[Max'smom]

Every person is entitled to their opinion. Please consider the opinion of Ukrainians. As the child of a Ukrainian historian and the grandchild of a professor of Kiev University, I would like to suggest the notion that is widespread among Ukrainians: Ukrainians were never Russians. The notion that Ukrainians were once Russians is a myth spread by Russian imperialists. If you are referring to the past, before the Soviet era, Ukrainians did not consider themselves Russians in that time period. The Russian empire and the Soviet state would not have gone to great trouble to suppress the Ukrainian language and culture if there was really a firm belief in Ukraine among Ukrainians that they were all Russians. Kyivan Rus' existed centuries before the modern day concept of nationality (Russians versus Ukrainains). Modern notions of nationality emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only since Ukraine finally became independent have Ukrainians been allowed to say such things without risking arrest and exile to Siberia. That is probably why you haven't heard such thoughts before!