Historian explains origin of Russia and Ukraine | Serhii Plokhy and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian historian at Harvard University, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, and an author of many books on history of Eastern Europe, including his latest book The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.

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[LexClips]

Guest bio: Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian historian at Harvard University, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, and an author of many books on history of Eastern Europe, including his latest book The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.

[polarijet]

woah, haven't seen such a massive russian bot attack in quite a while

[golden_smaug]

This guy writes wonders. His book about Chernobyl is one of the best I've read on the subject

[nenadnovakovic]

So, if I got it right, it is not Rus-sians who are supposed to claim Rus origin, but instead Vik-ings and Ukrain-ians?

[mekhedashow]

Jeeeesh…so many ru bots, ew.
Plokhiy is one of the greats in this niche.

[andriyandriychuk]

I'm truly amazed Lex finally invited a Ukrainian.

[EscudoPadraoPrata]

I am again surprised he made so many major mistakes, probably because he went back and fort in a single historical period, the mongal woke. I believe he also made the mistake of understanding the Rus. The Rus was not of the same nature as other european mediavel states, quite far form it. Rus was a confederation of trading principalities. Trade organised alliances and priorities. The Rus was created in Novgorod. To protect their major trading route, to the back sea, that is to the Eastern Roman Empire. But that route fade away, as Constantinopla faded a way and the black sea coast felt into the hands of turkic nations, which eventually become muslims. Also, saying the maine trade of the Rus to be slaves is really messing up to many different eras. That's by the time of decadence of Kiev, a little before its destruction, and the Rus was not the only one envolved in enslaving, so were the poles and the teutonic mights. So the Black Sea route lost importance, so did Kiev, a new route was open, the one to the Caspian Sea that gave access to another very rich city, Bagdad. That route went through the volga river system. Vladimir-Souzdal was a very important principality if not the most important after Novgorod by the time Kiev is destroyed. Novgorod was the most important and powerful of all the constitutancies of the Rus, a traders republic with real stone walls, not wood walls like Kiev. Much more to the East Vladimir, Tula, Tver, Novgorod started to ignore Kiev, as the grow in terms of economic importance and expands to the east to explore products to export to the south. Moscow was founded in the place the Moskva river connects with the Volga, a fortess to control the trade between the north and the south before entering in the grounds of another major state, Eastern Bulgaria, later Kazan Kahnate. The mongals come but the mongols just wanted their taxes, they did not influentiated the everyday life of its subjuged peoples. The system of exchange of princies between the principalities, like it was tradition before the destruction of Kiev continued. The principalities dependent on the mongals had to had them confirmed by them, but Peskov or Novgorod did not (they were trader republics but elected a rudrik prince for a stipulated time as their military protector). When Kiev was destroyed, nothing really remained, the metropolit of Kiev and all the Rus moved to Vladimir and later to was forced to Moscow when the princies of the Vladimir principality moved the seat to Moscow. Moscow become the most important city in what was left of the Rus in the East. Pesok later Minsk allied with the Kindogom of Lithuania and in Halich the principality evolved to a Kingdom, claiming heritage from Kiev. They survived 150 years than were absorved by Poland and Hungary. By that time Moscow princies claime also the primacy over all other principalities. Bagdad will be destroyed by the Mongals and trade moves to silk road which comed from the east of Kazan. In the XVI cent. Moscow confrontate the Mongals, stop paying them the tribute, and anexed several principalities as a mater of trade war. The pivital moment is Ivan the terrible, of the sad one, which decides to conquest Kazan, to have direct acess to the trade routes in the east. Ivan invited several european and oriental scholars, had the penal code reformed, anexed Novgorod and call it self Tsar, a word used by the kings of Bulgaria before, meaning Ceasar. Ivan maries the last princesse of Constantinopla and percieves itself not just as the King of all Russ but also as the rightfull heir of Constantinopla. Later a path through the Ural montains is found and that allows the Russian to enter what we today call Siberia. It is also important to note Siberia was not conquested. Alliances between russian trader and local leaders lead to military alliances. Now the grave moment in Russian history is the time of trouble on the end of the XVI. Poland invades Moscow, it tries to convert it to catholicism and engares in extreamly bloody business. The Poles are eventually expelled but keep Smolensk. It now that thare is some religious character on the ties between Russia and the west but also a sence of pride to free Smolensk. 60 years long will the Russians try. A pleasent rebelian plus the emergency of a Kosak society achieve victory over the poles, the rebelians ask the Tsar for protection and in a treaty the poles gave the russians the richt bank of the Dnieper to Russia where a village call Kiev existed around the ruins of old orthodox monasteries. These are territorial conquest for conquest, but Russia is still a comercial empire. Peter the Great becomes King and wants to westernise Russia. But by funding Saint Petersburg he is actually creating new trading routes. The center of Peter still today has the bazar where traders from the silk road exposed their merchandise. But with westernization Russia will reinvent itself. I am surprised that this historian is more interested in tell the history of the historiography of Russia than a history of the Rus and Russia. Peter the Great created the strategy of the worm lakes which Ekaterina the Great, II, concreticized. We still far from reconquesting all the traditional lands of the Rus. The main goal is to secure access to the warm seas, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and eventually to the Mediterranian Sea. It is much later with Nikolai I and Alexander that the concept of the slavic empire takes form. Other very important moments in the history of Russia after Peter the Great, is the rise of Georgian refugees to the high ranks of the army, which lobbyed for the liberation of Georgia and to a lesser extend of Armenia, the stabilization of the eastern front in central asia, which was precipitated to the anexation those peoples to block the british. The great game. And last and not least the decline of Empire of the Middle, China, that lead to desigual alliance of opportunity as the rise of Japan treatned the Russian Far East.

