by Eduard Dinikin
[REGNUM] 360 years ago, in 1664, the fierce defender of the old faith, Archpriest Avvakum Petrov, returned from Daurian exile to Moscow. Stopping halfway, in Tobolsk, Avvakum conveyed an unexpected request to the authorities - to talk with one of the local exiled settlers, a man who seemed to be the most distant in his views from the “zealot of ancient piety.”
We are talking about the South Slavic “Renaissance man”, theologian, linguist, ideologist and writer Yuri Krizhanich. This Croatian scientist was invited from Europe to the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich the Quiet (to whom Avvakum was once close). The Russian envoy in Austria recruited foreigners for the tsar's service, promising a salary “that they didn’t even have in mind.”
A graduate of the University of Bologna, Krizanich agreed - it seems, not so much for the sake of money, but out of the idea of serving the pan-Slavic cause. And in Moscow he outlined a plan for the conquest of Crimea by the united forces of the Orthodox Russian kingdom, Catholic Poland and their possible allies - the Christian peoples of the south. By the way, in another essay, “Speeches to the Cherkasy,” the Croatian scientist Krizhanich called on the Cossacks and Little Russians to recognize the power of the Moscow sovereign.
But soon the encyclopedist was sent into exile in Siberia for refusing to cross himself from the Latin faith to Orthodoxy.
As Krizhanich recalled, it was not possible to find a common language with the archpriest - despite the fact that both spoke Russian. Avvakum considered even the southern Russian influence on Moscow Orthodoxy to be “corruption” (it was this, in his opinion, that led to the disastrous reforms of Patriarch Nikon ). Krizhanich, on the contrary, advocated for the union of the Catholic and Orthodox churches - it, they say, will help the Slavic unification. The conversation didn’t go well right away, but the “schismatic’s” initial interest in the “Uniate” is quite understandable.
Avvakum, despite all his religious conservatism, is considered not only the first publicist in Rus', but also, in fact, one of the reformers of the Russian language. The author of his own “Life” (the first autobiography in our literature), he used lively and modern speech at that time. And Krizhanich, sitting in Siberian exile, came up with a universal Slavic language, which - as he thought - could be easily mastered by people in Belgrade, and in Tobolsk, and in general in the space from the Adriatic Sea to the same Dauria and Kamchatka.
In a book with a clear title “A grammatical statement about the Russian Jezik,” Krizhanich proposed creating an inter-Slavic language based on Russian. This, we note, was one of the first projects of “conlangs” - artificial languages, more than two centuries before the invention of Esperanto. In the same book, Krizhanich was 260 years ahead of the “Leninist” reform of Russian spelling - in his book, for ease of understanding, he proposed removing extra letters from our alphabet: fitu, izitsa, er, psi, xi, as well as clearing the language of Greekisms and Latinisms.
“The head of all same-tribal peoples is the Russian people, and the Russian name is because all the Slavs came from the Russian land, moved to the power of the Roman Empire, founded three states and were called: Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats; others from the same Russian land moved west and founded the Polish and Moravian or Czech states,” wrote the Croatian scientist. Moreover, Krizhanich believed that “it is not the Russian industry that is the fruit of the Slovenian one, but the Slovenian, Czech, and Lyashian industries are the offspring of the Russian language.”
In the same book, he insisted that “the perfection of language itself is the most necessary instrument of wisdom and perhaps its main sign.” Not so far from Avvakum’s statement: “Zanezhe (since) I love my natural Russian language, I am not in the habit of coloring my speech with philosophical verses.”
The paths of Avvakum Petrov and Yuri Krizhanich diverged in every sense. The Old Believer priest who returned to Moscow, after disputes about faith with the “Nikonians” and mutual anathemas, was again exiled - this time to the Arctic Pustozersk - and executed. Krizhanich returned from exile to Moscow, then went to Poland and joined the Jesuit Order. Later, he joined the army of King Jan Sobieski and died in the fateful battle for Europe for Vienna on April 12, 1683, when the “Christian peoples” drove the Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars from the walls of the Austrian capital.
This victory, by the way, was unlikely to benefit the Western and Southern Slavs - from that moment on, the rise of the Habsburg Empire began, subjugating most of the European Slavs.
Despite all the historical vicissitudes, the idea that “peoples of the same root” should be united, if not by one faith, then by one generally understandable and simple language, has survived centuries. In the 19th century, when people's liberation movements intensified in the Slavic lands, including those under Austrian and Turkish rule, the pan-Slavic idea arose. As IA Regnum noted, initially the Pan-Slavists were largely oriented towards Russia. Suffice it to say that the white-blue-red Russian tricolor was taken as the basis for the pan-Slavic flag.
