AHC: More East Slavic nations-states

With a POD of 1900, do so that in 2017 there are more East Slavic nation-states than just Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

The only plausible one I can think of personally is a Rusyn state. Other alternatives could be a revived Novgorod, although that would require 'fabricating' a new culture, but it's arguably the most famous extinct East Slavic country (Ukraine is often refered to as the successor state of the Kiev Rus, if I'm not mistaken).

Perhaps some radical east Slavs decide to set up a Iazychie nation-state, in the form of an anarchist or communist state?
 
Nation-state implies that it's a state by and for a nation, so this immediately disqualifies Novgorod or any other Russian breakaway state, seeing as it's inhabitants would be Russians, as well as a Iazychie state, as Iazychie is an artificial language with no separate national connections (no Iazychie nation, I mean)

Carpathian Ruthenia might work, but with a POD of 1900 and the low population of Rusyn, chances of such a nation existing and surviving to 2017 are pretty dim. Outside of that, no chance of any more East Slavic nation states.
 
Rusyn state is with my knowledge only East Slavic people whose haven't own nation. But their problem seems being that there not be much Rusyns and they are shattered to wide area where is several other peoples too.

Multiple states forming in what is OTL Ukraine?

I don't see way how to balkanise Ukraine. And they all would speak Ukrainian anyway.
 
Galicia was mostly Polish, I think. And Crimea mostly Crimean Tatars (Turkic people).

Galicia was majority Ukrainian/Ruthenian throughout Lithuanian, Polish, Commonwealth, Austrian, (again) Polish and Russian/Soviet rule.

Crimea has a mixture of Russians and Ukrainians as well as Tartars.
 
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Ukraine is the successor to the Kyivan Rus.

A Lemko state or a state of Ukrainian bukovina is possible, though it would be very strange.

OTL The West Ukrainian People's Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic directorate were only officially unified. They had major political and ideological differences. If Symon Petliura some how is in charge of an independent Ukraine, the ZUNR might choose to remain separate. Of course both would have to survive the wars of indeoendence. Though for the ZUNR that isn't as hard as it seems, they almost did it in the Chortkiv offensive.

It wouldn't be long before they unified into one Country though. Probably Petliura would fall first.
 
I think you'd have more nation-states if you'd include the Finno-Ugric peoples (and maybe Volga Germans?), but I think post-1900 is too late for that and they are unlikely to be viable independent states...
 
All of the East Slavic states can be considered successors to the Kievan Rus since it included all East Slavic territory. Russia does have the best claim due to having arisen from a breakaway state of the Kievan Rus.

Mykhailo Hrushevsky presented the classic Ukrainian argument against this (which I am not necessarily endorsing here) in http://likbez.org.ua/en/hrushevsky_east_slavs.html

"...In the first place, it is most irrational to link the old history of the Southern tribes, of the Kievan State and their socio-political organization, laws and culture with the Volodimir-Moscow Principality of the 13th and 14th centuries, as though the latter were the continuation of the first. This may have been permissible insofar as the Moscow scribes were concerned. The genealogical approach may have satisfied them. Modern science, however, looks for genetic connections and thus has no right to unite the ‘Kievan Period’ with the ‘Volodimir Period’ (as they are inappropriately called), as phases of the same political and cultural process.

"We know that the Kievan State, its laws and culture, were the creation of one nationality, the Ukrainian-Ruś, while the Volodimir-Moscow State was the creation of another nationality, the Great Russian [3]. The Pogodin theory aimed to eliminate this difference by suggesting that the Dnieper regions of the 10th-12th centuries were colonized by Great Russians who emigrated from there in the 13th-14th centuries, but I doubt whether anybody today will defend the old historical scheme on the basis of this risky and almost neglected theory. The Kievan Period did not pass into the Voiodimir-Moscow Period, but into the Galician-Volhynian Period of the 13th century and later into the Lithuanian-Polish of the 14th-16th centuries.

"The Volodimir-Moscow State was neither the successor nor the inheritor of the Kievan State. It grew out of its own roots and the relations of the Kievan State toward it may more accurately be compared to the relations that existed between Rome and the Gaul provinces than described as two successive periods in the political and cultural life of France. The Kievan government transplanted onto Great Russian soil the forms of a socio-political system, its laws and culture – all nurtured in the course of its own historical process; but this does not mean that the Kievan State should be included in the history of the Great Russian nationality. The ethnographic and historical proximity of the two nationalities, the Ukrainian and the Great Russian, should not give cause for confusing the two. Each lived its own life above and beyond their historical contacts and encounters..."
 

PhilippeO

Banned
by 1900, there are no longer any East Slavic 'nation' that can be created, even Ukraine and Belarus have rather weak identity as 'nation'. the POD must be far, far earlier to create 'nation-states'.
 
Mykhailo Hrushevsky presented the classic Ukrainian argument against this (which I am not necessarily endorsing here) in http://likbez.org.ua/en/hrushevsky_east_slavs.html

"...In the first place, it is most irrational to link the old history of the Southern tribes, of the Kievan State and their socio-political organization, laws and culture with the Volodimir-Moscow Principality of the 13th and 14th centuries, as though the latter were the continuation of the first. This may have been permissible insofar as the Moscow scribes were concerned. The genealogical approach may have satisfied them. Modern science, however, looks for genetic connections and thus has no right to unite the ‘Kievan Period’ with the ‘Volodimir Period’ (as they are inappropriately called), as phases of the same political and cultural process.

