CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTORY NOTES

In 1648 Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky gained a victory over the armed forces of Poland. As a result Ukraine was liberated from Polish rule, except for the western provinces.

The new state, since it was born of the victory of the Cossack Army over Poland, acquired the name of this army: ’’The Zaporo- zhian Army.” We should understand that from 1648 this term had two different meanings — (a) the Cossack Host (Army), and (b) the new state established by the Cossacks. But after the 1730’s this name was gradually replaced by the term Malaia Rossiia or Malorossiia (Little Russia).

The Ukrainian people usually called their state Hefmanshchyna (the state of hetmans), i. e. by the title of their rulers. In this work following the example of other historians, and the students of the history of Ukrainian law, we shall call it the ’’Hetman Ukraine." The name — the "Zaporozhian Army” is rather ambiguous and mis­leading, and the term Malorossiia which originated in Russia, is rather abstract and artificial.

We have to answer the question: what phase in the historical development of the Ukrainian people was this period? Did Ukraine (or, at least, the part of it which belonged to the Hefmanshchyna) change the path of its general social development? If before 1648 this country was in the postfeudal period of hereditary social classes — the social structure of most European countries of that time — is it possible to say that Cossack Ukraine remained in this phase of its development after it became the Cossack state?

Most of the early modem historians of Ukraine talk about the ’’Revolution of 1648,” or the ’’social revolution in Ukraine,” or about the ’’destruction by the Cossacks of the whole social structure of the previous period.” Very often they have transferred into that period the problems and aspirations of their own time. The populist and socialist intelligentsia of the second half of the nineteenth cen­tury and the first decades of the twentieth century believed in social revolution.

These views were not correct. If we accept them, we have to regard the state of Ukrainian hetmans in the seventeenth century as a unique example in the history of European nations. In fact the historical development of the Ukrainian people and of Hetman Ukraine, even if they had very peculiar and specific forms, were not an exception from the general historical development of European peoples.

The victory of 1648 indeed brought changes into the social structure and social relations in central and eastern Ukraine. But, while acknowledging these changes, we nevertheless should not say that they ended the previous period and brought a new and different stage of social development. After 1648 Hetman Ukraine continued to be a country with a relatively stable web of hereditary classes; relations among these classes were the most important and decisive feature of its social organization. But these relations acquired somewhat different forms from the previous period. While the social structure of Hetman Ukraine was not completely different from the socio-political structure of other European countries, and her histo­rical development, in general, went in a similar direction, the actual forms of Ukrainian social divisions and class relations were in many aspects quite distinctive.

We also have to stress the importance of the establishment of a fUllfledged Ukrainian state. Without it the Revolution of 1648 would have been just a rebellion, a Jacquerie, and could not have established a new form of class-divided society.