Volhynians

Russian historiography on regions like Volhynia, specifically before the emergence of the Soviet Union in 1922, brought together Eastern European lands as justification for Romanov rule.

in the 1920s Soviet censorship restricted the study and publication of literary work that demonstrated a separate national and historical background for Ukraine as something non-Muscovite, and therefore non-Russian.

[5] The era of Romanticism in the 19th century brought with it the idea of human ingenuity as the most relevant driving historical force, and authors like Maksymovych and Kostomarov published works like Books of Genesis of the Ukrainian People to popularize this theory.

[3] Among many East Slavic Tribes, the Volhynians are mentioned in the Primary Chronicle and lived along the Bug river in the region of Volhynia,[6] that covered present-day sections of eastern Poland, western Ukraine and southern Belarus.

[6][7] According to the tradition recorded by Al-Masudi and Abraham ben Jacob, in ancient times the Walitābā and their king Mājik, which some read as Walīnānā and identified with the Volhynians, were "the original, pure-blooded Saqaliba, the most highly honoured" and dominated the rest of the Slavic tribes, but due to "dissent" their "original organization was destroyed" and "the people divided into factions, each of them ruled by their own king", implying existence of a Slavic federation which perished after the attack of the Avars.

[9] These Boyars, due in majority part to their geographic position relative to the capital of the Kievan Rus' were controlled by the Grand Prince of Kiev in a way that allowed Volhynia to adopt the systems and customs, such as Christianity, in a concrete way.