- •The Pereiaslav Agreement (1654)
- •Evaluations of Khmelnytsky
- •The Treaty of Hadiach and the Ruin
- •Major reasons for Ukrainians’ failure to get independence
- •The Decline of Ukrainian Autonomy
- •In 1762 Catherine II ascended the Russian throne. She was an ardent centralizer and decided to abolish Ukrainian autonomy altogether. Rozumovsky had to resign his post on 10 November 1764.
- •The Liquidation of the Hetmanate
TOPIC 3
Ukraine in the second part of the 17th – the end of the 18th centuries
The Great War
In the middle of the 17th century a great war occurred in Ukraine which influenced several countries and changed the map of Eastern Europe.
Main causes of the war:
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The duties of serfs increased and became extremely harsh. For example, in the 15th century the peasants worked for their lords only 14 days a year, but in the 17th century – 4-6 days a week. It happened because Western Europe was interested in agricultural products to feed its growing population. Thus Poland, as a country with vast agricultural resources, decided to take advantage of the situation. The result was an increase in peasants’ working obligations.
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There were a number of wars between Cossacks and szlachta (nobility) at the end of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries after which the Cossack rights were severely limited. The registered Cossacks were placed under the command of Polish officers and their number was reduced. The Polish control was rather strict so it was practically impossible for the Cossacks to make sea raids against the Crimea and Turkey after 1638.1 Especially dissatisfied were the Zaporozhians as without sea raids the Zaporozhian Sich was slowly dying away. So, the Cossacks needed only a spark to rebel. This spark was provided by Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
The Course of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising
The great uprising of 1648 was started by a Cossack captain (sotnyk) Bohdan Kmelnytsky. Born around 1595 of noble Orthodox parents, he got an excellent education in a Catholic school, before joining the Polish army. In 1618 he took part in the Polish march on Moscow. In 1620 during the war between Poland and Turkey he was taken prisoner by the Turks and spent two years in captivity. In 1622 he came home to the family estate in central Ukraine, where he spent rather peacefully the next twenty-five years. What made this respectable middle-aged man to start a rebellion that would desolate Ukraine, kill hundreds of thousands of people and almost destroy the Commonwealth of which he had been a loyal and successful member?
In 1646 when Khmelnytsky was over 50 and it seemed that his career came to an end, one event turned his life upside down. One day, when Khmelnytsky was away on business, Daniel Czaplinsky, a polish nobleman, appropriated Khmelnytsky’s estate and abducted the woman that the recently widowed Cossack captain wanted to marry. Khmelnytsky sought justice in local courts and in Warsaw, but failed. Then the infuriated captain decided to lead a revolt against the Poles.
The time for uprising was right. People in Ukraine, and especially the Zaporozhian Cossacks, were ready to take up arms to improve their lives. They needed only a leader and they found him in Khmelnytsky who arrived at the Sich and was elected hetman.
Realizing that the Cossacks’ great weakness in fighting the Poles was a lack of cavalry, Khmelnytsky proposed the Crimean Tatars, the Cossacks’ traditional enemies, an alliance against the Poles. The time was perfect as the relations between the Tatars and the Poles were extremely bad. Poland stopped paying tribute to the khan. Besides, there was famine in Crimea at the time. Thus, war could bring necessary resources to the hungry Crimeans. The Tatars readily agreed to support Kmelnytsky and in this way to enrich themselves.
The Tatars were not reliable allies as they were not interested in the Cossacks’ victory. They were not interested in Polish victory as well. They were interested in weakening both the Poles and the Ukrainians. They wanted the war to continue as long as possible without a definite winner because under such conditions it was easy for them to take yasyr (captives) from Ukraine. So the Tatars did not let the Cossacks to defeat the Poles completely when it was possible. Among the Ukrainian masses, the alliance with the Tatars was most unpopular because, as a price for Tatar aid, the hetman had to allow his allies to take yasyr. While Khmelnytsky hoped to satisfy the Tatars with Polish prisoners, the Crimeans often took what was at hand and this meant that many thousands of Ukrainian peasants were driven into slavery.
The year of 1648 brought Khmelnytsky three brilliant victories over the Poles (at Zhovti Vody, Korsun, and Pyliavtsi). These victories provoked a large-scale peasant rebellion all over Ukraine. The war woke up the darkest instincts of many peasants and Cossacks. The famous Ukrainian “Eye Witness Chronicle” paints a frightful picture of these events: “Whenever they found szlachta, royal officials or Jews, they killed them all, sparing neither women nor children. They pillaged the estates of the Jews and nobles, burned Catholic churches and killed their priests, leaving nothing whole. It was a rare individual in those days who had not soaked his hands in blood and participated in the pillage.” Within a few months, almost all Polish nobles, officials, and priests had been wiped out or driven from Ukraine.
Jewish losses were especially heavy. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed by the rebels, and to this day the Khmelnytsky uprising is considered by Jews to be one of the most traumatic events in their history (only Germans under Hitler managed to kill more Jews).2 According to Jewish chronicles many Jews (not only men but also women and children) died cruel deaths. Many of them were skinned alive and left dying slowly. Some had their arms and legs cut off; others were buried alive. The most notorious executioners of the Jews were the popular Cossack colonels Maksym Kryvonis and Danylo Nechai.
