Cossack Historiography: A Vision of the Past and the Construction of Identities in the Hetmanate in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

ANDRII BOVGYRIA

Throughout the existence of the Hetmanate, the historical narratives written on its territories did more than just illuminate its past and the prehistory of its emer­gence.

Ethnogenesis: The Khazar Myth

In describing the distant past, local authors tried to follow the beaten path of their predecessors - European, and especially, Polish historians. They searched their works not only for facts that could be used in composing a picture of their own past but also certain formulas, and established forms and myths that were popular in Europe at that time.

What was the derivation of the Khazar myth, and what factors contributed to its appearance? How was it interpreted and adapted in later texts?

It should be noted that the author of this myth was not the first to attempt to “age” the prehistoric origin of his people, thereby giving it greater authority by linking it to an ancient, warlike people. The overwhelming majority of European historical narratives of the medieval and early modern periods begin with similar stories. For example, in the sixteenth century the French developed the theory of Francogallism; its counterpart in the Scandinavian countries was Nordism, while the Dutch espoused Batavism, which traced the origin of the Dutch people to the ancient tribe of the Batavi. A similar tradition was transmitted to the East Slavs through the intellectual mediation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Sarmatian myth.³

The appearance of the Khazars in the ethnogenetic picture created by the Cossack chancelleries of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries be­came a kind of alternative and, at the same time, an imitation of Sarmatism.

The first attempt to identify the Khazars as Cossacks was made as far back as in 1676 by the Chernihiv archimandrite loanykii Galiatovs'kyi in the dedicatory foreword to Hetman Ivan Samoilovych in his Skarbnytsia (Treasury), where he identified the Cossacks with the Khazars - “people of the Rus' nation,” quoting Maciej Stryjkowski.⁶ Thus Galiatovs'kyi can be regarded as the originator of the “Khazar myth,” which acquired more elaborate interpretations in the Ukrainian texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁷

Who was the author of the Khazar myth in its most elaborate version as rep­resented in the Hrabianka Chronicle? Needless to say, the Hadiach colonel Hry- horii Hrabianka, to whom the authorship of this chronicle is attributed, could not have been the creator of this myth by virtue of various reasons.⁸ Nor could the other texts, mentioned in the Hrabianka Chronicle, have been the direct sources of the Khazar myth - the works of Marcin Kromer, Marcin Bielski, Ales­sandro Guagnini, Maciej Stryjkowski, and Hieronim Kochowski. But there is one text that repeats this story from the Hrabianka Chronicle almost verbatim - the menaion of Dymytrii Tuptalo, the metropolitan of Rostov, Chet'i Minei (Monthly Readings), or Zhytiia sviatykh (Lives of the Saints). The lives of Saint Methodius and Saint Constantine contain the story of the brothers' mission to the Khazars, which includes a section titled “O kazarekh” (About the Khazars) in the nature of background information.⁹ A comparison of this text with the corresponding fragment of the Hrabianka Chronicle gives us grounds to conclude that Dmytro Tuptalo's text is the original and the fragment from the Hrabianka Chronicle is its abbreviated version.

We do not know exactly what the section “About the Khazars” is based on. Ob­viously Maciej Stryjkowski's Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia and all of Rus’ was its main source.¹⁰ Dymytrii Tuptalo took as his basis the fragment in this chronicle about the settlement of the East Slavic peoples and extrapolated the story of the Khazars into his text. The chronicle itself makes no reference to the kinship of the Cossacks with the Khazars. Stryjkowski mentions the latter only once as the “Rus' people,” to whom other Rus' paid tribute.¹¹

The Khazar myth was further elaborated in later historical narratives. For ex­ample, Samiilo Velychko, a graduate of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, senior chan- cellerist in the General Military Chancellery, who identified himself as “a true son of Little Russia from the Khazar tribe,” combined both myths - Khazar and Sar­matian - in his work, regarding both the Khazars and Sarmatians as the ancestors of the Cossacks.¹² Velychko utilized the Sarmatian myth as evidence of the com­mon origin of the Poles and the “Cossack-Rus' people/nation”: “The free noble Sarmatian Cossack-Rus' people/nation (volnyi shliachetskii savromatiiskii koza- koruskii narod) and the other Sarmatian people/nation, the Poles... born of and descended from us Sarmatians and Rus' and themselves being our brothers, Sar­matians and Rus', at the beginning.”¹³ This kinship was meant to equalize the two peoples and thereby confirm the illegitimacy of Polish claims to Ukrainian lands.

One form of instrumentalizing the Khazar myth was to use it as an additional argument to prove the antiquity of the “Little Russian Cossack people/nation,” who did not yield in this respect to their nearest neighbors, the Poles. The Khaz­ars were even fitted into the context of ancient history as the allies of Alexander the Great, which unquestionably elevated their status in the European ethno- genetic picture.¹⁴ Their martial spirit and courage, in Velychko's view, were inherited by their descendants, the Cossacks, whom he unreservedly calls “heroic Khazars (bogatyrskimi kozarami)” in his narrative of the victory of Hetman Ivan Briukhovets'kyi's host over the Polish army, which lay siege to Hlukhiv in 1664.¹⁵ Velychko inflated the importance of his own work by invoking the “Khazar chronicles,” which he constantly quoted.

The existence of the Khazar myth in other historical narratives of the Het- manate in the eighteenth century was wholly based on its version in the Hrabianka Chronicle. This applies, for example, to Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution (1710), where there is mention of “a great warlike ancient Cossack people, known before this as the Khazar people.”¹⁶ The Khazars, as the ancestors of the Cossacks, are also present in Semen Divovych's work The Conversation of Great Russia with Little Russia (1762), in eighteenth-century verse histories, and also in scores of hand­written copies of Cossack chronicles that were part of the historical collections popular among the readers of the Hetmanate in the eighteenth century.¹⁷

It was the handwritten copies of chronicles that were instrumental in shaping the Hetmanate society's, and especially the Cossacks', perceptions of their past and their ethnogenetic roots. Oleksandr Rigel'man (1720-89), a military engineer and the author of the Chronicle Narrative about Little Russia and Its People and the Cos­sacks in General (1787), in dealing with the origins of Cossackdom, complained about the persistence in their midst of the belief in their descent “from the Khazar people.” These “fables,” Rigel'man believed, the Cossacks “took from their own Lit­tle Russian history, written by an unknown person.”¹⁸

One of the late manifestations of the reception of the Khazar myth, which at­tests to its prevalence beyond the textual environment, is recorded at the begin­ning of the nineteenth century in the story of the former Cossack from the Zaporozhian Sich Mykyta Korzh (1731-1835), who, citing oral sources, claimed that “in olden times the Zaporozhians were called Khazars.”¹⁹

Thus, the creators of the historical narratives of the Hetmanate incorporated Sarmatism, which was popular in Polish intellectual circles in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and, using it as a model, created a new ethnogenetic concept on its basis - Khazarism.

Perceptions of the Territory: “Our” Land

An important element of identity for the authors of Cossack history writing was territory, which was portrayed as their “own,” where the main events of their “own” history occurred and which was inhabited by people conscious of their ethnic or religious unity. In the historical narratives of the Hetmanate, it is pos­sible to distinguish three theoretical levels of perception of their “own” land: the ancestral home, the ideal territory, and the real-life space. It is difficult to draw a clear dividing line between them; they are interpenetrable. In addition, the same territorial names - Rus', Little Russia, Ukraine - changed their content, and, ac­cordingly, their spatial borders. Each of these three levels was based on a certain layer of knowledge about the past.

The concept of the ancestral home as one of the markers of identity, which is present in the history of many peoples, is closely linked in the Cossack chronicles to the Khazar myth. According to this myth, the territory of the Khazars, the an­cestors of the “Little Russian people” in ancient times, was confined to Crimea, the Sea of Azov coast, and the Black Sea coast, from where they later expanded their settlement. The ancestral home from the Khazar myth emerges full-blown in seventeenth-century narratives, where it is modified into an additional instru­ment for justifying the borders of the Cossacks' “own” land. For example, the au­thor of the Hrabianka Chronicle concocts a dialogue that supposedly took place in 1654 between Hetman Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and Crimean Khan Islam Giray. Khmel'nyts'kyi reproaches the khan for breaking faith with his ancestors, the “forefathers of our tribe, the Khazars.” He puts forward territorial claims to Giray, accusing the Tatars of seizing Crimea, “the land of our ancestors,” the Khazars: “on their land to this day you remain in Crimea.”²⁰

We see the further development and adaptation of the Khazar myth in the con­text of Cossack perceptions of their ancestral home in Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution, where mention is made of “vast domains” that once belonged to the Khazar peo­ple.²¹ In the Velychko Chronicle, the land of the Khazar ancestors is identified with Little Russia, which is called the “ancient true Khazar homeland.”²² It should be noted that in the Velychko Chronicle, the concept of the borders of the “ancestral home” has been expanded by combining the Khazar and Sarmatian myths. This allowed the Cossacks to claim territories that were significantly larger than the imaginary ancestral lands of the Khazars. They now included “our true Sarmatian Cossack-Rus' lands and provinces from ancient times,” which essentially unified all the territories of old Rus'.”²³

What were the consequences of these attempts to find the ancestral home for the subsequent ideological constructions and territorial perceptions of the au­thors of the Cossack chronicles? The lower reaches of the Dnipro River, the initial territory of the Khazars, were treated in some Cossack chronicles as the center of Cossackdom, which was regarded as the elite of the “Little Russian people,” and “the root and affirmation of its honor and eternal glory.”²⁴ The consolidation of these lands in Cossack hands is traditionally associated in the narratives with the reforms of Stefan Batory (1576-86).²⁵ Zaporizhzhia, the Cossack domains that were regarded as a separate territorial and political entity from the Hetmanate, as well as the southern regions of the Hetmanate, appear in the Velychko Chronicle as the cradle of Cossackdom, its “ancestral home.”²⁶

In dealing with the next level of mental geography - the construction of the ideal borders of their “own” land - it is important to note the influence of the re­ception of the Kyivan Rus' past.

