Central Europe, when a
British historian told his colleagues in German language that patriotism
was nothing but a disguised attempt at achieving personal, egoistic
advantages. A Polish colleague got so furious that he nearly jumped over
the table... Even for researchers it is not easy to find a common
language.

For those who read German, I worked on this question in two papers:
*Von der Sakralgemeinschaft zur modernen Nation. Die Entstehung eines
Nationalbewusstseins unter Russen, Ukrainern, Weissruthenen im Lichte der
Thesen Benedict Andersons. In: Formen des nationalen Bewusstseins im
Lichte zeitgenössischer Nationalismustheorien. Ed. Eva Schmidt-Hartmann.
Muenchen: Oldenburg 1994, S. 197-232.
*Das Ringen um die Vergangenheit. Mychajlo Hrushevs¹kyj und die
Problematik einer Konzeption der osteuropaeischen Geschichte. Muenchen
1998 (= Osteuropa-Institut Muenchen. Mitteilungen Nr. 30, 1998) (in
print).


Markus Osterrieder


On 08.05.1998 21:53 Uhr ipustino at syr.edu wrote:

>Before the 14th century there was one nation, that later divided into
>Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians and one language- Old Slavic. So there is
>nothing offensive for Ukrainians  that the State was Kiev Rus', as there was
>a tribe of Rus' who lived at that territory.
>
>Irena Ustinova
>
>
>and oAt 09:43 AM 5/8/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>>
>>>7 May 1998
>>>
>>>Colleagues:
>>>
>>>Edward L. Keenan has just driven another one of his golden nails into the
>>>coffin of Russian nationalist scholarship.  Not only is the Igor tale not
>>>part of "Russian" literature, it is not even a part of "Rusian" (Lunt)
>>>literature.
>>>
>>>Another way to look at this is to observe that there is one less reason for
>>>conflating things Rusian with things Russian, because there is one less
>>>Rusian cultural object for Russian culture to claim for itself.
>>>
>>>And this is good for Ukrainians, who are naturally offended by expressions
>>>such as "Kievan Russia" ("Rossiia kievskaia" - Berdiaev) in reference to
>>>Rus' before Russia existed.
>>>
>>>Let's just adopt Horace Lunt's term "Rusian" and stop offending the other
>>>East Slavs.
>>
>>This is not just policing "which works belong to which literary traditions"
>>as J. Douglas Clayton wrote, but ideological control of language and
>>linguistics. By the same token, Portugese should hate Spaniards for common
>>cultural history, and French should have it in for Italians for the common
>>Latin literature and language, and we should all hate each other for having
>>shared the common Indo-European language. And we should certainly support
>>the Greeks in their claim to the word Macedonian.
>>
>>Alina Israeli
>>
>>


************************************

Markus Osterrieder, M.A.

Osteuropa-Institut
Historische Abteilung
Munich, Germany

eMail: u9511bw at mail.lrz-muenchen.de