Serhii Plokhy. The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine and
Belarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 379 S. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-52186403-9.
Reviewed by David G. Rowley (Department of Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin–
Platteville)
Published on H-Nationalism (May, 2007)
A History of East Slavic Identity-Building Projects
In The Origins of the Slavic Nations, historian Serhii
Plokhy has written a history of identity-building among
the East Slavs from the creation of Kyiv Rus’ in the
ninth century to the formation of the early modern nations of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia in the eighteenth
century. In the course of his exposition, Plokhy displays a masterful command of both the written records
of the East Slavs–chronicles, saint’s lives, treaties, letters, polemics, and memoirs–and of the historiography.
Plokhy appears to have read all relevant interpretations
of East Slavic nation-building in the English, Ukrainian,
and Russian languages, and his historiographical reviews
at the beginning of each chapter will be a boon to all
future researchers who take up this field. Most importantly, Plokhy offers innovative and convincing reinterpretations of the key controversies in the histories of the
national development of the East Slavs. In the introduction, Plokhy promises to “suggest a new outline of the
development of East Slavic identities and thus prepare
the ground for a reconceptualization of the premodern
history of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus” (p. 9). I believe
he has delivered on his promise.
within Kyiv Rus’, and thereafter evolved along their own
paths. Plokhy’s answer to this multiple-choice question
is “none of the above.” He argues that there was no single ethnic identity in Kyiv Rus’ (contradicting the first
and second points), and he further argues that Ukraine,
Belarus, and Russia are modern constructions by intellectual and political elites (contradicting the third point).
That Plokhy brings a modernist sensibility to his investigation is evident from his treatment of national identity as the construction of elites as well as from his goal of
seeking “ ‘to deconstruct the existing nation-based’ narrative of East Slavic history“ (p. 9). Plokhy characterizes
himself as a ”revisionist“ in the tradition of John Armstrong and Anthony Smith, who recognize that although
nations are modern constructions they cannot successfully be built except on the basis of historical ethnicities.
However, he provides evidence that is completely consistent with unreconstructed ”modernism,“ and, in fact, he
cites Benedict Anderson more often than Armstrong and
Smith combined.
In analyzing the identity-building projects of
Slavic
elites, Plokhy is really looking at “imagined
Broadly speaking, there have been three major comcommunities”–a
term he uses a number of times. He
peting approaches to the origins of the East Slavic nadoes not attempt to conclude whether any particular East
tions: that the medieval state of Kyiv Rus’ was a sinSlavic “people” shared a culture, language, origin myths,
gle nation which split into three; that Kyiv Rus’ evolved
directly into one of the three East Slavic nations, while or history. All the evidence provided by Plokhy conthe other two are derivative variants; or that the proto- firms that identities did not evolve but were periodically
nations of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia existed separately remade by new elites for new circumstances, and were
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heavily influenced by institutions of the state and the
church. In his own words, Plokhy “interprets the growth
of East Slavic identities as a succession of identitybuilding projects. Such projects served as blueprints
for the construction of new identities, which in turn are
prerequisites for the existence of self-conscious communities” (pp. 354-355). This is a very different proposition
from the revised modernism of Armstrong and Anderson. Plokhy provides no evidence that an East Slavic
ethnie (to say nothing of a Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian ethnie) ever existed. To say that an idea of Kyiv Rus’
was invented, that was then used by subsequent elites, is
far different from saying that a nation of Kyiv Rus’ came
into existence and then evolved. No matter what Serhii
Plokhy’s own hope, his work reinforces the perspective
of the modernists.
While Muscovite princes were “gathering the lands”
of the old Northeast of Kyiv Rus’, the grand dukes of
Lithuania incorporated much of the remainder of Kyiv
Rus’ (including the city of Kyiv) into their realm. In chapter 3, “The Lithuanian Solution,” Plokhy deals with the
contradiction for Slavic elites between identifying themselves as inhabitants of the Rus’ Land and as subjects of
an alien ruling dynasty. He argues that the Grand Duchy
of Lithuania in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries “created conditions for the first manifestation of Rus’ solidarity based not on the principle of the dynastic state
but of ethnocultural unity” (p. 118). However, he argues
that the primary loyalty of the inhabitants was still to
local cities and lands. In other words, an idea of ethnocultural unity appeared, but it was not the precursor of
either Ukraine or Belarus.
In chapter 1, “The Origins of Rus’,” Plokhy dismisses
the idea that the educated elite of Kyiv Rus’ had a single, unifying identity. Through close examination of the
chronicles kept by the principalities that made up Kyiv
Rus’, he finds that there are four major chronicle complexes, each of which reveals a primary identity that
is superior to an all-Rus’ identity. On the other hand,
Plokhy also denies that any of these identities developed
in a linear and unbroken path toward one of the modern
East Slavic nations. Instead, the contribution of Kyiv Rus’
was to create the idea of a single East Slavic community
and a name for it. “The Kyivan state left a strong legacy
in the region in terms of historical memory, law, religion,
and ultimately identity, which was adopted in one form
or another by all its former subjects” (p. 48).
In chapter 4, “The Rise of Muscovy,” Plokhy shows
how a ruling dynasty, a single Church structure, and a
homogenous population all supported a nation-building
project by Muscovite grand princes. Plokhy concludes
that “Great Russian history per se, at least when it comes
to self-identification and ethnopolitical identity, begins
with the reign of Ivan III (1462-1505)” (p. 158). Plokhy
also points out that Muscovite identity was clearly separated from the identity of the Slavic populations across
the Polish-Lithuanian border. Nevertheless, Plokhy does
not claim that modern Russian national identity appeared
at this time, since the people (Rus’) were defined by their
loyalty to a dynasty and a church, not membership in a
nation.
