Russian lies examples, part 1. Who are Russian?
People who only recently started watching, reading or listening Russian propaganda may be surprised by how the facts are presented there. They often make sense, but in some bizarre way. Facts stop feeling real. After some time one starts questioning not only Russian propaganda, but even some reliable sources. And actually that’s the point. One of the purposes of Russian propaganda is to make people question and doubt everything. I call it Russian postmodernism.
This is the first article in my Russian postmodernist lies inquiry series. I will start this series with a simple question.
What is Russian?
One of the reasons Russia started the war in Ukraine was protecting Russians. But what are Russians exactly? No surprise, but there are at least three definitions — political, ethnical and historical.
Russian is the only ethnicity in Russian language which is not a noun, but an adjective (russkiy, русский). And this is the same adjective which is used to describe everything which relates to the Kyivan Rus — country which existed about thousand years ago. This way Russians can conveniently claim the ownership of the Kyivan Rus heritage. This gives us a historical definition — “Russian” is made of “White Russians” (Belarus), “Small Russians” (Ukraine) and “Big Russians” (Russia).
The term “Big Russian” is rarely used nowadays, and is usually simply shortened to “Russian”, giving us the second — ethnical definition of Russian (historically called Muscovites).
However as every modern nation, Russia has a third definition of Russians — the one who holds a Russian passport, no matter which ethnicity. Strangely enough, there is a noun reserved for the “passport-Russian” which is “россиянин” (rossiyanin), but for some reasons, it’s almost never used nowadays.
Contradicting claims
The problem is that these three terms are used interchangeably sometimes in the same sentence:
Ukranian nation does not exist, there are only Russians (historical definition) living there, who forgot their past, therefore Russians (as nation) should join army and fight against the opression of Russians (ethnicity) in Ukraine.
Russians are confused with these definitions themselves. They know that Ukrainian nation do not exist, but Ukrainians and Russians are brotherly nations. Or Buryats (Asian buddhists), even though never living in Kyivan Rus are Russians who should fight for Russians unity, which excludes Buryats, but is composed of “Big Russians”, “Small Russians” and “White Russians”.
Add to this a fact that many ethnical Ukrainians speak Russian as their primary or secondary mother-tongue, and things become even more confusing. Now Russians can (falsely) claim, that all Ukrainian who speak Russian are Russians — because how would you tell the difference? And Russia does not only want to “protect” the Russians, but also Russian-speakers in Ukraine. And remember — because “Russian” is an adjective, it’s easy to use it with people of other nationalities, as “Russian-Ukrainian”.
Conclusion
Russian propagandists often juggle with these terms, depending on what they want to say. If this is confusing even to Russians, surely outsiders will be confused too.
Whenever you hear claims that “Russians and Ukrainians are the same nation” or “Russians are oppressed in Ukraine” — please remember that not only these sentences are lies, but even if they were true, together they make no sense whatsoever, since they contradict each other.
Russian postmodernism casted doubt on the word “Russian” itself. You may see here an identity problem for Russians. But they should not try solving it by starting a war against Ukraine.
Buryats in Russian army fighting in Ukraine, image taken from https://war.obozrevatel.com/ukr/v-ukraini-vdruge-rozbili-pidrozdili-armii-rf-z-buryatii-yaki-chinili-zvirstva-na-kiivschini-likvidovano-nachalnikiv-rozvidki-ta-artilerii.htm