Little Russian identity

The Little Russian political ideology emerged simultaneous to the revival of the Byzantine term Little Rus' at the end of the 16th century in the literary works of the Christian Orthodox clergy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Little Russian idea steadily gained support among Cossack leadership[7] and Orthodox brotherhoods, which were subject to judicial, economic and religious discrimination; and repeatedly organized violent uprisings against Polish rule from the end of the 16th to the first half of the 17th century.

Simultaneously, the image of an Orthodox Tsar who would protect the All-Russian people against the injustice of the Poles became a political tool used by Moscovite rulers.

[8] Later, the existence of such sentiments facilitated the signing of the Treaty of Pereyaslav during the Khmelnytsky Uprising as well as the political integration of the Hetmanate into the Tsardom of Russia.

After the pro-Polish fraction lost Left-bank Ukraine, the Little Russian identity ultimately consolidated after already being strongly enrooted in ecclesiastic circles.

[15] The supporters of hetman Ivan Mazepa who rebelled against Russian emperor Peter I favored a Khazarian origin to the Cossack people, which they considered a distinct nation.

It began to acquire pejorative connotations in the late nineteenth century when young, nationally conscious Ukrainians started to hold the older generation in contempt for being too conciliatory, too bicultural, and too Russian.

Before then, it was neutral, if not frequently positive: the Kyiv University historian and ethnographer Mykhailo Maksymovych welcomed the fact that he had been called a "true Little Russian."

Osip Bodyansky, one of the founding fathers of Ukrainian philology, identified himself in 1836 as a Little Russian (malorossiianin) in his private correspondence with the great Slavist Pavel Jozef Šafárik.

The historian Mykola Kostomarov, who played a leading role in the Ukrainian national revival for most of his life, at certain points in his career even rejected the name Ukraine as anachronistic.

[citation needed] Brian J. Boeck says "The separation of Ukraine and Little Russia became virtually complete by 1920; and the word maloros, previously used by serious scholars and sincere patriots, became forever tainted because of its appropriation by Russian nationalist extremists.

Representatives in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, the United States and western Europe got an opportunity to exert influence on societal processes in Ukraine.