Chapter 5, “The Making of the Ruthenian Nation,”
might better be called “The Making of a Ruthenian Nation,” since Plokhy again deals not with the continuous
evolution of nations but with the recreation of Rus’ identities. Ploky argues that the Union of Brest (1596), in
which the Polish-Lithuanian state subordinated the Orthodox Church (on their territory) to Rome, alienated the
Orthodox Slavic elite. This “helped to promote a model of
early modern identity based on the nation as a linguistic
and cultural entity” (p. 200). As a result, “the leitmotif of
the public debate that shaped the Ruthenian identity was
not loyalty to the ruler (as in Muscovy) but the rights of
individual institutions, estates, and nations” (p. 202).
In chapter 2, “What Happened to the Rus’ Land,”
Plokhy addresses the era of Mongol rule after 1240 when
Mongol armies destroyed Kyiv Rus’ and incorporated its
northeast territories into the Golden Horde. This period is generally considered to be the time in which the
three East Slavic nations began to be clearly differentiated, but Plokhy turns this concept on its head and argues
that, in fact, the period of Mongol rule served to “preserve the sense of Rus’ unity by forcing elites throughout
the Rurikid realm to think of their appanage principalities first and foremost as part of the Rus’ Land” (p. 83).
The key players in this process, he argues, were Mongol
overlords in Sarai and Orthodox Church leaders in Constantinople, both of whom treated the “imagined community” of Rus’ as a reality. On the ground, however, “local
identity, rooted in loyalty to particular lands, was predominant. And it was land by land, principality by principality, that the Rurikids’ more aggressive neighbors (i.e.,
Moscow) took over their patrimony” (p. 84).
In chapter 6, “Was There a Reunification,” Plokhy
deals with the Cossack uprising against Poland-Lithuania
led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the mid-seventeenth
century. In this process, Cossack territories and the
Rus’ Land east of the Dnipro broke away from PolandLithuania and put itself under the protection of Moscow.
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A major element in this rebellion was the religious loy- this new identity did not evolve from old Kyiv Rus’. “The
alty of the population to Constantinople and not to Rome. Ukrainian identity of the period was deeply rooted in
Cossack practices and traditions, and the elites of the
From the point of view of Great Russian (and So- Hetmanate imagined Ukraine as a society led and repviet) historiography, the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654 resented by the Cossack estate” (p. 358).
marked the reunification of Moscow and Kyiv. Plokhy,
however, refers to it as the “Pereiaslav Disagreement”
Plokhy sums up his conclusions regarding the modand demonstrates that neither side saw the unification ern East Slavic nations with these words: “The modas an ethnic unification. Bohdan Khmelnytsky “made no ern Russian nation grew out of the Russian imperial
use of the theme of ethnic affinity” (p. 246) and Tsar Alek- project and preserved many of its characteristics, insei “continued to think not just primarily but almost ex- cluding the blurred boundary between the Great Rusclusively in dynastic terms” (p. 247).
sians per se and the non-Russian subjects of the empire. The modern Ukrainian identity developed out of
In chapter 7, “The Invention of Russia,” Plokhy in- the Ukrainian/Little Russian project of the Hetmanate,
vestigates the early modern creation of a Russian idenexcluding Russians and Belarusians and taking over not
tity in the era of Peter the Great. He examines the comonly the formerly Polish-ruled Right-Bank Ukraine but
plexity and ambiguity of a nation with an imperial mis- also Austrian Galicia, Bukovyna, and eventually Transion. He points out that the old national identity, which scarpathia, proving legitimacy for the creation of one
was rooted in religion, lived on among the Old Believ- nation out of historically, culturally, and religiously diers, while the new vision of an imperial nation owed verse regions. The Belarusian national project was based
much to the contributions of Ruthenians such as Teofan
on the Ruthenian identity that had previously developed
Prokopovych. The new identity did not reunite all the
in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania but failed to produce
Slavs, however. “The new Russian imperial identity de- a distinct identity in early modern times, given the lack
veloped with the help of the Kyivans was designed to in- of a proto-Belarusian polity comparable to the Cossack
clude the Little Russian (Ukrainian) and Muscovite elites, Hetmanate in Left-Bank Ukraine. Ultimately, the Rutheas well as Westerners who were joining the imperial ser- nian name was claimed by the Rusyns of Transcarpathia,
vice. It failed, however, to include Ruthenians west of the
whose leaders insist today that they are distinct from the
Russian imperial boundary and non-Slavs in the borderUkrainians” (pp. 360-361).
lands of the empire” (p. 297).
Serhii Plokhy does not add substantively to the scholIn chapter 8, “Ruthenia, Little Russia, Ukraine,” arship on general theories of or approaches to the probPlokhy shows that the unifying Ruthenian identity (de- lem of nations and nationalism. However, his contribuscribed in chapter 6) did not survive Pereiaslav. When tion to the history East Slavic identities is huge. He has,
Ruthenian and Cossack territories to the east of the indeed, delivered on his promise to reconceptualize the
Dnipro River united with Russia, they separated from the
field. This is must reading for all historians of the East
remaining Ruthenian population in Poland-Lithuania,
Slavs in the pre-modern period.
and a new Ukrainian identity was formed. Moreover,
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Citation: David G. Rowley. Review of Plokhy, Serhii, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia,
Ukraine and Belarus. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13146
Copyright © 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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