SUMMARY:

Zenon Kohut explores the origins and development of the belief in historical, linguistic, cultural and spiritual unity of Russia and Ukraine. His article attempts to address these questions by tracing Ukraine’s role in the development of the “traditional scheme of Russian history”, a grand narrative of the origins and evolution of the Russian Empire. Although the idea of a unitary Russia was not fully developed until the mid-nineteenth century, its roots can be traced to the seventeenth century, when Ukraine and Russia first encountered each other. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the imperial “grand narrative” or “traditional scheme” of Russian history was fully formed. It began with the establishment of a pedigree for the Muscovite dynasty (the Stepennaia kniga), evolved into a story of an Orthodox Slavo-Rossian realm (the Sinopsis), turned into an account of an evolving and territorially shifting Russian state (Karamzin), and was finally transformed into the national history of Russia and the Russian people. Although Ukrainians had developed an alternate narrative, it had little impact on the evolution of the Russian grand narrative. In its fully developed form, the Russian grand narrative became an assertion of historical priority, a claim to privileged possession of territory and statehood, and a justification of a Great Russian ethnolinguistic definition of “Russianness” and Russian identity. It was this paradigm of historical, religious, and ethnic unity that had to be challenged if Ukrainians were to assert their own identity. Although Ukrainians went on to conceptualize a distinct national history, the unity paradigm of the Russian grand narrative continues to overshadow current perceptions of both Russia and Ukraine.