TOPIC 3
FROM THE KHMELNYTSKY UPRISING TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Great Rebellion

In the middle of the 17^th century a great war occurred in Ukraine which influenced several countries and changed the map of Eastern Europe.

Main causes of the war:

1. The duties of Ukrainian serfs increased and became extremely harsh. For example, in the 15^th century the peasants worked for their lords only 14 days a year, but in the 17^th century – 4-6 days a week. It happened because Western Europe was interested in agricultural products to feed its growing population. Thus, the Commonwealth, as a country with vast agricultural resources, decided to take advantage of the situation. The result was an increase in peasants’ working obligations.

2. The numerous Cossack raids against the Commonwealth’s neighbors caused a number of wars between Cossacks and government troops that tried to punish Cossacks and place them under the government’s control. The Cossacks lost these wars and their rights were severely limited. The Registered Cossacks were placed under the command of Polish commissar and their number was reduced. They could not elect their officers¹ and be judged by their own court. The government’s control was rather strict so it was practically impossible for the Cossacks to make sea raids against Crimea and Turkey after 1638. 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.

3. The Catholic Church tried to spread its influence all over Ukraine. Many Orthodox churches and monasteries were closed, but many Catholic temples were erected instead. Orthodox city-dwellers were gradually being pushed out from city councils. Orthodox nobles enjoyed less political rights than their Catholic colleagues. Orthodox people in small towns or villages were often forcibly converted into Greek Catholic or Catholic faith. That religious policy led to the growth of indignation among Orthodox believers.

4. Most of Ukrainian villages were rented out to Jews who tried to squeeze from peasants as much as possible during the time of rent and thus, constantly invented new taxes. Jews also owned the overwhelming majority of taverns (bars) where many peasants drank away everything they had. Jews made a lot of money through usury and many peasants had to sell their households to pay their debts to Jewish money-lenders. These facts explain hatred and cruelty revealed by the peasants toward the Jews during the great rebellion. The peasants also tried to enrich themselves at the expense of the Jews during the uprising.

The Course of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising

The great uprising of 1648 was started by Cossack captain (sotnyk) Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Born around 1595 of noble Orthodox parents, he got an excellent education in a Catholic school before joining the Polish army. In 1618 Khmelnytsky took part in the Polish march on Moscow. In 1620 Khmelnytsky was taken prisoner by the Turks during the war between Poland and Turkey and spent two years in captivity where he learned the Tatar language and customs.² In 1632 the Polish king personally awarded the captain with a precious sword in another Polish-Russian war. Most of the time from 1622 till 1646 Khmelnytsky spent rather peacefully in his family estate in central Ukraine. 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 Rzeczpospolita 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 Czaplinski, a Polish nobleman, appropriated Khmelnytsky’s estate and abducted the woman that the recently widowed Cossack captain wanted to marry.³ Khmelnytsky sought justice in local courts and in Warsaw, but failed. Then the infuriated captain decided to start a rebellion.

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 after a passionate speech.

Realizing that the Cossacks’ great weakness in fighting the Poles was a lack of cavalry, Khmelnytsky proposed the Crimean Tatars an alliance against the Poles. The time was perfect as the relations between the Tatars and the Poles were extremely bad. Poland planned to destroy the Crimean Khanate and stopped paying tribute to the khan who readily agreed to support Khmelnytsky. Besides, there was a famine in Crimea at the time and war could bring necessary resources to hungry Crimeans. By concluding a union with the Tatars Khmelnytsky not only received a first rank cavalry but also secured the rear against Tatar raids. Many historians believe that without Tatar help the Cossacks would have been unable to succeed in their fight against the Rzechpospolita.

The Tatars were not reliable allies as they were not interested in Cossack victory. They were not interested in Polish victory either. 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 defeat the Poles completely when it was possible, and vice versa. 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.⁴

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, burnt 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,⁵ officials, priests, as well as Jews, had been pushed out from Ukraine.

