Mazepa and the Great Northern War

The Period of Ruin in Ukrainian history, which ended in 1686 after the establish­ment of the so-called eternal peace between Muscovy and Poland, was followed by another quarter century in which Ukraine was for long periods of time the scene of foreign invasion, civil war, and political upheaval.

The quarter century from 1686 to 1711 was initially characterized by political stability, but then came the first stage of the Great Northern War. Looked at in another way, it was the final phase in the centuries-long struggle between Muscovy and Sweden for control of the Baltic Sea and the continuation of Muscovy’s strug­gle against the Ottoman Empire (and the latter’s Crimean allies) for access to the Black Sea. Caught between these monumental conflicts was Ukraine. The intensity of the military and political struggle during eastern Europe’s last “seventeenth­century crisis” was heightened by the presence of dynamic, young, and talented leaders who ruled two of the great powers in question, Charles XII of Sweden and Peter I of Muscovy. Their contemporary in Ukraine was Ivan Mazepa, himself an experienced and very capable leader who held the post of hetman from 1687 to 1709, and who, next to Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, was the most influential of Ukraine’s Cossack leaders. Because the quarter century before 1711 was a turning point in the history of eastern Europe, and because these three figures - Charles XII, Peter I, and Mazepa - played such a dominant role during these years, an enormous historical literature on each of them exists. Not surprisingly, there is great controversy about their personalities and careers.

The image of Mazepa

Mazepa was traditionally viewed by Russian historians of the imperial era (S.

In contrast, Soviet writers, whether Ukrainian or Russian, continued to propa­gate the traditional Russian imperial conception. In the multivolume Radians'ka entsyklopediia istorii Ukrainy (Soviet Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, 1971), the entry on Mazepa began with the terse and uncompromising identification “Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa (1644-1709), traitor of the Ukrainian people,”² and another multivolume work, Istoriia Ukrains’koiRSR (History of the Ukrainian SSR, 1979) referred to “Mazepa, whose name has gone down in history as a synonym of treachery and betrayal.”³ Such views defined the popular image of Mazepa in some Russian emigre circles as well as in Soviet society, whereby the hetman symbolized the treacherous desires of all those “evil forces” who wanted to separate from an “indivisible mother Russia,” whether a Soviet or a non-Soviet Russia.

Mazepa initially found little favor among Ukrainian historians as well, especially those of the populist school during the second half of the nineteenth century (M. Kostomarov, P. Kulish, O. Lazarevs’kyi, V. Antonovych), who considered him a trai­tor because he seemed to have acted primarily in the interests of the Cossack elite and not of the nation as a whole. Beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, other Ukrainian historians (M. Hrushevs’kyi, V. Lypyns’kyi, D. Doroshenko, B. Krupnyts’kyi, O. Ohloblyn) reassessed Mazepa. Although critical of certain policies, they nonetheless regarded him as a national patriot who, in response to harsh Muscovite rule and the overwhelming ravages of war, tried in the classic Cossack fashion to obtain independence for his homeland by concluding alliances with foreign powers other than Muscovy. For Ukrainian political activists in the twentieth century such as Dmytro Dontsov, Mazepa became the subject of uncritical panegyric, with the result that in the end he has been transformed by some historians (such as N. Polons’ka-Vasylenko) into “the symbol of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine.”⁴

It is interesting to note that already in the early nineteenth century Mazepa had become a hero for the Romantic movement in western and central Europe. The era’s most famous writers - Lord Byron in England, Victor Hugo in France, and Juliusz Slowacki in Poland - all composed poems about Mazepa, usually based on tales of real or imagined episodes in the life of the Ukrainian leader. Musicians were even more attracted to the Mazepa legend. Four operas were written entitled Mazepa, the most famous by Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1883; the other three by little- known composers in the Russian Empire, Boris Vietinghoff-Scheel, 1859, Adam Minchejmer, 1875, and the Spaniard Felipe Pedrell, 1881); a cantata for chorus, by the Irish composer Michael Balfe (1862); and a piano work by the German Johann Karl Loewe (1830).

