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Dear Tim,

Yes, but Magosci's meaning is similar to that of other historians who have taken the root word to mean "field" or an agricultural understanding.

The "borderland" that others talk about relates to Ukraine being a part of one of the two empires it was subjected to.

It is because I know Americans stand for democracy and help other peoples achieve it that I get upset when I read Americans here be somewhat cavalier about terminology relating to the Ukies that offends them because it was terminology they were forced to accept when they were denied their freedoms.

Alex

Alex, you've tried to make this case before. You're only correct about the root of the word, not its usage in recorded history.

Orest Subtelny, a Ukrainian historian, since you seem to think the ethnicity of a historian is an issue, writes in "Ukraine: A History":

"In the vast frontier, which at that time (end of the 16th Century) was specifically referred to as Ukraina -- the land on the periphery of the civilized world -- the age-old struggle of the sedentary population against the nomads flared..."

You'll find this on page 105 of the paperback edition published in 1988 by the University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

--tim

Dear Tim,

Yes, I have the book in front of me as I'm using it in teaching my history of Ukraine class this year.

And you've made your case before - you are simply wrong and I don't mean that in a bad sense.

You are taking both Magosci and Subtelny out of context here.

Both affirm the original root of the word that means "cut out" and both relate it to "borderland."

And this makes eminent sense. "Borderland" does NOT mean today what it meant in the sense the two scholars use it, that is, in the original sense.

And this is also a different meaning of "borderland" than that given it by the much later Polish and Russian imperial historians - simply put, there was not Polish or Russian empire when that particular meaning of "borderland" came into being.

The "borders" of the steppes changed hands frequently. There was not stable "state" or "country" as we know it today. The steppe was a great burial ground, if you will, for the peoples who fought to defend it and who fought to invade it.

The sense of "borderland" as an outcrop or periphery of a larger empire - again, those empires didn't exist in those days and neither did the historians who interpreted "borderland" to mean "Malopolska" or "Little Poland" and "Malorossiya" or "Little Russia."

I think that should be clear from the historical context used by both scholars.

And again, Ukrainian historians in Ukraine today are taking a different approach to their own history that is free from the tendentious interpretations of the recent past that were the result of, shall we say, imperialist perspectives.

That "Okrayina" and "Ukrayina" are different in both historical context and historical linguistic use is something that is only NOW coming to the fore.

Even the most nationalistic of Ukrainian historians repeated the old imperialist viewpoint concerning "borderland" that then gave Polish and Russian historians the necessary background to interpret this for their own political purposes.

In addition, "Ukrayina" can also simply mean "field" or "country" in a generic sense, as Maksymovyc has shown from a linguistic, rather than strictly historical, sense.

In any event, I'm only drawing your attention to what is obvious - "borderland" had quite a different meaning during the pre-Polish and Russian imperial times.

So it is not whether "borderland" is a fair component of the meaning of "Ukraine" - the jury is still out on that one and we know today that there were several meanings to that word, depending on whether or not you agreed that there was a difference between "okrayina" and "ukrayina." The study of the historical usage of that term is crucial here, not that most would want to pursue it.

And the term "Ukraine" was used in six historic Chronicles beginning with the Ipatiiv Chronicle in the 12th century.

The term "Ukrainian people" referred to those people of the steppes while "Rus'" tended to be an officious term denoting the state founded by St Volodymyr/Vladimir/Valdemar the Great.

So I'm not denying that "land of borders" isn't a valid context to understand "Ukrayina" in - it is just that the distinction between the former and the latter imperial meanings of the word tend to get blurred.

And both Magosci and Subtelny demonstrate that there is a distinction of meaning.

Neither affirms that "Ukraine" means "borderland" in the sense that it is "Little Poland" or "Little Russia."

Alex

Alex,

Beautiful. I love it!

Many years,

A New England Colonist

I don't read Magocsi and Subtelny giving the word any other meaning at all. If you have some specific evidence that they do, please quote it.

As Michael Hrushevsky, the father of modern Ukrainian history, writes, in "A History of Ukraine": "The rich wilderness had gained the name of Ukraine, which means borderland, because it was the borderland of the civilized Christian world."

P. 151 of the edition published by Archon Books in 1970.

--tim

Dear Tim,

I'm not questioning that they give the word the meaning of "borderland."

Maksymovyc and his school would deny that.

The point is not, however, in whether "borderland" is a valid interpretation but what we really mean by "borderland."

And this term was done to death by imperialist Polish and Russian historians.

It would have been impossible for "borderland" to mean what they wanted it to mean when the term first arose PRIOR to the establishment of those imperial regimes.

And the term is a composite one, including the idea of "cutting" and also of "borders."

The idea that we can point to a source as indicating a "fact" without the need to interpret may be good journalism.

But it is very bad social science.

Alex

And the above converstation is precisely why Sola Scriptura is a bad idea...

Gaudior, reflectively

If you're trying to be cute by attacking my profession, you may not realize that journalists don't footnote what they write. Historians do.

