Polish-Controlled Lands

The Right Bank The provinces of Kiev, Bratslav, Volhynia, and Podilia on the right bank of the Dnieper suffered most during the great uprising and the repeated Polish, Ottoman, Muscovite, and Tatar incursions that took place during the period of the Ruin. The depopulation of the region after the ruinous Chyhyryn campaigns of the late 1670s and I.Samoilovych's mass evacuation was almost total. Yet, as soon as the fighting died down in 1681, the Poles wasted little time in encouraging the area's recolonization. Realizing that the most effective means of achieving this goal was to allow the Cossacks to return to their devastated lands, the Commonwealth formally reinstitutcd Cossackdom (with its traditional forms of self-government) on the Right Bank in 1685. Actually, Cossack settlers had already appeared in the region several years earlier.

The Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants, many returning from the Left Bank, resettled the land with astonishing speed. Cossack colonels, such as Semen Palii, Samuilo Samus, and Zakhar Iskra, organized and led this colonizing movement. Some regimental districts sprang up around such settlements as Fastiv, Bohuslav, Korsun, and Bratslav. As had been the case earlier, the Poles also utilized the Cossacks in their wars. For example, in 1683, King Sobieski engaged about 5000 of them in his famous and victorious battle with the Ottomans at the walls of Vienna. By 1684, a year before a renewed Cossack organization was formally sanctioned by the Polish parliament, there were already about 10,000 Cossacks on the Right Bank. As the land became more settled, the Polish szlachta also returned. Thus, the tensions that had led to the 1648 uprising began to simmer again.

The West Ukrainian lands Galicia and Polissia, formally called the provinces of Rus' and Belz, had long been densely settled and possessed well-entrenched nobility. Therefore, Cossackdom, a frontier phenomenon, never developed in these regions. With no Cossacks to stand up to the szlachta, the peasants in these western lands were especially hard pressed.

The cultural influence of nearby Poland was most widespread here and, unlike elsewhere in Ukraine, the Greek Catholic church was well entrenched. A thoroughly Polonized nobility showed no interest in establishing a native Ukrainian political entity. Although the 1648 uprising reached well into Galicia - and B.Khmelnytskyi, as well as other hetmans, claimed lands as far west "as the Ukrainian language is spoken" - the Poles had little trouble in controlling the West Ukrainian lands and often used them as a base of operations for their attacks upon the Cossacks.

The remainders of West Ukrainian lands were ruled by other neighboring powers. From 1672, the Ottomans occupied most of Podilia, relinquishing the region to the Poles only in 1699. Northern Bukovyna, however, remained in Ottoman hands. The Ukrainian population on the western slopes of the Carpathians continued to be ruled, as it had been for centuries, by the Hungarians.