out very strongly against a further process of Latinization. For
example, Bishop Shumlyansky who had played such a large part in winning
over by guile or persuasion the population of Lviv and the Brotherhood
of that city, was equally emphatic in his recommendations to his
clergy to try to start parish schools and to build up the Ukrainian
Uniat educational system. His work was watched and followed by many of
the other bishops. The successes achieved were far scantier than had
been those won by the Orthodox cultural movement of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; but the seed was sown, although it was not to
take effective root until after the division of Poland. A keen observer
could have predicted by the middle of the eighteenth century that the
Union was not only a means of disrupting the Orthodox but that it
would in time take its place as a definite Ukrainian Church. The idea
seemed preposterous at first sight, but with each new effort that was
put forth the tendencies in this direction became more clear and the
actions of the Austrian rulers after the division of the country worked
strongly in this direction.
It thus happened that the very period that saw the ending in Poland
of the old form of the Ukrainian problem witnessed another aspect of
it that was to dominate the province of Galicia during the nineteenth
century. The dream of using the Union to Polonize the country failed
exactly as had the more direct methods that were employed before the
Union, for the Union was in itself enrolled in the service of the
Ukrainian cause, and it had its chance to be effective when Russian
pressure was directed toward the suppression of that Ukrainian
Orthodoxy that had been the first inspirer of the recovery of the
national consciousness.
CHAPTER TEN
_THE END OF KOZAK LIBERTIES_
The disastrous outcome of the revolt of Mazepa gave to Peter the Great
his opportunity. The battle of Poltava had definitely strengthened his
position and that of Russia in Europe. It carried with it the definite
weakening of Poland and made it clear that henceforth the Polish state
would not be able even to cherish hopes of resisting the demands of the
Russian Tsar. Thereby it freed him from any necessity of consulting
the wishes of the Kozaks, who might in other cases have been tempted
to resume their loyalty to the King. Besides that, the disloyalty of
Mazepa had been so evident that Peter could have an open excuse for
acting.
As soon as the old Hetman’s treason had been made clear, Peter ordered
the Kozak officers to elect Ivan Skoropadsky in his place; but he
already took care that the new hetman should not have the power of
the old. Within two months, as soon as Charles had been defeated
and it was possible for Peter to make far-reaching plans, he sent a
Russian official, Izmaylov, to remain with the hetman “to be resident
minister at the hetman’s court with the function of assisting him
with ‘forceful’ advice in settling all issues, because of the recent
rebellion in Little Russia and the Zaporozhian uprising.” Skoropadsky
and all the Kozaks well knew what this meant, especially when the Tsar
refused to allow a formal confirmation of the conditions of the Treaty
of Pereyaslav. To make the significance still plainer, the Tsar moved
the hetman’s capital to Hlukhiv near the Russian border and assigned
two regiments of Russian troops to watch over the safety of the hetman
and arrest him at the slightest suspicious sign.
This was a good beginning, for every one knew and realized that from
that time on Skoropadsky would be hetman only in name. He and the Kozak
officers would have to bear the brunt of any unpopular actions. The
Kozaks would merely murmur at their own officers and the Russians could
then step in to act as the champions of the masses and try to win them
away from their allegiance to the Host. At the same time Peter very
ostentatiously treated Skoropadsky with respect on the occasions of his
state visits to the capital, and waited.
The building of the city of St. Petersburg and the various other works
in the north, like the construction of the Ladoga Canal, demanded
an abundance of labor. The Kozaks were in a way bound to government
service and Peter summoned large numbers of them to the north, where
they were compelled to labor under the most unhealthy conditions. They
died by the thousands, and the Host the next year or on the return of
the survivors was compelled to furnish other large contingents. Orlyk,
who kept in touch with the situation from abroad, openly said that it
was the object of Peter to exterminate the whole Host by these methods.
He may have exaggerated Peter’s purpose but facts certainly seemed to
support him.
At the same time Skoropadsky was not strong enough to maintain order
at home. He was much under the influence of his wife and his friends.