"We know that the Kievan State, its laws and culture, were the creation of one nationality, the Ukrainian-Ruś, while the Volodimir-Moscow State was the creation of another nationality, the Great Russian [3]. The Pogodin theory aimed to eliminate this difference by suggesting that the Dnieper regions of the 10th-12th centuries were colonized by Great Russians who emigrated from there in the 13th-14th centuries, but I doubt whether anybody today will defend the old historical scheme on the basis of this risky and almost neglected theory. The Kievan Period did not pass into the Voiodimir-Moscow Period, but into the Galician-Volhynian Period of the 13th century and later into the Lithuanian-Polish of the 14th-16th centuries.

"The Volodimir-Moscow State was neither the successor nor the inheritor of the Kievan State. It grew out of its own roots and the relations of the Kievan State toward it may more accurately be compared to the relations that existed between Rome and the Gaul provinces than described as two successive periods in the political and cultural life of France. The Kievan government transplanted onto Great Russian soil the forms of a socio-political system, its laws and culture – all nurtured in the course of its own historical process; but this does not mean that the Kievan State should be included in the history of the Great Russian nationality. The ethnographic and historical proximity of the two nationalities, the Ukrainian and the Great Russian, should not give cause for confusing the two. Each lived its own life above and beyond their historical contacts and encounters..."
This is not modern science - it was written in 1903. This is basically history distorted by blatant nationalism, which attempts to backdate the separation of Ukraine and Russia to the 10th century in a an attempt to prove that the Russians were always a separate peoples who had nothing to do with the Ukrainians who founded the Rus (it's not surprising that he leaves out the fact that the Rus first capital was in Novgorod or that it was most likely founded by Scandinavian invaders who conquered the various Eastern Slavic tribes). And it doesn't speak well of Ukrainian nationalists that they continue to use these kind of pseudo-historical arguments.
 
This is not modern science - it was written in 1903. This is basically history distorted by blatant nationalism, which attempts to backdate the separation of Ukraine and Russia to the 10th century in a an attempt to prove that the Russians were always a separate peoples who had nothing to do with the Ukrainians who founded the Rus (it's not surprising that he leaves out the fact that the Rus first capital was in Novgorod or that it was most likely founded by Scandinavian invaders who conquered the various Eastern Slavic tribes). And it doesn't speak well of Ukrainian nationalists that they continue to use these kind of pseudo-historical arguments.

I suggest you learn first to respect one of the Greatest Historians of the 20th century, and second that you check your facts, especially before dismissing someone more qualified than yourself.

Third, the claim presented by Hruchevsky is correct. I wrote a paper on this subject myself, and just now I'll go through some of the evidence that I used for that paper.

1. The vast majority of religious centers (which in this period where the centers of cultural and academic life) were located during the Kyivan Rus' period in the territory of the modern Ukrainian State, if you include Greater Ukraine, this number goes up aswell. If I recall correctly, it was ~70% of the religious centers were located in Ukraine.

2. That the area and territory of Moscow was not even under the control of the Kyivan Rus' until the reign of Grand Prince Sviatoslav and even then was nothing more than a rebellious backwater. In fact a large chunk of said territory was not even populated by Slavic People until at least the 12th century, where many Ugric, Finnic, and more specifically Mordvin people still lived.

3. The Ukrainian State, occupies the economic and population center of the Kyivan Rus', whereas with the exception of Novgorod there weren't any real significant population centers comparable to other ones in the Ukrainian areas of the Rus'.

4. Galicia-Volhynia is perhaps the best choice for a successor to the Kyivan Rus', as its royal family and political systems aswell as religion, language, and culture were all Kyivan. The Galician-Kingdom did become part of the Polish and Lithuanian Kingdoms, who also controlled Kyiv and the rest of the center of the Rus' with only Novgorod escaping Polish rule, only to be subjugated by Moscow later on. The then, known as "Ruthenian" people were considered to be the successor people of the Rus' by everyone at that time.

5. Old Ruthenian is far closer to contemporary Ukrainian than it is to the Russian language, and old Ruthenian was the language of the heartland of the Kyivan Rus' and of Kyiv itself.

For my sources, I used Orest Subtleny's a History of Ukraine, I believe 4th edition which if I recall was published in 2007.
 

Deleted member 94680

Maintaining an East and West Ukrainian split? Making a separate Crimea and Cossack states are a good one too.

According to Wikipedia:

"Modern East Slavic peoples and ethnic/subethnic groups include:
  • Russians
    • Pomors
    • Polekhs
    • Goryuns
    • Kamchadals
    • Lipovan Russians
    • Russian Cossacks
  • Belarusians (Ruthenians)
    • Poleszuks
    • Goryuns
  • Ukrainians (Ruthenians / Cossacks)
    • Poleszuks
    • Goryuns
    • Ukrainian Cossacks
    • Hutsuls
    • Boykos
    • Lemkos
    • Pannonian Rusyns"
With the right POD, any of these could end up with their own state.
 
Something like this: the Provisional Republic still falls, but the Bolsheviks fail to gain supreme power with several of their OTL key leaders killed or discredited. The political disorder in Russia ramps up further, with some German intervention. Germany holds out longer; the nascent Polish state asserts itself too soon and is suppressed by Germany. But the Central Powers lose WW I, and Galicia breaks away from Austria.

Poland rises again, but is unable to regain control of Belarus or East Galicia. Belarus becomes independent. Ukrainian nationalists establish a separate state, but get stupid about religion and make enemies of the Uniate Ukrainians of the West; they already annoyed the ex-Austrian Empire Galicians. So there is a Galician/Uniate state in western Ukraine, and an Orthodox Ukraine state in eastern Ukraine. However, the Ukraine government also offended the Tatar and ethnic Russian population of Crimea, which declares itself separate.

Kolchak establishes a post-imperial White Russian republic in Siberia and the Upper Volga; Wrangel establishes a rival state in the Ciscaucasus and lower Volga.

There is a Bolshevik rump state around Moscow, and a non-Bolshevik Left state around Petrograd. So there are seven "east Slavic" states.
 
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