While united in their Slavic roots, the two countries have long been at odds.
The Kiev Cafe feels like neither Kiev nor a typical cafe; the only visible reminder of its Slavic roots is the row of matrioshka dolls above the bar.
Recalling Orthodoxy's Slavic roots, he added: "The Eastern Orthodox world has much to give Western Europe — its sincerity, its emotional way".
Russian culture with its Slavic roots is also the product of Greek, Nordic, Tatar and Mongol influences — and the rapid Westernization of the elites in the 18th century.
The Russian Government, a traditional ally of Serbia because of common Orthodox and Slavic roots, called its Ambassador to Brussels and its NATO representative back to Moscow this weekend.
Indeed many people viewed Stravinsky's evolution beyond the Rite as a betrayal of both his Slavic roots and modernistic genius, so the question can be posed in all earnestness: did Stravinsky himself survive the Rite?
Whereas a decade ago rocket salads, Argentine steaks and sushi were all the rage, now – because of economic sanctions and a renewed patriotic mood – high calibre chefs are rediscovering their Slavic roots.
In modern literature one might cite the experiments at unification of Velimir Khlebnikov, a Russian Futurist poet, and of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim, who invented words based on Russian and other Slavic roots in some of his poems.
Professor Riasanovsky's book "A History of Russia," scanning its history from its ninth-century Slavic roots to the Soviet era, has been in print continuously since it was published in 1963.
The "idea" could make no special appeal to Slavic roots, nor to the Russian Orthodox church, the traditional sources of Russian nationalism, since plenty of Russians, especially in the 20 ethnic republics of the federation, are neither Slavs nor Orthodox.