His son-in-law, whom he made army judge, indulged so extensively in
bribery that Peter again felt himself called upon to intervene and in
1722, he appointed a Little Russian Board under Brigadier Velyaminov
to supervise the administration of justice under the hetman. This act
definitely transferred the most important functions of the Host in
times of peace to the Russian commanders of the garrison in Ukraine.
Even Skoropadsky protested against this last act, and the refusal of
his petition so hurt the old man that he died a few months later.
In the meanwhile all the old vices that had existed in the Hetman
state, of striving for the control of estates and land on the part of
the officers, continued with increased energy. Peter saw to it that
his favorites, like Menshikov, received large estates in Ukraine. He
appointed Russian officers in the Kozak regiments and saw to it that
they were richly rewarded, so that even the officers of the Hetman’s
Council consisted largely of Russians and not of Ukrainians.
On hearing of the death of Skoropadsky, Peter followed the same tactics
that he had used in disposing of the Patriarchate. He appointed Colonel
Polubotok Acting Hetman with instructions to listen to Velyaminov,
exactly as he had used Stephen Yavorsky to carry on the Patriarchate
until the Holy Synod was ready to function. Then he transferred the
responsibility for the Little Russian Board to the Senate from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs where it had previously rested. It was
another symbolic act in the elimination of all privileges on the part
of the Kozak Host and the Ukrainian population, and was intended to
show that the Ukrainians were only Little Russians and part of the
Russian state. When the officers petitioned for the election of a new
hetman, Peter postponed decision on the ground that all the hetmans had
been traitors, except Khmelnitsky and Skoropadsky and he sent another
agent to Ukraine to aid Velyaminov in securing evidence of Kozak
dissatisfaction with their officers and in investigating the misdeeds
of the latter.
He also summoned Polubotok to St. Petersburg so that the Acting Hetman
could be near the Tsar. This made it more difficult for Polubotok,
who was sincerely endeavoring to restore justice and discipline in
the Host, to undertake any positive action. His efforts to do this
merely made his position worse and when it was discovered that he
was sending letters to Ukraine to tell the people how to act under
the new investigations, Peter solved all problems by arresting
and incarcerating him in the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul in
Petersburg together with Colonels Apostol and Miloradovich, who had
been summoned also to the capital. Thus the governing body of the
Kozaks and their most influential leaders were in prison, while Peter
was planning his next step. Polubotok could not stand the new insults
and he died in prison in the fall of 1724, just a few months before
Peter himself passed away.
It is fair to presume that had Peter lived, he would ultimately have
wiped out the Host. As Tsar he had no use for any factor in Russian
life which reminded him too strongly of the past and which could find
no parallel in Europe. The Kozak Host as the government of Russian
Ukraine seemed to him superbly out of date. Its leaders still claimed
to be entitled to the rights and liberties which they had enjoyed when
they joined Moscow. They continued a military organization of the past
and as Peter had abolished the old streltsy, the old Muscovite army, so
he would the Kozaks.
The ambitious monarch had already realized one thing which perhaps had
not impressed itself so deeply upon the Kozak officers. They were to
a certain degree outmoded as a military force. His long struggle with
Charles XII had shown him that the irregular cavalry of the past, the
Kozak strength, was not so fitted to cope with the trained armies of
Western Europe as they had been with the mobile cavalry of the Turks
and Tatars. With Russia interfering more and more in European quarrels,
Peter needed the manpower of Ukraine. He did not need the Kozaks and
his practical mind was only too ready to believe that the Host was
no longer of service. It could, however, be employed to advantage in
the far southeast, and so thousands of Kozaks were sent there on
practically constant military service, where again their losses were
tremendous.
With the death of Peter, the era of rapid westernization spent its
force. The Tsar’s successor and widow, Catherine I, with her favorite,
Menshikov, did not have the energy of her late husband. She was not
so permeated with the spirit of ruthless change and not so sure of
her position that she could alienate large classes of the population.
