Putin noted the influence of Lenin's policy on the creation of Ukrainian statehood
The idea of Ukrainian statehood in the USSR was the result of Vladimir Lenin's korenization policy. This was announced on June 22 by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with the editors-in-chief of history textbooks.
According to the president, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks tried to restore statehood using slogans aimed at attracting national elites. As part of this policy, he noted, the idea of creating formally independent national republics, including Ukraine, appeared.
"This was a continuation of the policy of the Communist Party and the Bolsheviks regarding the so—called korenization. <...> And this is where Lenin's idea of korenization and the creation of so-called independent states, which, of course, never existed, came from," Putin said.
During the meeting, Russian Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky stressed that the new history textbooks had revised the interpretation of a number of events, including 1954 and the topic of the transfer of Crimea. According to him, the previous wording about the "reunification of Ukraine with Russia" in 1654 is incorrect and does not reflect the real historical context.
"It was not about the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, but about joining the Moscow Kingdom on the rights of a certain autonomy of the lands of the Zaporozhian Army," Medinsky explained.
He also stated that the new history textbook is free from ideological distortions of facts that could form false ideas about the past among schoolchildren.
On June 20, Putin declared that the Russian and Ukrainian people are united. The President stressed that the grounds on which Ukraine became independent and sovereign were set out in the declaration of 1991, "where it is clearly written in black and white that Ukraine is a non—aligned, non-nuclear, neutral state."
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