After the chaos of the period of Ruin subsided, the Hetmanate on the left bank of the Dnieper emerged as the center of Ukrainian political, cultural, and economic life.
The focus of historically significant development in Ukraine now shifted completely from the westernmost lands to the easternmost. The Hetmanate was an autonomous political entity, not an independent one.
Nonetheless, it provided Ukrainians with a greater measure of self-government than they had enjoyed since the days of the Galician-Volhynian principalities. As part of the Russian Empire, it existed in what was for many Ukrainians still a relatively new political environment. It was no longer the fractious and failing Commonwealth of the Polish nobles that Ukrainians had to deal with; rather, since the collapse of the Polish and Ottoman options during the Ruin, they now had to contend with the exacting rulers of expanding Russia.Intent on monopolizing power, the tsars were inherently opposed to the idea of Ukrainian, or any other, self-rule. This attitude was reinforced by the spread of absolutist principles and practices throughout Europe in the 18th century. Such committed proponents of absolutism as Peter I and Catherine II, two of Russia’s foremost rulers, believed that centralized government was the most efficient and enlightened. This view, however, ran counter to the form of self-government – based on uniquely Ukrainian institutions and traditions – that existed in the Hetmanate. Thus, the central political issue of Ukrainian life in the 18th century became the struggle, long and drawn out, between imperial Russian centralism and the Ukrainian desire for autonomy.