Describing the circumstances in which the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654 was concluded, Samiilo Velychko took special note of the attitude of the Muscovite tsar to this event: “he was joyful that such a large part of the Little Russian land, which remained in Greek-Rus' Orthodoxy, was voluntarily bowing to him, an Orthodox monarch, without any war or bloodshed.”²⁷ Thus Velychko represents the lands that accepted the protectorate of the tsar as part of a whole - Little Rus­sia. Citing the so-called Bila Tserkva Universal of 1648, Velychko pointed out that copies of this document were sent out “to both sides of the Dnipro,” “describing in them the vastness of Rus' borders,” and went on to refer to them as “Little Rus­sian oikoumene” In the text, this area is bounded approximately by the borders of the Kyiv metropolitanate and the Rus' lands in the Polish-Lithuanian Com­monwealth. But further on, Velychko reduces Little Russia to the Hetmanate proper, mostly its Left-Bank part, which survived until 1783.

In the Velychko Chronicle, the two levels of characterizing the borders of Little Russia - expanded and narrow - are separated chronologically. The expanded treatment of “Little Russian borders” and the “Little Russian oikoumene” applies only to the times of Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi. Nothing of this kind is found in other Cossack narratives. We cannot rule out that Samiilo Velychko, who served in the General Military Chancellery and the General Military Court, had access to mid-seventeenth-century documents, where this spatial concept of Little Russia was reflected. The formation of this concept was influenced by attempts to legit­imize the protection of the Muscovite tsar. In the times of Khmel'nyts'kyi, this term was used in official documents and correspondence with Moscow, but prac­tically never “for domestic needs.”²⁸

It is worth citing one example of such use. In 1653 the hetman wrote a letter to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich asking for help in the war with the Poles, who intended “to destroy the Orthodox faith and the Christian people from all Little Russia (iz Maloi vsei Rossii)”²⁹ A year later, in a speech by the Nizhyn archpriest (protopop) Maksym Fylymonovych addressed to the tsar, Little Russia figured as “the true Rus' land, the eastern patrimony of the Tsar's Majesty,” which included the “Lviv, Podilia, Pokutia, Polisia, and Belarus lands.”³⁰ Thus to Khmel'nyts'kyi and his en­tourage, Little Russia meant the lands whose general borders coincided approx­imately with the territory of the Kyiv metropolitanate. It is this territory that Velychko designated as the “Little Russian oikoumene.”

What was the basis for projecting the territorial image of ancient Rus' onto the concept of the ideal image of the “own” land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What markers were used for this purpose?

The most frequent marker to which the authors of the examined narratives turned when invoking the concept of “Rus'” was Orthodoxy. For them, the ter­ritory of the Kyiv metropolitanate was “their” land. This was the Pax Orthodoxa, where their coreligionists lived. Rus' was also understood to mean a historic space. For the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors, the “Rus' people” often appear in their narratives as a synonym for “Ukrainian/Little Russian/Cossack people,” the successor to the traditions of Kyivan Rus'. The memory of it was ac­tualized in the narratives through the concept of the “rights and liberties” that had been established in the early Rus' period and granted by “their” Rus' princes. The recognition of the latter as “theirs” also meant the recognition of ancient Rus' as “theirs,” inhabited by “pious” people who professed the same religion.

The vision that the Cossack authors had of their ancestral home and the ter­ritory of ancient Rus' as “their” land did not coincide with the real/actual borders of the territory where they lived. That vision, in contrast to the first two levels of mental geography, did not require the underpinning of ethnogenetic myths or remote historical analogies. It was grounded on political reality and formalized in international agreements.

In a series of documents issued by Hetman Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and his successors, as well as in the historical narratives of the second half of the seven­teenth to eighteenth centuries, the real-life territory was confined to the jurisdic­tion of Ukrainian autonomy, which coincided with the pre-war borders of three palatinates - Chernihiv, Bratslav, and Kyiv - that is, the “Rus'” territories that were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.³¹ This happened for the first time within the framework of the Treaty of Zboriv of 1649. This pact was preceded by the demands that the Zaporozhian Host presented to King John Casimir. The Cossacks lay claim to the following lands: “Beginning from the Dnister [River], Berlintsi, and Bar, to Staryi Konstantyniv, to the Sluch [River] and beyond the Sluch, which drains into the Prypiat, to the Dnipro, and from the Dnipro, begin­ning from Liubech to Starodub and all the way to the Muscovite border with Tru- betsk.”³² The configuration of these frontiers was formalized by the Polish side. It was within these borders that the Cossacks later accepted the protection of the Muscovite tsar.³³

In the political discourse, as well as in the tradition of historical writing of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, they were known as the “Ukrainian palati­nates” or Ukraine. The Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising (Khmel'nychchyna), according to Frank Sysyn, consolidated a large part of them, thus drawing new political bor­ders.³⁴ This name dominates in the Eyewitness Chronicle (Litopys Samovydtsia) and the Dvorets'kyi Chronicle (LitopysetsDvorets’kykh).³⁵ But in later texts, “Little Russia” also appears as a synonym.

In the second half of the seventeenth century, a large part of the historical fa­therland, or ideal territory, remained outside the borders of the Hetmanate's “own” real land. In the documents of the day, claims to it were often revised and actualized in connection with the prospects of concluding treaties or with military plans. This applied primarily to the western territories: Podilia and Galicia, which were part of the Kingdom of Poland. In the narratives, in contrast with the doc­uments of the era, the contours of the “own” real land were fairly vague. Thus, its western border in three Cossack chronicles - the Eyewitness, Hrabianka, and Ve­lychko accounts - is bounded by the Sluch and Horyn Rivers. In the Nizhyn Chron­icle, the land's borders are marked emotionally: “Look out, Pole, up to the Sluch is ours; Don't look back, and don't hope to live here.”³⁶ “Our fatherland” has sim­ilar borders in Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution.³⁷ According to the Velychko Chronicle, the far western border of the Hetmanate should lie along the Vistula River. These were the goals of Hetman Khmel'nyts'kyi that his envoys announced in Istanbul at their audience with the sultan.³⁸

As has already been noted above, the real territory of “their” land in the Cossack narratives did not match the ideal one. Lands west of the Cossack state were re­garded by them as Polish, despite the fact that Lviv, Brody, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Zbarazh, Starokostiantyniv, and others often appear in the texts as part of Rus', populated by the Rus' people. Velychko calls them “Polish, close to Ukraine.” Not infrequently he distinguishes between “his” land (Ukraine) and “foreign” (Polish) territory, in which he includes a number of Podilian cities and lands of the Rus' palatinate. He does although in one instance call Lviv, Brody, and Zhovkva “Little Russian cities.” But he notes that he is doing so “not because he believes this” but because he is quoting the Skarbnytsia of the Chernihiv archimandrite Ioanykii Galiatovs'kyi, “where he clearly calls the cities Little Russian (gde [on] iasno grady narechennye Maloiu nazyvaet Rossieiu)”³⁹

The same occurs in the Eyewitness Chronicle: “Khmel'nyts'kyi advanced from Ukraine to the Polish cities, where he got as far as Pyliavtsi, not reaching Kos- tiantyniv,” “[he] set out to Ukraine from Kamianets,” and “Bar and other cities of Poland.”⁴⁰

Volhynia and Polisia are presented in a similar context in a number of the Het- manate's historical narratives. Despite the fact that they were part of the Cossacks' ideal vision of “their” lands, in the real dimension they figured as Polish territory. Most telling in this respect is the episode in the Velychko Chronicle that describes the attack of the Tatar Horde, which invaded “all the way to the Polish rivers of Prypiat and Pina and devastated Polisia and Lutsk.”⁴¹

Thus, each of the described levels of perception of the “own” land was based on certain spatial visions that ranged from a small coastal area, the ancestral home of the “Kozars,” to the macro territory of former “great” Rus'. These borders of settlement of the “Little Russian Cossack people” depended, in the final analysis, on which space - historical or real - they legitimized. The Khazar myth not only identified the “historical roots” of the Cossacks but also secured for them the ter­ritory they occupied as their ancestral home. The creators of this myth incorpo­rated the “Little Russian people/nation” into the general context of the European national genesis. The Cossack narratives kept silent about Kyivan Rus' history.

But memory of it survived, as validation of the autonomy’s territory among other things. In real terms, the borders of the “own” land were determined by actual political configurations. They were what defined the place of the new ethnocul­tural entity - the “Little Russian Cossack people/nation” - on the historical and mental map of Europe.

Heroes and Antiheroes in Cossack Historiography

In the century between the end of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries, Cossack historical writing produced its own pantheon of heroes and, accordingly, antiheroes. This was a complex of impressions, assessments, and characterizations of historical figures. As a rule, these characterizations were not permanent but changed in keeping with the times and the personal attitudes of the authors. Consequently, the lines separating these categories were fairly ten­tative. The assessment of the activity of one figure or another was often deter­mined by the concept of rights and liberties - that is, did his efforts promote or obstruct their consolidation.

