landlords were driven away, the officers sought to secure their
estates. They no longer considered themselves elective servants of the
Host but they saw themselves as a new nobility. They demanded that
they receive as their own the abandoned estates and that required the
control over the former serf population, if the lands were to be run
properly and profitably. They saw the Polish and Muscovite nobles
ruling autocratically over large tracts of territory and being the
masters of many villages. They realized that the old hit and miss
elective system was not suited to the administration of large areas
of territory and the maintenance of a consistent foreign policy and
they could not visualize reform in any other way than by assimilating
themselves to the prevailing mode of life in Eastern Europe. Their
object was either the formation of an aristocratic republic like
Poland or unrestrained overlordship like Moscow. They resented the
rights of the lesser Kozaks and once they had secured estates, they
were determined not to allow their serfs and peasants to join the
Kozak body and thus escape the more burdensome obligations. Quite
the reverse. Just as the Poles, they sought to force the Kozaks into
servile labor. Their demands were mild at first but with each year they
became more oppressive and galling. As a result they began to hire
mercenary guards for their persons and property and this marked an
overwhelming change in the constitution of the Host. The early Kozaks
who had dared to raid the outskirts of Constantinople would have been
aghast at this development, at this denial of the fundamental equality
of the members of the Host, but the process went on inexorably.
The ordinary Kozaks deeply resented this transformation of their corps
of officers into something like the hated landlords and tried in every
way to thwart and hinder the movement. They swung like a pendulum from
one group of officers to another and allowed themselves to become the
prey of all kinds of intrigues. Nevertheless very few of them thought
seriously of the situation and even when they did succeed in electing
a hetman from their own class, they did not support him and he in turn
adapted his manners to those of the other officers. Thus the mass of
the Kozaks in their search for their old freedom maintained only their
old turbulence and their wild and unreasoning attachment to Orthodoxy
and this prevented them from exerting the full force of their influence
in a constructive way. At the same time, the Kozaks, even when they
were almost reduced to serfs, still maintained their superiority to all
other classes of the population.
A new cause of discord arose over the Zaporozhian Sich. The Kozaks
of the Sich, still in a sense the real frontiersmen, argued that the
choice of hetmans should be conducted there and they developed an
open hostility toward the officers and the Kozaks of the permanent
regimental and territorial organizations that existed in the more
settled part of the country. It only added more unpleasantness, for the
Kozaks of the Sich did not realize that it required a consistent policy
if the Host was to maintain itself under the new conditions.
At the same time the international pot continued to boil. Both Moscow
and Poland, busily engaged in fighting one another, angled for the
support of the Kozaks. Both sides in cases of necessity made liberal
promises. The Poles were only too willing to give the Kozaks anything
for which they asked when they were driving back the Muscovites; the
Muscovites were willing to extend political and financial assistance
whenever the Kozaks were needed to turn back the Poles. As soon as
discord raised its head in the Kozak ranks, the favorable offers were
withdrawn, the Polish magnates renewed their claims to Ukrainian land
and the Muscovites began to abrogate the Kozak privileges granted at
the Treaty of Pereyaslav. At times the Turks and the Crimean Tatars,
their vassals, took a hand in the game but they likewise did not carry
out any consistent policy and did not try to fulfil the promises which
they had made a short time before to the Kozak leaders.
Under such conditions everybody suffered, but the Ukrainian population,
which might have profited by the duel between Poland and Moscow, fared
the worst. The land was terribly devastated and there came the period
graphically called by the Ukrainians of this and later periods the
Ruin. The helpless population, Kozak and non-Kozak alike, wandered
from the right bank of the Dnyeper to the left bank. They went on into
the land of free communes which was outside the Hetman state and then
discovered that Moscow would not confirm their privileges there, since
it was regarded as purely Muscovite territory. Then with a slight
change or rumors of change in the west, the trend of wandering reversed
its course and the settlers streamed back to the right bank, only to be
again disillusioned and resume their melancholy travels.
Under such conditions it is idle to seek for a coherent history. It
is impossible even to speak of Polish and Muscovite parties among
the Kozaks, for regiments and companies swung from side to side with
appalling rapidity, handicapped their more able hetmans and either
killed them or discredited them so thoroughly that they received little
hearing at either Warsaw or Moscow.
