On the Principles of Writing History: the geographic principle, Byzantium, and the 'Russian republic' (04.12.2021)

A video dispute by Vitaliy Dribnytsya in a chat roulette with a pro-Russian interlocutor who demands the “Ukrainian history from the 9th century” and insists it is “the history of Russia.” The conversation is about the principles of writing history: the history of every modern state is presented according to the geographic principle — from the settlement of ancestors on its territory (the school textbook on the history of Russia begins not with Kyivan Rus but with the settlement of the territory), with an analogy to Turkey and Byzantium. It closes with a structural argument: the Russian Federation contains dozens of ethnic republics and autonomies (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Tuva, Altai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and others), yet there is no “Russian republic” at all, so “Russianness” is an imperial and political category rather than an ethno-territorial one. A source for the article on the “artificiality” of the Ukrainian nation.