Talk:Русь

Question about the term's development

ok, what I have been trying to figure out and couldn't is, how and when did the masculine plural become a feminine singular? In Old Russian, by all appearances, Русь always refers to a group or people collectively. The singular is русинъ. The country is always identified as рускаӕ землѧ, "the land of the Русь".

It appears that w:Vasili III of Russia first called himself "tsar of all [the?] Rus". I do not know if this was intended to refer to a people or to a territory. If it still referred to the population, perhaps here we see the nucleus of a re-interpretation. Ivan IV was "Царь и Великий князь всея Руси". Again, does this refer to a territory or to a people? It sees the later tsars styled themselves "Император и Самодержец Всероссийский", i.e. "All-Russian emperor and autocrat", avoiding the Rus altogether.

So when and where can we see Русь used as a feminine singular ("Древняя Русь")? It was clearly in use by the 19th century. Here is a feminine singular from 1788, Клади всю Русь подъ саблю. So, this happened after the 12th but before the 18th century. I suppose it could have been any time during the 13th to 17th centuries, I have no idea. The feminine may be related to the adoption of Россия from Greek Ῥωσσία, which is, of course, feminine. Perhaps also to the emergence of the "coloured Ruses" terminology of w:Red Ruthenia etc. This originates in Latin (Ruthenia Rubra) in the 14th century, but somehow ends up as "Червоная Русь" in Russian. My suspicion is that this would have happened in the 16th or 17th century, but I have no evidence, and I find it extremely difficult to find information online. --Dbachmann 13:01, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Right, I don't really speak Russian, but if Ivan IV really called himself the ruler "всея Руси", that's the third declension feminine genitive singular right there. If this is the verbatim (not a modernized) title, we can place the feminine in the early 16th century. This doesn't resolve the question of how it arose, though. I could imagine that Русь is really impossible as a plural in Russian morphology, and suggests itself as a feminine singular grammatically. Even the Primary Chronicle seems to feel compelled to excuse the name, saying "hey, it's just what they were called, we don't know why". In the list of Japhetites,

Варѧзи . Свеи . Оурманє . Готѣ . Русь . Аглѧнѣ . Галичанѣ . Волохове . Римлѧнѣ . Нѣмци . Корлѧзи . Венедици . Фрѧговѣ

The Русь are the only ones ending in ь. And s.a. 862, they say

сіце бо звахуть ты Варѧ̑гы Русь, ӕко се друзии зовутсѧ Свеє, друзии же Оурмани ,Аньглѧне, инѣи и Готе, тако и си ркоша.

"These particular Varangians were known as Rusĭ, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans and Angles, and still others Gotlanders, for they were thus named."

It would be interesting to look through the Old East Slavic sources and see if Русь appears as a feminine somewhere. But I cannot do this, I have a hard time following modern Russian, and I am completely lost in Old Russian. I just find it surprising that there isn't academic literature on this question readily googlable. --Dbachmann 15:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

According to this, the "всея Руси" idea dates to the early 14th century (as opposed to adjectival ruskaya zemlya used in the 12th to 13th centuries). This would be the last phase of generic Old East Slavic, or the period of Old Russian proper. --Dbachmann 15:11, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know ancient Russian but I can say that Русь is not used as a plural masculine form in the Russian literature, including literature talking about ancient times and stylised to match the ancient Russian closer. "царь и великий князь всея Руси" car' i velíkij knjaz' vsejá Rusí refers to the territory. "всея" is the old genitive feminine form of вся, "всей" in modern Russian. You are right, it doesn't sound grammatically correct to use Русь as a plural masculine, even if it is a collective noun but I don't exclude it was used like this in the past.

Here's what the Russian Wikipedia says:

Древним собирательным обозначением всех жителей древнерусского государства было Русь. Для обозначения же единичности использовалось слово русин, которое встречается впервые в договорах русских князей с греками в X веке. Этим словом до XVIII века обозначали славянское православное население Северо-восточных княжеств и Московского государства, особенно в противопоставлении с татарин, бусурманин, жидовин, немчин, латин и т. д. Слово же русский, мн.ч. русские отдельно не употреблялось как сейчас (то есть как существительное), а только как прилагательное в сочетаниях русская земля, русский человек, русские люди, русский народ, русский язык и т. д., сравните англ. Englishman(men), England, нем. Deutschland; или сохранившиеся у западных славян древние субстантивные названия стран: чеш. Česko, Německo, Rusko, словацк. Slovensko, Rusko, польск. Polska (ziemia).

Одновременно с русин было в ходу слово русак (сравните поляк, словак), однако сейчас это слово носит оттенок просторечия.

Неологизм русичи единственно встречается только в "Слове о полку Игореве"

In brief, "Русь" was a collective word for people living in that territory. русин or русак were used for one person (the latter is now pejorative), русский was used as an adjective. русич was used as a neologism in "Слово о полку Игореве" (The Tale of Igor's Campaign) --Anatoli 23:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I see. This is interesting. I now understand how the всея was giving me trouble. Its being archaic also suggests that "всея Руси" is authentic 16th century Russian.

The fact remains that in the Primary Chronicle, the territory is never called Rus, but always рускаӕ землѧ "Rus'ian land". But perhaps the use of "Rus" for the territory is found in other early literature, such as the Igor poem? I would be very interested in any pre-modern reference to the use as feminine singular. --Dbachmann 10:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

To me the collective noun Русь, even if it was plural in meaning, seems it was still feminine singular grammatically. There are a few collective nouns (in sg) in modern Russian but most of them have pejorative meanings when referring to people. Referring to the country and ethnicity with the same word is quite common in Slavic languages, even in the quotes in the entry, it's not obvious whether the reference is to the country or to the people. In Russia fairy-tales, when talking about Baba Yaga or Koshchey Bessmertny - the phrase was often used: "здесь русский дух, здесь Русью пахнет". --Anatoli 10:46, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I just checked out The Tale of Igor's Campaign, and the interesting thing is that while it talks about the Russian land and Russians (or rather, the Rusian land, and Rusians) literally incessantly, the term Русь itself is completely absent, in either meaning. --Dbachmann 10:42, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

alphabetization

Wiktionary's practice of creating one page per spelling and then h2 sections for each language, alphabetized by the English name of the languages, is bizarre as it is. But alphabetizing by era prefix is just involuntary comedy.

So Old East Slavic is listed under "O", and Ancient Greek under "A". Thus generating an "alphabetic order" of, say, Ancient Greek, Armenian, Chinese, Classical Armenian, German, Greek, Italian, Medieval Greek, Mycenaean Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Old East Norse, Old East Slavic, Old High German, Old Norse.

I just wonder what whoever came up with this system had been smoking. --Dbachmann 10:34, 24 April 2011 (UTC)