The Origins

It was at the turn of the seventeenth century that a number of Orthodox intellectuals began to develop a view that prepared the way for what nineteenth-century historiography would call the “reunification of Rus'.” That view was based on the notion of the dynastic, religious, and ethnic affinity of the two Rus' nations.

The idea of the ethnic affinity of the two Rus' nations took on special importance in the writings of the new Orthodox hierarchy consecrated by Patriarch Theophanes in 1620. The hierarchs, who were not merely denied recognition but actually outlawed by the Polish authorities, could not take office in their eparchies and found themselves confined to Dnieper Ukraine. They needed all the support they could get, including support from Muscovy, and even contemplated emigration to the Orthodox tsardom—a plan later implemented by Bishop Iosyf Kurtsevych. Thus the famous Protestation of the Orthodox hierarchy (1621) asserted that the Ruthenians shared “one faith and worship, one origin, language and customs” with Muscovy.¹⁰ The author of the Hustynia Chron­icle (written in Kyiv in the 1620s, possibly by the archimandrite of the Kyivan Cave Monastery, Zakhariia Kopystensky) established a biblical genealogy for the Slavic nations that listed the Musco­vites next to the Rus' and called them Rus'-Moskva.¹¹

The most compelling case for the ethnic affinity of the two Rus' nations was made by the newly consecrated metropolitan himself. In a letter of August 1624 to Mikhail Romanov, Iov Bo­retsky compared the fate of the two Rus' nations to that of the biblical brothers Benjamin and Joseph.

How did the Muscovite elites react to the ideas put forward by the Ruthenian seekers of the tsar’s alms? As might be expected, given the experience of the Time of Troubles, continuing military conflicts with the Commonwealth, and the general tendency of Muscovite society toward self-righteous isolation, the response was by no means enthusiastic. Patriarch Filaret was reluctant to accept and use in his correspondence the title of Patriarch of Great and Little Rus' attributed to him by the Ruthenian bishop Isaia Kopynsky in 1622. In letters to the Orthodox in the Com­monwealth, he would carefully style himself Patriarch of Great Rus' (instead of all Rus'), apparently to avoid provoking a neg­ative reaction from the Commonwealth authorities. The tsar did likewise. In 1634, Muscovite envoys assured Polish diplomats that the reference to “all Rus'” in his title had nothing to do with the Polish-Lithuanian “Little Rus'.”¹³ There was more understanding between the two parties on the issue of the Kyivan origins of the Muscovite ruling dynasty.