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So, is it like the difference between Spanish spoken in Spain versus Mexico (large difference where speakers may not even understand each other even though they are speaking the "same" language) or is it more like the difference between English in the US and Britain (minor differences with spelling and usage of some words, but generally everyone understands each other)?
I'd say its more like Spanish and Portuguese, or Swedish/Danish/Norwegian. A Russian speaker would understand about half of what a Ukrainian speaker is saying.
So, is it like the difference between Spanish spoken in Spain versus Mexico (large difference where speakers may not even understand each other even though they are speaking the "same" language) or is it more like the difference between English in the US and Britain (minor differences with spelling and usage of some words, but generally everyone understands each other)?
Those are not good examples. Better let's take Scandinavian languages as Mr.Marbles suggested and let's imagine for a moment that Swedish for example is a modernized version of Old Norse language, yet Sweden borders a country, where people still speak Old Norse, or rather a slightly modified version of it. The reason why I wouldn't stick exactly with Mr.Marble's example, is because Sweden and Norway are coming from the same ancestry, apparently, but Russia takes her roots directly from Ukraine. Hence Russian language is refined and modernized version of Ukrainian; old Russian looks much closer to Ukrainian. As a Russian speaker I sometimes can't understand what Ukrainians are saying ( because of different dialects and influence of Polish language, apparently,) but I can understand for the most part this text in New-York news-paper above; it looks pretty close to pre-revolutionary Russian.
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That is still a debated topic. It basically comes down to whether or not you think there is evidence that specific policies were implemented to punish the Ukrainians and exacerbate the existing situation. The link I posted from the University of Chicago follows the intentional model and lays out a very strong case on why based on Ukrainian nationalism and their general resistance to Soviet economic policies.
I know it's a debated topic, which turned at a certain point in time into political game, when the US State department used those nationalist claims trying to separate Ukraine from Russia and thus to weaken Russia geopolitically.
However if we'll look closer into the claims of genocide, directed supposedly at Ukrainians as ethnicity by the Soviet government, then we have to investigate a bit more what collectivization was all about. So in order to make my job easier, I'll quote the main points from Wiki if you don't mind;
"Until this time, the Bolsheviks allowed the peasants to take the land and farm it privately.[2] In the 1920s, however, they began to lean toward the idea of collective agriculture...
...The pre-existing communes, which periodically redistributed land, did little to encourage improvement in technique, and formed a source of power beyond the control of the Soviet government.
The equal land shares among the peasants gave rise to food shortages in the cities. Although grain had nearly returned to pre-war production levels, the large estates who had produced it for urban markets had been divided up.[2] Not interested in acquiring money to purchase overpriced goods, the peasants chose to eat their produce rather than sell it, so city dwellers only saw half the grain that had been available before the war.[2] Before the revolution, peasants controlled only 2,100,000 km² divided into 16 million holdings, producing 50% of the food grown in Russia and consuming 60% of total food production. After the revolution, the peasants controlled 3,140,000 km² divided into 25 million holdings, producing 85% of the food, but consuming 80% of what they grew (meaning that they ate 68% of the total).[4]
The Soviet Communist Party had never been happy with private agriculture and saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem. Lenin claimed "Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in vast proportions."[5] Apart from ideological goals, Joseph Stalin also wished to embark on a program of rapid heavy industrialization which required larger surpluses to be extracted from the agricultural sector in order to feed a growing industrial work force and to pay for imports of machinery (by exporting grain).[6]
Furthermore, collectivization involved significant changes in the traditional village life of Russian peasants within a very short time frame, despite the long Russian rural tradition of collectivism in the village obshchina or mir. The changes were even more dramatic in other places, such as in Ukraine, with its tradition of individual farming, in the Soviet republics of Central Asia, and in the trans-Volga steppes, where for a family to have a herd of livestock was not only a matter of sustenance, but of pride as well.
So there we have it, in a nutshell.
1. Russian/Ukrainian peasantry with their drive for private property was a source of power uncontrollable by the Soviet government, because Russia where the communists were trying to implement their Marxist ideas was not industrialized European country like, say, Germany, but still underdeveloped, predominantly agrarian country.
2. Russian/Ukrainian peasantry was a direct threat to implementation of the country's industrialization planned by bolsheviks and hence Russian peasant was probably the most hated figure by Stalin, as I've already mentioned before.
