Breaking the Myth of the Trinity People with Vitaliy Dribnitsya

Today we will talk about a very mysterious page in our history. I have long wanted to understand this very topic. We all more or less know what happened during the time of Russia.

We can name at least our main princes. But what happened to Russia? The history of those times is so ancient that it is difficult to understand it and separate fact from fiction. This is what the Russians use, by the way, when they push the version of a triune people to the masses: Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, who supposedly descend from a common Slavic essence.

This common cradle of three peoples is used by the Kremlin to justify the war and occupation of Ukrainian territories. So let's figure out what's true and what's a myth in this story.

Who lived on our lands before Rus' and what do we have in common with Russians and Belarusians? My name is Akim Galimov and this is a true story. [music] Friends, today we have Mr.

Vitaliy Dribnytsya. Congratulations. Greetings, Mr. Yakim. I think you are definitely watching Mr. Vitaliy's video. Voice of Truth channel.

Voxstatis vetas. Well, actually, I think you've definitely seen the video of Mr. Vitaliy laying out Russian Russians and Russian narratives, putting them on their backs. Here is a unifying ethical attitude, let's say, Ukrainians, yes, to relatively Russians, well, Belarusians, let's say, and even, perhaps, I did not understand your questions.

Please clarify your question a little. What is the difference in ethnogenesis between Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians? There is no ethnogenesis between Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians. there is an ethnogenesis of the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian peoples.

Why do you constantly drag the history of Russia into your history, because you continued some kind of Byzantium? No, we basically proceed from the fact that we are one ethnic group, you know? A single Slavic ethnos, a single Eurasian one. There is no Slavic ethnicity.

There are 15 Slavic nations that live there. And the three unity of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians let the three unity of Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians is a typical imperial form of the formulation of the second half of the 10th half of the 20th century. Let me explain.

Look, I have a great-grandfather, one of the four great-grandfathers, because you know, what about the Slavs here in the 5th century? I will kill you immediately. I am such as you have already heard about great-grandfathers.

That's it. You told me that you would tell me about the Slavs in the fifth century. Your great-grandfather did not live in the fifth century. He lived at the end of the 10th century.

I explain that this, that what you are talking about in the 5th century is complete nonsense. It was not for nothing that I asked you what book you read. Things did not go well with Wikipedia.

And that's cool. Thank you for your work. Thank you for the invitation. Sometimes, when you connect with Russians in chat roulette, you can often hear from them something like this about this common Slavic ethnicity, this cradle from which we all came. And this is a very interesting period, actually, which was, well, before Russia, because we all know Oleg, Olga, Volodymyr very well from school there.

But what happened before that, you know, is always like a blank spot. And what's actually interesting is this common cradle, or can it really be called a common cradle for Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians there? And we have some kind of common foundation there, let's say. When we talk about a common cradle, we directly return to Soviet historiography, which spoke of the common cradle of three fraternal peoples: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.

Although the Slavs were collectively, well, archaeological Slavs, because historical Slavs appear somewhere in the 6th century in mentions. So the Slavs are a common cradle for all Slavs, not only Eastern Slavs, such as Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, but also Western and Southern Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Lusatian Serbs, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and so on.

Therefore, when Russians talk about some common past only for Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, it is common for all Slavs. This simple explanation is the essence of the Russian manipulation.

To better understand it, we need to travel back to the 10th century. At this time, historical science was actively developing in Europe, and new disciplines were emerging. One of the new and fashionable at the time was historical linguistics.

This is a science that studies the origin of languages. And also ethnology, a science that studies peoples, their culture, customs, traditions, and way of life. In 1837, the Czech scientist Pavel Josef Šaférik, based on the latest research at the time, wrote a fundamental work on the common origin of all Slavs.

In it, he first divides the Slavic peoples into three large groups: by similarity of language and by the territory where these tribes lived. This division did not mean that the peoples within each group were one people.

It was an attempt to systematize knowledge about the Slavs in a similar way that biologists group plants. The fact that Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians have similar languages and lived side by side only indicates common historical contacts, not a common national identity.