The rise of Mazepa

Mazepa was born in 1639 in Bila Tserkva, on the Right Bank of the Kiev palati­nate. His father, Stepan-Adam, was among those Orthodox Rus’ gentry who hoped to improve their precarious status by joining the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising. After 1654, Stepan Mazepa became commander of the Cossack forces in Bila Tserkva and subsequently remained in the service of Poland. Ivan’s mother, Maryna, nee Mokiievs’ka, was a descendant of an old Rus’ noble family who later in life became a cultural and religious activist in her own right. The young Ivan received a solid education on the Jesuit Latin model at the Mohyla Collegium in Kiev, and in 1649, at the height of the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising, he was sent to the Jesuit College in Warsaw, where after a time he came to the attention of Poland’s new king, Jan Kazimierz. The king was interested in creating a circle of young pro-Polish Ortho­dox Ukrainians, and Mazepa soon became his page, or gentleman-in-waiting. The king even paid for the young courtier’s travel and education in Holland between 1656 and 1659, during which time he visited Germany, Italy, and France. When he returned from western Europe, Mazepa entered the service of the king, who sent him on diplomatic missions to the Cossacks. This stage of his career lasted until 1663, when, in consequence of court intrigue and some amorous misadventures (the latter were particularly developed by the nineteenth-century Romantic writ­ers and librettists), Mazepa returned home to Bila Tserkva.

In 1669, Mazepa entered the service of Petro Doroshenko, the Right Bank het­man who, with the aid of the Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tatars, was trying to reunite the divided Cossack Ukraine. Mazepa rose rapidly through the ranks and became general aide-de-camp (heneral’nyi osaul) in Doroshenko’s Cabinet Gen­eral. In 1674, Mazepa was sent on a mission to the Crimea, but he was captured en route by the Zaporozhian Cossacks (who at the time were pro-Muscovite and fiercely anti-Crimean). He was imprisoned by the Zaporozhians and eventually sent to Moscow. His imprisonment did not last long, however, since he managed to find his way into the good graces of the Muscovite government - revealing to them all the pro-Ottoman and pro-Crimean plans of Hetman Doroshenko in the proc­ess. Convinced that Mazepa could be of use to them, the Muscovites sent him back to Ukraine, but this time to the Muscovite-controlled Left Bank and in the service of that region’s hetman, Ivan Samoilovych. Again, the capable Mazepa rose rapidly and, in 1682, became general aide-de-camp in the hetman’s Cabinet General.

The next stage in Mazepa’s career was determined by Muscovite foreign policy. Having concluded the “eternal peace” with Poland in 1686, Muscovy decided to eliminate the Crimean menace (the Tatars had participated in Doroshenko’s anti­Muscovite ventures) once and for all. An anti-Turkish “Holy Alliance” was struck between Austria, Poland, the Papacy, Venice, and Muscovy. The Muscovite govern­ment, led by Sophia (as regent 1682-1689), decided to take action first. In early 1687 Sophia dispatched southward an enormous army of 100,000 men led by Prince Golitsyn. Golitsyn’s forces were to be joined by 50,000 Cossacks and were to strike at the heart of the Crimea. Hetman Samoilovych opposed the plan and only reluctantly went along. The hetman’s premonitions were on the mark, however, and the ill-planned military venture ended in a fiasco. But to avoid total disgrace Prince Golitsyn, the favorite of regent Sophia, found - probably with the connivance of Mazepa - a scapegoat in Hetman Samoilovych.

As part of the new hetman’s confirmation, the prerogatives of the Muscovite government and the traditional privileges of the Cossacks were reaffirmed. The governmental prerogatives included Cossack recognition of the supremacy of the tsar, Cossack agreement not to conduct foreign affairs, and a limitation of 30,000 on the number of registered Cossacks. Among the traditional Cossack privileges were exemption from having to pay taxes, reaffirmation of the right to retain exist­ing landholdings, and restrictions on the power of the Muscovite governors (with their garrisons in Kiev, Chernihiv, Pereiaslav, Nizhyn, and Oster) to interfere in local affairs. Also, the hetman’s residence was to remain in Baturyn.

Mazepa as hetman,: The early phase

The first thirteen years of Mazepa’s rule, from 1687 to 1700, were characterized by a marked degree of stabilization in the Hetmanate. It was also a period that witnessed a flowering of culture and an improvement in the economic and legal status of the Orthodox Church (see chapter 21). Mazepa began his career as het­man with no real local power base, however, and was viewed by the established Cossack starshyna (officer elite) as an upstart and foreigner from Poland. But he was a master of political intrigue, and before long he was able to create a small coterie of staunch supporters. These consisted mainly of members of the Cossack starshyna and of Orthodox church hierarchs, whom he enriched by making them large land grants. Himself a member of the gentry, Mazepa protected the interests of his social estate by suppressing the peasant and rank-and-file Cossack revolts which broke out at the beginning of his rule and by reinforcing laws which fixed the number of days (at two) that manorial peasants were required to work for their landlords, whether hereditary Cossack gentry or Orthodox monasteries.

