More on Ethnic Russians in Ukraine Re-identifying as Ukrainians

The Russian identity is actually quite weak without strong state power, which is what the authors rightly noted. It is in a sense an artificial identity maintained by a strong authoritarian state, which actively promotes nationalism and promotes the propaganda of this identity.

But when ethnic Russians are placed in a democratic foreign environment, even where they speak Russian and are fully connected to the Russian culture, such as in Ukraine, the gravitating force of Russian central government precipitously declines.

They prefer to identify as Ukrainians even if they still regard their native language to be Russian. Since their children are mostly being educated in Ukrainian language, the next generation will identify with Ukraine even more.

Ukrainians are capable of maintaining their identity and even their language for 3-4 generations in a foreign environment like the US or even Russia. Russians dissolve much quicker without a strong state to support their identity. It's much harder to identify with an empire when you live outside of it. Ethnic roots are much easier to identify with. But Russian identity is more than ethnic, it's imperial.

The interesting thing is that many Ukrainian villages in Siberia still speak Ukrainian. It's also interesting that many Russians who still believe Russian is their native language, are nevertheless re-identifying themselves as Ukrainians.

Ukrainians have contributed a lot of manpower to the growth of the Russian empire. Many of the cities in Siberia were started by Ukrainian Kozaks, many of whom still identify as Kozaks. Interestingly enough, their ethnicity was recorded in their passports by the Russin imperial government as a "kozak" ethnicity. Obviously, such an ethnicity doesn't exist. It's simply a replacement for "Ukrainian". Mostly Ukrainian fought in the Russo-Japanese War, The Crimean War, The Finnish War, and so on. Many Ukrainians have been sacrificed in these imperial projects. Although obviously Ukrainians must be good warriors, if they weren't they would not have been used in this way.

Some of the people changing their identification may be ethnically mixed Russian-Ukrainians, who were recorded as Russian in the Soviet times and are now justifiably changing their identification to Ukrainian.

Some other people who have "changed" their identification are people who were recorded as Russians during Soviet times and even had their lasnames changed to look Russian in the 1930s, but are in fact ethnically Ukrainian.

A good example is Gen. Morozov, who knew that his mother was Ukrainian, but had assumed that his father was Russian until he discovered after his father's death that both his parents were Ukrainian.

My own grandfather's lastname was Turkulov, so I thought he was Russian. But I found out that his father's lastname was actually Turkul'. (I have a copy of his Soviet file documenting his arrest and murder by the government.) The -ov was simply added by the Soviet government on Stalin's orders. This was especially the case with all the Muslim people groups - practically all of them had the -ov added to their names.

It is also a known fact that some Ukrainian cosmonauts had their lastnames adjusted to look Russian to an international audience.

Ukrainians in the Russian Navy

Pretty interesting article on the history of the Ukrainian NAVY: http://www.geocities.com/unavy/aUNRnavy.html

75% of the Russian Imperial Black Sea Fleet was made up of Ukrainians! And consequently, most of the 60,000 "Russians" who died in Russian Empire's Crimean War, were actually Ukrainian conscripts.

Most of the other Fleets of the Russian Empire - Caspian Sea Fleet, North Sea Fleet, etc., were also dominated by Ukrainians, and many of those ships put up Ukrainians flags shortly after the Ukrainian National Republic declared its independence on March 17, 1917, and declared their allegiance to the Ukranian state.

More here:
http://www.geocities.com/unavy/aUNRnavy.html

Russia Would Be Insane to Attack Ukraine

Americans were quite worried in 1996 about the fact that Ukraine was the world's third largest nuclear power and it was right next to Russia. The American government decided that they would rather deal with one major nuclear nation than with two major nuclear nations. And they were also afraid of a future nuclear war between Ukraine and Russia.

Condoleeza Rice was the main person who was sent by Bush I to "encourage" Ukrainians to give up the nukes in exchange for security promises. (Her PhD thesis was in Soviet military history.) If United States really will defend Ukraine in the event of invasion, then it was probably a good deal for Ukraine.

Ukraine was the closest to the West, so it was the most armed area of the Soviet Union. At the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine actually had more tanks than Russia. And it still has a significant defense advantage compared with other nations its size.

Ukraine was also a major part of the Soviet defense industry. Ukraine still makes most of the engines for Russian military helicopters and missiles and provides many jet engines. The largest missile factory in the world is located in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. It can make lots of missiles really fast.

Another interesting comparison is that Georgia had about 6 jet planes and 6 military helicopters. Ukraine has at least 600 fighter jets and I am not even sure how many military helicopters, along with one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world. (Ukrainian-designed Kolchugas can shoot down even stealth airplanes.) Any conflict between Ukraine and Russia would result in huge losses on both sides, both in human casualties and in expenditures on war.

That's another reason why it would be insane for Russia to invade Ukraine. They could loose the war, even without Americans entering the fight. In any case, their military would at least be badly damaged. What they are more likely to do is try to destabilize the situation in Ukraine from the inside, by supporting and financing various anti-Ukrainian groups inside Ukraine.

If you are Russia's neighbor, you better be strong (or have strong allies), because otherwise you are not going to be a nation for very long. That's the sad history of all of Russia's neighbors.