In the Russian Empire, the scientific division of the Slavs into groups was turned into a tool of ideological propaganda. The fact that Shafaryk classified Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians as one eastern group of Slavs began to be presented not as a linguistic or geographical feature, but as evidence of their ethnic unity and historical brotherhood.

Thus, a purely scientific classification was used to create the myth of a triune people. This is such an absurd concept, it's as if someone today were to propose uniting Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks into a triune people. They say that they are Western Slavs, they have related languages and live nearby.

But such an idea has no historical or cultural basis from the very beginning. These peoples have different languages, different states, and different histories. They fought among themselves, had different allies, and belonged to different religious denominations.

And most importantly, none of them would think of calling themselves one people just because they are Western Slavs. This is a prime example of how artificial and politically convenient the imperial idea of a triune people of the Eastern Slavs was.

Why don't you translate the real story into English? I want to send your video to friends in Germany, France, the United States. Friends, I often receive comments like this.

And you are right. Our undistorted history should be accessible to anyone abroad. This is very important. If there is not enough of our Ukrainian content in the world, people will learn about Ukraine from Russian sources, and there, believe me, they know how to write beautifully that Ukraine never existed.

We would have launched the English voice acting a long time ago, but it's a matter of resources. And now the good news. Thanks to the support of our YouTube channel sponsors, we are launching the translation and dubbing of some episodes in English.

We're starting with English, but we'll continue to expand the list of languages. Dear our sponsors, a huge thank you from our entire project for helping to spread the real story and implement our plans. And if you are not yet a sponsor, but would also like to join the community, it is very easy to do so.

You just need to click the sponsor button and choose the level of support that is comfortable for you. In return, we offer nice bonuses.

This includes early access to our episodes without ads, additional content only for sponsors, offline meetings, and access to a closed chat. And as a sponsor of the highest levels, I am giving away the book Ukrainian Palaces of the Golden Age with my signature.

And your name will be engraved in history, marked on a brick in the Cossack estate in Pokorshchyna, which we are restoring with joint funds. Join us.

Let's create a real story together. But let's get back to the Slavs in general and our main question. What happened before Russia? To understand, when we talk about the emergence of the Slavs, there are, yes, I don't know, the scary words ethnogenesis, if possible, but still, how does this emergence happen? They didn't just appear now, didn't they come from somewhere? No, of course, these were certain small tribes, maybe a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, who spoke some common dialects.

So they populated this ecological niche of northern Ukraine. That's where they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, meaning they burned patches of forest, used the ashes as natural fertilizer, and then quietly dug with some primitive hoe and didn't touch anyone. History passed, neither the Roman regional legions, nor the Germans, who lived much further north, nor any eastern peoples reached them.

But when we talk about the emergence of the Slavs, we are still talking about the fact that these are people who were formed from what was here. That is, these were not people who came here from somewhere else.

No. Here are some of the homelands of the Slavs - this is conventional southern Belarus, southeastern Poland, and northern Ukraine. Here is the Pripyat River basin conditionally.

From there, this Slavic conglomerate was formed, which began to spread south to the territory of modern Ukraine, the Dnieper region, west to Poland-Czech Republic, and to the Balkan Peninsula. And some went to the territory of modern Russia, the so-called Zalisya, as they say in the Don region.

The term ancestral homeland of the Slavs does not mean any one country or specific city. This is a conditional territory in Eastern Europe, where many centuries ago the future Slavic peoples began to form. Now historians agree that the ancestral homeland of the Slavs should be considered the lands stretching from the Dnieper in the East to the Vistula in the West.

But before reaching an agreement, there were discussions in scientific circles about which river: the Oder, the Danube, the Vistula, or the Dnieper, this conditional place of origin of the Slavic peoples should be linked to. But, importantly, none of these versions ever included the territory of Russia.

To put it simply, Russia was not primarily the home of the Slavs. And this is the fundamental difference between the history of Ukraine and the history of Russia. We can say with confidence that part of our territory was the ancient home of the Slavs, their ancestral homeland.