Difficulties were again appearing along the Turkish border and it
seemed to the governing powers that the aid of the Kozaks might be
useful, if hostilities broke out. Besides, the country was becoming
dangerously underpopulated as a result of Peter’s inhuman methods, his
excessive taxation, his deportations and his drawing off of thousands
of Kozaks to practically certain death in the swamps of the north.
Catherine, too, soon died but Peter’s grandson, Peter II, who came to
the throne in 1727, carried out the policy at the advice of Menshikov
and later of Prince Dolgoruky. Once more the Kozak officers were
allowed to elect a hetman, the aged Daniel Apostol, who had been
released from the prison where Polubotok died. The Kozaks were given
back some of their privileges but not all, for they were now to be
allowed to elect a hetman only when the Tsar gave permission. Besides
that, the general army court was to be composed of three Russians and
three Ukrainians, and the treasury of the Host was to be administered
by two treasurers, one a Russian and the other a Ukrainian. In time of
war the Host was to be under the field marshal of the Russian army. The
lower officers were to be nominated by the companies and appointed by
the hetman, the regimental officers were to be appointed by the hetman,
but the colonels and the officer’s council had to have the approval of
the Tsar.
Apostol, who was over seventy years of age when he was elected to the
post, did his best to revive the dignity of his position. He tried
to arrange for the codifying of the Ukrainian laws and to prevent the
Kozak officers from getting control of the lands still in the hands of
the Kozaks. It was a difficult task because the constant assimilation
of the position of the officers, first to the Polish nobles and then to
the Russian, had started and continuously strengthened the demand that
the officers act entirely like those of equal rank around them and this
involved the lowering of the lesser Kozaks into serfdom.
It was during the hetmanate of Apostol that the Zaporozhian Kozaks who
had fled into Turkey after the fall of Mazepa finally returned to the
country and in 1734, they were allowed to resettle on the site of the
Sich. They were now only 7000 in number, but they were to be used under
their own officers in the guard of the border.
Meanwhile, in 1730, Anne had ascended the Russian throne as Empress.
Anne left the control of the high positions in Petersburg almost
entirely to German favorites but in general she approved the
policies of Peter the Great, and the death of Apostol gave her the
opportunity to renew the Little Russian Board, which was to consist
of three Russians and three Ukrainians. The board was to be under
the chairmanship of the Russian imperial resident, at first Prince
Shakhovskoy. Shakhovskoy typified the harsher type of Russian
administrator and constantly sought to be placed in complete control of
Ukraine without any consideration of the rights of the Kozak officers.
Although he did not succeed in this, the period became memorable in
Ukrainian history for the harsh conduct of affairs, and the arrests of
even the most important persons. The Metropolitan of Kiev and the city
government of Kiev were all arrested on varying pretexts for desiring
to maintain some part of their traditional rights.
In 1741, following the death of Anne and the removal of the baby
Emperor, Ivan VI, Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, seized
the throne after a palace revolution. It might have been presumed that
she would continue her father’s policy, but she had a personal reason
for changing it.
Elizabeth had been kept in retirement for many years and during this
period she had met and fallen in love with a Ukrainian singer, Alexis
Rozumovsky. The two were morganatically married and while Rozumovsky
played no open role in Ukrainian affairs, he quietly influenced
Elizabeth to look upon Ukraine with more sympathy and favor. She went
with him on a trip through Ukraine in 1744 and at that time came into
contact with the Officers’ Council. They assured her of their loyalty
and petitioned for the election of a new hetman. She asked their
leaders to Petersburg on the occasion of the marriage of her nephew,
Peter of Holstein, to Catherine and then informed them that the new
hetman would be Cyril Rozumovsky, the brother of Alexis, but that he
was still being educated abroad and could not be considered for two
years, when he would return to the country. She kept her word slowly.
