Slovo o polku Igoreve, Rus'/Rossija

[Milman/Rancour-Laferriere]

9 May 98

Colleagues,
I am enjoying the interventions of Markus Osterrieder, and I look forward
to pulling out my German dictionary and reading the articles he mentions.

In the meantime, I note his suggestion that there was great tribal
diversity in Rus' (or in various areas of Rus' in its various temporal
incarnations).  In addition, there was great educational and political
diversity.  Perhaps the only people we should be calling Rusians were the
various East Slavic elites who thought of themselves as Rusians.  Most
occupants of the territory/territories in question did not "know" they were
Rusians.  Indeed, I am not sure even the elite knew, for I see no evidence
that "rus'skii" was an ethnonym.  The widespread term "rus'skaia zemlia"
does not seem to have been ethnonymic, but more dynastic or even cultish.

Similarly, most occupants of Russia did not "know" they were Russians until
late nineteenth-early twentiethth centuries.  Instead, as Valerii Tishkov
(following the lead of Gellner, Anderson) points out, they called
themselves "locals," "Pskovians," "Dukhobors," "Pravoslavnye," etc. 
National identity among the masses is a remarkably recent development.  And
again, even among the elite national consciousness was slow in coming.  Can
anyone provide an example of "russkii" used as an ethnonym before the
eighteenth century (as in the standard ethnographic term "russkie," not as
an ordinary adjective)?  I find Avvakum calling Aleksei Mikhailovich a
"rusak" in the seventeenth century, but this is unusual.

If the foregoing is true, then it is certainly an anachronism to be
speaking of "Kievan Russia" / "Rossiia kievskaia," as many have ever since
Karamzin (and this apart from the fact that the term offends some
Ukrainians).  "Russia" / "Rossiia" came in late, probably from Latin via
Polish.  The term came to be attached to the expanding Muscovite empire. 
Rus' was earlier, and Rusians were not Russians because Russians did not
exist yet.  The term "russkie" contains an etymological memory of Rus', but
that does not suffice to synonymize Rusians with Russians.  As Keenan has
observed, there is practically no evidence that participants in the initial
Muscovite expansion of the late fifteenth-sixteenth centuries  which led to
the formation of "Rossiia" even thought they were restoring the legacy of
Kievan Rus'.  That particular reclamation project, which continues to this
day in some quarters, did not get under way until the middle of the
seventeenth century, around the time Muscovy was expanding into Kievan
territory.  One purpose of that project has been to deny legitimacy to any
potential heirs besides Russia to the "post-Kiev space" (Roman Szporluk),
and to ensure that "Ukraine has no independent historical existence" (Paul
Robert Magocsi).

To return to the Igor tale.  I think I will continue to teach it in my
"Russian Culture" course because it has so much to offer as a literary gem,
and now because it has even more to offer than it did before in terms of
ethnohistorical debate.  Certainly I do not want to "police" what tradition
the work should be attached to, and I'm sorry if I conveyed that
impression.  I actually don't mind if my colleagues in the English
department teach Tolstoy, and I even edited a book recently by mostly
English professors, a couple of whose articles were on Dostoevsky. 
However, I will continue to point out that those Russians who foster a
"myth" that "appropriates" the Igor tale (to use Douglas Clayton's terms)
are best characterized as Russian nationalists (and of course Ukrainians
who do are Ukrainian nationalists).  And I will continue to insist, with
Lunt, that Rusians were not Russians.

Cheers,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Professor, Director of Russian
University of California, Davis
BarDan at compuserve.com

PS. - I don't have a damned thing to say about Jeffrey Sachs.