Is Donbas historically Russian or Ukrainian? | 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.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[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.

[kuschilop]

These new towns needed new people to develop. So of course nearby Ukrainians came in, but also Russians, and many others as well. It was a kind of "Wild South", that attracted people willing to start a new life. Russians and Ukrainians built these places together, and never had any conflicts there — until the recent times when ethnical history became a weapon.

[aynrandish]

My family immigrated from Odessa in 1903. That’s the early 20th century. I have their papers and they say Russia with no mention of Ukraine. People rewrite history everyday.

[ДенисСейдалиев-хс]

If we start questioning which country each piece of land historically belongs to, the world will turn into chaos of wars.

[ashotdjrbashian]

This guy confirms the "high" reputation of Harvard. So, according to him industrialization started in Donbass and Russians flooded the region. Somehow we should believe that people from faraway regions heard the news about new coal mines openings, but local Ukrainians didn't come to work. As a result the proportion of Russians increased, brilliant analysis!

[francisbacon]

Very biased and preconceived historian. I am russo-ukranian. A half of my family is from Donbas. These lands never were the ethnical or historical places populated by Ukrainians or Russians. It was a steppe or grassland where indigenous turkic nomads lived. Then it was conquered by Russian Empire and populated with Russians. Of course some Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Tartars, Greeks, Armenians, Jews lived there. So it still pretty well represents the population of the Empire. (In the city of Mariupol, Donbas there is an amazing greek community where people speak their own separate dialect of greek until now). So what actually happened? During the Soviet times boundaries were drawed in terms of the management of a giant and complex empire mostly geographically, not in terms of inhabitant areas. Inside the Communist Party nobody suggested that USSR would some day collapse. That's why now we have so many conflicts in postsoviet space: Azerbaijan -- Armenia, Kyrgyzstan -- Kazakhstan, Transdniestria -- Moldova, Georgia -- Abkhazia, Russia -- Ukraine

[ttrainor]

Lex, you know your subscribers are highly intelligent, critical thinkers. Why put a propagandist like this on your channel?

[JanKowalyk-ggir]

it is nice to see Russian trolling bots here.

[JanKowalyk-ggir]

Poles called Ukraine MaloPolska, Russians Malorossia. Interesting coincidence.

[ГалинаБрагина-пт]

about Donbass: there are a lot of soviet documents in which people were ordered to learn Ukrainian language or they could lost their job.. these documents are from 1920 - 1930.... It was the communist goverment idea to improve Ukrainian populations by Russian proletariat, because Russian proletariat was considered as a main force of world communist revolution. These documents were publiced in newspaper of the time and came from families as the official letters which families memeber got from their jobs. the same idea was the reason to add Donbass to Ukraina inspite of people protests - these protests was also documented.

[fernandoleanme]

Plokhy is definitely biased towards the Ukrainian side. You would need to hear the Russian side and version of history to fully understand the situation.

[expertizer]

And this guy teaches history in Harvard? Dafq... Did he even read a single document from that time??? ... creative writing would be more suitable. No wonder there is war...

[Greathawk]

Finally. After two years, finally someone is talking about actual reality of the conflict in Ukraine!

[JohnDoe-iqbz]

This guy has a very pro-Ukraine bias so it's very hard to take him seriously.

[kostasp]

Lex Fridman you are a huge disappointment trying to re-write history...

[Ealendir]

It is laughable how the American academy tries to change history. The entire part from Odessa to Donbas was part of New Russia, or Little Russia. The interior was Ukraine, which literally means border, and in each region they had a different way of speaking Russian/Old Slavic. And on the border Ukrainian was spoken. What was Ukraine is the part that is between Poland and Kyiv...

[M.Georgiev]

I kinda have no trust in this man. I don't support anyone in this conflict, but as someone born in Eastern Europe I read extensively on history of it, basically since early Antiquity times. This historian is twisting and interpreting his knowledge as many of his colleagues...Please sir explain why the historical name of Donbas is known as Malorossia?

[MrMaxGiz]

Donbass was given by Lenin to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1922 at the creation of the USSR. These are native Russian territories. A historical fact.

[damianm-nordhorn]

Lots of pro Putin ace holes 'round here.

[TheSasha]

"Natuonalism is the principle to making the political borders to coincide with ethnic and cultural borders".
As a mexican, is wild to me that a supposed history expert would say that. There is a powerfull mexican nationalism (1864 War for example) and there are more that 80 ethnic groups in mexico. Nobody tries to make those coincide. Everyone is nationality mexican whatever their ethnic background