Russian statehood and Ukrainian separatism in Russian Emigrant prince A. M. Volkonsky’s study “Historical Truth and Ukrainophile Propaganda”

The purpose of the study is to analyze the opinion of one of the prominent representatives of the Russian post-October emigration of the 1920s and 1930s, Prince A. M. Volkonsky, on the foundations of Russian statehood and Ukrainian separatism, set out in his original study “Historical Truth and Ukrainophile Propaganda” published in Turin in 1920 and long unknown to Russians, as well as a number of the author’s other emigrant publications. The paper substantiates the significance of A. M. Volkonsky’s contribution to the objective coverage of forming the Russian statehood foundations and the exposure of numerous myths of Ukrainian propaganda in this regard, the interpretation of which has bene given in the paper in the context of discussions taking place in the Russian diaspora (N. S. Trubetskoy, P. M. Bicilli, P. B. Struve, N .O. Lossky, P. N. Milyukov, etc.) on Ukrainians, the Ukrainian issue, and the issue of Ukrainian identity. The paper reveals the main directions of A.M. Volkonsky’s criticism relapsed into “Ukrainianism” as an ideology of Ukrainian separatism, which denied the historical and cultural unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people and insisted on the ideology of special “Ukrainian people” who allegedly existed from ancient times, having nothing in common with Russians, which in real political practice, as the author believed, fostered hatred of all Russians in the minds of Malorosses and created a real danger of alienation from the Slavic world and subjugation to the West of the native Russian lands, which had been called Malaya and Velikaya Rus since ancient times.

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