We went here to one village.

While the boys were wandering around the yard with a mine detector, I sat in a shed and, looking around, found, as for me, a whole treasure.

Luxuriously published library of Ukrainian literature.

From the 17th to the 20th century.

And, I confess, I took it.

Not only because the owners are gone and are unlikely to return, but also because they took these books out of the house into the barn.

So they don't need them.

And I need.

In my free time, I carefully leafed through all the volumes.

And I want to say something about this.

Thesis one.

Trans-Ukrainian.

In general, I studied Ukrainian literature at the philological faculty, I know the main names, and a lot of things aroused my sincere interest there.

But that there are so many of them, I still somehow didn’t imagine, even if I saw a lot of names in literary reference books.

Enumerations of names do not work as well as dozens of volumes of texts seen with one's own eyes, hundreds of poems, many novels and dramas.

There are very, very many Ukrainian writers of the second half of the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th centuries.

And all this, of course, causes a sneer at our unfortunate nationalists, who are confident that "Ukrainians were invented by Lenin."

Ukrainians, even before Lenin was even born, had a huge literature of their own.

Just huge.

And, as far as I can judge from these books, quite a developed self-awareness.

The second thesis, which significantly corrects the picture drawn above.

Of course, the volume “Ukrainian Literature of the 14th-17th Centuries” aroused my special attention.

(From my youth I have been studying the late Russian Middle Ages, this is a very important time for me and I understand it in many ways.)

I flipped through the entire book without stopping smiling.

No, there was nothing funny there.

The fact is that all the so-called Ukrainian literature of the XIV-XVII centuries was written ... in Russian.

The same volume can be easily published under the title "Russian (or South Russian) Literature" - no one will notice the catch.

There are even few future Little Russian regional words there.

Any Russian person, even today, can calmly read "Ukrainian literature of the 17th century" from a sheet.

I open it first and read: “Mount Sinai stands on the midday side of Jerusalem, 12 days the procession through the wilderness is all.

And to Egypt from Jerusalem 12 days to go.

And the monastery stands between three mountains, on both sides of the monastery, burn very high.

Do you need an interpreter from Ukrainian?..

Okay, I think.

I'll see what kind of literature they had in the 18th century.

She, too, has a whole volume dedicated to her.

And here I am again randomly opening and reading:

In sorrow, in great

I always stay

For you, dear heart,

I take a deep breath.

You can't forget me

Dear Diana,

I have you, my heart

Most of all is chosen.

Well, and so on.

A whole volume of plus or minus exactly this.

Well, "kohayu" occurs sometimes.

So, now I will tell you one thing without irony.

Please listen carefully, you will have a little more respect for yourself from now on.

All Russian people are fluent in the Ukrainian language of the 18th century.

They don't just understand it, they speak it.

As well as the Ukrainian language of the 17th and 16th centuries.

Because it's Russian.

And it was only at the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the next, 19th century, with the help of Polish philologists who ended up in Russia, on the basis of the Little Russian dialect, they began to create the Ukrainian literary language.

It was precisely that it was created from a common dialect, because the literary Ukrainian language - the language of their first poets, their hetmans, their priests from the 14th to the 18th centuries - did not differ from Russian, in fact, in any way.

Conclusion?

The latest Ukrainian philology, telling that “the Russian language was born from Ukrainian”, is absurdly lying.

This common South Russian dialect meaningfully spun off (in order to be different) from Russian about 200-250 years ago.

But when reading Ukrainian writers of the 19th century, I constantly found myself understanding them the further, the less.

That is, in fact, for 100 years, by the beginning of the 20th century, they rapidly and, moreover, diligently, at great speeds, molded their literature.

How good it is, let's talk, hopefully later.

But the fact that the Ukrainians did not have their own Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky does not mean at all that they did not have literature.

Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are not available to anyone at all.

Among others, Slovaks, Croats, Czechs, a whole scattering of established European, including Slavic, tribes do not have them.

And now what?

Shall we deny their existence?

Let's summarize.

Firstly.

Ukrainian literature (as a carrier of Ukrainian self-consciousness) was fully created in the 19th century, and in this sense it is impossible to say that “Ukrainians are like Novgorodians, only in the south”.

Because there is no "Novgorod literature".

And Ukrainian - is.

Secondly.

Ukrainian philology, as well as Ukrainian historical science, lengthening its history due to the so-called.

Ancient Rus', is engaged in forgery, about which they themselves know.

I will now explain to them why.

If a modern Ukrainian, who does not know the Russian language (and such, alas, already exist), picks up these two books - "Ukrainian Literature of the XIV-XVII centuries" and "Ukrainian literature of the XVIII century", he will not understand anything there.

Because he doesn't know Russian.

In the 17th century Ukrainians were Russians.

In the most elementary way.

In the most direct sense.

Now part of the Ukrainians have the right to say: "They were and swam away, and now we have our own language."

No one has the right to forbid them to speak.

But you only, brothers and not brothers, unhook from Rurik, Svyatoslav, Vladimir and Yaroslav the Wise.

And from Serko, and from Nalivaiko, and from Bogdan Khmelnitsky, and even, you won’t believe it, from Doroshenko.

They have nothing to do with you.

They spoke in a different language.

Not on yours.

Let me explain to you once again, for consolidation, with a simple example.

If in our time Serko, Nalivaiko and Khmelnitsky were transferred - and we would sit down at the table: on the one hand, for example, I, and on the other they - we would easily understand each other.

The spoken Russian language of the 17th century is generally understandable to modern Russian people.

But if the same three sat down at the table with Zelensky and he began to overwrite them on a modern move, they would ask for an interpreter.

Or maybe they wouldn't have asked.

They would manage themselves.

Bogdan would come out of the hut - and there Serko wipes his saber on the grass.

- What did he say?

Bogdan would have asked, puzzled.

- Hell knows.

Serko would answer.

— Something not in Russian.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.