CHAPTER 4 RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UKRAINIAN STATE AND THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The foreign relations of the seventeenth century Russian state were conducted by one of its organs of central government — the PosoVskii Prikaz (agency of legations or foreign affairs).
The European states of the seventeenth century had just begun to assign their permanent representatives to the courts and governments of foreign countries, but, the Russian state of the seventeenth century did not have such permanent representatives, and sent its legations and envoys to foreign countries only from time to time. Such legations and envoys were quite often sent to Hetman Ukraine. These envoys received detailed written nakazy (instructions) with the prepared texts of their speeches and addresses to the rulers of foreign states as well as detailed directions for their actions and behaviour. The envoys sent their written otpiski (reports) to the Agency of Legations and after their return to Moscow had to submit a Stateinyi spisok (detailed account) on the carrying out of the mission. These materials are a very valuable source of history; they have been preserved in the Moscow Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.At first relations with the Ukrainian Government were also managed by the Agency of Legations. But the missions and envoys were sent there so often and the nature of mutual contacts was so special that the Russian Government decided to separate them from the Agency of Legations and carry them out by a special new organ. In 1663 a new body was established — the Prikaz Malye Rosii or Malorossiskii Prikaz (Agency of Little Russia). In Moscow the name of Ukraine became officially — Malaia Rossiia (the Ukrainians usually were called there the Cherkassy). The new agency was different from other Muscovite organs which governed some territories that had recently been incorporated into the Russian state such as the Smo- Ienskii Prikaz (for Smolens Land), Sibirskii Prikaz (for Siberia), Prikaz Kazanskogo Dvortsa (for former Khanate of Kazan).
It was not possible to directly govern Ukraine from Moscow as long as it had its own governmental organization. Consequently the Agency of Little Russia was a second office for international contacts, alongside the Agency of Legations. Moreover the former was not in a subordinate position to the latter. A long time after its establishment theAgency of Little Russia was headed by boiarin P. Saltykov whose social standing was higher than that of the heads of the Agency of Legations. The subordinate position of his office in relation to an organ administered by persons of lower social status would have been, under the conditions of the Moscow mestnichestvo (order of precedence), an unwarrantable debasement.
The Agency of Little Russia had the following functions. The envoys of Hetman Ukraine (the "Zaporozhian Army”) were received here, and carried out negotiations with the personnel of the Agency of Little Russia as the representatives of the Russian Government. As long as there were Russian garrisons in several Ukrainian cities their commanders (υoeυody) sent to the Agency of Little Russia their letters, reports and requests. In some cases this agency also received requests directly from the citizens of Ukraine. Often they were in the form of petitions for the issue of the Tsar’s letters patent confirming the grants of landed estates bestowed by the Ukrainian Hetmans. The Agency of Little Russia supplied with provisions the Ukrainians imprisoned in or exiled to Moscow. It also acted as a court which examined the offenses of the Ukrainians who violated the Russian laws. Most often these offences were related to the smoking or selling of tobacco. The smoking of tobacco was strictly forbidden in seventeenth-century Russia and the Russian violators were severely punished. The Ukrainian smugglers usually were only exiled from Russia and the smuggled tobacco was confiscated. The Agency of Little Russia invited to Russia and brought from Ukraine master artisans and skilled workers.
It also imported Ukrainian editions of religious books and sold them to the Russian people.Special quarters were established for the Ukrainian envoys in Moscow. They were called the Malorossiiskii Dvor (Little-Russian Yard). During the rule of Peter I, the central political institutions of Russia were transferred to the new capital of St. Petersburg, including the Agency of Little Russia. In the 1720’s its documentary sources were incorporated into the Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs where they have been preserved.
We know far less how the organs of Ukrainian Government dealt with the Ukrainian-Russian relations. Unquestionably there was no special Ukrainian organ for these contacts. The Ukrainian national archives of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Baturyn and later in Hlukhiv (Glukhov) were burned and as a result we have but a few reports of Ukrainian envoys from the capitals of foreign countries — Moscow, Warsaw, Istanbul, Bakhchisarai, and others. But some of these reports — which for certain reasons were interesting for foreign governments — were preserved in their archives; some others reached the archives of Ukrainian local administrative organs. While trying to find some materials related to Ivan Bykhovets, at first an employee of the Ukrainian General Chancellery and later a noble army fellow (he was the probable author of the famous Ukrainian ’’Annals of an Eye-witness”) we found and published in the 1920’s some reports on his missions to foreign countries. Ivan Bykhovets' accounts of his mission to the taishi (rulers) of Kalmykia in 1665 as well as of his negotiations with the Khan of Crimea in 1704 prove the existence of such written accounts and reports compiled mostly in the form of diariushi (diaries).