To cite but a few cases. Shortly after the death of Khmelnitsky, his
secretary, Ivan Vyhovsky, almost unified the Host as a new hetman
succeeding the weak Yury Khmelnitsky. Vyhovsky and his friends realized
that with a weakened Poland, it might be possible for the Kozaks to
force upon the King a recognition of their rights. He drew up the
Union of Hadiach in 1658 and this more than fulfilled the dreams
of Khmelnitsky, for it made the Kozak Host and Rus’ a third member
of the Polish state along with Poland and Lithuania. It again gave
the Orthodox Metropolitan the right to sit in the Polish Senate and
conferred upon the Academy of Kiev the same rights that were given
to the Polish Universities of Krakow and Wilno. It was all in vain.
The blind hate of the Polish clergy and aristocratic landowners and
Muscovite intrigues destroyed the plans of Vyhovsky and the Poles
speedily withdrew their promises.
Ten years later Peter Doroshenko, more hostile to the Poles,
manipulated his power so skilfully that he was able to win complete
independence from Poland and became the master of the right bank.
Through an alliance with Mnohohrishny, the hetman of the left bank, he
bade fair to unite again the whole of Ukraine with the hope of securing
a definite autonomy from the Tsar. It was of no use. The officers
overthrew Mnohohrishny because he was the son of a peasant and then
they appealed to Moscow against Doroshenko. Of course the Tsar heard
them for he welcomed the opportunity to deprive the Host of its rights
to deal with foreign policy, and executed Mnohohrishny. Doroshenko
tried in vain to secure Turkish help but this was not forthcoming and
the hatred of the Kozaks for Islam brought about his downfall. When he
had to surrender to Moscow, he received a long term in Siberia.
Then came the turn of Ivan Samoylovich, who was as sympathetic and
obedient to Moscow as the others had been critical and independent.
He won a certain amount for the Host at the price of taking part in
Muscovite plans against Turkey. Yet when an expedition under Prince
Golitsyn met with failure against the Crimea, because of disregard of
his advice, the other officers accused him to the Tsar of betraying
the Russians. Samoylovich was deposed and imprisoned and his son was
executed.
Thus while the Host was relapsing into discord, it gave both Tsar and
King the power to do with the Ukrainian lands as they would. In 1667,
by the Treaty of Andrusivo, the two divided Ukraine at the Dnyeper,
with Poland holding the right bank and Moscow the left and the city
of Kiev on the right bank. This last was nominally for two years, but
Moscow never returned the prize and used the occupation for still
greater demands.
The chief of these lay in the elimination of the autonomy of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This was still nominally under the control
of the Patriarch of Constantinople but Moscow wanted it under the
Patriarch of Moscow to cement its own power. Diplomatic pressure on
the Sultan led him to force the Patriarch of Constantinople to consent
to this and then the ever obedient Samoylovich appointed a relative
Metropolitan of Kiev and the thing was done. Moscow had been able to
lay its hand upon the last strong factor of Ukrainian independence and
the rest was easy.
It was in the midst of this chaos that Ivan Mazepa became hetman after
the arrest of Samoylovich. He was the last of the hetmans who possessed
any real strength of character and assurance of his position. Perhaps
he misjudged his situation. Perhaps it was an unkind fate that drove
him along the path of destruction and with him the Kozak Host and all
Ukraine. Yet he played a striking role, albeit an unsuccessful one, in
the events of the day and achieved lasting fame or ill-repute among his
fellow countrymen and their oppressors.
Mazepa was born about 1640 in Bila Tserkva on the right bank and
received an excellent education. For a while he was at the court of
the King of Poland and conducted various diplomatic negotiations with
Ukraine for the King. Then he suddenly vanished, perhaps because of an
unconventional love affair as described by Byron, and he turned up in
the Hetman state. He attracted the attention of Samoylovich who made
him the Inspector General of the Host. This brought him into prominence
both with the Ukrainians and the Muscovites and when Samoylovich was
arrested in 1687, Mazepa offered Prince Golitsyn ten thousand rubles
for the post of hetman and Golitsyn saw to it that he was the sole
candidate for the position.
The world had changed since the time of Khmelnitsky and it would be
impossible to recognize the traditional type of hetman in Mazepa.
