Russophobia is to Blame for Everything

Protodeacon Herman Ivanov-Treenadzaty | September 26, 2023

 

We warmly welcome the article by His Eminence Metropolitan Agafangel, “Christ is Leaving Ukraine,” and note that it takes a special degree of courage to write such things from within Ukraine itself…

[https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2025/10/christ-is-leaving-ukraine.html]

One can only agree with everything written in the article, and there is even much more that could be added, since in this Ukraine—so highly praised by some—many things are proceeding entirely awry.

The common denominator of Ukraine’s falling away—both from the Truth of Christ and from plain sound reason—is the overwhelming Russophobia that has flooded the minds and consciousness of Ukrainians under the influence of insane government propaganda. Everything can be explained by this Russophobia. Let us say again—it is quite understandable that today’s Ukrainians may feel animosity toward Putin’s Russian Federation. However, the shortsightedness of both the professional propagandists and their unfortunate victims lies in the fact that they do not see Russia beyond the Russian Federation—or rather, they confuse Russia with the RF.

Out of a sense of some kind of inferiority, today’s Ukrainians shy away from anything bearing the Russian name, forgetting that for centuries they themselves were Russians. A few years ago, Ukraine was widely praised for its policy—genuinely commendable—of “Leninfall,” but at the same time it fiercely defended the Leninist-Bolshevik borders inherited from the satanic revolution, and to this day clings to them with its teeth. Don’t look for logic here—there is none. Lenin, for them—strange and foolish as it may sound—was regarded as a purely Russian product, and it was for this reason alone that his monuments were torn down, tossed into the same pit along with the monuments of glorious Russian military commanders, public figures, renowned writers, and scientists. One should not look here for any true struggle against communism or condemnation of the Bolshevik past. It is simply Russophobia. And, in addition, unrelenting foolishness—for in so doing, they themselves renounce kinship with such figures, whom under different circumstances they might have been proud of.

Are the Ukrainian authorities truly conducting a commendable fight against the communist past by toppling monuments to the great Pushkin, by simultaneously banning the study of his works in schools, by dismantling monuments to the celebrated commander Suvorov, to the Foundress of Odessa—Her Majesty Empress Catherine II, to the world-renowned scientist Lomonosov, and even (!) to the Soviet Marshal Zhukov—not at all because he was a zealous, inhumane communist, but simply because he was Russian? Thus, he too is thrown into the same heap as Suvorov. From the same barrel comes the renaming of streets, squares, government buildings, cities, and villages. What is this—a struggle against communism, or utter darkness and folly? No, this is clearly that same repugnant Russophobia: a maniacal desire to expel even the slightest trace or memory of Russianness, to erase one's real past for the sake of some invented history.

As we can see, the desire of the Kiev regime to sever centuries-old historical ties with Russia reaches the point of absurdity and extends far beyond just renaming streets and dismantling monuments. His Eminence Metropolitan Agafangel is absolutely right in emphasizing the importance of the calendar reform. To change the calendar does not merely mean shifting a few days on the calendar—it is a break with Tradition, a rupture with the Church, an act of sowing division among the people. And division will undoubtedly follow, for it is impossible to imagine that there will not be people in Ukraine who desire to adhere to God-pleasing Tradition and who have no wish to rush headlong down the broad path of apostasy. The infamous OCU (Orthodox Church of Ukraine) hastened to seize upon this opportunity to deepen its apostasy—which is no surprise, since it merely obediently follows its “heretical mentor,” the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew. Thus, beginning with the ecclesiastical New Year according to the new style—that is, from September 1—it transitioned to the Gregorian calendar, so as to depart even further from the truth. It was emphatically declared that to follow the Orthodox Julian calendar is to belong to the sphere of the so-called “Russian World.” And so, together with the Uniates of the UGCC—two peas in a pod—they boldly crossed over to the new style. Anyone can understand the deeper meaning of this reform: God forbid they should celebrate Church feasts together with the Russians; far more preferable, it seems, is to celebrate and rejoice alongside Catholics and various Protestants—but not with the Orthodox…

This act was preceded by an equally sorrowful decision: to conduct divine services in the Ukrainian language, abandoning the long-sanctified Church Slavonic—most likely on the same grounds: to distance themselves further from the "Russian World." The ultimate aim of this ruinous reform is entirely clear: that within a single generation, the native, prayer-soaked, majestic Church Slavonic language would become incomprehensible and alien to the rising younger generation. And to achieve this goal, the architects of the Maidan revolution will stop at nothing.

