Special Chapter
The Ruthenian Question
The "Ruthenian Question" was a dilemma in the Empire of Lithuania, concerning the future and the situation of the Ruthenian... state? Nation? Region? Territory? The people of the time had a tough time telling what "Ruthenia" even
was, so, as one may realise, this was not the easiest question to answer, not for the Emperor and his court, not for the neighbouring nations, not even for the Ruthenians themselves.
While the name "Ruthenia" comes from a Latinization of the word "Rus'", a common name for regions and historical states in East Slavic lands, the modern usage of the term, meaning the Slavic-inhabited lands in the lands around the Dnieper and beyond, centered in cities such as Kiev, Minsk, Chernigov, Polotsk and Vitebsk, arose during the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Lithuanians used the term and it's equivalents to refer to the long since integrated, peacefully ruled East Slavic lands, as opposed to the recently conquered Grand Principality of Tver', which became the heartland of the region which is now called "Russia".
While the Russians founded their national identity a history of resistance against Lithuanian rule, and the Lithuanians prided themselves in their great victories across the Russians, Tatars and Teutons, building their own identity on top, the Ruthenians did not have such an event in their history, and as a result, their nationality became murkier and murkier as time went on. In the 18th and 19th centuries, with faster and easier communication and rapidly changing lifestyles across Lithuania, assimilation and intermarriage began to slowly mix and conflate all of the three nations into one, with this process especially visible between Russians and Ruthenians, who were still only in the process of separating into different nations. The region around Vitebsk and Orsha, for example, previously a part of the Ruthenian heartland, was starting to Russify due to creeping up influence from their eastern neighbours.
At the same time, however, the rise of Nationalism did not leave the Empire out. While the Russians were already a firm nation-state and began to experience a renaissance of culture and nationalist thought, the writers and artists from Ruthenia split. Some continued to swear allegiance to Lithuania, even if they were not particularly enthusiastic about imperial rule, some began to abandon ship and attach themselves to Russian Romanticism, calling for a union of Ruthenia and Russia, maybe even with the Volga, into one powerful East Slavic State, while the rest stayed in support of what they perceived to be a Ruthenian culture. As you could tell by that wording, nobody was in agreement on what was Ruthenian and what was not. One of the most influential Romanticist artists from Ruthenia, one who helped inspire an entire movement, was
Martyn Dorokhov (Lith. Martynas Darakovas), the so-called "Horace from Kiev" to Westerners, who wrote and published many poems, prose works and a number of epic poems on many historical moments from the history of the Kievan Rus' during the period between 1794 to 1811. His most famous work, "The Three Bogatyrs", nowadays often interpreted as an Aesopic tale about the struggles of the three East Slavic nations - Ruthenia, Russia and the Volgaks, represented by the Bogatyrs - against a metaphor for the Lithuanian empire, the three-headed dragon Smey Gorynych, was so popular that the Lithuanian government forced Dorokhov to leave the nation, moving to Prague, where he died not long after his departure. Despite his nickname, given to him by his readers in the West, Dorokhov was not from Kiev - in fact, he hails from Navahrudak, and his dialect, the one he used in his writings, was later used as the base for a codified and modernized Ruthenian language. A symbol of the Ruthenian nationalist movement, he is hailed as one of the greatest Slavic poets of his era, but the Ruthenians are not the only ones who claim his legacy - the Russians often try to make a point that he loved and hailed Russia as well as Ruthenia, while the Lithuanians carefully mention how he was still a citizen of the
Lithuanian empire.
An 1818 vitagraph of Martyn Dorokhov, made in Prague
Dorokhov's call for an independent Ruthenia was the main thing that inspired the
Ruthenian separatist movement, one of the three separate waves each calling for a different future to the nation. Many Ruthenian separatists were young, burning with nationalism and patriotism, and often believed that kicking out the Emperor and introducing direct rule from Kiev will be a panacea to all of the region's problems, including, but not limited to, unequal industrialization, large wealth gaps between the rich and the poor, an ineffective agricultural sector due to the legacy of serfdom, and so on. These people wrote future anthems to a Ruthenian state, envisioned it's borders, and were usually ridiculed by many around them. The Russian nationalists, for one, believed that Ruthenia had no right to exist as a separate state, and any and all ideas of "separatism" were instilled by the Lithuanians as an attempt to divide the Slavs into weaker subgroups - the Russians had to experience first hand what a forcefully attempted division was like, back when the Lithuanians tried to divide the Russian nation into two cultures, one around Novgorod and the other around Tver, a tactic which was dropped by the end of the 18th century due to not achieving any visible results. As such, they viewed a rising Ruthenian nationalist movement with suspicion. Meanwhile, the Lithuanians were obviously unhappy with a second Slavic nationalist movement in their territory.
