Starodubshchyna, A Russified, Historically Ukrainian Borderland

Author

Rendiuk Teofil

a Doctor of History, senior research fellow at the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department

Starodubshchyna, A Russified, Historically Ukrainian Borderland

Abstract

The article examines for the first time the protracted and negative, for the national interests of Ukraine, process of purposeful expansionist policy, initially of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (XVIth–XVIIth centuries), and later of the Russian Empire (XVIIIth to XXth centuries) and Soviet Russia (1918–1920) in relation to Starodubshchyna as an autochtonal Ukrainian ethnographic territory.

A particular emphasis is placed on identifying the role of the reiterated Russian military factor in the violent seizure of the region, as well as personnel, religious, educational, linguistic and cultural expansion by Moscow. It is ascertained that the Russification and occupation policy pursued consistently by Moscow and St. Petersburg over half a millennium with regard to the ancient Ukrainian territory of Starodubshchyna has eventually led not only to the loss of a significant Ukrainian territory, but also to the virtual disappearance of a part of the Ukrainians  in this ethnographic region.

It is emphasized that nowadays the territory of former Ukrainian Starodubshchyna is a part of Bryansk Region of the Russian Federation, viz. Hordiyevka, Zlynka, Klymovo, Klyntsi, Krasna Hora, Mhlyn, Novozybkiv, Pohar, Pochep, Starodub, Surazh and Unecha districts. The total area of ??this portion of the Ukrainian territory unjustly taken away by Bolshevik Russia in 1919 and bordering on Chernihiv Region of our state, is about 15 thousand square kilometres.

It is concluded that, while extrapolating the process studied in the article to the current annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea by the Russian Federation, as well as the hybrid Russian-Ukrainian war in some parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the expansion of the Russian World to cultural, educational, linguistic, religious and ideological activities of independent Ukraine, one can easily infer that the basis of modern occupation policy of Moscow are well-established scenarios, one of which fully relates to the historical fate of the original Ukrainian territory of Starodubshchyna.

Keywords

Kyivan Rus, Principality of Chernihiv, Chernihiv-Siversk lands, Starodub, Starodubshchyna, Poland, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Tsardom of Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, Starodub Cossack Regiment, Ukrainian border ethnographic region, Russification.

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