Norman Davies about Ruthenia, Belarus && BNR
“The Muscovites were waxing powerful, but were still vassals. It was in that period [14-15th centuries] that the Muscovites began to call their state by the Greek name for Rus’, Rossiya (Russia), and to call themselves Russians. These Muscovite-Russians had never ruled over Kiev; but the disability did not prevent them from regarding Moscow as the sole legitimate heir of Kievan succession. […] Their tendentious version of history, which persisted in confusing Muscovy-Russia with the whole of Rus’, was not accepted by those other Slavs who remained beyond Moscow’s rule for centuries to come.”
[…]”They called themselves rusini or ‘Ruthenes’ and it is the Rutheniean variants of east Slav speech that provided the roots of the modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. Until 1700 the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was largely administered by literate Christian Slavs was not Lithuanian but Ruthenian.”
From Norman Davies. Europe: A History. p.392.
Both paragraphs are taken from the same page. While the first part (about Muscovites) is brilliantly laconic and right to the point (Muscovites did steal the name “Russia”), the second paragraph is a bit confusing and too short. I think Norman Davies could’ve elaborated a bit more on the history of Old Belarusian as the main language of the Grand Duchy.
By the way, in that book there’s a also a special insert (p.933) about BNR (Belarusian National Republic) that was proclaimed in 1918. It was, basically, the first independent Belarusian state in the modern sense of the word. Usually, Western scholars ignore it altogether, because they probably rely too much on Russian history books and Russian version of history. During Soviet times the topic of BNR was a total taboo in Soviet Union.
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