Ukrainian Russophiles

Ukrainian Russophiles

The focus of this article is part of a general political movement in Western Ukraine of the 19th and early 20th century. The movement contained several competing branches: Moscowphiles, Ukrainophiles, Rusynphiles, and others.

The time has come . . . to cross our Rubicon and say openly so that everyone can hear it: We cannot be separated by a Chinese wall from our brothers and cannot stand apart from the linguistic, ecclesiastical, and national connection with the entire Russian world!—from Ivan Naumovich's Glimpse into the future, considered the most important manifesto of Galician Russophilism

Western Ukrainian Russophiles (Ukrainian: Pусофіли, Rusofily) were participants in a cultural and political movement largely in the Western Ukraine. This ideology emphasized that since the people of Galicia (Halychyna) were descendents of the people of Kievan Rus' (Ruthenians), and followers of Eastern Christianity, that they were thus a branch of the Russian people. The movement was part of the whole Pan-Slavism that was developing in the late 19th century. Russophilia was largely a reaction against Polish (in Galicia) and Hungarian (in Transcarpathia) cultural suppression that was largely associated with Catholicism.

Russophilia has survived longer among the Transcarpathian Rusyns and among the Lemkos in modern Poland, as well as in other Western Ukrainian regions such as parts of Bukovina.