Ukrainians or Little Russians?

Back in the summer of 1917, Vasily Shulgin and his like-minded people began to speak out as political opponents of the “Ukrainians-independent supporters” - supporters of the independence of Ukraine. At the end of 1917, this group decided to release a specialized publication that would allow a clearer presentation of the position in the “Ukrainian issue” of the “Bogdanovites” principles of unity of Ukraine and Russia, as opposed to the “Mazepians” ^[1] . The first edition of this collection, called “Little Russia” , was released in 1918 in Kiev . In this collection was placed an article of the former deputy of the State Duma of the IV convocation, the famous Kiev politician and publicist Anatoly Savenko with the name “Our national name”. "Encyclopedia of the history of Ukraine" this article Savenko was noted among the most important works of this collection ^[2] .

At the height of the Civil War, Savenko left Kiev and found himself in the location of the Volunteer Army , where he became one of the first employees of the Shulginskaya secret organization Azbuka , receiving the codename Az in it. In volunteer Odessa, with minor changes, the text of his Kiev work was re-published in 1919 in a collection of articles on the Little Russian issue published by the Preparatory Commission on National Affairs Commission chaired by the historian, Professor Ivan Linnichenko . The name of the work by Savenko was changed, here it was called “On the Question of Self-Determination of the Population of Southern Russia”. In the spring of 1919, Savenko wrote to the Odessa military governor Alexei Grishin-Almazov that the main slogan of whites in Little Russia should be “the slogan of fighting traitorous Ukrainians ” ^{[3] [4]} .

The command of the White movement in the south of Russia attached great importance to Savenko’s political experience, and in 1919 the text of his work was published in Rostov-on-Don as a separate brochure entitled “Ukrainians or Little Russians?”. This brochure was intended for ideological support of volunteer combat operations in Ukraine ^[5] . After the seizure of Kiev by the Volunteer Army, Anatoly Savenko returned to Kiev, was appointed head of the Kiev branch of OSVAG — the propaganda body of the White movement in southern Russia — and became the de facto head of Kiev in the fall of 1919 . Many of the postulates of this brochure became the basis of the national policy of the White movement in Kiev and the Ukraine (as the white leadership officially called Ukraine ^[5] ) in 1919.

In Soviet times, the booklet Savenko “Ukrainians or Little Russians?”, Published in Rostov-on-Don in 1919 , was among the prohibited books to be withdrawn from libraries and the bookselling network ^[6] .

In 1998, the article was reprinted in Russia in the collection Ukrainian Separatism in Russia. The ideology of the national split ”edited by Mikhail Smolin with the name of the Odessa version:“ On the issue of self-determination of the population of southern Russia ” ^[7] .

In the pamphlet, Savenko spoke "with criticism of " Ukrainians " , emphasizing the indissoluble link of Little Russia with Great Russia" ^[3] . Savenko's work was aimed at convincing public opinion that there were no grounds for the political independence of the Ukrainian people. Savenko himself, the son of the Pereyaslavl Cossack, identifying himself as a Little Russia, expressed the opinion that the term “Ukrainian” is correctly used not in the national, but in the regional-territorial sense. “In other words,” the author argues, “those residents of Little Russia who consider themselves Russians, sometimes use the word Ukrainians, but in the exact same meaning in which Russians who live, for example, in Siberia, call themselves Siberians” ^[5] . Like many other authors of this period ( A. Storozhenko , I. Linnichenko and others), Savenko calls Mikhail Hrushevsky , the scientific creator of Ukrainian separatism, who invented for Ukrainians both a special national name and the Ukrainian language ^[5] .

Savenko focuses on the fact that the opponents of the Ukrainian movement, and especially the region’s intelligentsia, acted at the beginning of the 20th century no less actively than the supporters of this movement, both politically and scientifically. He also draws on a small percentage of those who voted for the Ukrainian parties in all local and state elections in the Russian Empire , as well as in the elections to the Constituent Assembly ^[8] .

Savenko analyzes the data “on the preference of the inhabitants of Little Russia in the field of press” at the beginning of the 20th century , and concludes that the press in Russian was many times superior to the press in Ukrainian in terms of volume of publications and demand ^[8] .

Ukrainian political scientist and historian Dmitry Kornilov wrote about the work of Savenko that from the point of view of its historical value it is unequal: “Almost half of the article he devotes to the proof that since Ancient Russia the population of Dnieper has always called themselves Russian, all Kiev have called themselves Russians the princes, the Zaporozhian Cossacks and their leaders considered themselves Russian, ”and dealt with similar investigations, which are a“ dispute over terms ”, which are of no interest now and are incomprehensible modern th society. And only the other half of the work provides valuable facts of which he was a contemporary ^[8] .

In the Soviet period, the work of Savenko was forbidden. Among the few references to it in the press were, for example, one that was placed in No. 2 for 1927 in the newspaper "Evening Kiev" :

A prominent speaker, journalist and State Duma deputy is an ideologue of the nobility-landowner class. Shulgin's friend. Flaming organizer and mastermind behind the Beilis case and many other “cases”. The author of the reactionary brochures (eg. "Ukrainians or Little Russians?"). The famous head of Denikin "agitprop" - OSVAGA. Pathetic immigrant on the island of Halki. Such is the career of this guardsman in a tailcoat who had drowned out the seditious speeches of the Duma speakers with his loud voice.

- ^[9]

In modern studies, there are sometimes estimates of the booklet Savenko as "scandalous" ^[10] .

In paper editions

• Savenko A.I. Our national name // Ed. V. Shulgin. Little Russia. : collection. - Kiev: Share partnership, 1918. - Vol. 1 . - p . 20-32 .
• Savenko A. I. To the question of self-determination of the population of southern Russia // Proceedings of the preparatory commission on national affairs of the commission, Little Russian department. - Odessa , 1919. - Vol. 1. Collection of articles on the Little Russian issue .
• Savenko, A. I. Ukrainians or Little Russians? (National self-determination of the population of southern Russia). = Ukrainians or Little Russians? National self-determination of the population of South Russia. - Rostov-on-Don, 1919. - 32 p.
• Savenko A. I. To the question of self-determination of the population of southern Russia // Ukrainian separatism in Russia. The ideology of the national split . - Moscow, 1998. - p. 291-300. - 432 s. - (Ways of Russian imperial consciousness). - 5000 copies - ISBN 5-89097-010-0 .

In electronic editions

• Savenko A.I. On the issue of self-determination of the population of southern Russia (Neopr.) . Ukrainian Pages. The history of the national movement of Ukraine (ukrstor.com) (March 31, 2002). - Published with abbreviations from Sat. “Ukrainian separatism in Russia. The ideology of the national split. Circulation date August 4, 2012. Archived October 1, 2012.
• Savenko A. I. To the Question of Self-Determination of the Population of Southern Russia (Neopr.) (Electronic publication). Al No. 77-6567, publ.10210 . "Academy of Trinitarianism" (January 25, 2003). Circulation date August 4, 2012. Archived October 1, 2012.

• Denikin's appeal to the population of Little Russia
• Kiev branch OSVAG