The actions of the first Cossack hetmans-chiefs Przeclaw Lanckoronski, Kryshtof Kosyns'kyi, Severyn Nalyvaiko, Dmytro Hunia, and others were judged in unequivocally positive terms. The chroniclers’ vision of them was that of the “founding fathers” of Cossack statehood and the first Cossacks to fight for Cossack liberties. Most of them were portrayed as martyrs who gave their lives to consol­idate these liberties. In the opinion of Volodymyr Antonovych, the eighteenth­century authors identified sixteenth-century Cossackdom with the state structure of the Hetmanate. Consequently, in order to tie together two periods of Cossack history - before Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi and after - they sought to create a single chronological line of Cossack hetman-rulers like the lines of ruling monarchs in neighboring countries. Inasmuch as there was no real basis for this, they used the murky facts presented by Polish authors to attribute the title of Cossack hetman to anyone about whom they found information of having headed the Cossack forces, to border starostas, and others.⁴²

Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi was portrayed in the same context. His glorifica­tion already had its tradition, which had begun shortly after his death. This refers, in particular, to Kasiian Sakovych’s Verses on the Sorrowful Obsequy for the Worthy Knight Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi (Virshi na zhalosnyi pohreb zatsnoho ryt- sera Petra Konashevycha-Sahaidachnoho) (1622). In the Cossack chronicles, his activity is characterized not only by his efforts to support the Orthodox Church but also as an example of successful relations between the Cossacks and the Pol­ish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The chronicles thus underscored the contrast between the services of the Cossacks to the Kingdom of Poland and the ingrati­tude of the Poles. At the same time, the close cooperation between the hetman and the Poles in the military sphere gave grounds to the author of the Tale About What Happened in Ukraine Since It Was Seized by Lithuania to treat Sahaidachnyi as “a friend of the Poles,” who marched on Moscow “for profit.”⁴³ A similar as­sertion that Sahaidachnyi “was very friendly with the Poles” is found in another late work from the 1780s.⁴⁴ A mixed assessment of Sahaidachnyi is also found in a fragment of an unknown chronicle, probably dating from the turn of the sev­enteenth-eighteenth centuries: “Praise to him, Konashevych, named Sa­haidachnyi! He was always at peace with the Poles, and so the Cossacks had it good, only the common people suffered greatly...”⁴⁵ The unknown author then notes that after the hetman's death, the Cossacks began suffering unendurable injustices from the Poles, which led to new uprisings.⁴⁶

The greatest amount of attention among all the personalities that figure in the works of Cossack historiography was devoted to the founder of the Cossack state, the “father of the fatherland,” Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi. It is with his rule that the authors of the eighteenth century and subsequent periods associate the “golden age” in the history of the Hetmanate. His death led to a decline, internal strife, and the Ruin.

When did the Khmel'nyts'kyi cult emerge? The first signs of it appeared under Samoilovych, when he was associated with the image of the ideal hetman.⁴⁷ On the other hand, no interest in the person of the hetman is found in the narrative works of the period written by the representatives of the Orthodox elite. In the Eyewitness Chronicle, Khmel'nyts'kyi is an iconic and outstanding figure but far from being the subject of glorification. The author even harshly criticizes the het­man for his alliance with the Tatars and refusal to seek an understanding with the Polish king. For Roman Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi, the presumed author of the chronicle, the death of Khmel'nyts'kyi is also an ordinary fact, which he simply states, without giving this event any pivotal significance.

During the Mazepa period, the textbook on Rhetoric compiled by the profes­sors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 1693 called the hetman the “father of the fatherland,” and the “Ruthenian Leonid,” referring to Leonidas, a king of Sparta.⁴⁸ But it was on the pages of the Hrabianka Chronicle that the hetman received his first wholehearted homage. The author of this work saw in Khmel'nyts'kyi the attributes of the ideal leader, which the Hetmanate so greatly lacked. “Owing to him, Ukraine rose to her feet, for she almost died under the Polish yoke,” read the poem entitled “Pokhvala Khmelnitskomu ot naroda malorosiiskogo” (Tribute to Khmel'nyts'kyi from the Little Russian People), which appeared at the beginning of the work along with “Virshi na gerb Malorosiiskii” (Verses on the Little Russian Coat of Arms).⁴⁹ Thus in the vision of the author of the Hra- bianka Chronicle, the figure of Khmel'nyts'kyi became one of the symbols of the new state.

In contrast to the Eyewitness Chronicle, it is difficult to find in Hryhorii Hra- bianka's text so much as a shadow of anything negative concerning Khmel'nyt­s'kyi. A telling example is the characterization of the hetman in the text. He emerges as “a man worthy of the name hetman...”⁵⁰ The emphasis is on his sim­plicity of dress, unpretentiousness, and military courage: “the first into battle and the last to leave it.”⁵¹ Interestingly, this narrative in its content and structure is es­sentially a translation from the work of the Roman historian Titus Livy, in which the latter characterizes the Carthage commander Hannibal.⁵²

The glorification of the hetman is further developed in the Velychko Chronicle. Its author also sees him as Moses who led his people out of captivity.⁵³ For Samiilo Velychko, Khmel'nyts'kyi's death is not just an ordinary event; it is a tragedy that opened a new page in the country's history: “[Khmel'nyts'kyi died] leaving the machine of war to his successors, the Cossack hetmans, and great sorrow to the whole of Ukraine, orphaned by him.”⁵⁴ The apotheosis of the glorification of the hetman in Velychko's text is the eulogy of Samiilo Zorka: “he has died, under whom the ancient rights and liberties of Ukrainians and the whole Zaporozhian Host did not die. our beloved leader, the ancient Rus' Odoacer, the famous Skanderbeg.”⁵⁵

The tradition of glorifying Hetman Khmel'nyts'kyi in historical writing con­tinued throughout the eighteenth century. While the authors of the Cossack chronicles in their assessments of his activity gave him credit for accepting the protection of the Muscovite tsar, which was instrumental in the preservation of their rights and liberties, the representative of another camp of Cossack intellec­tuals, Pylyp Orlyk, saw in him, apart from other things, a supporter of Ukraine's Swedish orientation.⁵⁶

According to the tradition begun by the Cossack chronicles, Khmel'nyts'kyi continues to be called Moses in later works as well - for example, in the drama Divine Grace (Mylost' Bozhiia, 1728).⁵⁷ Or he is associated with ancient heroes: “Famous hero and faithful protector of Rus' our fatherland, true heir of Mars, a renowned Cossack, akin to Achilles,” wrote the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professor Hnat Buzanovs'kyi in his Latin poem in 1729.⁵⁸ In the post-Poltava period, the Khmel'nyts'kyi cult was of special significance in contrasting him to Mazepa as traitor. He was meant to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Hetmanate as a state entity through the glorification of its founder.⁵⁹

The assessment of other figures in the works of Cossack historiography often depended on the author's subjective preferences. For example, the negative image of Mazepa usually associated with his campaign against Peter, was associated with something very different in Velychko's chronicle: Mazepa, “the sly Machiavelli,” was the enemy of Kochubei, Velychko's patron and protector. The Hrabianka and Eyewitness chronicles basically took a neutral stand on Khmel'nyts'kyi. It is in­teresting to note that in the three classic Cossack chronicles Mazepa is portrayed as a representative of the “ancient Ukrainian nobility,” and “an important Cos­sack-Rus' nobleman.”⁶⁰ Later, however, it became the tradition to bill Mazepa as a “native Polish nobleman” in order to dissociate the Little Russian people from his action.⁶¹ This fact, as well as the restriction of information about Mazepa, was part of a conscious construction by the authors of the past, ridding it of all nar­ratives that were “inconvenient” for the new ideology.

We also find subjectivity in the chronicles with respect to other historical figures or social groups. The “Eyewitness”, in contrast to, for example, Velychko, who re­garded the Zaporozhians as “the source and affirmation of the honor and age- old glory of other Ukrainian-Little Russian town military forces,” was more sympathetic toward the elite.⁶² This is evident throughout the whole text of his chronicle. The Zaporozhian Sich is listed among the antiheroes as a destructive element. The elite-oriented position of Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi is especially clear in the narrative of the Black Council (ChornaRada), which was later used by Pan­teleimon Kulish in his famous novel of the same name. In the conflict between the representatives of the elite, Somko and Zolotarenko, and Briukhovets'kyi as the representative of the holota (landless peasants), Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi is on the side of the former and condemns the holota as guilty of bloodshed.⁶³ Al­though he does speak with praise about Briukhovets'kyi later, which is explained by the simple fact that during the latter's hetmancy, Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi at­tained the height of his career in the post of general vice-treasurer. The charac­terization of the actions of Hetman Demian Mnohohrishnyi, during whose hetmancy Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi's career essentially came to an end, is replete with negative assessments. As Iaroslav Dzyra observes, the author raked up all the hetman's faults and sins and described them in detail.⁶⁴

An equally unfavorable evaluation was meted out to Mnohohrishnyi's succes­sor, Hetman Ivan Samoilovych, who was accused by the author of arrogance, greed, and love of power. In addition, the latter was the “son of a priest,” that is, of non-Cossack stock, which automatically nullified his prestige in the eyes of the Cossack chronicler. In the opinion of Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi, the author of the Eyewitness Chronicle described those historical figures in negative terms who had already left the historical stage and posed no real threat to him.⁶⁵

On the other hand, in Hrabianka's account, hetmans Samoilovych and Mno- hohrishnyi, along with Vasyl' Zolotarenko and Iakym Somko, appear as idealized embodiments of good - in contrast to Ivan Vyhovs'kyi, lurii Khmel'nyts'kyi, and Ivan Briukhovets'kyi.

