Day of Ukrainian Statehood to undergo date change, countering Russian claims about Kyivan Rus and Christianity
In commemoration of Saint Prince Volodymyr and the Baptism of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine, Ukraine is observing the Day of Ukrainian Statehood on July 28. However, starting next year, the holiday will shift to July 15.
NV recalls the importance of this tradition and the reasons behind the date change, especially in light of Russia’s attempts to “appropriate” the history of Kyivan Rus.
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy introduced the Day of Ukrainian Statehood less than a year before Russia’s full-scale invasion. He signed the corresponding decree at Independence Square on Aug. 24, 2021, coinciding with Ukraine’s 30th anniversary of independence.
This decree established an annual celebration held on July 28, the Day of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine – blending with the previous commemoration of Saint Volodymyr the Great, the Prince of Kyiv, on this day.
By doing so, President Zelenskyy asserted that Ukrainian statehood traces its roots to “the founding of the city of Kyiv and the flourishing of the state during the time of Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv.” This pivotal moment occurred in 988 AD when Prince Volodymyr converted the country to Christianity.
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Ukraine considers the following states to have been successors to ancient Kyivan Rus:
The Galician-Volhynian Principality
The Ukrainian Cossack State
The Ukrainian People’s Republic
The Western Ukrainian People’s Republic
The Ukrainian State
Carpathian Ukraine,
And modern independent Ukraine
In the decree, it is stated that Ukraine celebrates the Day of Ukrainian Statehood based on the Act of Declaration of Independence of Aug. 24, 1991, approved through a nationwide referendum on Dec. 1, 1991.
On this day, Ukrainian society also honors and pays respect to the activities of “outstanding representatives of the national elite and fighters for the statehood and independence of Ukraine,” including Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, Mykhailo Drahomanov, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, and others.
“We are a young family from the glorious dynasty of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine,” said Zelenskyy, speaking at Independence Square in August 2021 on the occasion of Ukraine’s 30th anniversary of independence.
“Descendants of the founders. Descendants of the baptizers. From a brave lineage. A wise lineage. A Cossack lineage. We are neither orphans nor newcomers. We are descendants of a mighty country that was the center of Europe. Here, Orthodoxy began, and the Old Slavic language took its origin, from which the modern Ukrainian language descended. Here, our statehood began. We will celebrate the birth of our statehood on the day of the flourishing of our state – on the Day of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine.”
On the same day, Aug. 24, 2021, the president delivered a separate speech in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament urging MPs to make the Day of Ukrainian Statehood a public holiday. A special bill (No. 5864) was introduced for this purpose.
The bill was passed on May 31, 2022. The new law amends Article 73 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, adding a new paragraph that establishes July 28 as the Day of Ukrainian Statehood as a public holiday. The law came into effect on June 9, 2022. However, until the end of the state of war, all public holidays in Ukraine are considered working days, including the Day of Ukrainian Statehood.
The holiday known as the Day of the Baptism of Kyivan Rus-Ukraine was officially established by the third President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko in the summer of 2008. He issued a decree to commemorate this occasion on July 28, coinciding with the celebration of the 1020th anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus. The selected date holds special significance as it honors Prince Volodymyr’s memory, an important figure in Ukrainian history.
President Yushchenko’s decree emphasized the profound impact of Orthodox traditions on the development of Ukrainian society and the state. The holiday serves as a reminder of the country’s religious and cultural heritage.
However, there will be a change in the date of the holiday starting from 2024. The Ukrainian government has approved a bill to observe the Day of Ukrainian Statehood on July 15, instead of July 28. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, approved this decision on July 14, 2023, as part of the bill that also modifies the dates of two other holidays.
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The revised holiday dates are as follows:
Christmas will be celebrated on Dec. 25 instead of Jan. 7.
The Day of Ukrainian Statehood will be on July 15 instead of July 28.
Defender of Ukraine Day (coincides with the church holiday of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God) will be on Oct. 1 instead of Oct. 14.
The driving force behind this decision was President Zelenskyy. The explanatory note accompanying his presidential bill emphasized the intent to “abandon the Russian heritage” and counter attempts by Russia to impose corresponding dates on Ukraine.