Historians like Francis Dvornki, in �The Slavs in European History�:

�The number of these steppe adventurers (in the 15th Century) were also swelled by young peasants, who were attracted by the riches of the land and by the unrestricted freedom which they could enjoy there because feudal bonds did not yet extend into the borderland, the Ukraina.� (p. 471)

He footnotes the term Ukraina thusly:

�The designation Ukrainia was used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, without distinction, for the whole borderland of Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. Only in the seventeenth century did this name begin to be used exclusively for the Polish-Lithuanian borderlands.� (p.487)

That�s the edition published by Rutgers University Press in 1962.

Quirky personal interpretations are often interesting, but I'm wondering if there are some specific citations for this alternate view of the use of the word Ukraine in a historical and geographical sense.

--tim

I'd like to thank Hal and Mark in particular for sharing some of their experiences from travel in ancestral homelands, which is what I have been looking for on this thread from the beginning. I hope to have an opportunity for my wife and I to go in the not too distant future.

Dear Tim,

It wasn't my intention to attack your profession - I didn't know you were a journalist.

Those last two lines were what my social science profs used to say - I apologise for having given offense.

Francis Dvornik and also Hrushevsky used "Ukraina" and "Okraina" as one and the same word.

But they are NOT the same words and the discussion here would have to move to linguistics and arguments on Church Slavonic.

I'm satisfied that there is a difference between "Okraina" (literally "borderland") and "Ukraina" which, historically, simply meant "land."

There is disagreement on this score and there is NO sacred text that can decide it once and for all.

If you feel there should be, I respect that.

But, whatever that is, it is not social science.

Your reference to "quirky" is out of place since the confusions of the two terms above is what is truly "quirky."

And it is about interpretation, to be sure.

But you are not willing to engage in a discussion on interpretation and I respect that as well.

We will just waste each other's time and good humour here doing so.

Once again, I apologise for having given offense.

And I apologise on behalf of my professors too.

I work with journalists every day now and there is not one that I do not admire and respect for the professionals they are.

Yourself included.

Alex

Dear Hal and Marco,

I enjoyed your stories very much.

I hope that more stories from others will be forthcoming.

In Christ,
Alice

Alice:

Thank you very much.

Have you been to Greece? If so, would you mind sharing an experience or two of your own?

Yours,

hal

Your opinions wouldn't be so quirky if you simply offered some specific sources that back you up.

There's a history of quirky opinions becoming the conventional wisdom.

But what I've quoted from is a long continuum of work that starts with the father of modern Ukrainian history down to modern works that don't agree with your personal opinion.

And it's important to remember that spelling variations do not necessarily denote different words. Standardized spelling, whether in Church Slavonic or Ukrainian or English, is a relatively modern convention.

After all, doing research on the state where I live, I find newspapers in the 19th Century calling it Ouisconsin. Since its root is the French word for "Yes," Wisconsin must have been founded by some very positive people, indeed.

--tim

Tim,

First off, I"ve very little time these days, at work and at home, to spend it on the forum and I apologise for getting back to you only now.

I have in front of me several sources, unfortunately none in English, that deal with this very subject including Maximovyc, V. Kosarenko-Kosarevych and Fr. Dr. Sluzar - all of which include discussions of further sources to supplement their argumentations.

I have, as of this week, quit any job I might have had here or elsewhere as a translator - just don't have the time or inclination to do it.

My "opinion" is not something I came up with here - even with a Ph.D. I'm not smart enough to develop an alternate viewpoint on the meaning of "Ukraine" as I've outlined here.

Perhaps someone may one day find something in English on it on the internet (the safe money is ultimately on Neil the Irish Melkite, but no pressure, Neil!).

Your view of "quirky opinions" is based on your treatment of authorities as sacred texts. That is your prerogative, but we can always analyze what others have written and come to different, even contradictory conclusions.

For my Ph.D., I critiqued an authority on ethnic identity and contradicted him. This does not make him less of an authority. He subsequently became the head of my examining committee and admitted that my criticism of his work was correct and that he was wrong.

Not only did he not take offense, he urged the publication of my dissertation, with his blessing.

When I critiqued him, I invoked authorities, yes.

But we can and should analyse what they say on their own logical grounds.

And within the realms of social history and related fields, Sir, I am an authority. And so can anyone be if they but analyze and ponder what another has said and discussed.

Subtelny could be wrong - or it could be that he was citing conventional wisdom without feeling the desire to address it.

Hrushevsky was also very left-wing in his views and his work has been critiqued, for many reasons, by others.

The point is that we are dealing in the area of the probable, not the definite.

And I'm not giving a quirky anything to what Subtelny and Magosci have expressed.

I know what they wrote.

I'm simply open to the possibility that there is more to that issue than what they wrote.

And every new theory does indeed appear "quirky" at first.

As one professor of social anthropology once said, real intellectual development and progress depend on one's readiness to appear different from the crowd.

God bless,

Alex

Alex,

I am sitting here with tears of laughter running down my cheeks, my brother. I read that as a reference to my ability to search the net and track down the obscure.

I'll keep this issue in mind as I surf. And, in recognition of the compliment (hope that is what it was ) and, in acknowledgement of the quick-wittedness that produced,

I vow to henceforth only use "Kyev" (despite the Administrator's dispensation in perpetuity for the use of that other spelling) and "Ukraine" .

Many years,

Neil