The world should revert to calling ‘Russia’ as ‘Muscovy’ in the light of its current socio-political situation and also the invasion of Ukraine, all of which mirror the conditions of the old Grand Duchy of Moscow, a Swedish academic has suggested in his new book.
Stefan Hedlund, Professor Emeritus of Eastern European Studies, Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, gives three fundamental reasons for agreeing with the embattled people of war-ravaged Ukraine, who first demanded in spring 2023 that their country should change its official practice and stop calling Russia ‘Russia’ and go back to ‘Muscovy’.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had endorsed this demand and instructed the government to study the issue from various perspectives, according to an article on Hedlund by the University of Uppsala in Sweden.
The Grand Duchy of Moscow or simply ‘Muscovy’ was an East Slavic principality that developed around the city of Moscow on the Moskva river and later grew into the Tsardom of Russia. It became the Russian Empire under Peter the Great.
According to Hedlund, the first reason why Russia should be called Muscovy is that the country has been reduced to precisely what Muscovy was at the end of the 16th century.
The second reason he gives in his book Russia reverts to Muscovy is that social conditions in the country are now similar to Muscovy.
There is autocracy, suppression of private property, xenophobic relations with the world around it, and an alliance with the Orthodox Church, which preaches that subjects have a duty to obey their ruler.
In other words, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has regressed to the Muscovy under Ivan the Terrible, according to Hedlund.
But the most important reason as per Hedlund is that calling the country ‘Russia’ would be giving legitimacy to the Russian demand of a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine.
The controversial ideology of the ‘pan-Russian nation’ believes that Russians, Ukrainians and Belrusians are all one ‘Russian nation’ and that Russia itself is the sole successor of the Kievan Rus, the medieval East Slavic state that was established by Viking traders (Varangian or ‘Rus’) from Scandinavia. The Kievan Rus is believed to be the ancestor of all East Slavic peoples — Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
“If modern Muscovites want to call themselves ‘Russians’ then of course they have a right to do so, just as others have a right to call themselves Ukrainians or Belarusians. What is unacceptable is that the Muscovites assert that everyone whose roots lie in the old state of Kiev are ‘Russians’ and that all of them, no matter how they define themselves, must accept being governed by Moscow,” Hedlund was quoted in the University of Uppsala article.
“Going back to talking about Muscovy could not only improve our understanding of how the country is governed. It also enables us to side with Ukraine in its struggle for the right to continue to exist,” Hedlund added.