Velychko treats the era of Ivan Vyhovs'kyi as the beginning of the dramatic pe­riod of the Ruin and devotes a whole chapter to the hetman, “Iziavlenie o Vy- hovskom” (Report about Vyhovs'kyi),⁶⁶ which is basically the hetman's biography, written quite vividly and not without humor. Velychko condemns both Vyhovs'kyi for his reckless policies, which led to bloodshed, and the implacable stand of his enemy, Poltava Colonel Martyn Pushkar. Negativity also dominates in the char­acterizations of Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi, the “two-faced” Ivan Briukhovets'kyi, and Ivan Samoilovych because of his pride and arrogance. As the source for the bi­ography of Samoilovych, Velychko uses an anonymous poem mocking the het­man, which he includes in his work. Ivan Sirko, on the other hand, is presented as a strikingly positive figure in the Velychko Chronicle, which can be explained by the author's special affinity for Zaporozhians.

Hetman Petro Doroshenko's figure is usually devoid of sympathy in the texts of the Cossack narratives. The reason for this was his alliance with the busurmany (infidels). Also associated with his name were the pillaging campaigns of the Turks in Podilia and the Chyhyryn wars. However, it is worth citing an example that il­lustrates how a new image of the hetman is constructed under the influence of subjective factors. I have in mind the Lyzohub Chronicle (1742).⁶⁷ Its author re­worked the basic source texts that contained a negative image of Doroshenko and removed the negative associations with the hetman or significantly softened their tone. For example, the Lyzohub Chronicle copied verbatim from a primary text the story of the capture of Kamianets by the Turks, in which Doroshenko had a hand, but omitted the following episode: “where in the presence of Doroshenko dead bodies were cast out of their graves and the streets were paved with icons for the entrance of the sultan.”⁶⁸ The episode about Doroshenko's participation in the reprisals by the Turks against the residents of Uman and others is omitted.⁶⁹ This kind of “whitewashing” of Petro Doroshenko in the Lyzohub Chronicle be­comes understandable in light of the close family connections of the Lyzohub family with the hetman.⁷⁰

The Cossack chronicles portray monarchs, be they Russian or Polish, in a uni­formly positive light, and even Turkish sultans are generally presented in the texts in a neutral light.⁷¹ The Russian tsars and emperors were sovereigns in relation to the Cossacks, so that the latter's loyal attitude to them was perfectly understand­able. For their part, the Polish kings, starting with Casimir the Great, were seen by the Cossack authors as the granters and guarantors of their rights and liberties and were always “above the fray.” Thus the Cossacks waged war not against the kings, but against the magnates and nobility, whose activity contravened the will of the monarchs, who were favorably disposed toward the Cossacks. Many works, including the Hrabianka and “Eyewitness” accounts, include a narrative about the charter of Wladyslaw IV, which dealt notably with Cossack liberties, which, ac­cording to the king, the Cossacks “can secure from the Poles with weapons.”⁷² In­terestingly, even the king's presence at the head of the Polish army ranged against the Cossacks was not regarded by their ideologues in negative terms. The king was obliged to do so as the head of state. The Velychko Chronicle contains similar stories about two kings from the times of the Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising - Wladyslaw IV and John Casimir.⁷³

By the same token, the policies of Russian government officials were not asso­ciated by the Cossack authors with the will and intentions of the monarch when it came to the rule of the voivodes or the lawlessness of the Little Russian Col­legium.⁷⁴ Instead, they variously underscored the monarchs' sympathies for the Cossack people. Thus, writing about the death of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich, the Eye­witness Chronicle noted that “he had love for our people, [he sanctioned] our melodies for church songs, he revoked [the wearing] of Muscovite attire but per­mitted us to wear our own style.”⁷⁵ But the “darling” of Cossack historiography was, unquestionably, Elizaveta Petrovna. “Almighty God especially endowed this monarch with moral virtues, enriched her with a fervent love for piety” wrote Hryhorii Pokas.⁷⁶ The empress earned this praise for liquidating the Little Russian Collegium, giving permission to elect the hetman, and also for her sympathy to­ward the fatherland of her husband, Oleksii Rozumovs'kyi.

On the whole, however, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cossack intellectuals were inclined to imagine the Russian tsars as joint rulers of a kind of Russian-Ukrainian Commonwealth. This attitude can be seen most clearly in the Conversation of Great Russia with Little Russia: “Not to you. To your Tsar I submitted, / Under which [tsars] you were born of your ancestors. / Do not think that you alone are my ruler, / Your Tsar and mine is our joint sovereign. / And the difference between us is in the names we were given. / You are [known as] Great, and I am [known as] Little [Russia].”⁷⁷

The eighteenth-century authors shifted all the responsibility for the conse­quences of imperial rule from the monarchs to their close associates; it was the latter who were to blame for everything bad. Among the figures that stood out in this group were Aleksandr Menshikov and Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. The first, the “tsar's courtier” and “our Ukrainian fatherland's ill-wisher,” was re­garded as practically the chief enemy of Cossack rights and privileges, a view of­fered, in particular, by the authors of the Brief Description of Little Russia and the Chernihiv Chronicle.⁷⁸ His fall and death were greeted by them with joy. “He was insatiable, but, they say, he ended his life in a hut, in cold Beriozovo, and his body occupied only a sazhen [seven feet] of land. And that, in depth,”⁷⁹ wrote the author of the Lyzohub Chronicle sarcastically. Field Marshal Munnich’s negative image was associated with his contempt for the Cossack military units in the Russo- Turkish war, an important event for Cossack authors in creating the heroic past of the Hetmanate. Hryhorii Pokas boiled down his main charge against Munnich to the latter’s “malicious hatred of the Little Russian people.” Because of it, ac­cording to the author, Munnich inflicted many wrongs on Ukrainians, and es­pecially the Cossacks that fought under his banners. The field marshal refused altogether to regard the latter as a military force, and forced them to serve his sol­diers as bath attendants or cooks, persecuted them in ways “that the captives of the infidels themselves never suffer,” and at the height of military operations sent them into the most dangerous sectors to certain death.⁸⁰

“Others” in the Hetmanate’s Historical Narratives

The authors of Cossack chronicles were aware of their difference from represen­tatives of other ethnic groups; the texts contained an image of each of these groups that probably coincided with the perception of the respective ethnicity in eighteenth-century Ukrainian society. The image of “others” in narrative texts was not confined to a simple reflection of this reception. This construct was one of the most important elements in shaping an own identity. This is because awareness of oneself as a community is based not only on myths and historical memory but also on stereotyping the images of “others,” projecting ideas, values, and concepts of oneself, objectifying one’s own virtues and flaws, and shaping identity by rejecting negative features, which are attributed to “others.”⁸¹ The lat­ter play the role of a factor of unity of the “we-group” - an imaginary community that strives to identify itself by setting itself apart from the “they-group.”⁸²

The texts of the historical narratives created in the Hetmanate distinguish sev­eral ethnic groups that are most relevant to the defined authors’ goals: Poles, Rus­sians, and Jews, and also the Turks and Tatars. The order in which these ethnic groups are mentioned coincides approximately with the frequency with which they are mentioned in the texts, as well as with the principle of decreasing toler­ance toward their representatives.

Russians. Mentions of Russians as representatives of a separate ethnos appear rarely in the texts. There are several instances of such designations as “people of the Muscovite nation,” “Muscovite” (moskovytianyn), “Muscovites” (moskali), “Moscow” (Moskva) and also derivates of the latter - “Muscovite clothes,” or even “cursed abusively in the Muscovite manner.”⁸³ They occur mostly in episodes that describe events in the second half of the seventeenth century. Closer to the end of the century, as well as in stories of the eighteenth century, the ethnonyms “Great Russians” and “Russians” come into use.⁸⁴ The ethnonym moskali now loses its neutral meaning and takes on a negative sense or demeaning status. Its use is mainly associated with documents of an anti-imperial bent, for example, the uni­versals of the “Tatar” hetman, Petryk Ivanenko.⁸⁵ Then again, the description of the joint siege of the Turkish fortress of Kazy-Kermen (1695) in the Velychko Chronicle is accompanied by the remark that in addition to the Cossacks, “our brothers the moskali” took part in the operation.⁸⁶

The insignificant number of examples in Ukrainian texts of a purely ethnic perception of their northeastern neighbor is explained by the preponderance of the concept of them as representatives of the state. It is in this aspect that they most often appear in the narratives - as voivodes, imperial officials, or soldiers in the garrisons and armies that take part in joint campaigns. In the latter case, there is a clear distinction between “we” - the “Cossack/Little Russian host,” “our army,” and “they” - the “Muscovite,” “Great Russian,” and “the tsar's” forces. How­ever, to set off the Turkish-Tatar threat, designations of “our troops” are also used to distinguish themselves and their allies.⁸⁷ For nonmilitary designations, the chronicle authors used categories based on the principles of subordination. Thence “we” - those who inhabit the territory of the autonomy, the Hetmanate, “people from the hetman's regiment,” and “they” - “the sovereign's people,” “the tsar's people,” who belong to a different system of subordination.