But Russians should be taught in their schools that the Slavs also came to the territory of modern Russia from the lands that are now part of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. For people with an imperial mindset, this fact is simply unacceptable.

Well, there are general principles for writing history within the framework of a modern state. In the 90s, when there was a discussion in Russia about what to do after the collapse of the Soviet Union and how to describe the history of Russia, there were two schools of thought. The Pivtsy school, which proposed, yes, there are state borders of Russia, let's dance from the state borders of Russia.

They tried to form this point of view that the first capital of the Rurikovichs, Rurik's Gorodishche or Ladoga in the area of Lake Ilmen, was there, and even Putin was taken there so that he could finance it. Well, for some reason Putin didn't like that.

And the Moscow school of Russian historians is traditional for Russia. No, the sources tell us about Kyiv. Kyiv was part of Russia, so let's pull the story from there.

And this Russian imperial school won. Well, what about now that you communicate with many ordinary Russians, uh, who are you connecting with? They understand how Kyiv is, how Putin perceives Kyiv, and these ordinary Russians, for them Kyiv is their city, they feel it that way, like, " Yes," because there is a system of public school education that produces this. There are media outlets that prey on this.

That is, they cannot take something separate from the academic point of view. Well, there are no historians who would say, like the St. Petersburg historians in the 90s, that no, this is not our history.

Let's form the myth of our statehood around Ladaga, around the Moscow principality of Tvir, Vladimir of Suzdal, and so on. No, they are dragging this myth to the middle Dnieper region.

The period of the 19th century is known as the Great Migration of Peoples. At this time, when a huge number of tribes began to move en masse across Europe. There were many reasons for the move.

Some were fleeing war, some were fleeing hunger or climate change, and some were in search of better lands. It all started with the Huns, a warlike nomadic tribe, moving from East Asia to Europe.

Their movement dislodged the Germanic tribes, who fled deep into the Roman Empire. This caused an avalanche. Some tribes displaced others.

Borders began to change. Old states disappeared, new ones emerged. Eastern Europe was displaced mainly due to nomadic pressure and climate change. Western due to political and economic reasons, including the decline of the Roman Empire.

In this chaos, the formation of new ethnic groups began, including the Slavic peoples. If Russians were to admit that the Slavs came to the lands of modern Russia as a result of a great migration of peoples from the territory between the Vistula and the Dnieper, it would become obvious to them that Russia is not the core of Slavism, but only one part of a great process. What to do with this? Well, in fact, until Russia somehow fails with its education system, well, it 's hard to fight it, right? That is, well, it's impossible, well, it's impossible to convince them, respectively, well, it's impossible.

We understand that India was part of the British Empire. But no historian tells us that our roots are in Britain and that our first Maharajas are the ruling Viennese dynasty there. This is absolute absurdity.

Exactly here too, the center was on the territory of modern Ukraine. The language issue is also interesting here, because Ukrainian and Lithuanian are some of the most archaic languages in this region. These are languages that have changed little.

And this is also visible in written evidence, in those very, uh, St. Sophia Cathedral, these graffiti scrawled on the walls, yes, and birch bark documents and so on. There are also phrases that are common to this day.

There is a vocative case there and so on. This suggests that we lived in this place and didn't move anywhere in particular. As a result of the great migration of peoples, a separate historical period emerged - the great migration of the Slavs.

At this time, some Slavic tribes remained in the territory of modern Ukraine, while others moved further south, west, and north of Europe. [music] At the beginning of the 10th century, the idea that one part of the Slavs migrated from their ancestral homeland, while the other part remained in place, was developed by the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky.

Referring to ancient written sources, Hrushevsky believed that those Slavic tribes that remained on the territory of modern Ukraine and did not move anywhere were called Antes. And those who moved westward, towards the Balkans, were Slavs.

Hrushevsky read about the Antes and Sklavins in the works of Byzantine historians, dating back to the 6th century AD. In the work of a Byzantine historian named Jordan, the Anti are mentioned as a warlike tribe fighting against the ancient Germanic tribe of the Goths, led by a king named Vinitar.