The gulf between the early Kozak hetmans, who acquired their power
merely to conduct a raid against Constantinople, and Khmelnitsky was
not so great as that between Khmelnitsky and Mazepa. The latter had
become hetman only of the left bank. He might indeed possess some
nominal control over the Kozaks of Paly in Poland but it was utterly
ineffective and he had no power to bring them as organized units under
his control. There were Muscovite garrisons in all of the important
cities and the maintenance of his power depended upon his retention of
the confidence of the Tsar. Still less than Khmelnitsky could he think
of the welfare of the people. Still less than Khmelnitsky did he have
the power to organize armies and use them for purposes of his own or of
the Officers’ Council. He was bound hand and foot by the Tsar and this
Tsar was Peter the Great.
Mazepa had been hetman for only two years, when Peter succeeded in
forcing his half-sister Sophia out of power, making her take refuge
in a convent. He immediately removed Prince Golitsyn from all of his
important posts, that same man who had been the patron of Mazepa and
had placed him in the hetmanship. Then Peter began his policy of
reforms. This is not the place to describe his transformation of old
Moscow into the modern Russia, but it can well be seen that Ukraine and
the Kozak Host, already stripped of most of the rights guaranteed by
Tsar Alexis, would not escape his centralizing tendencies.
Mazepa, although he was closely associated with Golitsyn, profited
by the latter’s downfall. He succeeded in winning and holding the
confidence of Peter, who willingly took from the Golitsyn estates
and returned to Mazepa the money that he had paid Golitsyn for his
election, and the generous Tsar gave him a good slice of the Golitsyn
fortune as a mark of favor.
This fortune together with the income of the Kozak Host allowed the
new hetman to start an unparalleled period of monumental building in
Ukraine. Thus, for example, he remodelled in Baroque architecture the
old Church of St. Sophia in Kiev. He constructed the Cathedral of St.
Nicholas and the Church of the Epiphany. He surrounded the Monastery
of the Caves with an elaborate wall. In everything that he touched
Mazepa showed the influence of the contemporary art of the West and his
hetmanship marked the flowering of Ukrainian Baroque architecture.
He had many motives for this. In the first place, he could feel the
desire of Peter for the elimination of the old forms of Muscovite art
and life. His liberal expenditure of funds for a westernizing purpose
could not fail to increase the certainty of the Tsar that he was not
interested in the maintenance of the old form of life. It appealed to
large elements of the Ukrainian population, and Mazepa used his liberal
support of the Orthodox Church to prove that he had no Polonizing
tendencies and that he was not, as his enemies charged again and again,
a mere servant of the Poles, for this was the favorite charge against
the hetmans and could rouse against him both the suspicions of the Tsar
and the ill will of the Ukrainian population, Kozak and non-Kozak alike.
On the other hand, Mazepa was a true hetman of the later type. He
was not in general on good terms with the leaders of the Zaporozhian
Sich, who claimed to speak for the common Kozaks, and emphasized in
their turbulent way the last elements of that democracy that had
characterized the entire Host of a century earlier. Mazepa found
his chief elements of support in the officers of the Kozak Host and
he relied upon the gifts of the Tsar to these men to maintain their
loyalty to him. For his protection he trusted chiefly to his mercenary
forces, on whose continued loyalty he could count for financial
reasons. His ambition was to be recognized as the master of Ukraine,
perhaps the King of a subservient state, and his ambitions perhaps
went no further than to hold the same position toward Moscow as the
princes of Georgia and other bordering vassal states. His role was
far different from that of the older hetmans who had felt themselves
owing no responsibility except to God and the assembly of the Host. He
himself owed supreme allegiance to the Tsar and he demanded the same
loyalty to himself.
The policy of Mazepa naturally did not make him friends among the
ordinary Kozaks who bitterly denounced him and his officers for their
high-handed actions. Yet when Petryk tried to secure the aid of the
Zaporozhian Sich against him and also secured recognition from the
Turks and Tatars, very few joined him and Mazepa was able to weather
the storm without difficulty.
Yet Mazepa was something more than a mere supporter of the Tsar. His
friend Kochubey denounced him to Peter for writing a poem glorifying
the independence of Ukraine and visualizing the hetman as an autocratic
and independent monarch. Peter laughed at the accusations and merely
condemned Kochubey to death when he added other insinuations against
the loyalty of the hetman. Kochubey was probably right. Mazepa ardently
desired to see Ukraine free but he was too well aware of the abuses of
the past to risk a struggle under the old manners and customs of the
hetmanate. He apparently had convinced himself and his friends that
Ukraine could only recover its liberty under an absolute monarch and he
intended to be that man.