Mazepa was helped in his struggles for power by Muscovy. While he was in Mos­cow on an official visit in August 1689, a palace revolution took place in which the regent Sophia was deposed and replaced by her younger half-brother and rival, Peter I (reigned 1689-1725), who came to be known in Russian and Western writ­ings as Peter the Great. Although he had been a supporter of Sophia and her advis­ers, the adept Mazepa quickly befriended Peter, who developed a strong liking for and trust in the older Cossack hetman. Mazepa continued to enjoy the confidence of the new tsar, with the result that in the years following, when political rivals in the Hetmanate made use of the Cossack privilege (which had become common practice) of sending denunciations against the hetman directly to the tsar, Peter rejected all their attacks outright. For his part, Mazepa served Peter faithfully in his anti-Ottoman wars, and the tsar reciprocated with a steadfast loyalty and friend­ship as well as with lavish gifts and land grants. With such help from the highest quarters, Mazepa was able to survive all attempts by his Cossack rivals to unseat him. At least until 1700, the relations between Mazepa and Peter I were as good as relations had ever been between a hetman and a tsar.

Aside from having no local power base, Mazepa faced a source of anti-hetman activity in the Zaporozhian Sich. In theory, Zaporozhia was dependent on both the hetman and the tsar, but juridically it was beyond the territorial administration of the Hetmanate, and in practice it followed its own autonomous policy. After the death of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi in 1657, the sich was generally opposed to the hetmans, whether those on the Right or those on the Left Bank. As had been the case since at least the beginning of the seventeenth century, the hetman and his registered Cossack entourage were suspected of fostering their own aristocratic ambitions at the expense of the rank-and-file Cossacks in Zaporozhia. Moreover, the sich remained an implacable foe of Poland and any notion of renewed Polish rule in Ukraine, an idea favored by some of Khmel’nyts’kyi’s successors. Zaporo- zhia, therefore, nominally remained in the pro-Muscovite camp.

Zaporozhia’s pro-Muscovite policy began to fade, however, as a result of Mos­cow’s anti-Crimean campaigns. It may seem paradoxical, but the Zaporozhian Cos­sacks, who had come into existence because of the need for protection against Crimean Tatar raids, were now beginning to be dissatisfied with Muscovy’s con­certed efforts to destroy their “enemy” in the Crimea. Looked at another way, the “Tatar threat” was in itself a justification for the Cossacks’ existence. If there were no more threat, then Muscovy would have no more need of its Zaporozhian fron­tier defenders. In this sense, the underdeveloped steppe, with potentially lucrative booty in the Crimea just to the south, was something the Cossacks of Zaporozhia wanted to preserve. For this reason, the Zaporozhians did not take part in Mus­covy’s abortive campaign against the Crimean Khanate in 1687, or in a similar campaign with similar results led by Prince Golitsyn two years later, in 1689.

The Zaporozhians did not trust Hetman Mazepa. In particular, they opposed his participation in Muscovy’s anti-Crimean campaigns and his policy of settling refu­gees from the Right Bank on Zaporozhian territory (near the Oril’ and Samara Rivers). Motivated by their distrust, in 1692 the Zaporozhians revolted. They were led by a Cossack named Petro Ivanenko, or Petryk, a figure otherwise little known to historians. Petryk declared himself the true hetman, signed an alliance with the Crimean Tatars, and proclaimed his intention to liberate the Hetmanate and Slo- boda Ukraine by establishing an independent state in alliance with the Tatars. In 1692 and again in 1693, Petryk led a combined Zaporozhian and Crimean Tatar force into Hetmanate territory. Although he was rebuffed by Mazepa, he tried twice more (1694 and 1696), albeit without success, to foment anti-Hetmanate revolts among the populace. The Petryk revolts reveal the degree to which Cos­sack society in Ukraine remained deeply divided even under Muscovite hegemony.

Muscovy moved next in its effort to subdue the Tatars and to gain access to the Black and Azov Seas in 1695. This time, the Zaporozhians participated with Maz­epa and the Muscovites in an attack on the powerful Ottoman fortress of Azaq/ Azov, at the mouth of the Don River. After an initial defeat, they took the fortress in 1696. Four more years of war followed, with the Cossacks renewing their sea raids on Ottoman and Crimean towns along the Black Sea until a thirty-year truce was finally signed in Constantinople between Muscovy and the Ottoman Empire in 1700. As a result of this treaty, Muscovy gained access to the Sea of Azov and Black Sea, and each side agreed to dismantle its fortresses along the lower Dnieper River. Tsar Peter was now free to turn to Muscovy’s other historical goal, the Baltic Sea.