The perception of Moscow and the Muscovite Tsardom as a state ranges from neutral to negative.⁸⁸ The events that take place inside the Muscovite realm - up­risings, change of rulers - are of interest to the Cossack authors primarily in the context of the history of their own fatherland.⁸⁹ The first mentions in the Cossack chronicles of the Muscovite Tsardom are recorded in stories about Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi's foreign policy activities. Here the empire is the “ancestral land” of the tsar, to whom the hetman is prepared to swear loyalty. In Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution (1710), the monarch himself is inviolable, but his state, Muscovy, is often portrayed in a negative context. It is the state, not its ruler, that is to blame for the oppressed condition of the autonomy: “The Muscovite state attempted by many ingenious means to weaken and utterly destroy the liberties of the Za- porozhian Host that it itself had confirmed and to place the yoke of slavery on the free Cossack people whom it itself had never subdued by force of arms.”⁹⁰ Extremely negative designations are associated with the Muscovite tsardom: “Muscovite yoke,” “Muscovite slavery,” “Muscovite bondage.”⁹¹

The distinguishing feature of the perception of Russians in comparison with other ethnic groups, lies, above all, in a low level of enmity toward them as pro­fessors of the same faith and subjects of a joint state. Moreover, the negative char­acteristics of specific individuals are not extrapolated to the whole. The sketchy familiarity with their neighbors can be explained by the relatively short period of common history and the restriction of contacts between the two peoples. For the residents and authors of the Hetmanate, the image of Russians was mediated by the state - the Muscovite Tsardom, the Russian Empire - which exerted sub­stantial influence on the structures of the autonomy in a short period of time. Consequently, the narratives contain by far more collective images of represen­tatives of this state: voivodes, imperial officials, and courtiers. These images were offset by the monarch, whose reception was based on Orthodoxy and the vision of him as a sovereign and guarantor of rights and liberties. At their core also lay the “Little Russian concept,” based on the idea of Great Russia and Little Russia as equal entities, united by the rule of a common monarch.⁹² For the contempo­rary Hetmanate elite, this concept was a kind of manifestation of multiple loyalty, impossible in the age of nationalism, which in the eighteenth century combined the struggle for autonomous rights and loyalty to the monarch.

Poles. The Poles are the ethnic group that appears most frequently in the texts of the historical narratives. This is not only a matter of Poland bordering directly on the Hetmanate, or of the coexistence of Ukrainians and Poles within the bor­ders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland and the Poles/Liakhy were the most “convenient” “others” for constructing an own Cossack identity.⁹³ The war against the Poles was the main subject of Cossack chronicles. Among its main results, the authors saw the “liberation of the Ukrainian/Little Russian people from under the yoke [of enslavement]” and the birth of a new state. Building on this thesis, it is possible to trace the subsequent efforts of intellectuals to legitimize both the war itself and the new sociopolitical reality in the former southeastern territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that emerged after the war's end. The authors of the historical narratives recognized that military action against the king and state was nonetheless a crime. Therefore, it was necessary to justify not only the reasons for the war but the right to wage the war itself. This could be done by making use of, among other things, various negative images of Poles as “others,” whom “we,” endowed with positive characteristics, antithetical to the flaws that are attributed to opponents or enemies, opposed.

In the period when the Cossack chronicles were written - from the end of the seventeenth to the beginning of the eighteenth centuries - the real-life image of the Pole as enemy, as Nataliia Iakovenko has underscored, was already obsolete and had already moved into the realm of memories and symbols. The reflections of immediate postwar generations had not yet turned into myth, and, at the same time, stripped of their personal emotions, they reflected the context of their time.⁹⁴ The genesis of the conflict with the Poles, in the opinion of the Cossack authors, lay in the distant past. According to the Velychko Chronicle, in the ethno- genetic myth, the Poles and the Rus' had a common origin.⁹⁵ The subsequent in­terpretation of this myth included Biblical connotations that contributed to the emergence of the “Cain image” of Poles.⁹⁶ According to this image, the Poles be­trayed their blood brothers and began to enslave and kill them, which was equiv­alent to Cain's action against Abel.⁹⁷

Thus, in the intellectual tradition of the beginning of the eighteenth century, the myth of the Polish betrayal embedded the Polish-Cossack conflict in the tra­ditional Biblical symbol of fratricide, to which the Cossack chronicles, consciously changing the Biblical connotation, added the prospect of inevitable retribution.⁹⁸ According to the Cossack chronicles, this retribution upon the Poles and their state was the series of wars and civil strife that enveloped the Commonwealth in the second half of the seventeenth century. And the myth of betrayal, of “betrayed brotherhood,” after taking on additional elements, became the dominant idea in the perception of the Poles, reinforcing the justification of the right to a just war. It had a dual influence on the construction of the image of the Poles.⁹⁹ On the one hand, the Cossack authors looked for a point of contact with this image in order to demonstrate kinship and equality, and, on the other hand, they fashioned antagonistic positions that proved betrayal.

Most substantially represented in the texts, Poland and the Poles were already regarded as a “foreign land” in the eighteenth century, with a rather limited range of relations with the Hetmanate and its population, and past enmity in this population's everyday consciousness had lost its relevance.¹⁰⁰ But there existed a narrative image that promoted the crystallization of an imaginary polity of a “Cossack Little Russian people.” This people, in contrast to the Catholic Poles, defended Orthodoxy and opposed the expansion of the Catholic “schism” and Uniatism. The negative characteristics of the Poles were contrasted with the positive characteristics of the collective “we.” At the same time, the texts made a distinction between the concepts of “Poles” and “Poland.” Poland as the image of a legitimate state, together with its monarch, was one of the sources and guarantors of Cossack rights and liberties, a category that was either neutral or positive in the value judgments.

Jews. Two factors were at the heart of the negative attitude to the Jews. They were not Christians, which in the mind of a person of the early modern period was in itself a crime. Also, the Jews were most often the leaseholders and owners of taverns and were therefore accused of the financial exploitation of the local population. It should be noted that at the time of the writing of the Cossack chronicles, there were practically no Jews left in the Hetmanate. A large portion of them had perished or immigrated to the Right Bank - territory belonging to the Commonwealth. Those who remained were forced to leave the Cossack au­tonomies of the Russian Empire pursuant to the decrees of Peter I and Catherine I. Eventually, thanks to hetmans Ivan Skoropads'kyi and Danylo Apostol, the Jews were permitted limited entry into the territory of the Hetmanate in order to attend fairs and engage in wholesale trade. In the eighteenth century, Jewish commercial settlements also existed on the territory of the Zaporozhian Sich.¹⁰¹ It is important to note that by the end of the seventeenth century, during the period of the sta­bilization of the Ukrainian Cossack state that began to emerge during the het- mancies of Ivan Samoilovych, and especially Ivan Mazepa, Jews started to occupy a leading place in its hierarchy. The influential starshyna clans of the Markovyches and Hertsyks, who were members of the highest administrative elite of the Het­manate, were of Jewish descent.

The Jewish narrative, as a rule, did not stand alone in the historical texts of the time but always appeared in the context of the causes triggering the beginning of Khmel'nyts'kyi's war. In the version of the Cossack chroniclers, the Poles and Jews united in order to destroy the Orthodox people. Toward this end, the Poles placed them in slavery to the Jews, and the Jews, taking advantage of their power, mercilessly exploited the local population, imposing various levies on it and in­venting new forms of imposts for personal gain. “The Jews were always devising new taxes and all the Cossack estates were encumbered,” notes the Hrabianka Chronicle, for example.¹⁰²

Another popular subject in the texts of the early modern period was the nar­rative about “church keys,” which were allegedly held by the Jews, so that in order to hold a service, the Orthodox community had to ask their permission. In Zenon Kohut's opinion, this story and anti-Jewish rhetoric as a whole found their way into Cossack historical writing from seventeenth-century Polish works.¹⁰³

In the texts of the chronicles, Jews are not only exploiters but also victims. The authors of the Cossack narratives report with detachment the destruction of Jew­ish communities in Nemyriv, Bar, and other cities. At the same time, they cite ex­amples of fierce resistance by Jews who found themselves in the besieged cities as evidence of the perfidy of the Poles, who often handed over Jews to be massa­cred in order to save their own lives. Earlier works of Cossack chronicle writing, produced at the end of the seventeenth century, contained elements of condem­nation of the actions of the Cossacks and other participants in the war. While ap­plauding the goals of the uprising, the authors of the Eyewitness, Lviv, and Dvoretskyi Chronicles characterize the Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising as a war of “all against all,” whose victims were the representatives of all estates and ethnic groups that then inhabited the territory of Ukraine.