[constantinvasiliev]

(6:53) NO. Kiev Rus was not Russian empire. It would be good to discuss the origins of Moscow and their attitude towards more educated and civilize Novgorod people to better understand what how the actual Russian Empire originated, it's goals and and why it's different from Kiev Rus (as mentioned at 7:32)

[GertR]

So Scandinavians have a claim on Russia.

[ayemmi]

That looks more like a spin doctor rather than a "historian".

A more impartial "historian" would mention that the first capital (i.e., the principal center of political, trade, and cultural life) of the Eastern Slavs was Novgorod, not Kiev. Then in 882, the rulers of Novgorod conquered (or liberated, depending on how you want to view it) Kiev from the Khazar Khaganate (a Turkic state). Prior to that, Kiev had not had the status of a capital polity. Following the conquest, Oleg founded the ruling dynasty and moved the capital from Novgorod to Kiev, hence establishing Kievan Rus, and then started conquering (or gathering/uniting) more Eastern Slavs under the same rule. This is not dissimilar to how, a few centuries later, the capital was moved once again from Kiev to Moscow, and then another cycle of reconquista of Slavic lands began (this time from the Mongols).

It doesn't seem that providing an impartial and comprehensive historical context was the agenda of this 'historian.' I would expect Lex, who was born in Moscow and is surely familiar with all this information, to question his guest more thoroughly to reveal their true agenda.

[njswampfox]

Lots of putin trolls and bots can't stand the truth.

[luisvillafane]

Well, listening to the guest, particularly his latest comments, the difference between Ukraine and Russia, on the one hand, and the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, on the other, is that Ukraine has only been an independent nation for thirty-something years. This is pretty much the same numbers of years the United States had when the War of 1812 broke out. So to me, the War of 1812 is a good parallel to think about what's happening in Eastern Europe. In the case of the United States, it manages to remain completely independent; In the case of Ukraine, we'll see.

[Michael-vpgs]

500AD Kyiv is in the Historical Records. 1000 AD Kyiv is marrying French Kings. 1230 AD is the first Historical mention of Moscow.

[JPJ]

Fun Fact about Russia: It was Russia who saved The Union during the American Civil War as they sent their Navy to San Francisco and New York when England and France were just about to enter the war on the side of the Confederates since London created the Confederates. France was already in Mexico making a spear head movement to resupply the Confederates and to open up a Pacific Theatre and to create a port in California. England already amassed 11, 000 troops and growing stationed at their Northern Confederacies border now called Canada ready to open a Northern Theatre to divert Union troops away from their Southern Confederacy then to attack The Unions naval blockade. The Union would have been completely destroyed and annexed by those two great powers leaving the Confederates to exist as either a puppet state of London or to be fully brought back into the fold of the British Empire.

London was already courting (threatening/bribing) other countries to get involved like Spain while Russia was in talks with Prussia to ally with incase London was to intervene.
Seeing all of this Tsar Alexander II wrote a letter to Queen Victoria saying “If you enter in this war it will be a casus belli for all out war with the Russian Empire”. The stage was set for the 1st World War and Russia stopped it.


There is also a memorial in San Francisco for the hundreds of Russian sailors who came off their Asiatic fleet ships that died while helping the city put out a fire that threatened to lay waste to it during the War.

[DavidKolbSantosh]

I do not think that we can rely on language to put people in different ethnic or national groups, as language is always rather quickly evolving. We can look at a country like India and see amongst two ethnic groups of people (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) several different languages.

[ElanMorin]

there were a couple points in there where I thought I'd never heard someone so skilfully and deftly avoid answering the actual question and I was very impressed 😂

[stivvits]

I was always thinking that principalities of Kiev, Moscow, Vladimir, Novgorod etc were all part feudal fragmentation process. All Europe was going through it. It would really be interesting to know when approximately one proto-nation was split into three

[glebarhangelsky]

About "Rus" and "Russia". The English philosopher Roger Bacon, in his work “Opus Majus” (“Great Essay”), written in 1267, noted: “from the north of this province is great Russia (Russia Magna), which from Poland on one side extends to Tanais, but the greater part of it borders in the west with Leucovia... on both sides of the Eastern (approx. Baltic) Sea there is great Russia (Russia Magna)”[58].
Another description of Russia is Marco Polo's Book of Wonders of the World from the 1290s: “the territory of Russia (Russia) is very large and divided into many parts, I will consider the part with the cold north winds (approx. Tramontana), where this is said to exist unknown region"[59].

[DelijeSerbia]

This reminds me a lot of the balkans where you have people who identify as some other ethnic group based on religion or some other historical reason. And that wouldnt be a problem if there was no claiming history that you share with others or even worse take from them. And I wont go into details :)
Also it is false that language is the deciding factor when it comes to ethnicity. People can speak differently in two villages that are close by, it is called dialects. It doesnt mean that they are ethnically different and it also doesnt mean that they are same.
For example in Italy people in Sicily and those in Veneto speak very differently, diffrence is bigger then Russian/Ukrainian and they are still considered Italians. German on the other hand have Austrians who are "not Germans" that speak closer to Bavarian dialect then Bavarian is close to northern dialects.

So there are many factors that play a role in this and Ukrainians have a right to identify as not Russians but that gets us to the right of Ukrainians that do have a right to identify as Russians.

[chriszenko]

Our language Ukrainian is more related to Polish than Russian