3. Ukraine historically was part of Russian Empire with extremely fertile land, with relatively wealthy peasants ( who were very protective of their private property) and what's more - with population that traditionally used to challenge the authorities throughout Tzarist times. Big part of Ukrainian population consisted of escaped surfs, who became organized in independent army, that wasn't bothered by Tzars, since it served as natural protection of Russia's borders.
With all this in mind, you can see under the circumstances why Ukrainians would be hit the hardest during the collectivization, since it was a class warfare and Ukraine was strongly represented by the targeted class. So all these Ukrainian claims about their "ethnic difference" with Russians and hence them becoming the target of Russian/Jewish/ whatever/ genocide doesn't hold ground. Is this region ( Ukraine that is) different comparably to many other Russian regions( Siberia, Central Russia,)? - yes of course; it has its own culture and its own traditions. It's the kind of regional differences that are normal for any big country; ( after all Southern Confederacy has different mindset comparably to the Northern States,) so I don't believe in any specific "destruction of Great Ukrainian race" as it has been claimed lately with clear purpose of political games.
So, is it like the difference between Spanish spoken in Spain versus Mexico (large difference where speakers may not even understand each other even though they are speaking the "same" language) or is it more like the difference between English in the US and Britain (minor differences with spelling and usage of some words, but generally everyone understands each other)?
Where they still speak Old Norse is in Iceland. Icelandic is close enough to Old Norse that Icelanders can still understand the sagas recited in Old Norse. Swedish and Norwegian are highly modernized descendants of Old Norse. Norwegian retains some older vocabulary than Swedish, but Swedish and Norwegian are extremely close.
As to Russian and Ukrainian, erasure, have you studied Serbo-Croatian or Bulgarian? Old Russian seems closer to South Slavic than to Ukrainian to me. I've heard that Ukrainian and Polish are more dialects of each other than separate languages, but I can't say from personal experience. I guess South Slavic, Ukrainian and Russian all developed together, then one branch of Slavs broke off and moved south. But here's the intriguing thing--there are a number of Scandinavian words in, well, Russian (холм, for example, as in Stockholm), but more so in South Slavic. That intrigues me. Would that go back to when the Vikings took over Rus', or would it go back farther still, somehow?
First of all, I just LOVE how Poles "expertly" speak on behalf of "Ukrainians" or the Soviet people! erasure, you don't even know what your own grandad was up to on occupied by Poland territories of Galitchina or Volun, you did not have a clue that there was a famine in Poland in 1930; who made you think you possess the knowledge to speak about the policies and the life in the Soviet Union?!
With regard to Ukrainian language and Ukraine itself: they were ARTIFICIALLY CREATED at the start of the last century. Even now so-called "Ukrainian speakers" speak not an official "Ukrainian language, but their respective DIALECTS; that's why a "Ukrainian speaker" from central or Eastern Ukraine finds it difficult to understand "Ukrainian speakers" from Western parts of Ukraine. And a state of Ukraine is falling apart: Ruthenians declared their independence a couple of years ago (hate Galitchians); Malorussia wants to remain formally independent from Russia, but with close economic ties (don't hate Galitchians, but feel annoyed at their militancy); Novorussia and Donbass want autonomous status within Russia (hate Galitchians) a few weeks ago Donbass Republic opened its embassy in Russia; Crimea considers itself under temporary occupation by Ukraine.
Where they still speak Old Norse is in Iceland. Icelandic is close enough to Old Norse that Icelanders can still understand the sagas recited in Old Norse. Swedish and Norwegian are highly modernized descendants of Old Norse. Norwegian retains some older vocabulary than Swedish, but Swedish and Norwegian are extremely close.
As to Russian and Ukrainian, erasure, have you studied Serbo-Croatian or Bulgarian? Old Russian seems closer to South Slavic than to Ukrainian to me.
I looked into those languages briefly, so what can I tell you? I don't understand them equally when I hear the spoken language, be that Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian. However I can understand them more or less in written form. It seems that they use a lot of words from old Russian too, so I have to figure out how and in what context/form they use them.
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I've heard that Ukrainian and Polish are more dialects of each other than separate languages, but I can't say from personal experience.
No, not really as far as I know; it's the more you move into the Western part of Ukraine, the more and more the words with Russian roots are substituted with Polish.
This became a popular trend in Ukraine lately - to get rid of words that indicate the direct connection between Russian and Ukrainian languages and substitute them with different words. However if I look at the text in that newspaper from the thirties, when this artificial trend was not there - the text reads very close to old Russian; I understand most of it, except for few words. I can't see how Ukrainian can be all that different logically speaking, since Russian language started ( and developed) from Ukrainian.