In 1747 the Senate was ordered to provide for the election of a new
hetman, and in 1749, after Rozumovsky, who had been showered with
various honors including the Presidency of the Academy of Sciences, had
met the Kozak delegates and had visited Ukraine, the delegates were
informed that an Imperial Minister was travelling to Ukraine to arrange
for the election.
The election took place on February 22, 1750 and of course Rozumovsky
was unanimously elected amid general rejoicing. Elizabeth, following
this, officially invested him with the insignia of office, turned back
the control of Ukrainian affairs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
officially restored the Kozak rights as they had been in 1722 before
Peter commenced his changes almost simultaneously with the death of
Skoropadsky. Rozumovsky was made a Russian Field Marshal.
It might have seemed as if conditions of the past were back. But it was
only an archaeological revival. Cyril Rozumovsky had the nominal and
perhaps the real power of the preceding hetmans but Ukraine had greatly
changed. In the past the hetmans, even if they had been elected under
imperial orders, had been chosen from among the outstanding colonels
of the Host. Rozumovsky was a young man, fond of pleasure, little
skilled in administration and he owed his power entirely to the whim
of Elizabeth, his more or less open sister-in-law. He had no desire to
stay in Hlukhiv but spent most of his time in St. Petersburg where he
frequented the court circles.
He left the administration of the country entirely in the hands of the
Officers’ Council, which did its best to reorganize the administration
after the changes that had been made during the reign of Anne. It was
really a thankless task, for in the last analysis they had the job of
remodeling an administration which had never been quite suited to its
purposes.
The regimental areas still retained the purely military form, but the
practical independence of the colonels separated them to a considerable
degree from the Officers’ Council which handled the general affairs
of the country. There were the same changes in the laws, whereby the
smaller villages were theoretically under the army courts and the
cities possessed their own courts, under the Magdeburg Law and the
Lithuanian Law, both organized before the union of the Host and Russia.
The great difficulty was that during the eighteenth century there had
vanished almost the last remnants of the old Kozak democracy. The
power of Russia rested outside of the tsars and bureaucrats in the
hands of the great landowners, and the Kozak officers loved to think
of themselves as the gentry of Little Russia and acted accordingly.
Yet they were still proud of many of their ancient liberties and the
hetmanate of Cyril Rozumovsky allowed at least the officers to be happy
and contented. As for the peasants they were on the whole no worse off
than they had been for decades, so that this period had really some
justification for seeming the best part of the eighteenth century.
It was however a period of cultural Russification. The abolition of
the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church brought the teaching
of the Academy of Kiev into a purely Russian system. The richer people
preferred to send their children to the newer and more fashionable
schools in St. Petersburg and other Russian centres, and there was
repeated again what had happened in the sixteenth century, when the
older Ukrainian aristocracy became almost completely Polonized and
there were left only the Kozaks and the townsmen to carry the burden
of the cultural revival. Now the higher Kozak officers had become the
aristocratic element and were Russianized superficially at least, and
the towns had lost most of their original importance.
The situation, such as it was, rested too largely upon the close bonds
between Cyril Rozumovsky and Elizabeth. When she died in 1761, her
nephew Peter III ascended the throne, only to be overthrown in a few
months by his wife, Catherine, who then became Empress.
Catherine at once decided to standardize the government of the Empire
and to this end she decided to abolish the local autonomies that had
existed in various border provinces. This meant the actual elimination
of all the Ukrainian rights and privileges and the placing of the
Ukrainians on the same basis as the Great Russians. At the same time
Cyril Rozumovsky, in his role as Colonel of the Izmailovsky Regiment,
had been one of the men to whom she owed her throne at the time of
her coup d’état and she did not wish at once to cast him out of his
position. She therefore waited until she received a report that he was
seeking to have the hetmanate made hereditary in his family.
It is not known definitely whether this proposal was put forward by
some of the Officers’ Council in an endeavor to please him, whether
he had engineered the move, or whether it was inspired by Teplov, who
had accompanied him to Ukraine as his tutor and who was regarded as
the spearhead of Russian influence during his hetmanate. Although the
proposal was not signed by the officers, word of it was reported to
Catherine and along with it were sent reports of the oppression of the
peasants and ordinary Kozaks by their officers.
