5 ms·

Always because tribalism implies 'us vs them'. Which is destructive.

int_19h 9y ago
Integration is often just tribalism at a larger scale. In Russia, for example, there's a popular line of thought that basically denies that Ukrainians are a separate nation - the claim is that they're just a "misled" subset of Russia, that their language is just a particularly badly distorted Russian dialect etc. It's not about integration - it's about Russian domination. For another example, Turkey treats Kurds in a similar vein.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  Well Ukraine never actually was a separate nation except very briefly after the revolution, then after the dissolution of the USSR. Also, Ukrainians are ethnically almost identical to European Russians, and more than half of them speak Russian. Ukrainian is an archaic dialect and probably would have died out if not for a resurgence in nationalism. Edit - to add to this, the way Ukrainian identity formed in the first place is that "Ukrainians" were the part of the Russian empire that came under occasional occupation by Western powers (Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary), so they developed their own identity by virtue of essentially being Russians cut off from the empire (they kept Cyrillic writing, attempted to keep the Orthodox religion, etc...). Even in Gogol's writings he refers to the Russian Empire, not Ukraine as a nation (even if the current Ukrainian authorities have censored/modified his writings). Oh, and I'm an ethnic Ukrainian in Canada whose family originated from the part of Ukraine occupied by the Austro-Hungarian empire... Edit2 - Sorry, just facts. "Ukraine" never was a country until last century. Maybe one of you down-voters could point out a Ukrainian state pre-1919 that identified as Ukrainian. Because Kievan Rus wasn't Ukrainian, it was Rus-sian....
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    It seems that emotional voting has become rampant on HN. Downvoting factual posts is among the most ridiculous of habits here.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    Interesting post. Thanks.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Thank you for an excellent illustration of what I was talking about. For those curious about how exactly this is distorted, briefly: Ukraine was not "part of the Russian empire that came under occasional occupation by Western powers". What is today called Ukraine was part of a single unified state called Kievan Rus, very roughly corresponding to today's European Russia + Ukraine + Belarus - indeed, it was its heartland, where the capital Kiev was located. Once Kievan Rus disintegrated because of feudal strife between its constituent principalities, its eastern parts were overrun by the Mongols, who integrated it into their empire as a vassal state of sorts (keeping the local dukes mostly in place, but using them as glorified tax collectors, and continuing to pit them against each other to keep them weakened), whereas the western parts were overrun by the then-ascendant Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which annexed the land outright, and mostly integrated the local nobility into its own hierarchy. Map: https://i.imgur.com/gXBDOJd.png https://i.imgur.com/gXBDOJd.png This is the point at which then-unified (mostly) East Slavic culture and language breaks apart. Western parts get more exposure to European culture, initially via Lithuania, and later also via Poland when the two form a commonwealth; Catholicism partially (but not wholly) replaces Eastern Orthodoxy, and language gets borrowings from Polish and Latin. Eastern parts get more exposure to the (then mostly Turkic) Mongol culture, with Eastern Orthodoxy becoming even more entrenched per Mongols' usual policy of supporting local religions and using them to control the rulers, and the language gets many Turkic borrowings. If you look at the map again, you'll see that the Mongol parts are (roughly) what would eventually become Russia, and the Lithuanian parts are what would eventually become Ukraine and Belarus. The parent is technically true that there was no state called "Ukraine" before WW1. But there was definitely a nation, calling itself and its language Ukrainian, and distinct from the neighboring Russians and Poles, whose statehood mostly dominated over the corresponding territory. The "Cyrillic writing" point is similarly bogus - Cyrillic alphabet and Eastern Slavic language was used heavily in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well, to the point of becoming the main language for clerical and legal works. First printed books in Eastern Slavic were printed in GDL. However, it would be incorrect to refer to that language as "Russian". It was an ancestor language common to modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. Historically, wherever that language was spoken, its speakers generally referred to it as "Rusian" (as in "language of Rus"). In Western sources, it is usually referred to as Ruthenian. Conflating it with Russian is one of the tricks played in this kind of propaganda. TL;DR version is that there's a substitution trick here: Russia claims to be the sole legitimate successor to Kievan Rus, and all other successor states to be "breakaway parts" (ironic, given where Kiev is located). A rough analogy would be if Italy said that it's the Roman Empire, and France and Spain are its breakaway provinces, and do not constitute nations in their own right.