This is how Mykhailo Hrushevsky describes this confrontation in his illustrated history of Ukraine. I quote: "In the first battle, says Jordan, the Antis defeated the Goths, but Vinnitar was not afraid, he fought with them further.

He defeated and took the prince of the Antis Bozha and their elders captive. And in order not to frighten the Antis, he ordered them to be killed with a terrible death, crucified on crosses." End of quote. It is no coincidence that Hrushevsky calls the leader of the Ants a prince, and his subordinates starshynas.

He saw in the Antes the ancestors of Ukrainians and a well- organized force that was an attempt at the first state formation of the Slavs even before the emergence of Russia. However, not everyone agrees with this interpretation.

Modern researchers believe that Hrushevsky somewhat idealized the role of the Antes and gave them more signs of statehood than they actually were. The fact is that the written history that we know from these Byzantine and Arab sources has little in common with archaeology, because immediately before the emergence of Rus', two archaeological cultures were recorded on the territory of Ukraine.

One in Left-Bank Ukraine is the Chernihiv region, the Volyntsev-Romen culture, if I'm not mistaken. And the second culture is recorded in Right-Bank Ukraine.

That is, there are two archaeological associations that do not coincide with what we see in the sources from a political point of view, that there was supposedly some kind of Ante state there at the end of the century, at the beginning of the century. That is, it was a period that historians call, using the English term chivdom, chiefdom.

This is a transitional period from these tribal groups to the state. When talking about how Ukrainian lands lived before the emergence of the Rus' state, modern historical science suggests not limiting ourselves only to the question of the origin of the Slavs who inhabited northern Ukraine and the Dnieper region, but also paying attention to the south and east of Ukraine. Modern Ukrainians are descendants of both Slavic tribes, and some part of the Hun tribes and Germanic tribes, and Poles, and Czechs, and so on.

That is, no one has canceled migration. Therefore, this process, well, we shouldn't be so primitive that we are the only descendants of the Othlovians. We are the descendants of all the peoples who lived here on our territory, even the Hungarians, who briefly passed through the territory of Ukraine, or the Bulgarians, who left their cultural traces and biological traces, let's say, in the Ukrainian people.

In 1930, Ukrainian archaeologist Volodymyr Grinchenko conducted archaeological research near Zaporizhia. And suddenly an amazing find.

On the outskirts of the village of Voznesenka, Grinchenko excavated something that at first glance looked like a scene from a legend. In the center of the stone rampart is a rectangular structure.

Around the perimeter is a ring of stones, fragments of pottery and a whole pile of horse bones. But the main thing is the treasure pit. In one pit, iron, bronze, silver, and even gold objects lay mixed together.

All these objects were covered with traces of fire, stacked in one pile and pierced by three swords. The archaeologist stated without hesitation that these were elements of the funeral rite of a wealthy warrior or leader, and the traces of fire indicated a burial by cremation.

When the artifacts were examined, it turned out that the gold alone found in the pit weighed 1 kg 200 g. Among the silver items, the figure of an eagle stood out, which was very well preserved.

This burial dates back centuries. Such a large time span of 300 years has opened up a wide field for scientists to hypothesize. Who could be buried near Zaporizhzhia with such honors? One of the most popular versions is the grave of Asparukh, the khan of the nomadic Bulgar tribe.

The Bulgars supposedly came from the North Caucasus. Their habitat there was their ecological niche. And part of the Bulgars went north and reached modern Tatarstan, where they founded the state of Great Bulgaria.

And part of them went east and seized power over the southern Slavs in the territory of modern Bulgaria. Well, they gave them their political name accordingly.

But they also became Slavicized extremely quickly. Making the transition from the Caucasus to the territory of modern Bulgaria, the Bulgarians wandered in the Ukrainian steppe for decades. They controlled not only the south, but also almost the entire left bank of modern Ukraine.

