The Eastern Slavic Ideological Building: Languages, Races and Nationssin the Nineteenth Century Russia

Abstract

Throughout the 19th century, the notion of language has been used by European scholars to create and to expand the notion of ‘Russian race’, which was divided into three ‘ethnical entities’: Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russians. The invention of these entities was based on an opposition between two concepts: russkost´ had to be against ruszczyzna, as well as Russia and Poland were opposed after the partition of Poland (1772, 1793 and 1795) and the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). This paper tries to explain several oppositions and differences between a linked terminology: rossijskij jazyk against russkij jazyk, russkost´ against ruszczyzna, obrusenie, obrusit´ against rusifikacija, rusificirovat´, showing their importance not only for the birth of a modern Russian history, but also for the invention of a modern history of Belarus and Ukraine, in an imperial environment of speeches where the language was exactly related to the ‘race’ to define the ‘nation’.