2020-09-24
94
SEMINAR 3
TOPIC 3
FROM THE KHMELNYTSKYI UPRISING TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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:
1. The duties of Ukrainian 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.
2. 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. 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 Khmelnytskyi.
The Course of the Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Uprising
The great uprising of 1648 was started by a Cossack captain (sotnyk) Bohdan Kmelnytskyi. Born around 1595 of noble Orthodox parents, he got an excellent education in a Catholic school, before joining the Polish army. In 1618 Khmelnytskyi took part in the Polish march on Moscow. In 1620 during the war between Poland and Turkey Khmelnytskyi was taken prisoner by the Turks and spent two years in captivity where he learned the Tatar language and customs. In 1632 in another Polish-Russian war the Polish king personally awarded the captain with a precious sword. Most of the time from 1622 till 1646 Khmelnytskyi 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 Khmelnytskyi was over 50 and it seemed that his career came to an end, one event turned his life upside down. One day, when Khmelnytskyi was away on business, Daniel Czaplinsky, a polish nobleman, appropriated Khmelnytskyi’s estate and abducted the woman that the recently widowed Cossack captain wanted to marry. Khmelnytskyi 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 Khmelnytskyi who arrived at the Sich and was elected hetman.
Realizing that the Cossacks’ great weakness in fighting the Poles was a lack of cavalry, Khmelnytskyi 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 Kmelnytskyi 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 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 iasyr (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 iasyr. While Khmelnytskyi 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 Khmelnytskyi 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 pushed out from Ukraine.
Jewish losses were especially heavy. Because Jews usually served as middlemen between the szlachta and 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 Khmelnytskyi 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).[1] 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.[2]
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 Iarema 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 army[3], 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. Iarema wanted them to ‘feel that they are dying.’ For his extreme cruelty Prince Vyshnevetsky earned the terrible nickname “Slavic Nero.”[4] 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. (Thanks to the popularity of his father, Iarema Vyshnevetsky’s son was elected Polish king). The example of Iarema 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 Khmelnytskyi’s armies. Hence, the Polish historians call the Khmelnytskyi 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, i.e. to found the Khmelnytskyi dynasty.