The Seven Years War, which saw the end of the French possessions in
America and the rise of Prussia, ended in 1763. Then, with peace in
Europe, 1764 proved another turning point in the complicated game
that involved Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. In that year Catherine
succeeded in forcing the election as King of Poland of Stanislas August
Poniatowski, a former lover. His relatives, the Czartoryski Family,
had hoped to put one of their number on the throne, but Catherine by
her energetic use of Russian money and Russian troops definitely had
her way and she could know with satisfaction that Poland would from
that time on cause no trouble. Just as the weakening of Poland had
caused the Tsars to increase their control of Ukraine, so the placing
of a Russian puppet on the Polish throne justified Catherine in going
further in Ukraine.
She accordingly requested the resignation of Rozumovsky. He postponed
doing it as long as was practicable, but was finally compelled to yield
and asked to be relieved of his difficult and dangerous office. This
was accepted on November 10, 1764 and in return she gave him a pension
of 60,000 rubles a year and allowed him to keep the vast estates that
had formerly been connected with the post of hetman. She replaced him
with a new Little Russian Board composed of four Russians and four
Ukrainians, seated in order of seniority to show that there was no
difference between the two peoples, and left the power in the hands of
the governor general, Count Rumyantsev. At the same time she instructed
Rumyantsev to give particular attention to the introduction of serfdom
and to beware of the general dislike of the Kozak officers for Russia.
At almost the same period she remodelled the Land of Free Communes.
This was the area to the east where Kozaks who were dissatisfied
with the Hetman state took refuge, and which had been spontaneously
organized into regiments by the population on the Kozak model. Various
hetmans had tried to secure the annexation of this territory to the
Hetman state, but the Tsars had persistently refused to allow it and
had encouraged the settling of Russians in the same area. Catherine
accordingly turned this into a definite province, abolished the Kozak
regiments, replaced them with hussars and introduced the Russian system
of taxation.
The restored Sich was the next to receive the attention of Catherine’s
centralizing policy. She had early begun to colonize the south of
Russia and she looked with envy at the lands occupied by the Kozaks.
Yet they were still very useful whenever a Turkish war broke out.
They fought with their usual bravery and received many honors for
their courage both on land and sea. They might have expected some real
sign of the gratitude of the Empress, but she was not interested in
maintaining the organization despite its usefulness. It was in the way
of Russian expansion.
Finally in 1775, she issued a conflicting statement that the
Zaporozhians were neglecting the land and also were abandoning their
past mode of life and permitting farmers to settle on their lands to
raise grain. The truth seems to have been that the Kozaks, under their
koshovy Peter Kalnyshevsky, were trying to develop their own land in
their own way and were succeeding too well.
General Tökölyi was accordingly sent secretly with a large force of
Russian troops and artillery to the Sich. When it was in position,
Tökölyi peremptorily announced that the Sich was to be destroyed. The
koshovy and several of the officers, including the chaplain, finally
persuaded the Kozaks to yield without fighting, as many had wished to
do. The fortress was razed on June 5 and the property was entirely
turned over to the government.
Then as a curious aftermath of this, Kalnyshevsky and the other
officers who had led the movement for surrender were all arrested. The
koshovy himself was sent for imprisonment to the Solovyetsky Monastery
in the far north where he lived until 1803 in solitary confinement and
was allowed to leave his cell but three times a year. It was the last
ungrateful act of the Empress.
The rest of the Kozaks who did not enter certain regiments were reduced
to serfdom and the very name of the Zaporozhian Kozaks was ordered
wiped out. Many of the Kozaks, however, succeeded in escaping into
Turkey where the Turks allowed them to live near Ochakiv and about
7,000 soon gathered there. Later they were allowed to settle near the
mouth of the Danube, but they were on the whole dissatisfied with life
in the Ottoman Empire.