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I guess South Slavic, Ukrainian and Russian all developed together, then one branch of Slavs broke off and moved south. But here's the intriguing thing--there are a number of Scandinavian words in, well, Russian (холм, for example, as in Stockholm), but more so in South Slavic. That intrigues me. Would that go back to when the Vikings took over Rus', or would it go back farther still, somehow?
I am not sure about it, ( although some of these words have been brought to my attention earlier,) what intrigues me in this whole situation with Vikings though, is why would Vikings pillage and lay to siege European cities, yet they'd come as guests of honor to Slavs?
Not only that, but as the old Russian chronicles have it, Slavs would invite Vikings to rule over them, asking for their protection from the Pecheneg and Khazar tribes. So what that was all about? Some old "blood" ties that we don't know much about, or simply a fact that a lot of Scandinavians settled in Russian steppe already much earlier in history than Oleg ( Helwig, Olef - whatever his real name was ) became the first ruler of Kiev?
That's what I kinda can't figure out.
First of all, I just LOVE how Poles "expertly" speak on behalf of "Ukrainians" or the Soviet people! erasure, you don't even know what your own grandad was up to on occupied by Poland territories of Galitchina or Volun, you did not have a clue that there was a famine in Poland in 1930; who made you think you possess the knowledge to speak about the policies and the life in the Soviet Union?!
You keep on confusing me with a different poster, apparently, but since not only my grandparents/parents lived in the Soviet Union, but I was born and lived there too, I can point you right away at your fallacy, when you write something like this;
"I don't think that I am the only one who lived in the USSR. I also understand that there were lots of people who did not like living in the Soviet Union; like there are lots of Americans who don't like living in USA, and lots of British who don't like it in Britain..."
See, I have to tell you right there, that when Britons or Americans don't like living in the US or Britain, they are free to live, without *being referred* to psychiatrist, as it was often a case in good ole Soviet Union.
Oh! And NEW-YORK based 1930-s papers are no longer a "reputable" source for you?! How convenient!
Well that depends on the paper and how well vetted the source is and what we have come to know since then. Also, it is rather poor form to post something in a language that is obviously foreign to the people in a thread and then demand that they translate the source. See, I know in the Soviet Union the papers can never print anything that isn't "official", here in the US we have always had something called freedom of the press where our papers can basically say and offer whatever opinion they want. Sometimes though, papers just get it wrong...
For all I know your "proof" consisting of a couple of pages of a New York based Ukrainian newspaper is the same as the incredibly wrong claim printed in the Chicago Tribune above. Of course, I can't even read it to try to refute or see what it really says. Maybe erasure would be kind enough to post some of the translation.
Not to mention there were US papers at the time that spoke of the horrible famines in the Ukraine, the ones you claim were responsible for fueling the "conspiracy" and there were ones that were singing the praises of the socialist state. Which American papers would you like us to believe?
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There is some more for you to ponder over:
Hunger marches in London. January 1931
This is hunger march of 1932 in Scotland
And this is 1934
This is British labour camp
Does "massacre of March 7, 1932 during Ford Hunger Marches" say anything to you?
This is from Hunger March in Chicago 1930
Do you get all of your information from "World Socialist Worker" websites? Do you even know what those events were about? During the Depression in Britain people were marching to pressure the government to abolish the "means test", which was administered to determine whether or not someone qualified for public assistance. There were many unemployed workers and communists were very active in Britain and the US at the time. These workers said they were "hungry" because they were struggling economically. However, that is FAR different from the famines that gripped the Soviet Union and killed millions. Heck, these "hungry" workers had enough energy to march from Liverpool to London. The famine ravished Soviet peasants would have given anything to be "hungry" unemployed Brits and Americans.
As for the "massacre of March 7th", it was a large protest and the police both the public Dearborn police and private security guards for Ford overreacted and opened fire on the crowd. Four were killed instantly, a fifth later died of their wounds and 60 were injured. The march was composed of a few thousand unemployed auto industry workers and led by communist organizers. At first the violence was attributed to communist agitation, but then the media and government placed blame squarely on the police and Ford security officers for the entire incident. It is a notable event because it gave a large boost to mainstream (non-communist) labor organization in the US and was the beginning of a chain of events that led to the unionization of the US auto industry.