Jewish losses were especially heavy. Because Jews usually served as middlemen between the szlachta and the peasants they became a symbol of oppression for the common masses. 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 killed more Jews).⁶ 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.⁷

Not only Poles and Jews suffered from the 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.⁸ Especially notorious in this activity were the Cossacks of Colonel Martyn Nebaba who often ordered to kill not only the soldiers who defended towns but also every dweller (including women and children) irrespective of their religion and nationality.⁹

The Catholic nobility also showed a lot of cruelty during the war. It applied the tactic of terror to the rebellious masses. Nikolai Pototski (Nicholas Potocki), Yanush Radzivill (Janusz Radziwill), Stephan Charnetski (Czarnecki) and other magnates of the Rzeczpospolita organized large-scale punitive expeditions. The most notorious practitioner of szlachta terror tactics was Prince Yarema Vyshnevetskyi (Jeremi Wisniowiecki), 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 a great grandson of Dmytro (“Baida”) Vyshnevetsky, the legendary founder of the Zaporozhian Sich. The head of the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, was Yarema’s uncle. His private army,¹⁰ 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. Yarema wanted them to ‘feel that they are dying.’ For his extreme cruelty Prince Vyshnevetsky earned the terrible nickname “Slavic Nero.”¹¹ 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 and a national hero. Thanks to the popularity of his father, Yarema Vyshnevetsky’s son was elected Polish king. It is interesting to note that Yarema’s troops defended some Orthodox monasteries from the Cossacks who wanted to loot them. That was one of the paradoxes of the war: the adherent of Catholicism defended Orthodox monks from the Cossacks, who claimed to be protectors of Orthodoxy. Vyshnevetsky considered Khmelnytsky and the Cossack rebels as law-breakers and traitors of the state. The example of Yarema Vyshevetsky is significant for understanding the tragedy of the Ukrainian nobility. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian nobles were 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, Polish historians call the Khmelnytsky revolt a civil war in which Polish subjects (szlachta and its armies) fought against Polish subjects (peasants, Cossacks and representatives of Orthodox szlachta). Some Ukrainian historians also consider this conflict as a civil war in which Catholicized Ukrainians fought against Orthodox Ukrainians.

Hatred on both sides was immortalized in folklore. For example, a szlachta proverb said, “Peasants are better when they are crying than when they are laughing” (Сільський люд ліпший, коли плаче, гірший, коли сміється). The peasant proverb said, “A nobleman (Pole) and a leaseholder (Jew) are good only when they are baked” (Шляхтич та орендар тільки печені добрі).

In 1649 after a number of impressive Cossack-Tatar victories over the Rzechpospolita the Polish king was ready to make concessions to Khmelnytsky.¹² The result was the so-called Zboriv agreement according to which an autonomous Cossack state (made up of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Bratslav¹³ lands) was established within Polish borders.¹⁴ The number of registered Cossacks was raised to 40,000. Those not included into the register were to go back to their masters (szlachta) who got the right to return to their lands. Jews (except for tavern owners) and Jesuits¹⁵ were to leave the territory of the Cossack state. The Orthodox believers were to be given the same rights as the Catholic ones. A Cossack administration structure was introduced which divided the Ukrainian autonomous territory into “regiments” (polkovyi ustrii). Each regiment consisted of 2-3 thousand Cossacks who lived in villages or towns and were supposed to arrive in the regiment capital upon receiving an order. All administrative positions in the Cossack state were to be occupied only by Orthodox people.

The Zboriv agreement was not popular with the Cossacks who were excluded from the register and peasants who were to return into serfdom. The Szlachta was also not satisfied with the agreement since they believed that the king made too many concessions to the Cossacks. It was clear that peace would not last long. Several Cossack regiments, the Zaporozhian Sich, and many peasants rebelled against Khmelnytsky. The hetman put down the rebellion with cruelty. Many rebels died a horrible death by impalement on orders of the hetman.

The war resumed in February 1651.¹⁶ In June two large armies (Polish and Cossack-Tatar)¹⁷ met at Berestechko. After severe fighting the Tatar army retreated. That enabled the Poles to encircle the Cossack army and defeat it. The situation in the north was also unfavorable for the hetman. The Lithuanian army of Janusz Radziwill captured Kyiv. Faced with such circumstances Khmelnytsky had to sign the Bila Tserkva agreement, which reduced the Cossack territory to the Kyiv land and the Cossack register to 20,000. Catholic szchlachta and Jews could return to their estates and the peasants were to turn into serfs again. The agreement as the previous one provoked a number of Cossack and peasant rebellions against the hetman. Khmelnytsky again cruelly suppressed the revolts.

Since the Sejm did not ratify the Bila Tserkva agreement the war broke out again soon. In May 1652 Khmelnytsky destroyed a Polish army at Batih. Next year the Polish royal army was encircled near Zhvanets by Cossack-Tatar troops. Since the Tatars were not interested in the defeat of the king they decided to save the Poles. The result was an agreement somewhat similar to that of Zboriv but without Cossack autonomy. The king also promised to pay tribute to the khan and join him in war against Moscow. The Sejm, however, did not ratify the agreement. The war continued desolating Ukraine. Only the Tatars benefited from it.