{"id":2489,"date":"2025-10-27T10:10:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2025-10-27T10:10:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:10:22","slug":"when-history-teaches%c2%b9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=2489","title":{"rendered":"When History Teaches\u00b9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you know \u201cUkraine\u201d literally meant borderland? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And before the 19th century, this region was officially called Little Russia (Malorossiya) not as an insult, but as honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the 1900s, the lands around Kiev were known as Malorossiya, \u201cLittle Russia.\u201d That didn\u2019t mean \u201clesser,\u201d it meant the original Rus\u2019, the spiritual and historical cradle of the Russian world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name came from Byzantium, rooted in an even older Greek tradition. The ancient Greeks called their original homeland \u201cLittle Greece\u201d (Mikr\u00e0 Hell\u00e1s) and their colonies in southern Italy \u201cGreat Greece\u201d (Meg\u00e1l\u0113 Hell\u00e1s). The Byzantines inherited this naming pattern. By the 14th century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople used the same pattern for the lands of Rus\u2019, calling the Kiev region \u201cMikr\u00e0 Rh\u014dss\u00eda\u201d (Little Russia) and the northern territories \u201cMeg\u00e1l\u0113 Rh\u014dss\u00eda\u201d (Great Russia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(: Patriarch Philotheos I, Letter to Metropolitan Alexis of Moscow, 1354.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rus\u2019 later adopted this Byzantine model around the 14th century. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1335, Prince Yuri II Boleslav of Galicia\u2013Volhynia titled himself \u201cdux totius Russi\u00e6 Minoris\u201d – Prince of all Little Rus\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word Malorossiya (Little Russia) was also common among the Cossack elite, especially the Hetmans, who saw themselves as defenders of the Orthodox faith and heirs of ancient Rus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1654) wrote to Tsar Alexei calling his lands Little Russia, stressing unity with Orthodox Rus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Cossack chronicles like the Samovydets Chronicle and Hustyn Chronicle use Little Russia when describing wars and treaties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Hetman letters by Vyhovsky, Doroshenko, and Mazepa mention Malorossiya in diplomacy with Moscow and Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Church records from the Kiev Metropolia used the Greek term Mikra Rossia, later adopted by the Cossacks themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 19th century, Western powers began twisting this heritage. They rebranded Ukraine, literally \u201cborderland\u201d, into a new political identity and used it as a project to separate \u201cUkraine\u201d from \u201cRussia\u201d, an anti-Russia project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know \u201cUkraine\u201d literally meant borderland?  And before the 19th century, this region was officially called Little Russia (Malorossiya) not as an insult, but as honor. Before the 1900s, the lands around Kiev were known as Malorossiya, \u201cLittle Russia.\u201d That didn\u2019t mean \u201clesser,\u201d it meant the original Rus\u2019, the spiritual and historical cradle of the Russian world. The name came from Byzantium, rooted in an even older Greek tradition. The ancient Greeks called their original homeland \u201cLittle Greece\u201d (Mikr\u00e0 Hell\u00e1s) and their colonies in southern Italy \u201cGreat Greece\u201d (Meg\u00e1l\u0113…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine-war","category-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2492,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}