The dynamic Peter was the first tsar to travel to western Europe, and he was par­ticularly fascinated by what he saw in Holland and England. He was determined to bring Western ways to the antiquated Muscovite governmental and social structure. He also saw Western technology as a means of modernizing the Muscovite army and fulfilling his other dream, military conquest. The Baltic Sea became Peter’s symbolic “window to the West,” and to make clear his orientation he planned to build a new capital for Muscovy on the marshes of the Neva River near where it flows into the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea.

First, however, Peter had to wrest control of the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea from Sweden. In order to do so, he forged new diplomatic alliances with Sweden’s traditional enemies, Denmark and Poland. (The second alliance was actually with August of Saxony, who recently had been elected king of Poland and who prom­ised to involve Poland on Muscovy’s side if that should be necessary.) Accordingly, by 1700 all sides were preparing for the outbreak of what was to be called the Great Northern War.

Mazepa during the Great Northern War

Notwithstanding the impressive diplomatic and military alliance he had forged, Peter soon discovered that he had a formidable foe in the eighteen-year-old King Charles XII of Sweden (reigned 1697-1718). In 1700, the first year of hostilities, Charles defeated the armies of Denmark and Muscovy at the Battle of Narva, near Russia’s present-day border with Estonia. Charles then proceeded southwestward toward Poland, and by 1702 he had captured Warsaw and Cracow. Many Polish nobles gave their support to Charles, and Sweden proposed its own candidate, Stanislaw Leszczyn ski, as king of Poland. Poland was thus divided between support­ers of King August of Saxony and supporters of Sweden’s ally, Leszczynski. It was at this point that Ivan Mazepa was drawn directly into the conflict.

Fearing that his ally, August, would be completely overwhelmed by Swedish forces and Polish Leszczynski supporters, Tsar Peter needed to act quickly. He desperately wanted to preserve the existence of an anti-Swedish Polish kingdom, and to this end in 1704 he ordered Mazepa to cross over into the Right Bank and to give support to the beleaguered King August of Poland. Mazepa promptly com­plied and led a Cossack army as far west as Poland’s Ukrainian-inhabited palatinate of Belz. But Charles XII maintained the upper hand in western Ukrainian lands where the heavily fortified city of L’viv, in Galicia, fell to Swedish forces in Septem­ber 1704. Mazepa was, however, able to hold on to the Right Bank palatinates of Kiev and Bratslav, where from 1705 a Cossack administrative stucture was set up. In effect, Ukrainian territory much as it had been under Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, was reunited. The local Cossacks in the Right Bank welcomed the fact that Maz­epa had driven out the Poles, although Tsar Peter now expected the region to be returned to his Polish ally, King August.

Mazepa had other plans, however. Since the outbreak of the Great Northern War in 1700, Ukraine’s dependence on Muscovy had cost Ukraine dearly. More than 40,000 Cossacks had been sent into battle, and the annual casualty rates in some regiments were as high as 60 or 70 percent. Moreover, the Cossacks had had to serve primarily in regions far from their homeland or to engage in building fortifications or in other supportive and, in their eyes, militarily demeaning tasks for the Muscovite army and government. Most deeply resented was their having had to participate in the construction of the new imperial capital of St Petersburg, during which hundreds of Cossacks perished in the swamps and low-lying regions near the Gulf of Finland. The Cossacks were also apprehensive of Peter’s plans to reorganize them and to send them to Prussia for training as foot soldiers (dra­goons). Finally, the civilian population of Ukraine was deeply discontent. Between 1705 and 1708, both the hetman and the tsar received numerous complaints from peasants and town dwellers about the abusive conduct of Muscovite troops sta­tioned on Ukrainian territory. All these factors contributed to an atmosphere in which Mazepa and some of his closest advisers began to have serious doubts about the advantages of being an ally of Muscovy, especially when so strong a power as Sweden’s Charles XII seemed to be the dominant force in eastern Europe.

