''History of Ruthenians or Little Russia'' () also known as ''History of the Rus' People'' is an anonymous historico-political treatise, most likely written at the break of the 18th and 19th centuries. It had a great influence on the formation of the

Ukrainian national identity The history of Ukrainian nationality can be traced back to the kingdom of Kievan Rus' of the 9th to 12th centuries. It was the predecessor state to what would eventually become the Eastern Slavic nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. During th ...

and was even named "the most prominent historical work in Ukraine". It was written and originally published in

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and describes the history of the

Ruthenians A ''Ruthenian'' and ''Ruthene'' are exonyms of Latin language, Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common Ethnonym, ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term ...

and their state,

Little Russia Little Russia, also known as Lesser Russia, Malorussia, or Little Rus', is a geographical and historical term used to describe Ukraine. At the beginning of the 14th century, the patriarch of Constantinople accepted the distinction between wha ...

(', in the terminology of the book), from antiquity to 1769. It mostly focuses on the history of the

Zaporizhian Sich The Zaporozhian Sich (, , ; also ) was a semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Zaporozhian Cossacks that existed between the 16th to 18th centuries, for the latter part of that period as an autonomous stratocratic state within the Cossa ...

and the

Cossack Hetmanate The Cossack Hetmanate (; Cossack Hetmanate#Name, see other names), officially the Zaporozhian Host (; ), was a Ukrainian Cossacks, Cossack state. Its territory was located mostly in central Ukraine, as well as in parts of Belarus and southwest ...

Authorship and dating

The book was written as a political

essay An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...

by an unknown author at the end of the 18th or early 19th century. It could not have been written before 1792, since it mentions the Tmutarkan stone, discovered only in 1792. According to

Zenon Kohut Zenon Eugene Kohut (born January 18, 1944) is a Canadian historian specializing in early modern Ukrainian history. He retired as professor emeritus, University of Alberta. From 1992 to 2014 Kohut worked at the University of Alberta's Canadian I ...

, the author of the manuscript was strongly influenced by the events that had taken place after the

Third Partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polis ...

. The "History" was distributed in the form of a manuscript for a long time and was published in

Moscow University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, and six branches. Al ...

press by Osyp Bodianski only in 1846. The title page ascribed the work to " Georgy Konissky, Belarusian Archbishop". Subsequently, his authorship was seriously questioned, but the true author is not established. One of the supposed authors is ; the ideas and style of the "History" are similar to the "Historical Reference", which he submitted to Empress

Catherine II Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III ...

. Another candidate (among others) is her Grand Chancellor

Alexander Bezborodko Prince Alexander Andreyevich Bezborodko (; 6 April 1799) was the chancellor of the Russian Empire from 1797 to 1799, and the chief architect of Catherine the Great's foreign policy after the death of Nikita Panin. Early life Аleksander Bezbor ...

.''Наталія Яковенко'
"Нарис історії України з найдавніших часів до кінця ХVІІІ ст."
, p. 366

Publications

*Г. Конискій. ''Исторія Русовъ, или Малой Россіи''. — М., 1846. *''Історія Русів''. Український переклад Івана Драча. Київ: Веселка, 2003.

Notes

References

External links

История Русов или Малой России.
Moscow, 1846. Digital text of the first edition.

on the

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' (), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was created under the auspices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe (Sarcelles, near Paris). As the ...

website.
History of Ruthenians
on the

Izbornyk Izbornyk is an internet-library project of the old Ukrainian literature also known as "History of Ukraine 9-18th centuries. Primary sources and interpretation". It functions since the 21st of August 2001. The project is a collection of major wor ...

website. {{Authority control 18th-century books 1846 non-fiction books History of Ruthenia History books about Ukraine