In the meanwhile the Northern War had broken out, and this radically
changed the situation. Charles XII, a man of superb military talent and
a ruthless desire to employ it, had inherited the Swedish army at a
time when Sweden, as a result of the Thirty Years War, was one of the
great powers of Europe. In 1700 he attacked Russia and badly defeated
Peter at the battle of Narva. Then he wasted the next years in trying
to depose August II, King of Poland, and replace him with Stanislas
Leszczynski, a move in which he had the support of all the anti-Russian
factions of Poland. This alliance of the King of Sweden and one faction
of the Poles against the Tsar of Russia and the King of Poland opened
new vistas to the Kozaks, who had not forgotten the negotiations
between Khmelnitsky and the Swedes during the great Kozak revolt of a
half century earlier.
Intermittent hostilities between the forces of King August and the
Kozaks of Paly, the leader of the Kozaks in Poland, led Paly to
appeal for aid to Mazepa, but at the moment Peter was interested in
maintaining relations with the King and he forbade Mazepa to interfere.
Instead of that he offered himself to help in the suppression of Paly.
This of course displeased Mazepa for he had hopes of bringing Western
Ukraine under his control, but again he was compelled to wait.
Finally in 1704 Peter ordered Mazepa to enter Western Ukraine to subdue
the Polish nobles friendly to Charles. Mazepa obeyed in his own special
way to aid the Kozaks. However, he distrusted the influence of Paly,
who represented more democratic traditions, arrested him and reported
to Peter what was probably the truth: that Paly was in touch with
the Swedes. He replaced him with one of his own relatives, a Colonel
Omelchenko, and finally this man was accepted by the Kozaks of the west
and still more warmly by the population of the various towns. However,
in 1707 Peter ordered him to restore Western Ukraine to Polish rule.
This Mazepa was unwilling to do, although instead of open disobedience
to the Tsar’s order, he made all kinds of excuses and promises, and
evaded action.
Mazepa had apparently already made up his mind to strike for the
independence of Ukraine, if Charles showed any sign of success. The war
was dragging on and Charles, true to his character, was dashing hither
and yon through Europe, wasting his troops, winning victory after
victory but not concentrating on any definite policy. The Kozak hetman
therefore opened some sort of negotiations with Stanislas Leszczynski,
and through him he could of course reach Charles. Yet he was so
overcautious that he kept even his closest friends from knowing of his
plans and continued to strengthen his bonds with Peter.
This policy could not fail to overreach itself. On the one hand the
Kozaks knew only of his apparent devotion to the cause of the Tsar
and those officers and men who were most hostile to Peter steadily
lost confidence in him. On the other hand he could not rally any wide
classes to his standards nor could he take the most elementary steps
for moving his own troops into advantageous positions for the coming
struggle. Perhaps he believed that he had only to give the order and
all the Kozaks would spring to arms in his behalf. If so, he was badly
mistaken, for his whole policy had alienated a large part of the Kozak
forces and he could not appeal to them as easily as could the older
hetmans who had tried to keep in close contact with the masses of the
Host.
The sequence of events is still uncertain, but after a year of this
double play, Charles suddenly turned his attention back to Russia and
attacked Peter from Lithuania, not far from the Ukrainian border. His
original plan seems to have been to seize Smolensk and march on Moscow,
while General Loewenhaupt attacked from Livonia. Suddenly, as winter
was coming on, Charles turned south into Ukraine.
Mazepa now could realize the evils of his excessive caution. Peter, at
the first attack, had ordered a large part of the Kozak regiments moved
into Lithuania and had sent a Russian army into Ukraine to protect
Mazepa and his officers from the hatred of the Ukrainians, something
for which Mazepa had previously begged. This left him in an impossible
position and did not strengthen Charles, for the very troops that might
have swelled the size of the Swedish army were where they could not
be easily reached and the Russians were in the very heart of Mazepa’s
territory.