In 1705, when Mazepa and was setting up a Cossack administration on the Right Bank, the Ukrainian hetman was contacted by supporters of the pro-Swedish candidate for the Polish throne, Stanislaw Leszczyn ski. At first Mazepa rejected the approach, but a year later he was more receptive. Nothing specific was agreed upon, but as time passed it seemed to Mazepa that Ukraine, which had suffered as a result of Tsar Peter’s military ventures, might best be served by an alliance with Poland and, in particular, with its Swedish protectors. Mazepa seemed to be fol­lowing in the footsteps of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, who during the early 1650s had tried to forge a Cossack alliance with Protestant countries in which Sweden would play a leading role. Again, no firm decisions were reached. Mazepa’s negotiations were kept secret, and certainly no plans were made for an uprising against Mus­covy. Mazepa remained Peter’s faithful servant. External events, however, forced Mazepa to reconsider his position.

Having decisively defeated August of Saxony in 1706, and having installed the pro-Swedish King Stanislaw I Leszczynski (reigned 1706-1709) on the Polish throne, Charles XII led a force of 50,000 men eastward toward Moscow in early 1708. At the same time, rumors spread that Charles’s Polish ally King Stanislaw was about to attack Left Bank Ukraine. Mazepa turned to Peter, requesting Mus­covite troops to help in the Cossack defense. Peter refused, however, claiming he had no forces to spare. In the context of other complaints against the Muscovites, this refusal seemed to Mazepa a breach of the Pereiaslav accord. At that moment, in the summer of 1708, Charles XII himself suddenly turned southward toward Ukraine in order to rest and to strengthen his army as the first step in a planned sweep around the right flank of the Muscovite army. In response, Peter dispatched Muscovite troops under Prince Aleksandr Menshikov to intercept the Swedes, and ordered Mazepa to attack the invaders. Mazepa was now faced with a dilemma: obey the tsar’s orders as he had done so many times in the past, or join Charles in the hope that a Cossack-Swedish alliance might bring eventual peace and politi­cal advantages to Ukraine. After delaying several weeks in a desperate attempt to put off the inevitable, Mazepa finally made his decision in October 1708. With fewer than 4,000 Cossacks, he defected to the Swedes. In return for the hetman’s support and a Cossack uprising against Muscovy, Sweden, which Mazepa thought soon to be the undisputed power in eastern as well as northern Europe, would guarantee the independence of a Cossack Ukraine on both banks of the Dnieper River. Both these hopes turned out to be illusions. Mazepa had made no plans for a popular uprising, and none occurred.

When Peter learned of Mazepa’s defection, he was shocked, disbelieving that the seventy-year-old hetman to whom he had remained loyal despite frequent denun­ciations from Ukraine (one had been brought to him from the Hetmanate’s gen­eraljudge, Vasyl’ Kochubei, and the colonel of the Poltava regiment, Ivan Iskra, as recently as 1708) would turn on him. But finally the tsar had to believe the truth. His retribution was swift. He ordered the advancing Muscovite army under Prince Menshikov to take the hetman’s capital, Baturyn. On 2 November 1708 Baturyn fell to the Muscovite troops, and for the next three days all Cossack government buildings were ransacked and destroyed. The inhabitants fared no better and, as recent archeological excavations have revealed, between 13,000 and 15,000 men and women (including the elderly and children) were massacred. Many bodies were summarily thrown into the Seim River whose waters ran blood red for several days. The object was to erase all memory of Baturyn as the center of Cossackdom.

The Muscovite authorities designated the town of Hlukhiv as the new Cossack capital, and it was there that they arranged for the election of a new hetman, Ivan Skoropads’kyi. Tsar Peter I himself arrived in Hlukhiv, where he participated in cer­emonies to show present and future generations what fate awaited “traitors” to the Muscovite state. On 5 November 1708, an effigy of Mazepa was hung in the pub­lic square and the hetman’s name was thrice declared an anathema in Orthodox Church services held simultaneously in Hlukhiv and Moscow. As for supporters of Mazepa who could be found, a special court was established in Lebedyn, where over 900 Cossack officers were tortured, found guilty, and executed. During this night­mare, several Cossacks turned informer and were richly rewarded for their services.

Meanwhile, Mazepa and his followers in the Swedish camp were joined by an unexpected ally, the Zaporozhian Cossacks led by Kost’ Hordiienko. Hordiienko had become disillusioned with Muscovy’s anti-Tatar policies and now accepted the

Mazepa’s Defection

In a sense, the decision taken by Ivan Mazepa in October 1708 to form an alliance with the Swedish king was just another example of Cossack actions following the 1654 agreement of Pereiaslav. Was that agreement, and the sub­sequent revisions, an indication of permanent Cossack subordination to the rule of the Muscovite tsars? Or was it a political contract that could be broken if either of the parties did not fulfill its contractual obligations? Mazepa justified his action with the following explanation, as subsequently related by his suc­cessor and protege, Pylyp Orlyk.

