Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
> I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century.
That has nothing to do with Russia vs Russian conquered territories, besides, France has Occitan, there is the German based dialects, Catalan, some Basque and a whole raft of others.
> Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Except that that didn't quite happen in the way you suggest. You could make a similar statement about Fries in NL or maybe Limburgs or Diets. And it would be just as much wrong.
> Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Sorry, are we on different planets or something? You mean: those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian and who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture?
> I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
They are as alike as the Dutch and the Belgians, we joke about each other but at the end of the day there is no hate and zero chance of a war.
> Occitan native speakers: Estimates range from 100,000 to 800,000 total speakers (2007–2012)
No assimilation and cultural genocide policy in any form. It has just dwindled to these numbers on its own. Also has no relation to the topic that we discuss. Don't forget to call whataboutism.
I gather that reflection is not a strong side of Western Europeans.
> those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian
That's called "a civil war", and that's how it viewed by many Russians and some Ukrainians. Indeed that's not a great condition to be in.
> who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture
Again, this accusation is coming from a proud member of a nation who eradicated a couple of cultures very recently. "While I had already been born" recently.
People of Donbass were fed up with Ukrainization to the extent that these two Republics do not have Ukrainian as co-official. But Crimea, and the "new territories" of Kherson oblast and Zaparozh'ye (whatever left of them, arguably) have Ukrainian as co-official. Crimea also has Crimean Tatar as co-official. If anybody wants they can study their language and their culture, including in schools. That's what was not permitted to Russians in many, many ex-USSR countries.
It is un-civil-ized genocidal war, by calling it civil war you are denying the existence of Ukraine as a state it's the same as saying you support this war and atrocities Ruzzian Federation commits and occupation of Ukrainian territories. Go and preach this on runet instead.
Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI
(Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is.
Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevsky [1] (1798) is first literary work published wholly in the modern Ukrainian language. Ivan Kotliarevsky lived in Poltava, East Ukraine [2].
Valuev Circular [3] (1863), Ems Ukaz [4] (1876) banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print. Religious books on Ukrainian were banned century before [5].
Census [6] (1897) maps Ukrainian language majority far beyond Ukraine current borders. Annexed by RSFSR, Russified by force. Continuum of ethnocide by Moscow.
In terms of vocabulary, the Ukrainian language is the closest to Belarusian (16% of difference), and the Russian language to Bulgarian (27% of difference).
After Belarusian, Ukrainian is also closer to Slovak, Polish, and Czech than to Russian – 38% of Ukrainian vocabulary is different from Russian.
Germans distinguish between prussians and bavarians? What are you talking about. Yes there are distinctions by state and where you're from. But the distingtion (apart from the occasional joking Fischkopf or Pazi) is nonexistent. Much less than states in the US.