Not only Poles and Jews suffered from Cossacks during this uprising. Many Greek Catholic (Uniates) and even Orthodox Ukrainians died or lost their property during Cossack attacks on towns and cities. The Cossack and Tatar troops usually looted captured towns without paying attention to the nationality or religion of townspeople. Especially notorious in this activity were the Cossacks of Colonel Martyn Nebaba who often ordered to kill not only Polish soldiers who defended towns but also every dweller (including women and children) irrespective of their religion and nationality.
The Polish nobility also showed a lot of cruelty during the war. It applied the tactic of terror to the rebellious masses. The most notorious practitioner of szlachta terror tactics was Prince Jarema Vyshnevetsky, the wealthiest magnate of the Rzeczpospolita. He descended from a famous Ukrainian Orthodox family but decided to change his faith and be Polonized. He was the grandson of Dmytro (“Baida”) Vyshnevetsky, the legendary founder of the Zaporozhian Sich. His private army3, whenever it moved, tortured and killed Cossacks, peasants, women, and children, leaving behind it a grisly trail of corpses. Many people were blinded or impaled alive upon wooden stakes. Jarema wanted them to ‘feel that they are dying.’ For his extreme cruelty Prince Vyshnevetsky earned the terrible nickname “Slavic Nero”. Although Ukrainian historians consider the prince a fierce butcher of his own people, a large number of Polish historians still consider him a real knight. (In honor of his father, Jarema Vyshnevetsky’s son was elected Polish king). The example of Jarema Vyshevetsky is significant for understanding the tragedy of the Ukrainian nobility. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian nobles was Catholicized and Polonized and fought on the Polish side against their own people. Many nobles had their own private armies consisted of ethnic Ukrainians (nadvirni Cossacks). Not only Catholicized nobles supported the Polish king in the war, he was supported as well by some Orthodox and Protestant nobles who fought against Khmelnytsky’s armies. Hence, the Polish historians call the Khmelnytsly revolt a civil war in which Polish subjects (szlachta and its armies) fought against Polish subjects (peasants, Cossacks and representatives of Orthodox szlachta).
At the beginning of the war Bohdan’s intentions were quite modest – he planned to create an autonomous Ukrainian principality within Polish borders. With time, after some impressive victories, he changed his previous intentions and started to think of an independent Cossack state under his own reign. He also planned to establish a hereditary monarchy in Ukraine, that is to found the Khmelnytsky dynasty.
The Pereiaslav Agreement (1654)
As the war continued with varying fortune without a clear prospect for success (since the Tatars were against it) Khmelnytsky started to look for another powerful and reliable ally. Two powerful neighbors – Turkey and Muscovy – were under consideration. There was a big problem with the Turks – they were Muslims. It was clear that the masses would not like such a union.
A much more popular candidate for the role of Ukraine’s protector was the Orthodox tsar of Moscow. From the start of the uprising, Khmelnytsky had asked the tsar, in the name of their shared Orthodox faith, to come to his aid. But Moscow’s response had been extremely cautious. Moscow lost a war to Poland in the 1630s and now it decided to wait for Cossacks and Poles to exhaust each other and only then to enter the war. However, by 1653, with the Ukrainians threatening to choose Turkey, the Muscovites could not put off a decision any longer. Tsar Aleksey decided to help Ukrainians and in such a way to expand his territories. The Constantinople patriarchy also urged Moscow to support Khmelnytsky as it hoped to extend the sphere of Orthodoxy.
In January, 1654, Russian envoys arrived in Pereyaslav to conclude a treaty with Ukrainians. Here an unexpected conflict occurred. According to Polish practice the king’s subjects swore an oath of loyalty to him; the king in his turn promised to respect the rights of his subjects and defend them as well. Hence, Ukrainians after swearing loyalty to the Russian tsar expected the Russian envoys to swear in the name of their monarch. But the envoys, headed by boyar Vasilii Buturlin, refused to do it, arguing that the tsar was an absolute ruler in Russia and it was below his dignity to take an oath to his subjects. That statement is very important for it has been characterizing the attitude of Russia’s rulers to their people for centuries. In contrast to European practices, the rights of the individual are still not respected properly by the state in today’s Russia. Some prominent Ukrainians including Colonel Ivan Bohun and Metropolitan Silvester Kosiv refused to swear loyalty to Moscow.4
According to the Pereyaslav agreement Cossack Ukraine got wide autonomy under Russia’s protection. It had practically unlimited internal self-rule but was to pay tribute to Moscow as price for protection. As to foreign relations, Ukraine was free to establish them with any country except for Poland, Crimea and Turkey. But Khmelnytsky often violated this rule and maintained close diplomatic relations with these countries. Moscow also allowed Ukraine to have a large army (60,000) of registered Cossacks.
After Khmelnytsky concluded the Pereyaslav agreement with Moscow, the Crimean Tatars decided to support Poland. In the summer of 1656 Poland’s position sharply deteriorated. Swedish armies entered Poland from the north and occupied much of its territory. Poland, fighting on several fronts, seemed on the verge of collapse.5 Under such circumstances Polish diplomats promised the Russian tsar to elect him their king and make Poland part of a common Russian-Polish-Lithuanian federation under Moscow leadership. Moscow accepted the proposal and declared war on Sweden (1656). The Polish-Russian union automatically closed all hopes for Khmelytsky to liberate Ukraine. He was infuriated and decided to break the union with Russia.6 Only death (1657) prevented him from doing it. This fact is silenced in Russia for political reasons.