  - musage 9y ago
    > "Ukraine" never was a country until last century. Nothing in the comment you replied to clashes with that. At all. The actual point, which stands unmoved, is something for which both Russia/Ukraine and Turkey/Kurds are mere examples. > Maybe one of you down-voters could point out a Ukrainian state pre-1919 that identified as Ukrainian. Why would they have to? They gained independence 1991. That's the most significant bit, no?
    - Mikeb85 9y ago
      > Nothing in the comment you replied to clashes with that. At all. The actual point, which stands unmoved, is something for which both Russia/Ukraine and Turkey/Kurds are mere examples. Except they really are all different situations. Turks and Kurds are completely different ethnic groups with different languages, origins and history. Kurds are closely related to Iranians, not Turks. > Why would they have to? They gained independence 1991. That's the most significant bit, no? Because there's revisionist history which states Ukrainians and Russians are different ethnic groups. They're not. They've shared the same history and culture for over a thousand years, they're the same ethnic group. Yes they're different nations now, but they're not different peoples.
      - musage 9y ago
        > Except they really are all different situations. That's the point of analogies. You point out similarities, not that things are the same. They're not even possible between things that are the same. > Yes they're different nations now, but they're not different peoples. Yes, and? The comment you replied to goes "there's a popular line of thought that basically denies that Ukrainians are a separate nation". Which, seeing how they're a separate nation, is just valid as Turks wanting to lord it over the Kurds.
        Mikeb85 9y ago
        It's a bad analogy. There are situations analogous to the Catalan quest for independence, and those aren't it. Maybe separatist feelings in Brittany, or in Quebec.

Integration is often just tribalism at a larger scale. In Russia, for example, there's a popular line of thought that basically denies that Ukrainians are a separate nation - the claim is that they're just a "misled" subset of Russia, that their language is just a particularly badly distorted Russian dialect etc. It's not about integration - it's about Russian domination. For another example, Turkey treats Kurds in a similar vein.

Mikeb85 9y ago
Well Ukraine never actually was a separate nation except very briefly after the revolution, then after the dissolution of the USSR. Also, Ukrainians are ethnically almost identical to European Russians, and more than half of them speak Russian. Ukrainian is an archaic dialect and probably would have died out if not for a resurgence in nationalism. Edit - to add to this, the way Ukrainian identity formed in the first place is that "Ukrainians" were the part of the Russian empire that came under occasional occupation by Western powers (Poland-Lithuania and Austria-Hungary), so they developed their own identity by virtue of essentially being Russians cut off from the empire (they kept Cyrillic writing, attempted to keep the Orthodox religion, etc...). Even in Gogol's writings he refers to the Russian Empire, not Ukraine as a nation (even if the current Ukrainian authorities have censored/modified his writings). Oh, and I'm an ethnic Ukrainian in Canada whose family originated from the part of Ukraine occupied by the Austro-Hungarian empire... Edit2 - Sorry, just facts. "Ukraine" never was a country until last century. Maybe one of you down-voters could point out a Ukrainian state pre-1919 that identified as Ukrainian. Because Kievan Rus wasn't Ukrainian, it was Rus-sian....
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  It seems that emotional voting has become rampant on HN. Downvoting factual posts is among the most ridiculous of habits here.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Interesting post. Thanks.