At the beginning, Ruthenian separatists were a fringe movement, mostly limited to cultural circles, but one development change it's face for decades to come. In the 1830s, both Visegrad and Lithuania went to war against the Ottomans, and there were serious fears that the two countries would be unable to divide their conquests in the Balkans and go to war with each other. This fear was shared by the governments of both nations, too, each worrying that the other will gnaw away too much land. It was the perfect opportunity for the Ruthenians, and around this time, a small delegation led by a man named
Pyotr Skushnevsky arrived to Buda, inquiring on, were Visegrad and Lithuania go to war, if the Visegradians would support Ruthenian independence. Skushnevsky hoped to speak to the King himself and possibly sway him to support an independent Ruthenia, or at least present his ideas to the Convention of Three Nations, but he never got to do either - however, the officials who were presented with the idea usually responded positively. Even if Visegrad didn't believe in the longevity of a Ruthenian state, it would weaken their rival enough to be considered.
This plan never came to fruition, however, as Visegrad and Lithuania never went to war, both resorting to only minor claims on Ottoman territory, but Skushnevsky presented the results of his expedition to the cultural circles in Kiev, and it whipped up an outrage. How does this supporter of a fringe movement dare to claim to represent all Ruthenians?! However, this made separatist ideas more popular, and also set an ominous precedent - should the situation be right, Visegrad might not say "no" to supporting an independent Ruthenia...
However, separatism was not the only possible solution to the Ruthenian question, and not even the most popular one at that - that honor goes to the
Federalist movement. Compared to the perceived tyranny and absolutism of the Lithuanian empire, Visegrad, which was sitting right next door, was like a beacon of hope and modernity - it was a powerful and wealthy industrial nation, it had a democratic parliamentary system, and most importantly, it seemingly managed to solve it's problems of multiculturalism by forming a federalized state with all three of the composing ethnicities respected. Such a system of government gained a lot of supporters across all of Lithuania, and while parliamentarism might have been too radical for what was at the time one of Europe's last true absolute monarchies, the idea of a "federal monarchy" with a Visegradian model was quite popular. Ruthenians hoped to establish a dual monarchy of "Lithuania-Ruthenia", where both of the constituent nations would have separate governments appointed from the locals (so Ruthenia would have a Ruthenian prime minister and Lithuania - Lithuanian), but with the same Emperor, foreign policy, military and other overarching institutions. Others were proposing a tripartite state of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Russia, in light of Visegrad's three nations, but creating a name for such a gigantic federal state was a lot tougher. Proposed names were "Sarmatia", "Slavica", or, as a joke option, "Lithessia" ("Liesėnija"), a combination of
Lithuania, Ru
thenia and Ru
ssia.
The Federalist movement was also the only one of the three movements which had supporters in the highest echelons of the government. As time went on, more and more politicians began to realize that the current situation which Lithuania is organized under is unsustainable. Sooner or later, Ruthenia and Russia would break away, and without them, Lithuania would be nothing, it's great power status would be lost forever. As such, measures need to be taken in order to prevent such a catastrophe - and federalizing the Empire was one of those options. Even
Žygimantas III, Emperor of Lithuania from 1865 onward, held sympathies to such a proposal.
A third answer to the Ruthenian question arrived from the East, in the form of the
Russophile movement. Despite the rise of Nationalism and the slow formation of a Ruthenian nation, a sizable portion of what we would consider "Ruthenians" actually considered themselves to be Russian in one shape or the other. While the separatists called them traitors, they nevertheless sympathized with the Russian struggle for independence and the failed rebellions against Russian rule. While Ruthenia had Dorokhov, he was not matched by any of his Ruthenian peers, while Russia lived through an enlightenment of national thought and culture in the form of
Russian Romanticism, and many of it's artists saw Russia as one and indivisible, stretching from Galicia to the Volga, not divided into a bunch of nation-states. A separate Ruthenia, a separate Volga-Russia, a separate Russia - by themselves, they would be weak, not powerful enough to deter foreign oppression, while a hypothetical "Greater Russia" would not only endure foreign attacks, but would also be able to dominate Eastern Europe all on it's own. The Russophiles rejected the idea of an independent Ruthenian identity, calling it bogus and a Lithuanian ploy, while at the same time called for unity with their brethren in Tver' and Vostovsk. Many of the Ruthenian Russophiles were either Russian speakers themselves or had a personal connection with Russia - either by having lived there, having Russian heritage or marriage ties with one. It was also the most rebellious of the three movements, rejecting the idea that Visegrad would ever help the Slavs or create a Slavic state, and believing that only an armed rebellion can thus kick the Lithuanians out.
The Ruthenian question is one of the many parts of history that show that it is a very complicated field. Nowadays, people already know which of the three paths was successful in the long run, and thus take it for granted - but the truth is, at the time nobody knew how history was going to unfold.
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The next chapter will also be about ideological splits in a nation, one that some people in the TL say might go extinct in the next century.
Do you like the fact that I give these hints for the next chapter, by the way? Since I have made plans for the course of this TL until pretty much modern day, I usually know what I will write about in the next chapter, so it's not a problem to me, but maybe you think it spoils too much?