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And do you know that former Ukrainian president Yuschenko and his wife -- US State Department official, -- were using photos of US famine to illustrate "Ukrainian Holodomor"?
Strong accusation, provide proof. I have heard accusations that some of the over 1,500 photos that were presented as evidence by the Ukrainian's may have been from the 1921 famine, but that was the extent of the falsification of photos.
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Originally Posted by Alma1
So, who caused "Holodomor" in Britain, US, Poland and other countries?
There wasn't one. There were widespread economic issues and poverty from the Depression, but nothing approaching the levels of outright famine experienced in the Soviet Union. I'm not saying everything was 'peaches and cream' for most of the world at that time, but what we are talking about is a difference of scale. To date, we have one historian, Boris Borisov, who claims 7.5 million deaths in the US from the Depression and its effects. His methods of "computing" this have been widely challenged because they are based solely on assuming that previous demographic changes of 16.7% growth over the period from 1920-1930 would continue unabated despite the impacts of the Depression on people having children or the increased infant mortality do to the Depression.
In real terms the US population increased by 7.3% from 1930-1940. He did his study to try and disprove the methodology for determining the impact of the Holodomor. What he fails to tackle is why did the population of the Ukraine only increase by 6.6% from 1926-1939 while neighboring areas of the Soviet Union such as Russia and Belrus increased 16.9% and 11.7% respectively. We know it wasn't do to emigration from the Ukraine, because that was not possible, something else happened. The same model cannot be applied to the US because Canada and Mexico experienced lower growth rates then the US during this same time period.
This isn't to deny that there weren't people who suffered with starvation in the US during that time or that there weren't large health impacts from the storms in the Dust Bowl. Let's just say that the most liberal number of deaths attributed to the Depression by US based researches is around 2 million. That number represents less then 1.5% of the US population and those people would have died for a variety of reasons. In terms of what happened in the Ukraine, taking a low end estimate of under 5 million deaths, it still represents 19% of the population during that time period and virtually all of that is attributed to famine.
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Originally Posted by Alma1
Darling, both, and Galitchina, and Volun were PART OF POLAND between 1922 and 1939!!!!! Didn't your "historians" tell you that?
Comrade, I know how the Ukraine was divided at that time. I also know those areas weren't suffering from widespread famine because the only source I have found (and apparently you as well) is a Ukrainian newspaper printed in New York in the 1930's. Find me a real source.
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Originally Posted by Alma1
NJGOAT
You will love this: it was taken from your favorite source of knowledge -- Wikipedia!
The Hunger March in Edmonton, December 1932
And this photo is from Jarrow march, 1936!
Again, what you fail to grasp is that unless you are a labor organizer or communist, these were isolated and very carefully created protests. They were called "Hunger Marches", but they were about promoting communism and socialist policies. The people involved in the marches were not gripped by famine, they were largely unemployed and struggling people. Were some of them hungry, sure, but no one was going door-to-door and forcing them to surrender whatever food they had and convicting them of stealing "state property" and shipping them off to a "labor camp" as a criminal if they had any food. What do you think would have been the result of "Hunger Marches" in the Soviet Union at this time?
First, it would never have been known about except locally becuase it would never have been reported in the papers. The only thing the papers would have shown was happy farmers living on a collective.
Second, the protests would have been put down in brutal fashion and I'm not talking about some local cops getting itchy trigger fingers while being pelted with rocks, I'm talking about a concerted effort to sweep the street and anyone remotely involved and convict them of being "enemies of the state".
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Originally Posted by Alma1
Are you paying attention? In the Soviet Union torn by revolutions and wars economic depression with famine and unemployment was over by 1933; while in Europe and USA (without any wars!!!) it started in the late 20-s and was still present in the late 30-s!
That's why your "historians" are getting in a twist: you must not remember that SOCIALIST economy together with Soviet collectivisation got Soviet society out of economic depression at the time when capitalist economy was displaying its utter impotency. The US got out of its economic mess only thanks to WW2!
Of course, the socialist policies worked at that time. The entire fabric of society was torn apart and reorganized. Millions died in famine so their grain crops could be dumped on the international market to fund industrialization. The irony of that is because the Soviet Union was dumping so much grain on the international market, they were depressing grain prices which had the effect of worsening the situation for western farmers already dealing with low prices and in the US, massive drought. On top of that, the Soviet's robbed every ounce of wealth from their citizens by forcing them to buy food from state stores only in exchange for hard currency. Anyone who resisted was prosecuted and made into slave labor to further the agenda of the state.
