Agnosticism or Bias? A Reply to Alexander Maxwell’s Analysis of Putin’s 2021 Essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18523/2313-4895.12.2025.121-129

Keywords:

Slavic dialects and languages, Ukrainian language, Russian language, agnosticism, normative isomorphism

Abstract

In the first 2025 issue of Nationalities Papers, Alexander Maxwell published his article “Vladimir Putin, Normative Isomorphism, and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy.” In this paper, Maxwell analyzes Putin’s narratives of the history of the Ukrainian and Russian languages, as presented in Putin’s 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” Based on a seemingly “agnostic” approach, Maxwell tends to renarrate traditional all-Russian concepts without any criticism. His bias is based on both methodological inconsistency and a striking lack of philological expertise. His repeated invectives against linguists should not go unanswered.

Author Biography

Michael Moser, University of Vienna

Michael Moser is a Professor of Slavic Linguistics and Philology at the Institute for Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria) and the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (Germany). He is an Honorary Doctor of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and an Honorary Professor of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. His numerous publications focus on the history of the Ukrainian language.

michael.moser@univie.ac.at

References

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Putin, V. (2021). “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” (July 12). Russian version: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181, official English translation: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181, accessed January 26, 2025.

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Published

2025-12-26

How to Cite

Moser, M. (2025). Agnosticism or Bias? A Reply to Alexander Maxwell’s Analysis of Putin’s 2021 Essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, (12), 121–129. https://doi.org/10.18523/2313-4895.12.2025.121-129

Issue

No. 12 (2025): Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal

Section

Reflections

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Copyright (c) 2025 Michael Moser

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