ON SOME HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS BETWEEN RUSSIA, THE UKRAINE AND POLAND

Abstract

The article substantiates the conditions of Russia’s revival as a world power. The necessity of conducting social and humanitarian research and allocating budget funds for these purposes is reinforced. Considerable attention is paid to the problems in Russian-Ukrainian relations, related primarily to unification of Russia and the Ukraine during the Pereyaslavl Rada of 1654, which were not focused on in Soviet history and which has been given excessive attention in the recent history of the Ukraine, which ultimately contributed to worsening of relations between the two former fraternal republics. The article indicated the reasons why the Ukrainian landowners, despite severe oppression for national and religious reasons on the part of the Polish szlachta, did not very much seek to separate from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and constantly betrayed Russia in its war with the Polish-Lithuanian state, including that for the Ukraine itself. Some forms of executions that the Poles applied to the rebelled Cossacks and peasants of the Ukraine are indicated, as well as some liberties of the Polish szlachta, which were so attractive to the Ukrainian landowners. The article shows the assessment of the Kobzar T.G. Shevchenko, which was given by him to the leader of the national liberation war of the Ukrainian people Bogdan Khmelnytsky, as well as his assessment of the decisions of the Pereyaslavl Rada.