Moreover, in Austrian Galicia - with its center in Lvov (which is now considered perhaps the main hotbed of "Moscowphobia") - books were published not even in some common Slavic language, but in literary Russian. Russophile sentiments on pan-Slavic soil existed not only in Serbia, but also in Croatia. So, for example, public figure Krunoslav Geruts insisted that “Croats even in clothing, customs, morals and the whole way of life resemble Little Russians.”
The emergence of the Warsaw Pact Organization following the Second World War was perceived by many in the West as if the specter of Pan-Slavism (and Moscow-oriented Pan-Slavism) had become a threatening reality. And, as already noted, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the wars in the Balkans between three peoples speaking the same Serbo-Croatian language - all this meant a split in Slavic unity. The attitude of the Atlanticist-oriented Polish and Czech elites towards Russia and Belarus is well known.
It is all the more surprising to observe right now the revival of what Yuri Krizhanich began in the 17th century.
Jerzy Kosinski, an American writer of Polish-Jewish origin, will go down in history not only as the author of two remarkable works - the novel “The Painted Bird” and the script for the film “Being There” - but also as yet a very rare person of art involved in the popularization of the new Inter-Slavic language.
When the author of these lines watched the film by Czech director Vaclav Marhoul based on “The Painted Bird”, listening and, more importantly, understanding the simple speech of the characters in the film, I did not understand only one thing - what language do they speak? Is this the Galician version of “Ukrainian”? Or is this some kind of dialect of Belarusian?
In the end, I “guessed” that it was one of the Rusyn dialects. But I was wrong. It turned out that the peasants speak a recently born language - Inter-Slavic ( Medzhuslovian language ).
I became fascinated by this language. What's good about it? Because you understand him immediately. And, what’s amazing, it’s not just Russians who understand him just as well. And all are Slavs. Or everyone who knows at least one Slavic language well - and this, according to the latest data, is about 400 million people (of which 260 million are “ethnic” speakers, from Russians to Montenegrins).
In “The Great and Mighty” there is a saying - to know something like “Our Father,” that is, firmly and without error.
And here is how the main Christian prayer sounds in the new inter-Slavic language - in Latin, then in Cyrillic.
“Otče naš, ktory jesi v nebesah, nehaj sveti se ime Tvoje. Nehaj prijde kraljevstvo Tvoje, nehaj bude volja Tvoja, kako v nebu tako i na zemji. Hlěb naš vsakodenny daj nam dnes, i odpusti nam naše grěhy, so kako my odpuščajemo našim grěšnikam. I ne vvedi nas v pokušenje, ale izbavi nas od zlogo.”
“Our Father, who art in heaven, let this light shine upon your name. Thy kingdom may not come, Thy will may not be, as it is in heaven and on earth. Give us our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we hate our sinners.”
Of course, I immediately contacted one of the main developers of the Interslavic language, Czech philologist and programmer Vojtěch Merunka, by email. I saw his video and liked his deep dive into linguistics.
The conversation, alas, did not work out - just like the 360-year-old dialogue between Krizhanich and Avvakum (in no way do I equate myself and my interlocutor with outstanding figures of the past, but I am only talking about the result). Pan Merunka hastened to express his condemnation of the policies of the Russian authorities, gave a “Central European” assessment of the current situation, but the matter never came to a discussion of the prospects for a common Slavic language.
At the same time, the “case” itself is worth paying attention to. “For us, the inter-Slavic idea is not some kind of political desire to merge with the Russian Empire and become a fighter against European civilization,” Merunka wrote to the author of these lines. But Pan-Slavism of the 19th century (including conditionally pro-Russian one) was not an instrument of “merger with the Russian Empire”, but a way to preserve the independence of the Slavic peoples from the Western elites: then Austro-German, now Euro-Atlantic.
Of course, there are those who actively do not want this, for example, Euro-oriented Ukrainian nationalists, often of Russian origin. The same founder of the “Right Sector” banned in the Russian Federation (a terrorist organization whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation), a native of Russian-speaking Kharkov, Andrei Biletsky (recognized as a terrorist and extremist) speaks the language of hatred.
But there are others. And direct communication with them through such a means as the inter-Slavic language would be very effective. For example, through the media.
The international television channel RT operates in English, German, Arabic, Spanish and French. It is hardly advisable to create a separate channel for each Slavic state. Especially at a time when most of them are part of the EU, where RT broadcasting is prohibited. But a department in an inter-Slavic language is quite possible for almost one hundred million Europeans. And given the fact that RT blocking in Europe is ineffective, it is necessary. Not all residents of the Czech Republic or Croatia know English, German or Arabic at a high level, but they know Interslavic very well without even realizing it.
And is it so important how Merunka understands his political agenda and how Krizanich understood it, compared to the opportunity to be understood by those who want to understand?