- int_19h 9y ago
  Thank you for an excellent illustration of what I was talking about. For those curious about how exactly this is distorted, briefly: Ukraine was not "part of the Russian empire that came under occasional occupation by Western powers". What is today called Ukraine was part of a single unified state called Kievan Rus, very roughly corresponding to today's European Russia + Ukraine + Belarus - indeed, it was its heartland, where the capital Kiev was located. Once Kievan Rus disintegrated because of feudal strife between its constituent principalities, its eastern parts were overrun by the Mongols, who integrated it into their empire as a vassal state of sorts (keeping the local dukes mostly in place, but using them as glorified tax collectors, and continuing to pit them against each other to keep them weakened), whereas the western parts were overrun by the then-ascendant Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which annexed the land outright, and mostly integrated the local nobility into its own hierarchy. Map: https://i.imgur.com/gXBDOJd.png https://i.imgur.com/gXBDOJd.png This is the point at which then-unified (mostly) East Slavic culture and language breaks apart. Western parts get more exposure to European culture, initially via Lithuania, and later also via Poland when the two form a commonwealth; Catholicism partially (but not wholly) replaces Eastern Orthodoxy, and language gets borrowings from Polish and Latin. Eastern parts get more exposure to the (then mostly Turkic) Mongol culture, with Eastern Orthodoxy becoming even more entrenched per Mongols' usual policy of supporting local religions and using them to control the rulers, and the language gets many Turkic borrowings. If you look at the map again, you'll see that the Mongol parts are (roughly) what would eventually become Russia, and the Lithuanian parts are what would eventually become Ukraine and Belarus. The parent is technically true that there was no state called "Ukraine" before WW1. But there was definitely a nation, calling itself and its language Ukrainian, and distinct from the neighboring Russians and Poles, whose statehood mostly dominated over the corresponding territory. The "Cyrillic writing" point is similarly bogus - Cyrillic alphabet and Eastern Slavic language was used heavily in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well, to the point of becoming the main language for clerical and legal works. First printed books in Eastern Slavic were printed in GDL. However, it would be incorrect to refer to that language as "Russian". It was an ancestor language common to modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. Historically, wherever that language was spoken, its speakers generally referred to it as "Rusian" (as in "language of Rus"). In Western sources, it is usually referred to as Ruthenian. Conflating it with Russian is one of the tricks played in this kind of propaganda. TL;DR version is that there's a substitution trick here: Russia claims to be the sole legitimate successor to Kievan Rus, and all other successor states to be "breakaway parts" (ironic, given where Kiev is located). A rough analogy would be if Italy said that it's the Roman Empire, and France and Spain are its breakaway provinces, and do not constitute nations in their own right.
- musage 9y ago
  > "Ukraine" never was a country until last century. Nothing in the comment you replied to clashes with that. At all. The actual point, which stands unmoved, is something for which both Russia/Ukraine and Turkey/Kurds are mere examples. > Maybe one of you down-voters could point out a Ukrainian state pre-1919 that identified as Ukrainian. Why would they have to? They gained independence 1991. That's the most significant bit, no?
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    > Nothing in the comment you replied to clashes with that. At all. The actual point, which stands unmoved, is something for which both Russia/Ukraine and Turkey/Kurds are mere examples. Except they really are all different situations. Turks and Kurds are completely different ethnic groups with different languages, origins and history. Kurds are closely related to Iranians, not Turks. > Why would they have to? They gained independence 1991. That's the most significant bit, no? Because there's revisionist history which states Ukrainians and Russians are different ethnic groups. They're not. They've shared the same history and culture for over a thousand years, they're the same ethnic group. Yes they're different nations now, but they're not different peoples.
    - musage 9y ago
      > Except they really are all different situations. That's the point of analogies. You point out similarities, not that things are the same. They're not even possible between things that are the same. > Yes they're different nations now, but they're not different peoples. Yes, and? The comment you replied to goes "there's a popular line of thought that basically denies that Ukrainians are a separate nation". Which, seeing how they're a separate nation, is just valid as Turks wanting to lord it over the Kurds.
      - Mikeb85 9y ago
        It's a bad analogy. There are situations analogous to the Catalan quest for independence, and those aren't it. Maybe separatist feelings in Brittany, or in Quebec.