In dealing with the sources of the Ukrainian image of Jews, it is worth under­scoring that only isolated narratives can be deemed to be eyewitness accounts. Most Ukrainian authors who lived and wrote in the eighteenth century by then

knew about Jews only from rumors. For the most part, the anti-Jewish narratives were adapted by the Ukrainian authors from the Polish historiographic tradi­tion. The Polish authors of the second half of the seventeenth century, in par­ticular the works of Samuel Grondski (Historia belli Cosacco-Polonici, 1670s) and Pawel Ruszel (Fawor Niebieski, 1649), trying to make sense of the reasons for such a large-scale civil war, which resulted in such famous events as the Swedish Deluge and the deadly war with the Muscovite Tsardom, lay the blame for this primarily on the Jews, whose economic activity led to an explosion of social and political conflict.¹⁰⁴

Turks and Tatars (Muslims) incur the greatest degree of intolerance among the other ethnic groups present in the historical narratives. The Turkish-Tatar world was seen as hostile and at the same time mysterious by the Cossack authors. This was the world into which thousands of captives disappeared and which was the source of permanent danger, a symbol of devastation and suffering. Often, in order to accentuate the negative image of a historical figure (Doroshenko, lurii Khmel'nyts'kyi), it was reported that he had had friendly relations with Muslims, with whom an alliance was regarded as unnatural. As the Eyewitness Chronicle noted: “As precarious as the friendship between wolf and ram, so is [the friend­ship] between Christian and Muslim.”¹⁰⁵ An exception was made only for Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi, who concluded an alliance with the Tatars for the sake of a holy mission: the consolidation of the rights and liberties of the Cossacks and the Little Russian people. Another characteristic trait of the Tatars in this context was treachery and perfidy, for it was because of the betrayal of the Crimean Tatars that the Cossacks lost many profitable prospects.

The image of the population of the Hetmanate as a European, Christian peo­ple, the defender of Christianity was crafted with the help of the chroniclers’ rep­resentation of the Muslim world. The attitude toward the Turks and Tatars in the historical texts was formed within the framework of a frontier discourse, in which they were the enemies of Christianity, and the Cossack Little Russian peo­ple were the obstacle on their path. It served as the basis for constructing binary oppositions, which were divided along the lines of religion and national affilia­tion. The existence of this discourse left little opportunity for the creation of at least a neutral image in contrast to portraying them as enemies. Only infrequently was this image toned down to justify certain foreign policy actions by the leaders of the Hetmanate.

The described markers in the texts are indivisible and interpenetrable; each of them reveals a certain aspect of the identity that characterizes the polity of the “Cossack Little Russian people/nation.” Thereby confirming its right to be equal to other ethnic groups and states in the region, and, at the same time, endowing this polity with unique characteristics that distinguish it from others. Each marker is a “brick” that together with other bricks create its whole image.

Thus, when speaking of ethnogenetic quests in the narrative texts of the Het- manate, it is worth asking: What made the Khazar myth appealing to the creators of the Cossack chronicles? The historical narratives of the seventeenth century, particularly church and monastic chronicles, were aimed at constructing a dy­nastic model of the historical process. This was seen as the sequential change of ruling dynasties - first, Kyivan, then Lithuanian, then Polish, and finally, Mus­covite - in the ancestral land. The people moved voluntarily under the rule of various new rulers who in return guaranteed them their rights and liberties. The intellectuals of the end of the seventeenth to the beginning of the eighteenth cen­turies did not find an autochthonic history in this process - namely, the history of the Hetmanate. That was the reason for the emergence of Khazarism, which asserted that the Cossacks-Khazars had their own ancient dynasty of khagans, and that they adopted Christianity from Byzantium long before the Lithuanians, Poles, and Muscovites.¹⁰⁶ In light of this, the readers of eighteenth-century chron­icles were meant to believe that the “Little Russian Cossack people” had a right to political autonomy - the “rights and liberties” secured in bilateral agreements with the Polish and Russian monarchs.

With the help of the territorial marker, the historical narratives constructed an image of an “own” land, which unified in itself the ancestral home, which was indissolubly linked with the ethnogenetic myth, Rus' as the historical territory, and the Hetmanate proper. This was the space inhabited by the “Cossack Little Russian people/nation” or its ancestors which, ultimately, legitimized the existence of this polity. The categories “own land” or “land of the ancestors” invariably in­tersect with the characteristics of the ethnic groups that unjustly rule or claim certain territories.

The creation of binary contrasts to characterize “own” and “foreign” is one of the elements in the construction of identity in the historical narratives of the Het- manate. With the help of the image of “others,” their authors sought to create a positive portrait of their own polity. Its dominant idea is the image of the “peo­ple-martyr,” oppressed by the Poles, “the servants of the pharaoh,” “savage” Tatars, and even Jews, “a people that stands lower than all others,” which, in the end, le­gitimized the war against them. It should also be noted that the subject of war as such, which dominates in the historical narratives of the Hetmanate, imposes a certain impression on the image of this polity. It is subordinated in much to the frontier discourse, which is embodied in the contrast with “others” - in military, confessional, ethnic, political, and social aspects.

At the same time, the confessional component of identity helped to establish its uniqueness not only with regard to the Catholics and Muslims but also to the Muscovite Orthodox. Despite the shared religious space with the Muscovite Tsar- dom, the Cossack authors did not consider Orthodoxy as a factor in unity with the Muscovites, and the only unifying factor they recognized was the Orthodox monarch, who was to be the guarantor of their “rights and liberties.” The image of the state, the Russian Empire, embodied in the reception and characterization of certain figures and institutions, whose activity opposed traditional “rights and liberties,” was counterposed by their own polity - the Zaporozhian Host/ Hetmanate with all its attributes of statehood.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Marta Skorupsky

NOTES

This an updated version of the article published as: Andrii Bovhyria, “Kozat- s'ke istoriopysannia: viziia mynuloho i konstruiuvannia identychnostei v Het'manshchyni XVII-XVIII st.,” in Ukrains’ka derzhava druhoipolovyny XVII-XVIIIst.:polityka, suspil’stvo, kul’tura, ed. Valerii Smolii (Kyiv, 2014), 586-628. Copyright 2014 by nasu Institute of History of Ukraine. Translated and reprinted with permission.

1 The work covers the period from “Khazar” times to 1709. Its main focus of at­tention is on the description of the Khmel'nyts'kyi era and the events of the second half of the seventeenth century. There are two known redactions of the work (short and long) and more than 60 manuscript copies. The author­ship of the long version is traditionally attributed to Hadiach colonel Hry- horii Hrabianka (?-1738). There currently exist five editions of this work. It was first published in 1793. Fedor Tumanskii, “Letopisets Malyia Rossii,” Rossiiskii Magazin, no. 2 (1793): 17-108, 209-30, 366-88; no. 3 (1793): 54-73, 75-76, 125-26, 205-36, 280-311, 436-39. In 1990, the Harvard Institute of Ukrainian Studies published a facsimile edition of the work from the manuscript copies of both versions, as well as the printed editions of 1793 and 1854, see Hryhorii Hrabianka, The Great War of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyi, ed. Yuri Lutsenko (Cambridge, ma, 1991).

Historiia H. Hrabianky. Litopis kratkii, comp. Viktor Moisiienko (Zhytomyr, 2001), 45.

On Sarmatism as an ethnogenetic concept and nobiliary ideology, see Tadeusz Ulewicz, Sarmacja. Studium zproblematyki slowianskiej w XV-XVI w. (Cracow, 1950), 18-19; Stanislaw Cynarski, “Sarmatyzm - ideologia i styl zycia,” in Polska XVII w.: panstwo, spoleczenstwo, kultura (Warsaw, 1969), 247; Oleksii Kresin, “Ukrains'kyi sarmatyzm,” in Mala entsyklopediia etn- oderzhavoznavstva, ed. lurii Rymarenko (Kyiv, 1996), 136; Janusz Tazbir, “Sarmatyzm a barok,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 4 (1969): 817-18, 826.

Iryna Zhylenko, “Teoriia: khazary-kozary-kozaky v ukrains'kii istoriohrafii XVII-pochatku XVIII st.,” in Synopsis Kyivs 'kyi. Lavrs'kyi al'manakh, comp. Iryna Zhylenko (Kyiv, 2002), 170.

In anticipation of possible objections to the paradox of the Cossacks adopt­ing Khazarism as an ethnogenetic myth, it should be noted that its initiator and adherent was unlikely to have known that the Khazar khagans had converted to Judaism in the seventh century. Moreover, the fact that the Khazars adopted this religion remains open to debate. See, for example, Shaul Stampfer, “Naskol'ko khazary byli iudeiamy,” in Nauchnye trudy po iudaike. Materialy XVIII Mezhdunarodnoi ezhegodnoi konferentsii po iudaike, 2 vols (Moscow, 2011), 2:9-68.

Ioanykii Haliatovs'kyi, Kliuch rozuminnia (Kyiv, 1985), 345.

Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (Cambridge, ma, 2006), 341-2; Iaroslav Zatyliuk, “Predky ‘kozats'koho malorosiis'koho narodu' i kyievo-rus'ka spadshchyna v uiavlenni elity chasiv Pylypa Orlyka,” in Pylyp Orlyk: zhyttia, polityka, teksty. Materialy Mizhnarodnoi naukovoi konferentsii do 300-richchia Benders ’koi konstytutsii 1710 r. (Kyiv, 2011), 131.

Andrii Bovgyria, “‘Litopys Hrabianky': pytannia pershoosnovy,” Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal 4 (2003): 75-88.

[Dmitrii Rostovskii (Tuptalo)], Kniga zhitii sviatykh vo slavu Sviatyia Zhyvotvoriashchiia Troitsina tri mesiatsi-mart, april’, mai (Kyiv, 1700), 541. Maciej Stryjkowski, Kronika polska, litewska, zmodzka i wszystkiej Rusi, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1846), 121.

Ibid., 121.

