In the 19th century, the Tsarist Government of the Russian Empire claimed that Ukrainian was merely a dialect of Russian and not a language on its own. The differences were few and caused by the conquest of western Ukraine by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the dialects in Ukraine eventually differed substantially from the dialects in Russia.
Is there an answer to this question (If it cannot be answered, say "unanswerable"): During which century did the Ukraine claim that Tsarist was simply a dialect of Russian?
unanswerable