Earlier in 2023, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) made a significant change by adopting the Revised Julian Calendar in place of the Julian calendar followed by the Russian Church. This shift means that July 15 now corresponds to July 28 in the Julian calendar. Consequently, the Day of Ukrainian Statehood was moved to this date.
Despite the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian propaganda and historiography have escalated their efforts to disassociate the history of Ukrainian statehood from Kyivan Rus.
Russian school textbooks are now undergoing revisions that omit references to Kyiv as the capital of Kyivan Rus. This apparent attempt to erase historical ties was highlighted by the BBC last summer, when they analyzed the content of Russian school textbooks approved for use by the Russian Ministry of Education. A comparison of editions from 2016 and 2022 revealed that many mentions of Ukraine and Kyiv were removed, and even the term “Kyivan Rus” was replaced with “Rus” or “Ancient Rus.”
In accordance with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s revisionist history, Russian propagandists persistently argue that Ukraine never existed as a state before the creation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR, labeling it an “artificial” entity.
However, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP) refutes this claim, asserting that Ukraine as a state has inherited numerous symbols from Kyivan Rus. This heritage includes the national coat of arms (Blue shield with a gold trident), the monetary unit (hryvnia), and most importantly, Kyiv as the political and cultural center of Ukraine.
Moreover, the Day of Ukrainian Statehood is deliberately celebrated on the same day as Ukrainian Christian churches commemorate the memory of Kyiv Prince Volodymyr the Great and the Baptism of Kyivan Rus. According to historians from UINP, “Prince Volodymyr the Great embodies the development of Rus. His acceptance of Christianity as the state religion in 988 AD marked a civilizational choice for Ukraine. Rus maintained political, economic, and cultural ties with most European states of that time.”
From that moment on, the continuity and inheritance of state-building traditions in Ukraine has remained unbroken, extending to the present day. It is worth noting that the traditions of Rus in building a state oriented toward Europe and a cultural-religious space have endured through various historical periods, including the Galician-Volhynian Principality, the Cossack State, the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR), the Ukrainian State of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, Carpathian Ukraine, and modern independent Ukraine.
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“The Day of Ukrainian Statehood reminds us of the thousand-year history of state-building in our country,” the UINP asserts.
"On this holiday, we honor all stages of our statehood, from Kyivan Rus to the present, and all those who have contributed to the establishment of Ukraine as a nation.”
Renowned historian Yaroslav Hrytsak acknowledges in his books that professional historians do not consider Rus as a national state, whether it be Russian, Ukrainian, or Scandinavian. However, he emphasizes that “By adopting Christianity, Volodymyr the Great integrated Rus into European civilization and did not, as the Kremlin claims, lay the foundations for the ‘Russian world.’”
“To discern between historical facts and propaganda, one need only look at this statistic: out of 52 interdynastic marriages of Kyiv princes, three-quarters were with Western countries such as England, Scandinavia, Poland, Germany, Hungary, and France,” Hrytsak noted, citing examples from the work “Kyivan Rus in Medieval Europe,” published at Harvard.
“I will not retell the book, but I will limit myself to this conclusion: for almost 250 years of its existence (from the Baptism in 988 to the decline of central Kyiv authority in 1146), Rus was a full-fledged part of contemporary Europe,” emphasizes the Ukrainian historian.
Last year, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, reminded that unlike Russia, “we do not need to privatize anything because we have been on our land for 1000 years, and we will remain on it.”
“It is you who come to foreign land trying to appropriate it, you are trying to appropriate a foreign history, foreign dishes, foreign culture,” Kuleba declared in response to the baseless accusations by the Kremlin’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Ukraine had “privatized” the Day of the Baptism of Rus.
“Ukraine was, is, and will be, and the Ukrainian President’s decree simply reaffirmed this fact.”
Kuleba also recalled that Moscow’s attempts to call itself the center, while being a historical periphery, are not new and have been happening for hundreds of years.
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“The fact remains: there are no two Kyivs,” Kuleba concluded.
“There is one Kyiv, and it is the Ukrainian Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, which has been the capital of Ancient Rus from the very beginning. This is our history, our past, our present, and our future.”
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