Samoil Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 4 vols (Kyiv, 1848-64), 4:appendix, vi. Samiilo Velychko is the author of a monu­mental narrative describing the events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The original text is held in St Petersburg (Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia, f. 558 [Manuscript Collection of Mikhail Pogodin], 2020/1-3). There exists a single copy of this work, made in the 1760S-1770S (Instytut rukopysu Natsional 'not biblioteky Ukramy im. V.I. Vernads ’koho [Manuscript Institute of the National Library of Ukraine; here­inafter - ir nbu], f. VIII, 154/153). The work has been published three times: Samoil Velichko, Letopis'sobytii vIugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 4 vols (Kyiv, 1848-1864); Samuil Velichko, Skazanie o voine kazatskoi spoliakami (Kyiv, 1926); and a Ukrainian translation, see Samiilo Velychko, Litopys, trans. by Valerii Shevchuk, 2 vols (Kyiv, 1991).

13 Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:81-2.

14 Ibid., 1:291-2.

15 Ibid., 2:83.

16 Dohovory ipostanovy, comp. by Oleksandr Alf'orov (Kyiv, 2010), 20-2.

17 Nauchno-issledovatel 'skii otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi gosudarstvennoi biblioteki (Scientific Research Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library; hereinafter - nior rgb), f. 99, no. 552, l. 144 ob-147 (“Skazanie o Maloi Rossiii o bedstvakh ee byvshikh,” author Maksym Plyska [1763]); ir nbu,

f. viii, no. 216/199, l. 108 (“Geroichni virshy o slavnykh deistviiakh Zaporozht­sev” [1780-e gg.]); Andrii Bovgyria, Kozats’ke istoriopysannia v rukopysnii tradytsit XVIIIst. Spysky ta redaktsit tvoriv (Kyiv, 2010), 106-21; Nikolai Petrov, “‘Razgovor Velikorossii s Malorossiei' (Literaturnyi pamiatnik vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka),” Kievskaia starina 1 (1882): 325.

18 Aleksandr Rigel'man, Letopisnoe povestvovanie o Maloi Rossii i ee narode i kazakakh voobshche (Moscow, 1847), 1-2, 5-7. By “Little Russian history, written by an unknown person” the author meant the Hrabianka Chronicle, the majority of the transcriptions of which are anonymous.

19 Ustnoe povestvovanie byvshego zaporozhtsa Nikity Leont 'evicha Korzha (Odesa, 1842), 10.

20 Letopis' Grigoriia Grabianky (Kyiv, 1854), 142.

21 Dohovory i postanovy, 21.

22 Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 2:348.

23 Ibid., 1:82.

24 Letopis' Grigoriia Grabianky, 18; Velichko, Letopis' sobytii vIugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 1:307.

25 Ibid., 1:20-1. See also Letopis' Grigoriia Grabianky, 21-2.

26 Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:83. In docu­ments from the end of the seventeenth century the Sich is sometimes called the “Cossack capital,” “our Zaporozhian capital, from whence our ancestors gained glory,” see Universaly ukrains ’kykh het 'maniv vid Ivana Vyhovs ’koho do Ivan Samoilovycha (1657-1687), ed. Ivan Butych et al. (Kyiv-Lviv, 2004), 302; Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii, 5:144.

27 Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:171.

28 Natalia M. Iakovenko, Dzerkala identychnosti: doslidzhennia z istorii uiavlen ’ ta idei v Ukraini XVI-pochatku XVIII stolittia (Kyiv, 2012), 28.

29 Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiei, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1953), 2:365.

30 Akty otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rossii, 14:176-7. In Zenon Kohut's opinion, Khmel'nyts'kyi's concept of the former Rus' in the context of the prospect of expanding the Hetmanate was a component of his “Rus'/Ruthenian plan,” which he was forced to abandon after the defeat at Berestechko in 1651, see Zenon E. Kohut, “Mazepa's Ukraine: Understanding Cossack Territorial Vistas,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 31, no. 1/4 (2009-2010): 3-4.

31 Kohut, “Mazepa's Ukraine,” 2.

32 See Dokumenty Bohdana Khmel 'nyts ’koho, ed. Ivan Kryp'iakevych and Ivan Butych (Kyiv, 1961), 130; Universaly Bohdana Khmel’nyts’koho, 1648-1657, ed. Ivan Kryp'iakevych and Ivan Butych (Kyiv, 1998), 56. The “Zboriv border of Ukraine” is also dealt with in the letter of Hetman Iurii Khmel'nyts'kyi

to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, see Istochniki Malorossiiskoi istorii, ed. D.N. Ban- tysh-Kamenskii and O. Bodianskii, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1858): 123-4.

33 Tat'iana Tairova-Iakovleva, “Predstavleniia o granitsakh Ukrainskogo Getmanstva u kazatskoi starshiny serediny XVII veka,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 49, no. 1-2 (2015): 295.

34 Frank E. Sysyn, “Fatherland in Early Eighteenth-Century Ukrainian Political Culture,” in Mazepa e il suo tempo: storia, cultura, società, ed. Giovanna Siedina (Alessandria, 2004), 47.

35 The Eyewitness Chronicle covers the period from 1648 to 1702. Written in the 1670s, it is valuable primarily for the author's reception of the Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising and the subsequent Ruin - the civil war in the Hetmanate. The au­thor is Roman Rakushka-Romanovs'kyi. There exist three publications of the text: Letopis' Samovidtsa o voinakh Bogdana Khmel’nitskogo i mezhdousobi- iakh, byvshikh v Maloi Rossii po ego smerti: Dovedena prodolzhateliami do 1734 goda, ed. P. Kulesh and O. Bodianskii (Moscow, 1846); Letopis' Samovidtsa

po novootkrytym spiskam, ed. Orest Levyts'kyi and Stepan Lukomskii (Kyiv, 1878); Litopys Samovydtsia, ed. Iaroslav Dzyra (Kyiv, 1971). The Dvorets 'kyi Chronicle covers the period from 1340 to 1672. It was probably written by the Kyiv colonel Vasyl' Dvorets'kyi (1609-1672?). The text is part of a manuscript collection compiled in the first half of the 1670s that also contains other important materials on the history of Ukraine: Navity - a polemical work created between 1667 and 1671; an unknown version of Afanasii Fylypovychs Diariush; a historico-political treatise titled Warning to Ukraine (1669); copies of various documents, notes, and maxims in Ukrainian, Polish, and Latin, and so forth. The Dvorets 'kyi Chronicle was published by lurii Mytsyk in 1984. See lurii Mytsyk, “‘Letopisets’ Dvoretskikh - pamiatnik ukrainskogo letopisaniia XVII v.,” Letopisi i khroniki. 1984 (Moscow, 1984): 219-34.

ir nbu, f. 310, no. 34, ark. 155. Dohovory i postanovy, 41.

Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:127.

Ibid., 2:375.

Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 53, 70, 82.

Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:164.

Vladimir Antonovich, “Neizvestnyi dosele getman i ego prikaz,” Kievskaia sta­rina 5 (1883): 141.

“Povesto tom chto sluchilos na Ukraine s toia pory, kak ona Litvoiu za- vladena,” Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, no. 5 (1848), 10.

Kratkoe istoricheskoe opisanie o Maloi Rossii do 1765 goda, z dopolneniem o zaporozhskikh kozakakh i prilozheniiami, kasaiushchimisia do sego opisaniia, comp. O. Bodianskii (Moscow, 1848), 3.

Nauchno-issledovatel 'skii otdel rukopisei Biblioteki Rossiiskoi akademii nauk (Department of Manuscripts of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences; hereinafter - nior bran), 24.3.96, l. 2 ob.

Ibid., l. 3.

Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations, 348.

Vladimir Peretts, “K istorii Kievo-Mogilianskoi akademii. Panegiriki i stikhi B. Khmel'nyts'komu, I. Podkove i arkh. Lazariu Baranovichu,” Chteniia v istoricheskom obshchestve Nestora-Letopistsa 14, no. 1 (1900): 11-16.

Letopis' Grigoriia Grabianky, 1-2.

Ibid., 153.

Ibid. See also Frank E. Sysyn, “A Man Worthy of the Name ‘Hetman’: The Fashioning of Khmel'nyts'kyi as a Hero in the Hrabianka Chronicle,” in Stories of Khmel’nyts’kyi: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising, ed. Amelia M. Glaser (Stanford, 2015), 110-26.

Marko Antonovych, “Kharakterystyka B. Khmel'nyts'koho v Hrabianky ta Liviia,” Ukra'ins’kyi istoryk, nos 1-4 (1995): 164-5.

Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:33. Ibid., 288.

Ibid., 291-2. Velychko associates Khmel'nyts'kyi with the Germanic leader Odoacer (433-93), who deposed the last Roman emperor, thus formally marking the end of the Western Roman Empire. In another fragment of the Velychko Chronicle, we read about the “warlike Rus' from Rugia from Baltic or German Pomerania, under the leadership of their Prince Odoacer, in the year 470 after the birth of Christ.” (Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 1:89). This story was obviously borrowed from Stryjkowski, who, without any geographical reference, cites Dlugosz, and makes mention of “Odoacer - Rus' prince,” who captured Rome and ruled there for fourteen years. (Stryjkowski, Kronika polska, litewska, zmodzka i wszystkiej Rusi, 111). Skanderbeg (1443-68) was the leader of a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire and a national hero of Albania.

56 Dohovory ipostanovy, 29.

57 “Mylost' Bozhiia,” in Ukrains 'ka literatura XVIII st. Poetychni tvory, dramaty- chni tvory, prozovi tvory, ed. Ihor Dzeverin and Oleksii Myshanych (Kyiv, 1983), 307-11.

