Moskal

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The Moscow Kremlin under Prince Ivan Kalita in the early 14th century, depicted by 19th century painter Apollinary Vasnetsov. Moskovskiy Kreml pri Ivane Kalite.jpg
The Moscow Kremlin under Prince Ivan Kalita in the early 14th century, depicted by 19th century painter Apollinary Vasnetsov.
Text in Ukrainian on a white T-shirt: "Slava Bogu, shcho ia ne moskal'" (Slava Bohu, shcho ya ne moskal), transl. Thank God I am not a Moskal Maiki1.jpg
Text in Ukrainian on a white T-shirt: "Слава Богу, що я не москаль" (Slava Bohu, shcho ya ne moskal), transl. Thank God I am not a Moskal

Moskal [lower-alpha 1] is a designation used for the residents of the Grand Duchy of Moscow from the 12th to the 15th centuries. [1]

Contents

It is now sometimes used in Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland, but also in Romania, as an ethnic slur for Russians. [2] [3] [4] The term is generally considered to be derogatory or condescending and reciprocal to the Russian term khokhol for Ukrainians. [5] Another ethnic slur for Russians is kacap in Polish, or katsap (кацап) in Ukrainian.

History and etymology

Initially, as early as the 12th century, moskal referred to the residents of Muscovy, the word literally translating as "Muscovite" (differentiating the residents of the Grand Duchy of Moscow from other East Slavs such as people from White Ruthenia (Belarusians), Red Ruthenia (Ukrainians), and others). With time, the word became an archaism in all the East Slavic languages, and survived only as a family name in each of those languages—see below. [6]

The negative connotation in Ukraine came in around the late 18th-early 19th centuries in the form of an ethnic slur labelling all Russians. At that time, since the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement of Cossacks with Moscow the majority of Russians in Ukrainian lands were soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army (and in fact at that time the term "moskal" was synonymous with the word "soldier"), as well as Russian bureaucrats, Russian nobles that were granted estates there, and merchants. All these categories were disliked by the locals. [7]

Cultural influence

The "Moskal" is a stock character of the traditional Ukrainian puppet theatre form, vertep. [8] [9]

It also gave rise to a number of East Slavic family names: Moskal, Moskalyov, Moskalenko, Moskalik, Moskalyuk, Moskalchuk, Moskalyonok.

See also

Notes

Related Research Articles

The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Southeastern Europe and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belarusians</span> East Slavic ethnic group

Belarusians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Belarus. They natively speak Belarusian, an East Slavic language. More than 9 million people proclaim Belarusian ethnicity worldwide. As of the 1st of January 2024, 9 155 978 Belarusians reside in Belarus, with the United States and Russia being home to more than 500,000 Belarusians each. The majority of Belarusians adhere to Eastern Orthodoxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ukrainian language</span> East Slavic language

Ukrainian is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the native language of a majority of Ukrainians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruthenia</span> Medieval exonym for Rus

Ruthenia is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Kievan Rus'. It is also used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, and some of western Russia. Historically, the term was used to refer to all the territories of the East Slavs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruthenians</span> European ethnic group

Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sources to describe all Eastern Slavs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as an exonym for people of the former Kievan Rus', thus including ancestors of the modern Belarusians, Rusyns and Ukrainians. The use of Ruthenian and related exonyms continued through the early modern period, developing several distinctive meanings, both in terms of their regional scopes and additional religious connotations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Duchy of Lithuania</span> European state from c. 1236 to 1795

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Ruthenian is an exonymic linguonym for a closely related group of East Slavic linguistic varieties, particularly those spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in East Slavic regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Regional distribution of those varieties, both in their literary and vernacular forms, corresponded approximately to the territories of the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine. By the end of the 18th century, they gradually diverged into regional variants, which subsequently developed into the modern Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn languages.

<i>Knyaz</i> Historical Slavic title

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polonization</span> Adoption or imposition of Polish culture

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In Ukrainian culture, vertep is a portable puppet theatre and drama, which presents the nativity scene, other mystery plays, and later secular plots as well. The original meaning of the word is "secret place", "cave", "den", referring to the cave where Christ was born, i.e., the Bethlehem Cave "Вифлеемский вертеп" in the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the 17th century, the vertep arrived in the Russian Empire after the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate, where it was known as szopka, became a Protectorat of the empire in 1654.

The Ruthenian nobility originated in the territories of Kievan Rus' and Galicia–Volhynia, which were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Russian and Austrian Empires. The Ruthenian nobility became increasingly polonized and later russified, while retaining a separate cultural identity.

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Rus or RUS may refer to:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oseledets</span> Style of haircut

Oseledets or chub is a traditional Ukrainian hairstyle that features a long lock of hair sprouting from the top or the front of an otherwise closely shaven head. Most commonly it is associated with the Ukrainian cossacks.

Moskal is an ethnic slur that means "Russian", literally "Muscovite", in Ukrainian, Polish, and Belarusian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zhyd</span> Pejorative term

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">All-Russian nation</span> Imperial Russian ideology

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Litvinism</span> Pseudohistorical theory according to which Belarusians founded the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Litvinism is a pseudohistorical branch of nationalism, philosophy and political current in Belarus, which bases the history of its state on the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and emphasizes the Baltic component of the Belarusian ethnic group. According to this branch of Belarusian nationalism, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a Slavic or Belarusian state, the medieval Lithuanians were Belarusians, and modern Lithuania is a consequence of a falsification of history. On the other hand, some Russian Litvinists refer to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a Slavic Russian state.

References

  1. Alexander Mikaberidze (2011). Ilya Radozhitskii's Campaign Memoirs. Lulu. p. 10. ISBN   978-1-105-16871-0.
  2. Ryazanova-Clarke, Lara (2014). The Russian language outside the nation. Edinburgh. p. 74. ISBN   9780748668465.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. Radozhit︠s︡kiī, Ilʹi︠a︡ Timofeevich (2011). Campaign memoirs of the artilleryman. Tbilisi, Georgia. p. 10. ISBN   978-1-105-16871-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. Benjamin Harshav (1986). American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology. University of California Press. p. 559. ISBN   978-0-520-04842-3.
  5. Thompson, Ewa Majewska (1991). The Search for self-definition in Russian literature. Vol. 27. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 22. ISBN   9027222134.
  6. Edyta M. Bojanowska (2007) "Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian And Russian Nationalism" ISBN   0-674-02291-2, p. 55: "In the 'low', folksy world of the provincial narrators, a Russian is a moskal ("Muscovite")", a foreigner and an intruder, at best a carpetbagger, at worst a thief in league with the devil."
  7. Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History , pp. 274-275
  8. Прыгунов М. "Драма Вертепная", Литературная энциклопедия 1929—1939, vol. 3. Moscow: Изд-во Ком. Акад., 1930, pp. 543—545
  9. Redefining the Traditional Vertep: An Issue in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations