14. Reunion In the Struggle for Conscience, Rus 2 Russia
At the Treaty of Stolbovsky (1617) and the Truce of Deulin (1618) the western Russian lands were ceded to Sweden and Poland.
Somewhere between 1630 and 1730 or thereabouts the Cossacks of Ukraine had many back and forth struggles with Poland, Russia and the Turks. Poland demanded conversion to Catholicism, which was unacceptable. Many Cossack Hetman wanted independence from both Moscow and Poland. There was little or no stability.
But if the Swedish possessions had few Russian inhabitants, the Polish possessions had many more. The Rzeczpospolita consisted not only of Belorussia and Ukraine, but also part of Wielkorossia Smolensk, Lithuania and part of Latvia. At the beginning of the 17th century Poland suffered the same troubles as all European states, which were called the Counter-Reformation. Poland itself did not take part in the Thirty Years' War between the Catholic and Protestant coalitions, but had to restrain Russia, which acted as a supporter of the Protestant Unia. Thus, Poland and Russia were once again rivals in the political struggle.
The outbreak of hostilities was not long in coming. In 1632 Russian troops made an attempt to capture Smolensk. The Russian army, thrown under the walls of Smolensk, consisted of four regiments of soldiers, who were taught western military style by service Germans, noble cavalry and Cossacks from the South Russian suburbs. The Russians besieged the city, but Smolensk, which had excellent defensive fortifications, successfully defended itself for a long time. When the Poles managed to provoke another raid of the Crimean Khan into southern Russia, from under the walls of Smolensk "boyar children" (nobles) went to defend the southern Russian border - where they were most needed.
Infantry regiments of the western structure now became the main force of the besiegers. But when King Wladyslaw approached Smolensk with an army of twenty thousand men, the Germans simply surrendered, and then joined him in service. Left with little or no command, the Russian army was surrounded by the Poles, blockaded and forced to capitulate, surrendering their artillery and laying down their banners before the Polish king (1634).
The commander of the Russian army, Boyar Shein, a hero of the defense of Smolensk during the time of King Sigismund III and the Thief of Tushin, was released by the Poles in Moscow. In Moscow, the unfortunate Shein, who was in no way responsible for the defeat, was accused of all mortal sins and executed. Although Shein's execution was a blatant injustice - war is war, and no one is immune from failure - it is true that something else must be said. The cruelty against Shein was an expression of the indignation that reigned in Moscow after the Smolensk debacle. Soon the Treaty of Polanova was concluded with the Poles. King Wladyslaw permanently renounced his claims to the throne of Moscow, but retained Smolensk and Chernigov. Thus, even after the war of 1632-1634 the lands of Russia, together with the large Russian population, remained in the hands of Poland.
View of Smolensk from the times of Catherine II
Map of Reformation Europe
nobleman
The Little Russian peasant.
The Veliko-, White-, and Malo-rossians, who happened to be subjects of the Rzeczpospolita, were on the whole quite loyal to the Polish government. However, Poles treated their Orthodox subjects with disdain and even with contempt. And one cannot assume that the true cause here was religious disagreement. The Orthodox, from the point of view of the Catholics, are "schismatics," but their sin is much less than that of, say, the Protestants, whom the Catholic Church regards as heretics. And after the Reformation, there were many "Arian" anti-trinitarians, evangelicals, and other Reformed religious movements in Poland. The most common forms of Arianism and Calvinism were adopted by respectable people of different estates. For example, the dukes of Lithuanian descent, the Radziwiłłs - one of the richest and noblest families in Poland - were also divided into Protestants and Catholics, yet they did not quarrel at all and got on splendidly with each other in matters of faith. But when it came to the Orthodox, not a trace of Polish tolerance remained.
From the lands occupied by the Poles, the Russian nobility was deprived of all rights of rank, and consequently, of all career opportunities; Russian merchants and urban artisans were entirely squeezed out of commerce by the Jews, who enjoyed the patronage of the Catholic Church and the Polish lords. The mechanism of their relationship was very simple. Polish magnates, who had acquired large estates in the Russian lands they seized, had no desire to farm, but preferred to travel to the glittering capitals of Western Europe. Neither was Poland itself - Warsaw and Cracow - boring: theatricals, balls, and banquets were held. Since such holidays were expensive, hard-working and time-consuming, the Danes needed intermediaries who could ensure a steady flow of money. Such intermediaries they found in the Jews, who were invited to Poland back in the XIV century by King Casimir the Great. Jews settled well in this country, renting taverns and shops and engaging in usury and money changing. On the estates they became trustees of the Polish pope - the Factors - and squeezed money out of the Russian tenant peasants.
In short, the Russian population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was faced with a choice not so difficult as an immoral one: either to convert to Catholicism and become Poles, or to suffer all kinds of humiliation. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians who lived in the occupied territories of Poland made enormous sacrifices, not even for the freedom of conscience (they had no such freedom), but for the preservation of the Orthodox faith itself. Very few converted to Catholicism and Uniateism; the majority of the Orthodox population refused to change their Greek faith for the Latin one. And it cannot be said that the illiterate Ukrainian Cossacks or Belarusian peasants understood the theological differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. None of them ever bothered to ask about such differences, because for many people a certain religious denomination was an indicator of belonging to a certain group: "their own". Those who were closer to Catholics in terms of stereotype of behavior and perception of the world adjoined the Catholics; those who were more sympathetic to the Orthodox joined their ranks.
But could it be that the Poles, who joined the circle of Western European nations, were consciously convinced of the correctness of the dogmas adopted by the Roman Church? Not at all. The two largest classes of the Poles were the illiterate gentry and the peasants, the "klopi". The class distinction between them is best defined as follows: the "klopi" were people exempt from military service and taxed; the nobility, on the other hand, were subjects exempt from taxes and obliged to the crown by military service. The difference between the "klopi" and the nobility was in fact small: The vast majority of the nobility consisted of the so-called zastenkova nobility, a counterpart of the Russian monodvortsy. Its representatives lived in tiny farmsteads ("zastenkas"), and tilled the land themselves, together with the peasants, because all their noble property often consisted of their grandfather's sabre and "Polish gonor". The petty Polish nobility constituted the same military estate as the Cossacks of the Polish Ukraine, that is, the outskirts, not differing from it in essence. And therefore, we have no reason to think that the Polish nobles knew the theological subtleties better than the Ukrainian Cossacks. Consequently, the causes of the bloody struggle that erupted in Ukraine in the seventeenth century lay beyond confessional differences.
By the middle of the 17th century, when Moscow had fought off and recovered from the Polish-Swedish intervention and the hope of uniting the two states under the scepter of the Polish king had collapsed, representatives of the Catholic Order of Jesuits appeared in Poland.
The Jesuit order was founded by the Spanish officer Ignatius Loyola in 1534. The officially declared purpose of the new brotherhood was to counter the Reformation - to fight heresy and expand Catholicism's sphere of influence. But the stereotypes enshrined in the order's charter indicated that the Jesuits were Catholic reformers in no lesser degree than were followers of Luther or Calvin. Let's limit ourselves to one eloquent example. According to Christian dogma, the ultimate judge of every human act is Christ himself, and his evaluation is found in our conscience. In other words, everyone who genuinely considers himself a Christian is obliged, for the salvation of his soul, to relate his deeds to his conscience, and not to justify them by the arguments of reason. The Jesuits, on the other hand, accepted the thesis of the absolute obedience of the younger to the older and regarded instruction as a method of shaping faith. This is why pedagogy had such a prominent place in Jesuit activities "to the greater glory of God. The brothers worked throughout the world, opening colleges and academies, preparing wars, and engaging in espionage and bribery with the sole purpose of bringing as many heretics back into the Catholic Church as possible.
Loyola's disciples were also active in Poland for the same purpose. A Jesuit college was opened on the territory of Byelorussia, which was actively engaged in Catholic propaganda. First of all, it was announced that an agreement between the Eastern and Western churches had been reached and secured by the Union of Florence in 1439, although by that time the Catholics themselves had already forgotten about this union. On this very shaky factual basis all the Orthodox were invited to accept the Catholic faith as more perfect. Of course, in order to prove the "superiority" of the Catholic faith, its preachers gave their own arguments. For example, the Catholic Peter Skarga, author of a book on the superiority of the Catholic faith, spoke of the universality of the Latin language in Catholic worship and communication, of the superiority of Latin over the Slavic languages. In some respects, he was right: Latin, along with Greek, had long been one of the main liturgical languages, and indeed there was a great deal of theological literature in Latin.
Peter Skarga had some very knowledgeable opponents among Orthodox Belarusians. True, the names of many of them are unknown, since objections to Catholics at the time could cost a person dearly, but the meaning of the arguments is quite clear. They pointed first of all to the existence of their own, the sacred tradition of Slavonic worship, to the existence of almost all the necessary translations of religious literature into Church Slavonic. On this basis they denied the necessity of learning a foreign language, practically unnecessary to them. And one cannot help but admit that the truth is entirely on the side of the Orthodox.
Mastering a language to the fullest degree implies above all being able to communicate complex thoughts with appropriate detail and nuance to interlocutors. And such knowledge of a language is possible only if one is familiar with the behavior of the ethnic group that speaks and thinks in that language, living in the appropriate ethnic environment. Otherwise, the sobers are forced to confine themselves to primitive clichés. Consequently, the Catholic-imposed replacement of Church Slavonic with Latin could only lead to a simplification of forms of spiritual practice. Thus, Catholics were essentially fighting for a decline in the intellectual level of the population of Eastern Europe, something that was blamed on them, not only by Orthodox Christians, but also by Protestants.
The second subject of dispute between Catholics and Orthodox was the problem of ecclesiastical autonomy. The Latins argued, quite convincingly at first glance, that the opinions of church hierarchs, as literate and knowledgeable, were preferable to those of lay parishioners. (The logical conclusion of the above statement is, of course, the thesis of the unconditional authority of the Pope.) Peter Scarga's opponents, objecting to the Catholics, cited a number of examples in church history where major hierarchs - Nestorius, Eutyches, Macedonius - were found to be the founders of heresies condemned by church councils.
The Orthodox rejected the Latin understanding of church authority and, guided by the principle of synodality, demanded that the right to determine the truth be left to them, based on the conscience of each and every person. In analyzing these contradictions between the Orthodox and the Catholics, we can conclude that in this case two different worldviews were concealed under religious ideological shells. It is clear that the resulting collisions made life difficult for the Russian population in Poland.14 Of course, the existing problems could be solved, but only with the good will of both sides, and this is exactly what was lacking.
Let us note in passing that serfdom as such did not exist in Poland: every peasant could leave his landlord if he wanted to. But to leave meant to give up all one's possessions, and often to lose one's personal freedom, because a peasant's personal freedom was restricted by a rigid system of taxes. Taxes were paid to the landlord, and if the peasant had no money, he became a peasant's servant. As one can see, the lack of serfdom created much worse living conditions for the peasants than under the serfdom that existed in Muscovite Russia. Paradoxically, the lack of serfdom doomed the peasants to complete disenfranchisement. Lands, water bodies, hunting grounds, hayfields, and even Orthodox churches were taxed. The latter was especially infuriating for the Orthodox: The Jewish factor used the keys to the church, like the keys to a barn, opening the church for services at will, depending on the parishioners' payment of the appropriate sum.
Of course, both Polish and Lithuanian peasants suffered from the arbitrariness of the Polish pope and Jewish factors, but the Catholic peasants could come to terms with the noblemen and landlords - they remained "their own," despite the social divisions. The Orthodox did not have such an opportunity: the Polish kings did not want to listen to them, because they were "strangers", "schizmatics". Because of this difference, neither Polish nor Lithuanian peasants staged any major revolts or uprisings against the panes, despite the severity of their exploitation. The Orthodox, on the contrary, had nothing else to do, and from the end of the XVI century Russian uprisings came one after another. Nalivaiko (1594-1596) was the first to rebel, but he was captured and executed in Warsaw. Nalivaiko's rebellion was followed by others: Pavlyuk, Ostranitsa, and Huni. The uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, which marked the beginning of the war of liberation in Polish Ukraine, is considered the apotheosis of the long struggle between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Hetman and the people
Bogdan Khmelnitsky was an Orthodox nobleman of Russian origin who served in the Polish border troops. Like any nobleman, Khmelnitsky had his own farm and several workers. Local headman (assistant governor) Catholic Chaplitsky disliked Khmelnitsky to such an extent that he even made attempts on his life. Thus, once only a helmet saved the future hetman of Ukraine from a fatal blow. Then Chaplitsky raided Khmelnitsky's farm, seized him and his family, and took all the property, including horses and bread from the threshing floor. When Khmelnitsky threatened to go to court, enraged Chaplitsky, wishing to show his impunity, ordered to flog Khmelnitsky's ten-year-old son in the marketplace. Zealous executors flogged the poor boy, and on the third day he died. Realizing the futility of his appeal to the court, where the same Catholics as Chaplitsky sat, Khmelnitsky went directly to Warsaw to King Wladyslaw. Wladyslaw's affairs were difficult: the Sejm, controlled by the Polish pans, constantly denied him funds for the war with the Turks and operations against Muscovy. Vladislav received Khmelnitsky, but, after listening to the nobleman, the king only complained of his powerlessness before the panes. Having failed to obtain justice from the king, Khmelnitsky went to Zaporozhye.
(14) At that time, the entire Orthodox population of Poland referred to themselves as Russians, while the word "Ukrainian" simply meant a resident of the outskirts. At the same time, the Russians who lived in the Russian state were clearly separated from the Russians of Poland and were called "Russian." This distinction represents a typical fixation of common super-ethnicity.
Map of the liberation war of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples in 1648-1654. Reunification of Ukraine with Russia
С. I. Vasilkovsky. Bogdan Khmelnitsky
In the seventeenth century Zaporozhye, located on the border of Poland and the Wild Field, was an exceptional phenomenon: Orthodox Russian passionarys fled there from the yoke of the nobility. Zaporozhye itself was a dense network of settlements, in which developed a blacksmith, carpenter, locksmith, shoemaker and other crafts, the population produced everything they needed for themselves. Individual settlements (kurens) constituted a kind of "order of knights" that lived quite independently. The high passionarity of the inhabitants of Zaporizhzhya and their rejection of the Polish order, already by the XVI century formed a special stereotype of behavior, which gave birth to a new ethnos - Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. Naturally, the Poles treated the Zaporozhye Cossacks extremely suspicious and unfriendly.
Equally suspicious and hostile was the attitude of the nobles and magnates to the "register" Cossacks. The "registers" were the Cossacks who served the Polish crown. To repel Tatar raids, many Cossacks were usually gathered under the Hetman's banners. When the war was over, the army disbanded, and yesterday's warrior had to return "to the plow" to the hetman. It is clear that one of the main demands of the Cossacks of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was to increase the number of the regiment. In the Rzeczpospolita the degree of rejection of each other by representatives of two different super-ethnoses - Orthodox and Catholics - was very high. The hatred of the Cossacks existed despite the fact that they did not attack the foundations of the Polish state. Moreover, the Cossacks served Rzeczpospolita as a reliable defense against Tatar raids, because Tatar chambulas were plundering the country, reaching as far as Krakow. Nevertheless, the Poles limited the number of the Registered Cossack Army to six thousand sabers (1625). Such half-hearted decision couldn't satisfy anybody - in the 17th century on the Polish Ukraine there were about 200 thousand people, wishing to be Cossacks and being them de facto.
In December 1647 the Zaporizhian Sich welcomed Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who, having safely fooled the guards who caught him on the road, appeared to the Cossacks and said: "Enough to put up with these Poles, let us assemble the Rada and defend the Orthodox Church and the Land of Russia!" Khmelnitsky's call was welcome and quite understandable. It became the dominant factor in all subsequent actions of the Cossacks. Moreover, initially Khmelnitsky and his comrades-in-arms did not aim at political separation from Poland. They only wanted to achieve the right to live in harmony with their own conscience, while obeying the laws of the Polish kingdom.
The Cossacks' demands were brief: first, to enroll all who wished to be Cossacks and to grant the Cossacks, as a military estate, the privileges of the nobility; second, to prohibit the propaganda of Catholic unification in Ukraine, to remove all Uniate priests and return the churches seized by Catholics to the Orthodox, allowing everyone the freedom to confess their own faith; third, to expel the Jews from Ukraine. This political program reflected the aspirations of the entire oppressed Orthodox population of Ukraine.
The Zaporizhzhya immediately elected Khmelnitsky as hetman, and he gained tremendous power, as the Cossacks, with complete anarchy in peacetime, maintained strict discipline on the basis of unconditional obedience to the hetman on the march. From Zaporizhzhya, Khmelnitsky traveled to Crimea, where he secured the promise of assistance from the Crimean Khan. Soon he marched with a detachment of four thousand Cossacks, joined by three thousand Cossacks. The forces of the insurgents were quite insignificant in comparison with the power of the enemy: the Poles could field up to 150,000 men. But it was impossible for Poland to mobilize these troops. There was absolute confusion in the country, and the panes, as usual, refused to give money to the king for the "polospolite ruin" (the noblemen's militia). Therefore, when confronted by the Poles in 1648, Khmelnitsky, despite his limited forces, won three major victories. The first of them was the battle of Yellow Waters, where the son of Polish hetman Stefan Pototsky was killed; then followed the victory at Korsun, where were captured Two Polish hetmans - Potocki and Kalinowski, and, finally, at Pilyavets, where a panic-stricken horde rushed to flee from the Cossacks.
Polish King Michael
The bitterness of the struggle was growing. The following episode is characteristic. At Korsun the Poles had good German artillery - the cannons could easily stop the onslaught of Cossack cavalry. And so, in order to "neutralize" the artillery, Khmelnitsky sent one of his loyal Cossacks to surrender to the Poles and testify that the Cossacks were preparing to attack from the right flank. The Cossack surrendered and died under torture, repeating a false version and knowing the truth about Khmelnitsky's plan. The Cossack cavalry struck on the left flank of the Polish army, and while the deceived Poles deployed their guns, victory was won. Imagine the heat of the battle if this Cossack hero not only sacrificed his life, but in the cruel torment he kept his strength of will for several hours, preferring to buy the victory of his comrades at the price of his own suffering.
И. Е. Repin. Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Titulary of 1672.
Khmelnitsky's victories did not encourage the Poles to reach an agreement. In 1648 also, King Wladyslaw died and the Polish government forgot about the Cossacks for a time: the Sejm and Sejmiks discussed the candidates for the new king. Taking advantage of the respite, Khmelnitsky strengthened himself; occupying Kiev and the Ukrainian lands on both banks of the Dnieper, he effectively became a fully independent ruler - the "hetman" of Ukraine, or Lesser Russia.
But as soon as the nobility chose a new king, Jan Kazimir, preparations for military action against the Cossacks began. There were enough passionaries among Poles in the 17th century - talented commanders, strong-willed politicians, intelligent diplomats - and they did not intend to accept defeat. Once again, the popolitic ruling was assembled, German artillerymen and infantrymen were hired at the expense of the crown, and secret agents were sent to the Crimean khan to induce the Tartars to break their alliance with Khmelnitsky. And when the Poles began to observe the terms of truce with Khmelnitsky, the war resumed.
In the 1651 battle near Berestechko, the Cossack allies - Tatars - suddenly abandoned Khmelnitsky, and when he tried to bring them back, they captured him and took him with them to the Crimea. The Cossack army, left without a commander, was pinned to the swamp. The talented Cossack colonel Ivan Bogun, who took command, tried to lead his troops through the swamp and ordered to pave the road. But the Poles had time to bring artillery - the road was quickly destroyed by cannonballs and most of the Cossacks were killed.
Soon Khmelnitsky, who had been released from captivity, returned, as they say, to the broken trough. The Poles, by that time, had agreed to limit the number of "register" Cossacks to only twenty thousand, and Khmelnitsky was well aware that his agreement to such conditions was tantamount to the death of the cause he had started. After all, as we recall, there were about 200 thousand Cossacks in Ukraine. Consequently, 180 thousand people had to go back to work for the pans and pay the Jews for the lease of the churches, pubs, hunting grounds, for the right to live. None of them wanted to return to the past, and so the revolt resumed. But in this situation the Poles had a clear advantage. There was no longer an alliance with the Tatars, and Ukraine, a border strip of land, was sandwiched between the Crimean Khanate and Poland. Khmelnitsky had no rear and it was impossible to defend himself. Having appraised the situation, the clever hetman began to look for a new ally. Naturally, he turned to orthodox Moscow.
Negotiations with Moscow began in 1651, but Moscow's usual response was slow, and it was only in October 1653 that the decision was made to incorporate Ukraine into the Moscow state. On January 8, 1654 in Pereyaslavl (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky) the assembled Rada supported the policy of joining Moscow by saying: "We will under the Moscow Orthodox Tsar".
А. D. Kivshenko. Pereyaslavl Rada
However, the Cossacks remained true to themselves, that is, to their stereotype of behavior. Expressing their complete readiness to swear allegiance to Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich, they demanded that the Tsar, for his part, give them an oath of loyalty to preserve the Cossack liberties. The shocked boyar Buturlin, representing the Moscow sovereign, refused flatly, stating that "we do not have a tradition for tsars to swear an oath to their subjects, and your liberties will be respected by the sovereign". Since the situation was hopeless, the Cossacks, shaking their long heads, agreed and thus put an end to the matter.
Even before the decisions of the Moscow government and the Pereyaslavl' Rada, Khmelnitsky took military action on the right bank of the Dnieper and twice defeated the Polish forces: at Batoga (1652) and at Zhvants (1653). The latter victory coincided with joyful news from Moscow. If the government of Alexey Mikhailovich did not hurry when weighing up its decision, it acted energetically when accepting it. In 1654 the Russian troops took Smolensk, and in 1655 Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, and reached Brest. Poland was defeated on all fronts. The Slavic state, as is usually the case, received "attention": the Swedish king Charles X invaded Poland (1655), banished Jan Kazimir, and part of the gentry and magnates were recognized as the Polish king. Now the interests of Russia and Sweden clashed in Lithuania. In the Russian-Swedish war that followed (1655-1659) neither side won a decisive victory, but Poland, seemingly on the eve of its first partition, recovered in time. The Poles had enough passionate resources to organize themselves to expel the Swedes and the Transylvanian (Romanian) invaders from the south, and in the future to take back from Russia occupied by her Lithuania.
The People and the Hetmans
In the summer of 1657 Bogdan Khmelnitsky died. Because his son Yuri was still a child, the "scribe general" (minister of foreign affairs), the nobleman Vygovsky, was elected hetman of Ukraine. He, though an Orthodox Christian, loathed Moscow and the Muscovites, dreaming of being placed under the patronage of the Polish king. In 1658 the war between Russia and Poland for the possession of Lithuania and Ukraine broke out with renewed vigor. At the decisive moment Vygovsky took the Polish side and entered into a political alliance with Poland, the Hadiach Union, returning Ukraine to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Russian army sent to Ukraine under the command of Prince Trubetskoy was defeated by Vygovsky with the help of the Tatars at the Battle of Konotop (1659). It seemed that Ukraine was lost to Russia forever.
С. I. Vasilkovsky. Zaporozhets type.
С. I. Vasilkovsky. The Cossack
But neither Vygovsky nor his Polish masters took into account the intensity of the Russian population's passionarity in Ukraine, i.e. they underestimated the opponent's capabilities. The most enterprising Cossack petty officers nominated Yuri Khmelnitsky for hetman, and the glorious name attracted people like a banner. Khmelnitsky's militia did what the regular army failed to do. In September 1659 the armies of the two hetmans met near Bila Tserkva, and Vygovsky's Cossacks began to defect to Khmelnitsky. Abandoned by his army, Vygovsky fled to Poland and withdrew from the political scene forever.
Next year, 1660, Moscow army under boyar Sheremetev came to the aid of Yuri Khmelnitsky. Polish-Tatar army met the Moscow army in Volyn and surrounded Russian troops near Chudnov. Here, unfortunately, showed the insignificance of Yuri, not in the least like his great father. He was afraid to enter into battle and, betraying the Russians, submitted to the Poles. Sheremetev was forced to capitulate and after that he spent twenty years in Crimean captivity.
The Cossacks again became agitated. Colonels Somko, Zolotarenko and the Zaporozhye ataman Briukhovetsky gathered "Black Rada", which deposed the son of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. But if Somko and Zolotarenko had a program of reunification with Moscow, Briukhovetsky acted as an unprincipled adventurer and was supported by Cossacks. After becoming hetman, Briukhovetsky demagogically exposed himself as an advocate of "golutva" (golytba) and the enemy of the petty officer. Many honored Cossacks and elders were deprived of their property and heads. (killed) In 1663 the colonels Somko and Zolotarenko, rivals of Briukhovetsky in the struggle for the hetman's mace, were also executed.
Meanwhile, Jan-Kazimir made peace with the Swedes and transferred the main military operations to the Ukraine. He wanted to go to the rear of the Russian armies and be in front of defenseless Moscow by crossing the left-bank Ukraine. But Russian border troops defeated him twice: at Glukhov and Novhorod-Siversky - and pushed the Poles across the Dnieper (1664). The exhausted Poland was forced to seek a respite, and in 1667 was signed the Truce of Andrusovo, which referred to the Russian state the old Russian city of Smolensk, Kiev, and all of the Left-bank Ukraine.
However, the victory over Poland did not lead to the unity of the Cossacks. As early as 1665 Cossack leaders of the Right-bank Ukraine assembled their own Rada and appointed as hetman Peter Doroshenko, who stood up for the idea of free Ukraine, i.e. the creation of a Ukrainian state, independent either from Russia or Poland. Doroshenko, who staunchly adhered to his program, at one time entered into a struggle with both Poland and his opponent, the hetman Kryukhovetsky. By that time Bryukhovetsky, too, had betrayed his alliance with Russia and struck deals with the Turks. He even received Tatar help, but did not have time to use it: the indignant Cossacks killed the traitor (1668).
After Bryukhovetsky's death, Demyan Mnoghreshny became hetman for some time (1668-1672), who recognized Moscow's supreme authority. But he did not manage to hold hetman's mace for a long time either, and his career ended sadly - in exile to Siberia. In 1672 Samoilovich became a new hetman of "all Ukraine" and found himself in a very hard situation. Podolia was invaded by the Turks and the champion of independent Ukraine Doroshenko joined the army of the Turkish sultan Mohammed IV. Poland capitulated to the Ottomans and ceded to the Turks a large part of the Right Bank. For two years (1672-1674) hetman Doroshenko sat in Chiguirin as a vassal of the Turkish sultan.
The Russian army put an end to this, which came to liberate the co-religionists. Beyond the Dnieper the Moscow troops crossed with the regiments of the left bank Cossacks. In 1676 Doroshenko surrendered and was pardoned, and Samoilovich became hetman of both sides of the Dnieper. The Turks, who tried to hold on to Podolia, installed Yuri Khmelnitsky as hetman. But this scoundrel finally compromised the party he led. Seeking money, Yuri imposed a tax even on weddings. Not having received from one marriage the bounty established by him, the hetman attacked the house of the parents of the bride and put her mother to a painful death. The husband of the deceased, a rich merchant, was in Istanbul at the time. When the merchant found out what had happened, he complained to the Vizier and the case was investigated. The pervert was seized, tried and sentenced to drowning (1681).
А. D. Kivshenko. The Battle of Poltava: Swedes bow their banners to Peter I. 1709 г.
The Turks were not destined to entrench themselves in the Right-bank Ukraine for a long time. Ukraine was too passionate and what the Ottomans succeeded in Bulgaria and Serbia was impossible in Volyn and Podolia. The successes of the Russian regular army and Cossack regiments as well as the defeats of the Turks in Central Europe rid Ukraine of the Ottoman threat as early as the early 1680s.
Samoilovich was hetman for quite a long time, until the full end of the Russian-Polish war, when at last the "Treaty on Perpetual Peace" between Russia and Poland (1686) was signed. The reason for Samoilovich's downfall in 1687 was Mazepa's intrigues. Mazepa, who trusted prince Golitsyn, the omnipotent favourite of tsarevna Sophia, accused the hetman of treason. Unhappy Samoilovich was arrested and exiled, but Golitsyn paid dearly for his indulgence in treason. Elected hetman Mazepa similarly betrayed Golitsyn, and after - and Peter, choosing the side of Charles XII, and deciding that, with the support of the Swedes, he could become an independent sovereign. However, Mazepa's call for an independent Ukraine did not receive popular support either. Only his serfs (guards) and Cossacks, who at that time were already against an alliance with Russia, followed Mazepa.
The rest of the slobodskaya Ukraine came out in support of "the Tsar of Moscow, the right-glorious" and held Poltava - the key fortress, under which Mazepa's ally Charles XII was defeated (1709).
The Battle of Poltava, in fact, puts an end to the history of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. To end this story, it is appropriate to try to explain the following: why the Poles fought a war with Russia over Ukraine, while numerous attempts by Ukrainian hetmans, from Vygovsky to Mazepa, to join Poland or become independent were invariably doomed to failure? Historians have given many explanations for this, but if one considers the ethnic reasons for what happened, the answer to the question posed is unlike anything that has gone before.
Like most of our contemporaries, Polish Pan and Ukrainian elders were convinced that their will transforms life, and so they ignored the objective natural dependencies that shape human behavior. Thus, the Poles believed that it was enough to attract Cossack elders by giving them noblemen's privileges, and all Cossacks would serve faithfully; that one could convince Russian Orthodox people that the Catholic faith was better, and they would become zealous Catholics. Similarly, many hetmans believed that, depending on the political situation and their choice, they could obey either Russia or Poland, and that their success in the struggle for independence was determined by their ability to deceive the Boyars of Moscow or timely negotiate an alliance with the Turkish Sultan.
In reality, as we have seen, of paramount importance was the common super-ethnic affiliation of Russia and Ukraine, the mass support of "their own," who were co-religionists. This universal feeling of unity shattered, like waves against a rock, the rational plans of strong-willed, intelligent power-seekers. Two closely related ethnic groups, the Russian and Ukrainian, joined together not because of, but in spite of, the political situation, as popular "will-o'-lan" or "will-not" invariably broke those initiatives that did not fit the logic of ethno-genesis.
Consequences of Choice
This choice, made on the basis of the people's natural worldview, turned out to be the right one. To prove this, it is enough to say a few words about the fate and role of the Ukrainian nation in the Russian history of the 17th-18th centuries.
Unlike Poles, who restricted as we remember the number of "register" Cossacks, the Moscow government increased the register by 60 thousand people as compared to Bogdan Khmelnitsky's requirements. In fact, the registry covered the entire population of Sloboda Ukraine. In addition, five or seven thousand Zaporozhye Cossacks remained. Under Polish rule, Ukraine could only dream of a similar situation. Discrimination of Ukrainians as a part of Russia was out of the question. Moreover, in the XVII century, the intellectual influence of the Ukrainians over the population of Russia increased greatly. Ukrainian monks and priests - educated, skilled in debates with Catholics, and proficient in languages - were highly valued by the Moscow Patriarchate. Later, in discussing the history of the Russian church schism, we will see that the schism was a conflict between the Great Russian (Moscow) and Ukrainian Orthodox traditions. The Ukrainian monks were able to prevail in this conflict and thus had a decisive impact on changing Russian ecclesiastical customs. The names of Epiphany Slavinetsky, Simeon Polotsky, and Theophan Prokopovich became an integral part of the history of Russian culture.
Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky. 1758 г.
Subsequently, when Russia's national policy was replaced by imperial policy, Ukrainians were not at a disadvantage either. Ethnic differences between Ukrainians and Velikorosses played a decisive role here. These differences were determined by ethnic substratum (the future Ukrainian nation was composed of Torks, who used to live on the border of the Steppe) and were reflected in some features of behavioral patterns (for example, Ukrainians were more diligent servants then Russians), as well as in the nature of the connection of ethnic groups with the landscape. It makes sense to talk about this in more detail.
The Velikorosses, as well as the Don Cossacks, expanding their ethnic area, settled, as a rule, on the banks of rivers. The river, its floodplain, served as the base of the Russian economy, its main link with the nourishing landscape. Ukrainians, on the other hand, managed to master the expanses of watersheds. They dug wells, made dams on brooks and had sufficient quantity of water. Thus, farmsteads with gardens appeared on the watersheds, and since the land was fertile, the Ukrainians did not know much concern about daily bread. When under Catherine II (1762-1796) two military campaigns resulted in the conquest of first the northern Black Sea coast and then Crimea, the earlier threat of the Tatars disappeared. At the same time new steppe areas - the Wild Field - became available for settlement.
In the eighteenth century the Ukrainian population grew rapidly, and there were many passionary ancestors, who had laid down their heads in the internecine strife of the late seventeenth century, managed to leave legal and illegal offspring. The overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian Cossacks were enrolled in the registry, so almost everyone had the opportunity to make a career.
For the whole XVIII century Ukrainians did just that. Eventually Tsar Peter I's daughter Elizaveta Petrovna married Alexei Razumovsky (the marriage was morganatic, without publicity); his brother, Kirill Razumovsky, became the last hetman of Ukraine. Although under Catherine II Ukraine lost its self-government, the position of Ukrainians at court was not shaken: the duties of the great chancellor of the empire were performed by Count Bezborodko, who formulated his political credo in the following words: "As the Mother Tsarina wants, so be it.” Neither the accent nor Bezborodko's background embarrassed anyone and did not prevent him from becoming the first official of the state.
Perhaps this mutual tolerance of Ukrainians and Great Russians was the most important evidence of the correctness of the choice made at the Pereyaslav Rada in 1654.
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