And there is archaeological evidence for this. In 1912, when the Ukrainian lands were part of the Russian Empire, in the village of Mala Pereshchepyna in the Poltava region, a 12-year-old boy named Fedor Dedyrkach noticed a hole in a sandy hill. The boy heated the sand a little and discovered a golden vessel.

The boy's mother immediately reported this discovery to the local authorities, who wrote to St. Petersburg. Later, an employee of the Hermitage was sent from St.

Petersburg to Malaya Pereshchepina, who explored the sandy hill and wrote in his report about a whole treasure trove of precious objects. This, friends, is another one of many examples of how the Soviet government erased our history.

No matter what we make an episode of real history about, one way or another we encounter such examples. The Russians took away artifacts found on Ukrainian lands, and destroyed libraries.

But what is most disappointing for me personally is when we ourselves do not preserve our history. More than a year ago, we came to Kozelets in the Chernihiv region to film an episode about the family of Hetman Rozumovsky, and there we saw the Cossack estate of Pokorchyn in this condition. A unique monument of the 10th century, with which the history of three Cossack families is connected: the Razumovskys, the Dargans, and the Galagans.

But there were homeless people living there. Everything was littered with garbage, and the building itself was in a state of disrepair. When we saw all this, we decided to set a precedent.

The "Real History" project community has taken this monument under its care, and we are engaged in its restoration. Firstly, to save, and secondly, to set an example for others.

Anything is possible. And our history is in our hands. In over a year of work, we have raised 3 million UAH. This is a gift from our viewers.

And they have already done a lot. We cleaned the monument, strengthened the foundations, and replaced the roof on the tenement house. You can see more details in our stream from Pokorshchyna.

The link will be in the description. But there is still a lot of work to do. According to the estimates of our restoration architects, we need over 7 million UAH to complete all flood prevention work. This is our history, our past.

And without saving such objects, it will be very difficult for us to understand our path. Join us. More than 100 years have passed since then, but even today the Malopereshchepensky treasure is considered the most expensive found in Eastern Europe. Among the finds were over 800 gold and silver items with a total weight of about 75 kg.

Swords, bowls, jewelry, rings, belt buckles, Byzantine coins and utensils. All extraordinary artwork. Of course, the Russians took everything away, and today the treasure is kept in the Hermitage in St.

Petersburg, like many other unique artifacts found on the territory of Ukraine during the Russian Empire. Of particular note is the Golden Ring with a Monogram, which researchers associate with the name of Khan Kubrat, the founder of the state of Great Bulgaria, in the 6th century.

This gave reason to assume that it was here, on Ukrainian lands, that this legendary ruler was buried. In the 8th century, traces of the Bulgarians in southern Ukraine are lost.

They no longer inhabited this area. A new wave of Khazar nomads is arriving in the Black Sea steppes. They also managed to create their own state entity, which in history is called Khazaria or the Khazar Kaganate.

The word kaganate comes from the Turkic linguistic tradition and means an empire headed by a kagan. And Kagan is the title of the Supreme Ruler in the Turkic nomadic empires, who had a weight even higher than that of the Khans.

Geographically, the center of the Slavic Khaganate was somewhere near Astrakhan. This is the lower Volga, the northern part of the Caspian Sea. also a state that combined traditions of nomadic herding, and some of the Khazars were already engaged in agriculture.

Geographically to the east, uh, they reached Kyiv somewhere, because there is a mention there that, well, there is a famous Jewish manuscript that was discovered by the British historian and Emilian Prytsak, as far as I remember, back in the 80s. It is possible that the territory of Kyiv was controlled by the Khazar Khaganate and was approximately the easternmost point of this state.

The Jewish manuscript mentioned by Mr. Vitaliy is a unique artifact, roughly dated to the end of the beginning of the 10th century, the era of the Khazar Khaganate. It opens a window to a little-known period in Kyiv's history, even before the formation of Rus'.

The document was found in Cairo in the repository of old manuscripts of a Jewish synagogue and was first studied by Ukrainian historian Omelyan Prytsak, a renowned orientalist and founder of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. It was he who called this document the Kyiv Letter.