58 Hnat Buzanovs'kyi, “[Virsh pro Bohdana Khmel'nyts'koho],” in Ukratns’ka literatura XVIII st., 50.

59 For more on the Khmel'nyts'kyi cult in the Hetmanate after 1709, see Sysyn, “A Man Worthy of the Name ‘Hetman'”; Serhii Plokhii, Tsari ta kozaky. Zahadky ukratns’kot ikony (Kyiv, 2018), 77.

60 Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 146; Velichko, Letopis' sobytii vIugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 2:342.

61 Petr Simonovskii, Kratkoe opisanie o kazatskom malorossiiskom narode i o voennykh ego delakh (Moscow, 1847), 116.

62 The author is referring to the town Cossacks (horodovi kozaky), i.e., Cossacks of the Hetmanate who are implicitly contrasted with the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

63 Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 91.

64 laroslav Dzyra, “Vstup,” in laroslav Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 33.

65 M. Grushevskii, “Samovidets Ruiny i ego pozdneishie otrazheniia,” in Trudy Instituta slavianovedeniia Akademii nauk sssr (Leningrad, 1932), 1:179.

66 In detail about the rule of Ivan Vyhovs'kyi in the Velychko Chronicle, see Nelia Herasymenko, Istorychnipodit na Ukratni 1657-1659 (het’manstvo I. Vyhovs’koho) u vysvitlenni S.V. Velychka (Kyiv, 1999).

67 The work describes the events of the period of 1506-1742. The author was a member of the Lyzohub starshyna family. The text is based on the Brief Description of Little Russia (Kratkoe opisanie Malorossii) with extrapolated information from family history, and supplemented with extracts from the Eyewitness Chronicle. The work was published in 1888 by Volodymyr Antonovych: “Letopisets', ili opisanie kratkoe znatneishikh deistv i sluchaev,” in Sbornik letopisei, otnosiashchikhsia k istorii Iuzhnoi i Zapadnoi Rusi (Kyiv, 1888), 1-69.

68 nior rgb, f. 152, no. 26, l. 95.

69 “Letopisets', ili opisanie kratkoe znatneishikh deistv i sluchaev,” 25.

70 Vadim Modzolevskii, Malorossiiskii rodoslovnik, (Kyiv, 1912), 3:99; Aleksandr Lazarevskii, “Liudi staroi Malorossii. Lizoguby,” Kievskaia starina 2 (1897): 108.

71 The only exception was the Crimean khan/khans, who, in addition to his Muslim faith, was also the overlord of the Tatars and thus complicit in their incursions. The negative image was underscored by treachery and perfidy (this refers to Islam Giray's demarche at Berestechko). A similar assessment was earned by the Moldovan Hospodar Vaseli Lupu for his inconsistent policy in dealings with Khmel'nyts'kyi in particular.

72 Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:26.

73 Ibid., 97, 213.

74 Although Velychko does allow himself to “criticize” Peter I on one occasion: “[against] the expectations of Little Russia, despite the old rights and liberties of the Zaporozhian Host and the Little Russian people (naroda Mal- orossiskoho), instead of the hetman, he set up the Little Russian Collegium and various levies that had never existed before, and destroyed and greatly burdened both the Cossack nobility and the common people” (Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 2:519-20).

75 Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 135.

76 Korotkyi opys Malorosii (1340-1776), comp. Andrii Bovgyria (Kyiv, 2012), 128. Hryhorii Pokas, a military chancellerist (?-1789?), was the compiler of one of the copies of the Brief Description of Little Russia, which he supplemented with his own accounts and a chronological continuation (1735-51). The origi­nal is held in St Petersburg: Otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi natsional 'noi biblioteki (Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library; hereinafter - or rnb), f. IV, 812.

77 Nikolai Petrov, “Razgovor Velikorossii s Malorossiei,” Kievskaia starina 2 (1882): 342.

78 ir nbu, f. viii, spr. i47m/56, ark. 101 zv.

79 “Letopisets, ili Opisanie kratkoe znatneishikh deistv i sluchaev,” 52.

80 Korotkyi opys Malorosii, 126.

81 Lorina Repina, “‘Natsional'nyi kharakter' i ‘obraz drugogo',” Dialog so vremenem, no. 39 (2012): 10, 13.

82 Frit'of Ben'iamin Shenk [Frithjof Benjamin Schenk], Aleksandr Nevskii v russkoi kul’turnoipamiati (Moscow, 2007), 14-15.

Dzyra, ed., Litopys Samovydtsia, 135; Velichko, Letopis sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 1:375.

The designation Velikorosiia (Great Russia) and its derivative ethnonym velikorosiiany (Great Russians) first appear in Palinodiia (1622). See Oleg Nemenskii, “Voobrazhaemye soobshchestva v ‘Palinodii' Zakharii Kopysten- skogo i ‘Oborone unii' L'va Krevzy,” in Belorussiia i Ukraina. Istoriia i kul 'tura. Ezhegodnik 2005/2006 (Moscow, 2008), 52.

Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v lugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 3:456.

Ibid., 3:501.

Frank E. Sysyn, “The Image of Russia and Russian-Ukrainian Relations in Ukrainian Historiography of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Cen­turies,” in Culture, Nation and Identities. The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945) ed. Andreas Kappeler et al. (Edmonton-Toronto, 2003), 139, 140. For more on the perception of the Russian state in the historical narratives of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Sysyn, “The Image of Russia and Russian-Ukrainian Relations,” 108-43.

Ibid., 131, 141.

“Pakty i konstytutsii” Ukrains ’koi kozats ’koi derzhavy, comp. Myroslav Trofymchuk and Taras Chukhlib (Lviv, 2011), 81.

Vasyl' Kononenko, “Kazatsko-moskovskie otnosheniia v originale teksta ‘dogovorov i postanovlenii' 1710 g.,” Istoricheskii vestnik 16 (2016), 79-80.

For a more detailed discussion of the concept of the Little Russian identity, see Zenon E. Kohut, “The Question of Russo-Ukrainian Unity and Ukrainian Distinctiveness in Early Modern Ukrainian Thought and Culture,” in Culture, Nation and Identities. The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945) ed. Andreas Kappeler et al. (Edmonton-Toronto, 2003), 70, 72, 79-80, 85.

Natalia Iakovenko, “Braty/vorohy abo poliaky ochyma ukraintsia XVII-XVIII st.,” Nezalezhnyi Kul’turolohichnyi Chasopys T, no. 10 (1997): 157.

Ibid., 158-9.

Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii vXVII veke, 1:32, 81-2.

This description is borrowed from the title of Frank Sysyn's article, see his “The Nation of Cain: Poles in Samiilo Velychko's Skazannye” in Sinopsis.

A Collection of Essays in Honor of Zenon E. Kohut, ed. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton-Toronto, 2005), 447-54.

“Later, after many years had passed, in their settlements on the Vistula and beyond the Wisla, on the vast stretches of foreign lands where they spread and multiplied, being displeased by the abovementioned wrongs and plunder of people, they suddenly and unconscionably rose (like at one time Cain rose against Abel) against the Rus', or Sarmatians, their own (as we wrote above) natural brothers from long ago.” Velichko, Letopis' sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke, 1:81.

98 Iakovenko, “Braty/vorohy abo poliaky ochyma ukralntsia XVII-XVIII st.,” 164.

99 Ibid., 159.

100 During the period when the Cossack chronicles were written (end of seven­teenth to the beginning of the eighteenth centuries), official documents also contained the term “good-neighborly” as a description of the relations be­tween the Hetmanate and the Commonwealth. One example is the corre­spondence between the newly elected Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Crown Hetman Stanislaw Jablonowski. In Mazepa's letters, these relations are guar­anteed by “contiguous borders,” the terms of the Eternal Peace, as well as

“a common enemy of Christianity - the infidels” (Lysty Ivana Mazepy, comp. Viacheslav Stanislavs'kyi, vol. 1 (1687-1691) (Kyiv, 2002), 88; vol. 2 (1691-1700) (Kyiv, 2010), 625.

101 Volodymyr Rybyns'kyi, “Do istorii zhydiv na Livoberezhnii Ukralni v polovyni XVIII st.,” in Zbirnykprats’zhydivs'koi istoryko-arkheografichnoi komisii, vol. 1 (Kyiv, 1928): 1-97; Saul Ia. Borovoi, “Evrei v Zaporozhskoi Sechi,” in Evreiskie khronikiXVIIstoletiia (Epokha “khmel’nichiny”), ed. Saul Ia. Borovoi (Moscow, Jerusalem, 1997), 233-50.

102 Letopis' Grigoriia Grabianky, 32.

103 Zenon E. Kohut, “Povstannia Khmel'nyts'koho, obraz ievrelv, i formuvannia ukrains'kol istorychnol pamiati,” in idem. Korinnia identychnosty. Studii z rann’omodernoita modernoi istorii Ukrainy (Kyiv, 2004), 258.

104 Kohut, “Povstannia Khmel'nyts'koho,” 259-60; Frank E. Sysyn, “A Curse on Both Their Houses: Catholic Attitudes towards Jews and Eastern Orthodox during the Khmel'nyts'kyi Uprising in Father Ruszel's Fawor niebieski” in Israel and the Nations: Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger, ed. Shmuel Almog et al. (Jerusalem, 1987), ix-xxiv.

105 Litopys Samovydtsia, 60.

106 Kresin, “Ukralns'kyi khozaryzm,” 166-7.