At the beginning of the 20th century, when revolutionary thoughts were stirring in some minds, the process of promoting the “native language” (ridna mova) began in Little Russia, with the support and funding of the Austrian authorities. Divide et impera—"Divide and rule," as the ancient Latin proverb goes—was the policy of the Austrian governors in Galicia.

Today, alas, it has become unfashionable to appeal to sound reason and to the judgments of those who, not long ago, were considered indisputable authorities. Nevertheless, let us cite here the words of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, spoken in 1990. Speaking of the end of the 19th century, he writes: “In severed Galicia, with Austrian encouragement, a distorted, artificial Ukrainian language was cultivated—stuffed with German and Polish words—as well as the temptation to wean the Carpatho-Russians from the Russian tongue, and the lure of full Ukrainian separatism, which, among the leaders of the current emigration, bursts forth in crude ignorance, such as the claim that Saint Vladimir ‘was a Ukrainian.’” Here the great writer has in mind the particularly loud Ukrainian emigration in Canada and the United States, but today that same ignorance is widespread in Ukraine itself—both among the people and at the state level.

And here arises the question of the emergence of the so-called “Ukrainian language,” this newspeak—formed in deliberate separation from Russian—which Solzhenitsyn defined as a “cultivated, unnatural Ukrainian language.” This is a question that cannot be addressed in a few sentences, nor even in a single article, but would rightly deserve an entire dissertation—one that would dispel the mistaken conflation of the original Little Russian language with the newly-invented, artificial ukromova. This ukromova was carefully developed by figures such as Kulish at the end of the 19th century, followed by Hrushevsky, and in later years by various linguistic experimenters. These individuals, engaged in the creation of new words and concepts, worked to Polonize and de-Slavicize the Ukrainian language. In an astonishingly short period—during the 1910s and early 1920s—they managed to shape and implant this ukromova, which, as has been said, is an artificial mixture of Russian, Polish, Hungarian, German, and even Turkic elements, blended with arbitrarily invented words and expressions. It is noteworthy that in the early 20th century, the Russian opposition—various liberals and Social Democrats—supported these innovations as a tool to undermine the Tsarist regime. Nothing new under the sun… Ukrainian-language newspapers and publishing houses began to appear in this new “literary language,” whose chief merit lay in its alienation and independence from the Russian language, yet which simultaneously departed from the authentic Little Russian dialect. As we see, little has changed in the span of a century.

And here it should also be noted that a Russian person at the beginning of the 20th century could understand the Little Russian dialect—but let us state plainly that today’s “Ukrainian newspeak” would be inaccessible and incomprehensible to that same Russian person. Where is the former melodiousness of the Little Russian language of carols and folk songs? What we now hear is an unfamiliar, foreign, grating tongue. In the past, a Russian would even at times enjoy inserting a few Little Russian words into his speech. But today, when he hears Ukrainian being spoken, it brings no smile—on the contrary, even the harmless “Kyiv,” “Kharkiv” sound grotesque. It is an unpleasant, jarring set of irritating sounds.

To complete this picture of de-Russification, all that remains for the architects of Euromaidan is to abolish the Cyrillic alphabet and switch to the Latin script—then they will be fully ready to enter the European Union, and nothing will remain to bind them to their centuries-old Little Russian roots. Let us recall how, at the beginning of the second millennium, when the Western Church broke away from the fullness of Orthodoxy, driven by the same spirit now animating the Ukrainians, the instigators of the schism decided to underscore this separation by introducing an incorrect, reversed sign of the Cross. You cross yourselves that way? Then we will do it differently. To make it clear to everyone: We no longer have anything in common with you. So it is here—the invented confusion known as the Ukrainian language, created in the 20th century, just like the recent calendar reform, follows the same logic: We have nothing in common with you, with our past, or with our roots.

 

Russian source:

https://karlovtchanin.eu/index.php/stati/1082-rusofobstvo-vsemu-vina-protodiakon-ivanov-trinadtsatyj