In terms of content, the letter is one of the oldest written evidence of Kyiv as a major trading center located at the crossroads between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is written in the Judeo-Arabic language of Jewish merchants.

The letter refers to a debt owed by one of the merchants, part of which was paid on his behalf by the Jewish community. This shows that there was already a Jewish community in the city, where people supported each other and a system of mutual aid was in place.

A Turkic inscription has been preserved on the back, presumably the signature of an official, proof that Kyiv was under the political control of the Khazar authorities. The Kyiv Letter is an important testament to how trade, government, and the local Jewish community lived in ancient Kyiv.

And what are they? They are Jews of greatness. Once again, historians hesitate. There, the top of the Khazar Khaganate may or most likely have adopted Judaism for a short time. And perhaps, yes, the top had adopted Judaism.

And what was the upbringing of the rest of the population? Well, it 's hard to say. Most likely, paganism, some variants. So, if we look at Kyiv, it turns out that what the Slavs mean is that the Khazar Khaganate is imposed on the Slavs here, and then our Varangians come, who, well, that is, yes, but at the same time are stupid Khazars, wrote Pushkin.

Yes, that is, here in general on the territory of Kyiv, uh, well, there could have been something Khazar, which was superimposed on something Slavic, yes, there could have been some Khazar artifacts, as far as I know, found approximately on the territory of Kyiv, but they are, well, insignificant, let's say, in the rest of the mass of Slavic artifacts. But, perhaps, for a short time, Kyiv was controlled by the Khazars.

Ugh. Why not? Historians still debate the influence of the Kozhar Khaganate on Ukrainian lands. Some say that the Khazar Kaganate was a powerful trading empire and Kyiv played an important role in it as a city with a favorable geographical location. Others criticize and even question the substantiation of the Kyiv letter, suggesting that it could have already been written in Rus' Kyiv.

One thing is known for sure: the Khazars were the last nomads to spread their influence over vast Ukrainian territories. Kyiv and almost the entire left bank of the Dnieper.

After the Khazars, the history of the powerful state of Rus begins. We officially count our statehood from the history of Russia, or more precisely, from the baptism of Vladimir. But this does not mean that our story began on the threshold of the Baptismal Font.

We are all, to some extent, descendants of the people who lived on our lands for millennia. In southern Ukraine, especially in Crimea, the earth literally preserves layers of antiquity. Here, among the steppes and coastal cliffs, incredible artifacts are hidden.

The legacy of Greek antiquity. Once upon a time, the Greeks built powerful city-states on these shores: Chersonese, Olbia, and Penticapaeum. They lived here for centuries, traded, fought, left behind architecture, coins, ceramics, and a whole layer of history that we are still discovering.

But it wasn't just the Greeks who left their mark here. These lands were a crossroads of cultures, and through them, wave after wave, nomadic tribes passed: Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians. Each of these tribes changed the map of the steppes.

Something brought something, and something destroyed something. And from the century a new wave of Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars. Each new nomadic association came with its own agenda and rewrote the history of southern Ukraine.

And yet, it was from the 6th century that the situation changed. The Slavs are increasingly making their presence felt on the historical arena. First as separate tribes, and then as a force that can no longer be ignored.

The Bulgarian khans begin to reckon with them. The Byzantine emperors sought agreements with them, and the Slavs themselves gradually built something much more than just tribal alliances. Glades, Derevlyans, Severyans, Ulichs, Tiverts, Dulibs.

We already know these names well from the chronicles. It is from them that the unification begins. They became the foundation of a new state, which would later be called Rus'. Thank you.

Well, friends, well, well, I don't know if we clarified a little bit today the issue of what happened to Russia. I think it's been clarified and perhaps systematized, because when it's laid out like this on some kind of scale, it seems to me that it all becomes much clearer.

But also, I think, to paraphrase the phrase that we know that we know nothing, this is also But we have to know more. But we need to know more.

Absolutely. There is something to explore. And I hope that we will have many, many discoveries ahead. History is an open book.

This is not something that has already happened. And we need to study it like the Talmud. We are constantly rethinking all of this. That's right.