Today's Russian-Ukrainian conflict makes people puzzled, why do the Rus, who are also Slavs, want to be Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, hostile to each other, and even kill each other? In fact, the ancestors of these three ethnic groups are all Rus' people, just as our southerners and northerners in China are all descendants of Yan and Huang. There is also not much difference in their appearance, and it is difficult for us Chinese, and even Europeans, to distinguish between them. So, why are they heading for **?
Here, we have to thank the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty unified China in a timely manner and restored the political and cultural center of the Han nation in the great ** period after the Tang Dynasty. After the Tang Dynasty, China experienced the chaos of five dynasties and ten kingdoms, and the Central Plains region was divided by the Liao State, the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Western Xia, and the Han people everywhere were also known as the Song people, Liao people, Western Xia people, and so on. Although the Mongols unified China, they were an alien people, and they practiced a steppe hierarchy, dividing the various ethnic groups into three, six, nine, and so on, and ruled only for 89 years.
Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, defeated the Yuan Dynasty and re-established the unified regime of the Han people. Although his clothing was influenced by the Yuan Dynasty, with the development of the Ming Dynasty, the traditional clothing of the Han people returned. The official uniforms of the Ming Dynasty are also considered to be one of the most beautiful costumes in ancient China. The nearly 300 years that the Ming Dynasty ruled China was also a critical period in the formation of the consciousness of all ethnic groups in the world. The sense of identity of the peoples of Eurasia today can basically be traced back to this period.
In these 300 years, under the leadership of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese nation has reached a high degree of unity in politics, economy, culture, ideology (Confucianism) and other aspects. In the end, a strong and stable sense of Chinese national identity was formed, which became one of the important memories of the modern national awakening. After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, although they also ruled China, they were Manchus, not Han Chinese, so they kept guarding against the resistance of the Han until the fall of the Qing Dynasty. They also know that foreigners only need money, while the Han people want their lives.
In the hundreds of years since the formation of national identity, the Chinese nation has always maintained a high degree of centralization and unity, forming a political, economic, cultural and ideological unity. The situation of the Rus' is different, for nearly 400 years from the 13th century to the 17th century, they have been in a state of ** like the Chinese Song, Liao, Western Xia, and Jin, and they belong to different hostile regimes with each other. At a critical moment in the formation of national consciousness in modern times, the Rus' ethnic groups scattered in Lithuania, Poland, the Golden Horde, Muscovy, gradually evolved into today's Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians. Since then, they no longer regard each other as compatriots, and the nation is irretrievable.
Although the later tsars ** reunited the entire Rus' national region and tried to bridge the rift between the peoples, it was a pity that it was too late, the rift already existed, and the sense of identity of the various nationalities was formed and was gone forever. It's like after four or five hundred years of China's experience of the Song, Liao, Jin, and Western Xia, the Liao people have identified themselves as Liao, the Tangut people have identified themselves as Tangut people, and the Song people have identified themselves as Song people. At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang unified China in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, but found that the Chinese nation was no longer the Chinese nation of the Han and Tang dynasties.
Fortunately, the Ming Dynasty appeared during the period when it should have appeared, and it avoided in time that the main ethnic group of China was reduced to a national group like Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, who were obviously the same ancestors, but did not agree with each other. Step by step, the Rus' could have developed into a Rus' nation with a high sense of national identity, and during the Rurik dynasty, the Rus' established the basis of their national identity, with Orthodoxy at its core, on the basis of which a unified Rus' state: the Grand Duchy of Kievan Rus'. Kiev is also known as the "Mother of Rus' Cities", and Kiev is to the Rus' nation what Xi'an is to China.
But alas, at this time the Mongols he came, Link, Moscow, Kiev, and then the regular operation to slaughter the city. This completely interrupted the integration of the Rus' nations, and the region was completely divided into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Golden Horde, and the Rus' Principality. In less than a hundred years, the Han Chinese overthrew Mongol rule and re-established a unified regime, and bridged the long-standing national rift, so that the people of China had a unified sense of identity with their own nation.
And the fate of the Rus' is more tragic, they experienced 400 years of hostility **, they were unified by the tsar**, 400 years, the vicissitudes of life, everything is too late, everything can not go back. Although we always complain about the Ming Dynasty now, we have preserved the civilization inheritance of the Han and Tang dynasties, embraced the sense of identity of the Chinese nation, and completed this great cause during the period of the formation of national identity, so that the bloodline of Chinese civilization has been inherited.