Moskal

History and etymology

Initially, as early as the 12th century, moskal referred to the residents of Muscovy, the word literally translating as "Muscovite" (differentiating the residents of the Grand Duchy of Moscow from other East Slavs such as people from White Ruthenia (Belarusians), Red Ruthenia (Ukrainians), and others). With time, the word became an archaism in all the East Slavic languages, and survived only as a family name in each of those languages—see below.

The negative connotation in Ukraine came in around the late 18th-early 19th centuries in the form of an ethnic slur labelling all Russians. At that time, since the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement of Cossacks with Moscow the majority of Russians in Ukrainian lands were soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army (and in fact at that time the term "moskal" was synonymous with the word "soldier"), as well as Russian bureaucrats, Russian nobles that were granted estates there, and merchants. All these categories were disliked by the locals.

Cultural influence

The "Moskal" is a stock character of the traditional Ukrainian puppet theatre form, vertep.

It also gave rise to a number of East Slavic family names: Moskal, Moskalyov, Moskalenko, Moskalik, Moskalyuk, Moskalchuk, Moskalyonok, Moskalenkov.

Notes

References

References

1. Alexander Mikaberidze. (2011). "Ilya Radozhitskii's Campaign Memoirs". Lulu.
2. (2014). "The Russian language outside the nation".
3. (2011). "Campaign memoirs of the artilleryman".
4. Benjamin Harshav. (1986). "American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology". University of California Press.
5. Thompson, Ewa Majewska. (1991). "The Search for self-definition in Russian literature". John Benjamins Publishing Company.
6. [[Edyta M. Bojanowska]] (2007) "Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian And Russian Nationalism" {{ISBN
7. [[Orest Subtelny]], ''[[Ukraine: A History]]'', pp. 274-275
8. Прыгунов М. [http://feb-web.ru/feb/litenc/encyclop/le3/le3-5431.htm "Драма Вертепная"], ''Литературная энциклопедия'' 1929—1939, vol. 3. Moscow: Изд-во Ком. Акад., 1930, pp. 543—545
9. [https://ukrainianjewishencounter.org/en/redefining-traditional-vertep-issue-ukrainian-jewish-relations/ Redefining the Traditional Vertep: An Issue in Ukrainian-Jewish Relations]