General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why are the Russian troops in Crimea without ensignia or otherwise identifying markings? [View all]Igel
(35,274 posts)Rather anachronistic and contrary to geography.
The translation has it wrong. Not slightly. Just wrong.
"Rus'" is the name given to the duchy based in Kiev that was destroyed by the Horde. It ruled Russia, and the Rjurikovy would rotate between major cities as their duchies. It reduced the loyalty of the citizenry to any one son of Rjurik and instead encourage loyalty to the house. It gave all the sons and heirs experience in a wide portion of the territory that one of them would one day rule, and made them more loyal to the House than to a specific territory.
Then again, it also had a kind of assembly, which made it far more democratic for the time than most places. Once the Horde trashed the duchy, already weakened by Muslim slavers over the course of a few hundred years, leadership passed to Moscow. Novgorod kept up having a kind of electoral system for a while, but Russia (Ivan IV? 'the Terrible,' in any event) put an end to that kind of anti-Russian thinking and did the Ottoman thing: He scattered the population across the north in forced resettlement.
To claim Moscow = Rus' is to claim all of Ukraine. Fortunately this was a Crimean Russian who simply failed to pass her history class--or perhaps learned a skewed, chauvinist view of history. Either way, her ignorance can be discounted and simply viewed as embarrassing.
On the other hand, for RT to publish it does show a bit of chauvinism, given RT's status in Russia. (There's a sort of poetic use of Русь, but I don't see it here. Usually it's restricted to на Руси, "in Rus(sia)."