Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/227

 of people not only of Western Europe and America, but also to political and intellectual circles, Ukraine is a “terra incognita”.

Many foreigners and Muscovites to whom the Tzarist regime taught a falsified history of Russia have come to believe that Ukraine as a political concept does not exist. Some have gone so far as to say that it was conceived by the Germans to mask their colonial aspirations. However, even before World War I, Ukrainians were averse to being confused with Russians. Ukraine possessed the name Rus (pron. Roosh) as early as the 10th century, while the Muscovite or (as it is called today) the Russian nation did not have its beginning until the middle of the 13th century. Although for more than 125 years it has been drilled into them by the Russian government and schools that they were Russian, the Ukrainian people never have lost their original identity.

Ancient Greek writers called the land “Rhos” and later Latin writers, “Rutheni”. In Ukrainian documents of old the land is called “Roos”, this being the name of the dynasty as for instance the name Hapsburg or Hohenzollern.

As early as the year 1187 we find the name “Ukraina” mentioned in the Ipatiev Chronicle in connection with the death of a Ukrainian prince, Volodimir.

It was when the Ukrainians lost their independence to Poland and Muscovy that these two countries forbade them the further use of the name of their homeland. Thinking to make their assimilation more complete the governments ordered their scholars and historians to disprove the origin of the name “Ukraina”. Thus between them a myth was fabricated that the name “Ukraina” meant a section or piece of Russian territory, a sort of borderland, and that in reality there was and had never been any such country as Ukraina nor any such people as the Ukrainians. This information was written into