From the 1580s or so, Poland's Catholic king, Sigismund I of the Swedish Vasa dynasty fought back, welcoming hundreds of Jesuit and other missionaries who founded schools and colleges with a modern curriculum combining Catholic Counter-Reformation doctrine with science and modern languages. Their allure, plus the king's refusal to appoint non-Catholics to lucrative high office, prompted a wave of conversion back to Catholicism. By the turn into the seventeenth century, the ratio of Catholic to Calvinist noblemen in the Parliament had reverted to 6 to 1, and Protestantism survived primarily among lower classes—Lutherans in the north, Anti-Trinitarians in modern day Belarus', and Ukraine. Jesuits and other proselytizing Catholic orders turned their attention towards the Orthodox as well. A majority of the highest Ruthenian elite—the princely families—did indeed convert, as did many but not a majority of Ukrainian noble gentry, drawn by the political utility and cultural superiority of Catholicism.
In the Ruthenian lands, the great loser was the Orthodox Church, whose social leadership was decimated as Orthodox nobles converted first to Calvinism, then Catholicism. In an effort to reinvigorate the Orthodox Church, a group of bishops negotiated a Union with Roman Catholicism at Brest in 1596, according to which Orthodoxy accepted subordination to the Pope in return for preserving differences such as married clergy and liturgy in Old Church Slavonic. The Polish king then abolished the Orthodox Church in his realm, declaring its parishes property ofthe new Church, which came to be called Uniate or Greek Catholic (see Chapter 20). Its priests were forced to accept the union or be dismissed. In response, opposition Orthodox bishops and laymen, particularly lay fraternities ofOrthodox burghers in Lviv and Kyiv (as Iaroslav Isaievych deftly chronicled), mounted campaigns to save Orthodoxy. They founded "Greek-Slavonic-Latin" schools modeled on the Jesuit curriculum to produce effective spokesmen for the faith; the most famous was the one in Kyiv that was promoted to "academy" level and named after Metropolitan Peter Mohyla (1596-1646). Emulating Counter-Reformation Catholicism, fraternities and Orthodox monasteries founded printing presses and published vernacular religious works, including a catechism written by Mohyla, homilies and collections of hagiographies, and other pietistic texts. Learned Orthodox intellectuals engaged in theological polemics with their Catholic opponents. In 1632 the Polish king relented and legalized Orthodoxy again, but the problem of seized property and persecution of Orthodox persisted.
In this tense atmosphere, Cossacks came to play a pivotal role, rising beyond their warrior band ethos to lead a widespread social and economic revolt. Cossacks had begun to gather on the Dnieper already in the late fifteenth century; already in 1492 groups are mentioned as mercenaries for the Polish kingdom and Grand Duchy on steppe-forest border, protecting against Crimean raids. By the end of the sixteenth century thousands of Cossacks lived on the Dnieper, many at the cataracts or Zaporozhian Sich. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth struggled to control this unruly population, creating "registers" of Cossacks who enjoyed certain privileges in return for service. They were paid by the state and served as separate regiments, commanded by their elected hetman; on the model of the Polish nobility, they were exempt from taxation and unjust arrest and enjoyed landholding rights. As much as these claims resembled the legal rights ofthe Polish nobility, the state never recognized Cossacks' demands for that status and it kept most Cossacks outside of the registers. In 1568 there were only 1,300 registered Cossacks, 6,000 in 1625, 8,000 in 1630, while for the campaign against the Ottomans at Khotyn in 1621, Poland recruited more than 40,000 Cossacks. Despite Polish efforts to turn "unregistered" Cossacks into taxed peasants, they continued their military lifestyle, banditry, and raiding as far south as the Crimea and Ottoman ports, endangering the Commonwealth's efforts to keep diplomatic peace with its Tatar and Ottoman neighbors. Attempts to enserf and tax unregistered Cossacks and grievances about Polish oppression caused frequent Cossack rebellions (1596, 1625, 1630, 1637) that were harshly put down and were followed by even harsher strictures on unregistered Cossacks.
Heartbed of the Cossack community, the Zaporozhian Sich became a center of Cossack political consciousness. Led by Hetman Petro Sahaidachny (ruled 1614-22), Zaporozhian Cossacks stepped into the role of defending regional Ruthenian interests against the Commonwealth. In 1620 Cossacks provided the military protection to restore the Orthodox hierarchy and the entire Zaporozhian Host joined the Kyiv Orthodox Fraternity, taking a more public political stance. In 1648 a rebellion erupted, sparked by the grievances of Zaporozhian Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657; see Figure 3.1) against an abusive Polish official. The rebellion quickly expanded to encompass the discontent of broader Ukrainian groups on religious, political, and social grounds. Cossacks brought grievances over access to landholding and Cossack rights; the Orthodox Church mobilized to defend itself against the Union; Ruthenian petty noblemen and burghers complained of Polish social and economic oppression; Ukrainian- speaking peasants protested encroaching serfdom. Coached by learned Orthodox clergy and Ruthenian noblemen adept in the Polish political system, Hetman Khmelnytsky and his Cossack leadership transformed their rhetoric from narrow Cossack grievances to a broad call for restoration of Orthodox faith, Ruthenian regional autonomies, and resistance to Polish control.
At the height of their power (1648-57) Cossacks led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky ruled a vast territory on both sides of the Dnieper. Their rebellion sparked a
Figure 3.1 This 1888 statue of Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelytsky in Kyiv stands before the majestic early eighteenth-century bell tower at the entrance to the grounds of the eleventh-century Sofiia Cathedral. In the 1740s the bell tower was restored by St. Petersburg architect Johann Gottfried Schadel and decorated by Ukrainian artisans with an ornate baroque facade. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
half-century of warfare known in Ukrainian history as the "Ruin," in Polish history as the "Deluge" and in Jewish history as the "Abyss of Despair." Although often billed as a fight for national independence, such consciousness was probably limited to the educated ideologues of Church and some nobility. As Iakovenko has suggested, the actual conflicts were diverse and dynamic. Cossack armies attacked at will oblivious to the ideological claims of the Kyiv leadership, looting Orthodox monasteries and Ukrainian and Jewish villages indiscriminately. Thousands were killed on all sides. Ukrainian princely nobles identified more with the warrior ethos of nobility than with ethnic or religious compatriots. Cossack government dispossessed thousands of Polish noblemen and Jews, awarding their property to Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants. The experience fatally weakened the Commonwealth and transformed the Ukrainian lands. When the dust settled at the Treaty of Andrusovo (1667) and its affirmation in 1686, lands along the Dnieper were divided between Right Bank (remaining in the Commonwealth) and Left Bank (ruled by Khmelnytsky and his successors). In 1654 Khmelnytsky negotiated an alliance with Russia at Pereiaslav, making the Left Bank Hetmanate a protectorate of Russia. To the east the Hetmanate was edged by Sloboda Ukraine in the Russian orbit and to the south by Cossacks in the still independent Zaporozhian Sich; thousands of Ruthenian peasants and Cossacks fled to both during decades of chaos.