So, yes, the means did establish an end. The Soviet Union at a massive expense in terms of the lives of its own people and society transformed itself into an industrial nation. As the west plodded along mired in the effects of the Depression, the Soviet Union slowly drug itself along. However, there was one other nation that could claim the same, Nazi Germany. Of course, they did it through economic "parlor tricks" and robbing the wealth of certain "undesirable" citizens.
The irony of course is that here we stand today looking back. Western democracy and capitalism for all its faults is alive and well while fascism and communism have been largely consigned to the "ash heap of history". Though, I do find it nice that in the last couple of posts you have at least tipped your hand in terms of your agenda. You don't care about what happened in the Ukraine, gulags or even the suffering of the Russian people do to communism. You are an ardent communist and anything contrarian to your view of it being the "savior of mankind" is dismissed as lies and propaganda. What's funny to me is you don't even need to deny the suffering. Afterall, it was all justified wasn't it? The gift of a communist utopia and the joy of standing in lines to buy anything, was worth the lives of the millions who died to create it...wasn't it?
Those are not good examples. Better let's take Scandinavian languages as Mr.Marbles suggested and let's imagine for a moment that Swedish for example is a modernized version of Old Norse language, yet Sweden borders a country, where people still speak Old Norse, or rather a slightly modified version of it. The reason why I wouldn't stick exactly with Mr.Marble's example, is because Sweden and Norway are coming from the same ancestry, apparently, but Russia takes her roots directly from Ukraine. Hence Russian language is refined and modernized version of Ukrainian; old Russian looks much closer to Ukrainian. As a Russian speaker I sometimes can't understand what Ukrainians are saying ( because of different dialects and influence of Polish language, apparently,) but I can understand for the most part this text in New-York news-paper above; it looks pretty close to pre-revolutionary Russian.
Thanks to you, Mr.Marbles and Ruth4Truth for the language lesson. It is one area I am not very well versed in at all.
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I know it's a debated topic, which turned at a certain point in time into political game, when the US State department used those nationalist claims trying to separate Ukraine from Russia and thus to weaken Russia geopolitically.
However if we'll look closer into the claims of genocide, directed supposedly at Ukrainians as ethnicity by the Soviet government, then we have to investigate a bit more what collectivization was all about. So in order to make my job easier, I'll quote the main points from Wiki if you don't mind;
*snip*
So there we have it, in a nutshell.
1. Russian/Ukrainian peasantry with their drive for private property was a source of power uncontrollable by the Soviet government, because Russia where the communists were trying to implement their Marxist ideas was not industrialized European country like, say, Germany, but still underdeveloped, predominantly agrarian country.
2. Russian/Ukrainian peasantry was a direct threat to implementation of the country's industrialization planned by bolsheviks and hence Russian peasant was probably the most hated figure by Stalin, as I've already mentioned before.
3. Ukraine historically was part of Russian Empire with extremely fertile land, with relatively wealthy peasants ( who were very protective of their private property) and what's more - with population that traditionally used to challenge the authorities throughout Tzarist times. Big part of Ukrainian population consisted of escaped surfs, who became organized in independent army, that wasn't bothered by Tzars, since it served as natural protection of Russia's borders.
With all this in mind, you can see under the circumstances why Ukrainians would be hit the hardest during the collectivization, since it was a class warfare and Ukraine was strongly represented by the targeted class. So all these Ukrainian claims about their "ethnic difference" with Russians and hence them becoming the target of Russian/Jewish/ whatever/ genocide doesn't hold ground. Is this region ( Ukraine that is) different comparably to many other Russian regions( Siberia, Central Russia,)? - yes of course; it has its own culture and its own traditions. It's the kind of regional differences that are normal for any big country; ( after all Southern Confederacy has different mindset comparably to the Northern States,) so I don't believe in any specific "destruction of Great Ukrainian race" as it has been claimed lately with clear purpose of political games.
I agree with everything you said about the impact of collectivization and why it fell harder on the Ukrainians. What is left is the series of seven policies identified by Timothy Snyder of Yale University that sets the Ukraine apart from the other areas suffering under collectivization. Now, we can all agree that the Ukrainians were the most susceptible and most resistant to collectivization. The measures identified only targeted the Ukraine. Was this done to force the collectivization and goals of the state or to punish the Ukrainians for their resistance? That remains the debated topic. Here are the secen decrees Snyder identified:
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From 18 November 1932 peasants from Ukraine were required to return extra grain they had previously earned for meeting their targets. State police and party brigades were sent into these regions to root out any food they could find.
