But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
That has nothing to do with Russia vs Russian conquered territories, besides, France has Occitan, there is the German based dialects, Catalan, some Basque and a whole raft of others.
> Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Except that that didn't quite happen in the way you suggest. You could make a similar statement about Fries in NL or maybe Limburgs or Diets. And it would be just as much wrong.
> Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Sorry, are we on different planets or something? You mean: those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian and who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture?
> I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
They are as alike as the Dutch and the Belgians, we joke about each other but at the end of the day there is no hate and zero chance of a war.
No assimilation and cultural genocide policy in any form. It has just dwindled to these numbers on its own. Also has no relation to the topic that we discuss. Don't forget to call whataboutism.
I gather that reflection is not a strong side of Western Europeans.
> those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian
That's called "a civil war", and that's how it viewed by many Russians and some Ukrainians. Indeed that's not a great condition to be in.
> who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture
Again, this accusation is coming from a proud member of a nation who eradicated a couple of cultures very recently. "While I had already been born" recently.
People of Donbass were fed up with Ukrainization to the extent that these two Republics do not have Ukrainian as co-official. But Crimea, and the "new territories" of Kherson oblast and Zaparozh'ye (whatever left of them, arguably) have Ukrainian as co-official. Crimea also has Crimean Tatar as co-official. If anybody wants they can study their language and their culture, including in schools. That's what was not permitted to Russians in many, many ex-USSR countries.
12.04.2014 Moscow occupied Slovyansk, "referendum" a month later.
February 2022 Moscow occupied Kherson, "referendum" half a year later.
Do you claim "people of Kherson was fed up, started civil war"?
It is un-civil-ized genocidal war, by calling it civil war you are denying the existence of Ukraine as a state it's the same as saying you support this war and atrocities Ruzzian Federation commits and occupation of Ukrainian territories. Go and preach this on runet instead.
(Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
Valuev Circular [3] (1863), Ems Ukaz [4] (1876) banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print. Religious books on Ukrainian were banned century before [5].
Census [6] (1897) maps Ukrainian language majority far beyond Ukraine current borders. Annexed by RSFSR, Russified by force. Continuum of ethnocide by Moscow.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eneida
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kotliarevsky
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valuev_Circular
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Ukaz
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_langua...
Еней був парубок моторний
І хлопець хоть куди козак,
На лихо здався він проворний,
Завзятіший од всіх бурлак.
Nationalists like to draw fantasy maps. Want to see mine?
Roma, Romania, do you claim Italian is "Romanian dialect"? Muscovy was Rus colony, grew under Golden Horde, renamed in 1721. Rus Grand Prince Володимѣръ Свѧтославичъ — Ukrainian name Володимир (Volodymyr) not Moscow Владимир (Vladimir). Language of Kyiv can't be dialect of its former colonies language.
Slav languages are mutually intelligible. I've checked spoken Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian. Do you claim these are "dialects" of Moscow language?
Eneida translated to Polish:
Eneasz rzutkim był młodzianem,
Podobnym całkiem do Kozaków,
Radzącym z każdym złem spotkanym,
Zawziętszym nawet od burłaków.
I don't understand a word of Polish text.
So it makes sense that everyone who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian will be consuming Russian content 90% of time. Hence people no longer use Surzhik anywhere east of Kharkov (or Khabarovsk), even if some of their ancestors actually spoke it. It just don't make sense to do that anymore.
It does not help that literature Ukrainian has a lot of borrowings from Polish, Romanian and Hungarian and is not really accessible to people who did not visit Ukrainian state schools. However, Russian is very accessible to basically everybody in Ukraine and the rest of ex-USSR.
Regarding folk songs, people actually did a lot of digging in this area starting with late Soviet times, and now there's huge revival of folk music in Russia. Many contemporary pop or rock bands use Russian (Slavic, maybe even Ukrainian) folk motives in their songs, which are usually in Russian. By doing so, they enrich Russian culture, which I've started this comment from.
Use of Russian language shrunk by 2x in last 30 years, while Ukrainian language increased by 2x in last 30 years. At some point, it will flip.
Regarding folk songs, just name one Russian folk song in Russian language, for which I will not be able to found author by 5 minutes of googling.
And it is also obviously in Russian: https://forum.d-seminar.ru/threads/zhuravel-xor-ukrainskaja-...
The rest of the offensive Ukrainian chauvinism I will skip.
For example, Ukraine holds word record by number of folk songs, while I was able to found none of folk songs in Russian (Russish) language after years of searching. Folk songs exists in Russia Federation, but they are not in Russian (Russish) language. Cuban Cossack Choir - folk songs are in Ukrainian language, Ural Cossack Choir - Ukrainian, for example.
You may want to read some on that. Start with:
What does that have to do with hypothetical hatred of Ukrainians?
As far as I know, Russian peasantry was absolutely not spared in the collectivization, making for the bulk of immediate casualties. And why would Stalin care about them? Was he Russian?
No, there is no comparative study of the effects of repressive policies, because starving millions of people to death and not allowing outside help in (read "The Russian Job" by Douglas Smith) is not practiced on such scale anymore, even by Russia. The Wikipedia page on Holdomor quotes orders to subjugate Ukraine regardless of cost. That in itself negates any notion of Russians having a "super positive attitude" towards Ukraine. Do you know why "(...) you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991."? Because it was not possible while Stalin was alive. It was not possible, because it was Stalin who gave orders to subjugate Ukraine at any cost.
[edit] more on the history of the freedom to use the Ukrainian language in Ukraine under Soviet rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization
If you have any complaints about Stalin, you can mail them to Georgia, and indeed I'm the first one to do the same.
After Belarusian, Ukrainian is also closer to Slovak, Polish, and Czech than to Russian – 38% of Ukrainian vocabulary is different from Russian.