Still it was now or never. There was the one chance that Charles
might defeat the Russian army in the first encounter. If he did,
Mazepa would have won his game of freeing Ukraine from both Russia and
Poland, for Sweden was willing to promise them complete independence
and Leszczynski and the Polish magnates were not in a position to
oppose this. If Charles failed for lack of Ukrainian help, the fate of
Ukraine was sealed. Mazepa could remain loyal to Peter but he would
have to resign all thought of liberating his country and becoming an
independent ruler.
It hardly seems possible that Mazepa invited Charles to spend the
winter in Ukraine, before he threw off the mask of allegiance to Peter.
If he did, it certainly reflects upon his understanding of the military
situation and it was a poor move on the part of Charles, although he
might hope that he could receive more supplies and have better winter
quarters in Ukraine than further to the north.
Mazepa took the chance. He secretly set what troops he had in motion
and led them to the camp of Charles before any of them were aware that
a revolt was going on. Peter took immediate action and sent a Russian
force to burn Baturyn, the capital of Mazepa, massacred the garrison
and destroyed a large part of his supplies. This made it very difficult
for the hetman to rally to his standards large numbers of the Kozaks
and to spread the revolt far and wide through the Ukrainian lands.
During the winter both Peter and Mazepa engaged in large scale
propaganda. The former denounced Mazepa as a Pole and a Catholic and
ordered the Kozak officers to meet at Hlukhiv and elect another hetman.
This time he designated Ivan Skoropadsky. He also won back several of
the officers who had gone with Mazepa to the Swedish camp. For his
part, Mazepa sent word through the whole of Ukraine that he was now
determined to free Ukraine once and for all from Muscovite domination
and he urged all Ukrainian patriots to rally to his cause.
The Tsar further ordered the authorities of the Orthodox Church to
utter anathemas against Mazepa and the Church willingly complied,
although Mazepa had been their most munificent donor during his entire
period as hetman. Mazepa’s estates were confiscated and distributed
to the officers who had remained loyal and the townspeople humbly
assured Peter of their fidelity. In a word it was very difficult to
stir up effective revolt, so carefully had Mazepa covered his steps and
negotiations in advance of his declaration of rebellion.
His main success lay in winning over the Kozaks of the Zaporozhian
Sich. These doughty fighters for the old rights of the Host had long
been opposed to Mazepa and to his policy of favoring the Tsar. They had
been opposed also to the introduction of serfdom or practical serfdom
in the country. Nevertheless, when they saw that the hetman had taken
the final step, the Sich began to swing toward the side of Mazepa and
Charles, and soldiers soon began to arrive in the Swedish camp. Yet
their aid was not as important as it would have been a century earlier,
for the Sich too had lost much of its original glory and prowess. There
were no longer the abundant supplies of arms and artillery that had
been there in the days when the Kozaks gathered and prepared their
expedition against whoever seemed the most profitable foe.
Charles moved southward toward the Sich but he was held up at Poltava,
which refused to surrender to him. In the meanwhile the Russian armies
in Ukraine had attacked and captured the Sich by treachery and then,
in defiance of the terms of surrender, massacred and tortured a large
part of the garrison. The rest escaped into Tatar territory and set up
a Sich near the mouth of the Dnyeper.
The final battle took place at Poltava on July 8, 1709. It was a
crushing defeat for Charles, whose troops had been worn down by
years of fighting and by lack of proper winter quarters. The Swedish
and Kozak forces were cut to pieces and only a handful, including
Charles and Mazepa, succeeded in escaping into Turkey. Here they were
practically imprisoned by the Turks, while the Sultan deliberated
whether or not to accept Russian offers of a handsome ransom to have
the fugitives turned over to them. Charles was finally released and
obliged to quit Turkey. Mazepa lived only a few months and then died.
The officers with him still did not lose hope. They elected Philip
Orlyk to be the new hetman and made plans to draw up a formal
constitution for the Host. This was far more in accordance with Western
standards than had been the old informal system of administration,
for it provided for a regular governmental body to be composed of the
officers, delegates elected by the ordinary Kozaks and still others
selected by the Sich. The measure also provided those limitations on
the power of the hetman that experience in the Western countries had
found useful. Thus the hetman was no longer to control all the finances
of the Host but would have his own source of income, and the treasurer
would handle the general funds, subject only to the general assembly or
staff. Of course this remained only a paper constitution, for Orlyk and
his friends were never allowed to return home.