Two days later, a law was passed forcing peasants who could not meet their grain quotas to surrender any livestock they had.
Eight days later, collective farms that failed to meet their quotas were placed on "blacklists" in which they were forced to surrender 15 times their quota. These farms were picked apart for any possible food by party activists. Blacklisted communes had no right to trade or to receive deliveries of any kind, and became death zones.
On 5 December 1932, Stalin's security chief presented the justification for terrorizing Ukrainian party officials to collect the grain. It was considered treason if anyone refused to do their part in grain requisitions for the state.
In November 1932 Ukraine was required to provide 1/3 of the grain collection of the entire Soviet Union. As Lazar Kaganovich put it, the Soviet state would fight "ferociously" to fulfill the plan.
In January 1933 Ukraine's borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasants from fleeing to other republics. By the end of February 1933 approximately 190,000 Ukrainian peasants had been caught trying to flee Ukraine and were forced to return to their villages to starve.
The collection of grain continued even after the annual requisition target for 1932 was met in late January 1933.
The impacts of these decrees is what, is claimed, made the famine in the Ukraine so much worse then in other areas. The question then is, why were these acts undertaken? The most obvious answer is that it was done to punish the Ukrainians for not meeting their quotas and their resistance to collectivization. Surely Stalin and the Soviet government knew what the impact would be on the Ukrainian peasants. It then becomes a question of whether or not it was done purposefully to target the largest piece of resistance to their policies or would the same have been done to any area resisting collectivization. The first essentially amounts to a definition of genocide, the seocnd not so much.
I can agree that the concept of it being a planned genocide is not one I necessarily fully agree with as the case as to why it was is compelling, but so is the modern reasons why it has been turned into such an issue for political reasons, which means people are stretching to call it genocide for a reason. However, regardless of that, the fact that at least you and I and many others don't dispute is that millions died, many of them in the Ukraine do to the actions and policies of the Soviet state.
You keep on confusing me with a different poster, apparently, but since not only my grandparents/parents lived in the Soviet Union, but I was born and lived there too, I can point you right away at your fallacy, when you write something like this;
"I don't think that I am the only one who lived in the USSR. I also understand that there were lots of people who did not like living in the Soviet Union; like there are lots of Americans who don't like living in USA, and lots of British who don't like it in Britain..."
See, I have to tell you right there, that when Britons or Americans don't like living in the US or Britain, they are free to live, without *being referred* to psychiatrist, as it was often a case in good ole Soviet Union.
PS. That was "free to leave" of course ( I should stop posting after midnight, really)
and while I am at it, let me post something specially for you Alma1, since you are such a specialist on Soviet Union. The reason Ukrainians are spelling now "holodomor" instead of regular Russian "golodomor" is not because someone is confusing it with the word "holod" ( as in "cold,") but because in Ukrainian letter "g" (г) sounds much closer to Russian h (x); it's half way in-between. That's why in order to distance their language as much as possible from Russian, they've started spelling certain words differently, substituting "g" for "h"
Let me repost something from the music forum for you; here is Mark Bernes ( who is an inseparable part of the Soviet culture and history) singing famous "Dark in the Night." He was born in Ukraine, so pay attention what sound he is using in the word "gudit." Is it your regular Russian "g" or Ukrainian "h" - you tell me.
So here is your answer, right there, - all Ukrainian-born people keep this way of pronunciation, although/even when they speak Russian. "Dark in the Night" is a perfect example of it.
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Better let's take Scandinavian languages as Mr.Marbles suggested and let's imagine for a moment that Swedish for example is a modernized version of Old Norse language, yet Sweden borders a country, where people still speak Old Norse, or rather a slightly modified version of it. The reason why I wouldn't stick exactly with Mr.Marble's example, is because Sweden and Norway are coming from the same ancestry, apparently, but Russia takes her roots directly from Ukraine. Hence Russian language is refined and modernized version of Ukrainian; old Russian looks much closer to Ukrainian. As a Russian speaker I sometimes can't understand what Ukrainians are saying ( because of different dialects and influence of Polish language, apparently,) but I can understand for the most part this text in New-York news-paper above; it looks pretty close to pre-revolutionary Russian. 
really?
) became the first ruler of Kiev?
