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The conception of a triune Russian nation in the Russian Empire Census of 1897. The map presents data on "Russians on the whole" and their component groups Great Russian, Little Russians and White Russians.

A British ethnic map of Europe (1923)

Triune Russian (Ruthenian) people (Russian триединый русский народ, Ukrainian триєдиний руський народ, Belarusian трыядзіны рускі народ) was the idea of the Russian nation in the broad sense that consists of three branches: Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russians. It was the state-constitutive conception in the Russian Empire and scientific standard in Russia and most other countries before (and some time after) the Russian revolution.

Translation specifics

In the Russian language, the word русский (russkiy) is a single adjective to the word Русь which means the historical region Rus. In the modern era, the two medieval forms of this region's name in Latin, Russia and Ruthenia, after a period of interchangeability, became the basis for the terminological distinction between Eastern Slavs in the English language. The first term primarily designated lands of Eastern Slavs who were subjects of the Tsar (modern Russians), the second described lands of Eastern Slavic subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the ancestors of modern Ukrainians and Belarusians. Also, the term Ruthenian is sometimes used to describe issues concerning the people of medieval Kievan Rus' in order to distinguish them from modern Russians. The Russian language traditionally doesn't have this distinction. For this reason, the Russian expression триединый русский народ which refers to Rus' and Russia at once, can be translated both ways and is dependent on the historical or the political focus.

History

Russian Tsardom and Russian Empire

The upcoming of a new state ideology was connected with the integration of the Left-bank Ukraine into the Russian state in the second half of the 17th century According to Ukrainian philosopher Sinyakov, the unification idea of Ukraine and Russia was not imposed by the Moscow government but was originally Ukrainian. Different initiatives began already at the end of 16th century and the idea strengthened in the course the 17th century. The influential Kievan Synopsis, written by the archimandrite of the Kiev Caves monastery Innocent Gizel, contained the description of the ancient unity of the "Russian peoples". Modern researchers see this work as the beginning of the historical conception of a common Old Russian ethnicity of Kievan Rus. In the following, Synopsys played the role of some kind of a spiritual constitution of the reunified lands.

The first author and ideologist of the conception of a triune Russian people was the Kiev-born achbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church and professor of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy Theophan Prokopovich. He taught that the Russian people is triune just like the title Tsar of Great, Little and White Russia.

According to Russian historian Andrei Marchukov, the triune Russian people constituted the ethnic and cultural center of the Russian Empire. He believes that the multinational Russian Empire can be imagined a spheric circles that surrounded the triune Eastern Slavic state-constitutive nucleus. The prominent historian Vasily Klyuchevsky supposed that the division of the Russian people occured in the era of feudal split when it underwent a division in two parts while the Western part later split into Little Russians and Belarusians. Thus, the Old Russian (Old Ruthenian) people gave birth to three branches of the All-Russian people of his time The well-known historian Nikolay Kostomarov also acknowledged the existence of an All-Russian people.