2022. március 10.
Interjú Fedinec Csillával a The European Conservative hasábjain

There is a thin line between history and fiction, and awareness of this, while not limited to dictators, is certainly one of their many tools of control. Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz about the cultural origins of Ukraine. Is there any merit to Russia’s claim to Ukraine as historically invested? This past summer, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin issued a statement regarding Russian-Ukrainian relations, recollecting their shared historical past: “Russians and Ukrainians were one people—a single whole,” words that frame Putin’s claim on Ukraine as organic, as a return to an ideal past. Putin defended his words by writing a sweeping history of the intersectionality of their peoples, spanning over a thousand years beginning with the baptism of Rus’ and ending with Ukraine’s entanglement with NATO. The core of his message throughout the twenty-page account is that the two countries belong together: 

Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people. … Russia has never been and will never be “anti-Ukraine.” And what Ukraine will be—it is up to its citizens to decide.

It’s a nice dream, a fable, this artful arrangement of history to respond to the question of national identity and thereby justify Russia’s claims to Ukraine.

But there is more to the story. In an effort to better understand Ukrainian and Russian history, Gergő Kovács of the Hungarian news magazine Mandiner interviewed Dr. Csilla Fedinec, historian, editor, senior research fellow at the Budapest-based Research Centre for Social Sciences. Here she takes questions on Ukrainian identity, Russian-Ukraine relationship development, and the possibility for a historical reason behind the current war.