Khmelnytsky was a petty nobleman and Cossack officer who, unable to obtain justice for wrongs suffered at Polish hands, fled to the Sich in late 1647 and was soon elected hetman. In early 1648 he began preparations for an insurrection, securing for this purpose Tatar military support. A Polish army sent into Ukraine to forestall the rebellion was shattered in two battles in May. This victory gave signal to a massive popular uprising. Violence spread throughout Ukraine as Cossacks and peasants vented their fury on those they associated with Polish tyranny and social oppression—landlords, officials, Latin and Uniate clergy, and Jews. The Poles in turn took bloody reprisals against the rebellious population. In September Khmelnytsky inflicted another crushing defeat on a newly raised Polish army, marched westward through Galicia, and finally besieged Zamość in Poland proper. He did not press his advantage, however, and, with the election of a new Polish king in November, he returned to central Ukraine. In January 1649 Khmelnytsky entered Kiev to triumphal acclaim as liberator.
Although initially seeking only a redress of grievances from the Polish crown, Khmelnytsky, following his arrival in Kiev, began to conceive of Ukraine as an independent Cossack state. He set about establishing a system of government and state finances, created a local administration under a new governing elite drawn from the Cossack officers, and initiated relations with foreign states. Still prepared to recognize royal sovereignty, however, he entered into negotiations with the Poles. But neither the Treaty of Zboriv (August 1649) nor a less favourable agreement two years later proved acceptable—either to the Polish nobility or to the Cossack rank and file and the radicalized masses on the Ukrainian side.
While military operations continued inconclusively, and because Tatar support proved undependable at crucial moments, Khmelnytsky began to search for other allies. In 1654 at Pereyaslav he concluded with Moscow an agreement whose precise nature has generated enormous controversy: Russian historians have emphasized Ukraine’s acceptance of the tsar’s suzerainty, which subsequently legitimized Russian rule, but Ukrainian historiography has stressed Moscow’s recognition of Ukraine’s autonomy (including an elective hetmancy, self-government, and the right to conduct foreign relations) that was virtually tantamount to independence (see Pereyaslav Agreement). Moscow now entered the war against Poland. No decisive breakthrough occurred, however, despite occasional joint victories, and Khmelnytsky became increasingly disillusioned with the Muscovite alliance. There were disputes over control of conquered territory in Belarus and conflicts over Russian interference in internal Ukrainian affairs. Especially galling to the hetman was the Russo-Polish rapprochement that followed the invasion in 1655 of Poland by Sweden, Moscow’s adversary but Ukraine’s potential ally (see First Northern War). Khmelnytsky again cast about for new alliances and coalitions involving Sweden, Transylvania, Brandenburg, Moldavia, and Walachia, and there were indications that the hetman planned to sever the Muscovite connection but died before he could do so.
The Ruin
Khmelnytsky’s successor, Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, broke with Moscow and in 1658 concluded the new Treaty of Hadyach with Poland. By its terms, central Ukraine (attempts to include Volhynia and Galicia were unsuccessful) was to constitute—under the hetman and a ruling elite of nobles and officers—the self-governing grand duchy of Rus, joined with Poland and Lithuania as an equal member of a tripartite commonwealth. Distasteful to the Polish magnates for its concessions to the hated Cossacks, repugnant to the Cossacks and the peasant masses for its conservative social cast and Polish connection, and a provocation to Moscow, the Treaty of Hadyach was never implemented. Faced with mounting opposition, Vyhovsky resigned the hetmancy and fled to Poland.
After Vyhovsky, Ukraine began a rapid descent into a prolonged state of chaos that contemporaries called “the Ruin.” Tensions increased between the Cossack officers, who were undergoing a transformation into a hereditary landowning class, and rank-and-file Cossacks and the peasantry, who were the expected supply of labour. From 1663, rival hetmans rose and fell in the competing Polish and Russian spheres of influence. In 1667, by the Truce of Andrusovo, Ukraine was partitioned along the Dnieper River: the west, known as the Right Bank, reverted to Poland, while Russia was confirmed in its possession of the east, known as the Left Bank, together with Kiev (which actually was located west of the river); the arrangement was confirmed in 1686 by the Treaty of Eternal Peace between Poland and Russia.
The partition of Ukraine caused a patriotic reaction. The hetman of the Right Bank, Petro Doroshenko, briefly occupied the Left Bank and sought to re-create a unified Ukrainian state under the vassalage of the Ottoman Empire. A massive Ottoman military intervention in 1672 had as its primary effect the outright annexation of Podolia as an Ottoman province for a quarter century. Doroshenko’s hopes—and popularity—evaporated as further Ottoman operations failed to establish his rule and led to devastation, especially after Russia was drawn into the war. Mass flight of the populace to the Left Bank, and even beyond, depopulated large tracts of Right Bank Ukraine. Two large-scale Ottoman campaigns followed Doroshenko’s abdication, but a truce in 1681 put an end to further direct Turkish military involvement. Ottoman power was soon on the wane in Europe, and in 1699 the province of Podolia reverted to Polish rule.
The autonomous hetman state and Sloboda Ukraine
After the partition of 1667, the autonomous hetman state, or Hetmanate, was limited territorially to the east, in Left Bank Ukraine. (The hetman state in Right Bank Ukraine, under at least nominal Polish control, was abolished by the Poles at the turn of the 18th century.) At the head of the state stood the hetman, elected theoretically by a general Cossack assembly but in effect by senior officers, who in turn were largely swayed by the tsar’s preference. The terms of autonomy were renegotiated at each election of a new hetman, and this led over time to a steady erosion of his prerogatives. Nevertheless, for a century the Hetmanate enjoyed a large measure of self-government, as well as considerable economic and cultural development.
The ruling elite in the Hetmanate was composed of the senior Cossack officers, starshyna, who had evolved into a hereditary class approximating the Polish nobility in its privileges. The common Cossacks too were undergoing stratification, the more impoverished hardly distinguished, except in legal status, from the peasantry. The conditions of the free peasantry worsened over time, their growing obligations tending increasingly toward serfdom. Urban life flourished, however, and the larger cities and some towns continued to enjoy municipal self-government; the burghers largely maintained the rights of their social estate.
In the ecclesiastical realm, the Uniate church disappeared from the Cossack-controlled territory, and the Orthodox Kievan metropolitanate itself was transferred in 1686 from the patriarchal authority of Constantinople to that of Moscow. Although Ukrainian churchmen eventually gained enormous influence in Russia, within the Hetmanate itself in the course of the 18th century the church progressively lost its traditional autonomy and distinctive Ukrainian character.
The hetman state reached its zenith in the hetmancy of Ivan Mazepa. Relying at first on the support of Tsar Peter I (the Great), Mazepa exercised near monarchical powers in the Hetmanate. Literature, art, and architecture in the distinctive Cossack Baroque style flourished under his patronage, and the Kievan Mohyla Academy experienced its golden age. Mazepa aspired to annex the Right Bank and re-create a united Ukrainian state, initially still under the tsar’s sovereignty. But Peter’s centralizing reforms and the exactions imposed on the Hetmanate in connection with the Second Northern War appeared to threaten Ukrainian autonomy. In 1708, in furtherance of his plans for independence, Mazepa made a secret alliance with Charles XII of Sweden, but in the decisive Battle of Poltava (1709) their allied forces were defeated. Mazepa fled to Moldavia, where he died shortly thereafter.