After returning to Baturyn with the Swedish King, I intended to write a letter to his Tsarist Majesty expressing our gratefulness and listing all our previous and current grievances: the privileges that had been curtailed and the impending destruction that faced the entire population. In conclusion, [I intended] to declare that we, hav­ing voluntarily acquiesced to the authority of his Tsarist Majesty for the sake of the unified Eastern Faith, now, being a free people, we wish to withdraw, with expres­sions of our gratitude for the Tsar’s protection and not wishing to raise our hands in the shedding of Christian blood. We will look forward, under the protection of the Swedish King, to our complete liberation.

Commenting on Mazepa’s decision, the Ukrainian-Canadian historian Orest Subtelny writes:

Mazepa’s line of argument is striking in how often certain phrases and ideas are repeated and stressed: rights and privileges; overlordship freely chosen and open to recall; and protection, always the issue of protection. For anyone with an acquaint­ance with medieval political theory, these concepts strike a familiar note. They are the components of the contractual principle, European feudalism’s most common regulator of the political relations between sovereigns and regional elites....

The contractual arrangement was an act of mutual obligation. The vassal prom­ised his lord obedience, service, and loyalty in return for the latter’s protection and respect for the vassal’s privileges and the traditions of his land. If the vassal had good reason to believe that his lord was breaking his obligations, he had the right - the famous ius resistendi - to rise against him to protect his interests. Thus, in theory, the lord as well as the vassal could be guilty of disloyalty. Throughout Europe, the contractual principle rested on the prevailing cornerstone of legal and moral author­ity - custom. The German Schwabenspiegel, one of the primary sources for customary law in East Central Europe, provided a concise summary of the principle: ‘We should serve our sovereigns because they protect us, but if they will no longer defend us, then we owe them no more service.’ Mazepa’s position could not have been stated more succinctly.

source: Orest Subtelny, “Mazepa, Peter I, and the Question of Treason,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, II, 2 (Cambridge, Mass. 1978), pp. 170-171.

idea of the Swedish alliance. In the spring of 1709, about 8,000 Zaporozhian Cos­sacks agreed to fight alongside the Swedish army. In their absence, however, a Muscovite army attacked their stronghold, the Stara Sich, and destroyed it.

Despite military defeats at the hands of the Muscovite army during the winter of 1708-1709, Charles XII decided to take the initiative and to advance toward Mos­cow indirectly via Ukraine (see map 21). In May 1709, the Swedish army under Charles XII, with Mazepa and his Zaporozhian Cossack allies (a total force of 22,000 to 28,000), reached the city of Poltava, on the Left Bank. They were met on 8 July by a Muscovite army which with its Cossack allies numbered 40,000. Commanded by Tsar Peter I himself, the Muscovite forces won a resounding victory. Although all the leading Swedish generals and officers were captured, Charles XII and Mazepa managed to escape and make their way to the Ottoman Empire. Even though hos­tilities were to continue along the Baltic Sea coast, the Battle of Poltava in July 1709 proved an important turning point. Sweden’s heretofore dominant role in eastern and central Europe, especially its influence in Poland, was coming to an end. Swe­den’s place was taken by the tsardom of Muscovy, which under its powerful ruler Peter I would soon be renamed the Russian Empire.

Mazepa and Ukraine after Poltava

The epilogue to Poltava was disastrous for Ukraine. Those Cossack officers who had previously supported Mazepa but had denounced him in an effort to gain favor with the tsar were now stripped of their recently won rewards, tried for high treason, and executed. Cossack autonomy in the Hetmanate was substantially reduced, and the new hetman, Ivan Skoropads’kyi, became a puppet in the hands of Muscovite officials stationed in Hlukhiv to keep watch over him.

Two months after the Battle of Poltava Mazepa died in exile in Bendery, an Ottoman-ruled town along the lower Dniester River. The Cossacks who were with him, however, continued their struggle. Based in Bendery, they formed what might be considered the first Ukrainian political emigration. They chose a successor to Mazepa, Pylyp Orlyk, who formulated a political program as part of a treaty with the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Orlyk’s program contained a constitution for a pro­posed independent Ukrainian state. In 1711, the exiled hetman signed a treaty of alliance with the Crimean Tatars, and he managed to negotiate an agreement with the Ottoman Empire which recognized his authority over Right Bank Ukraine and Zaporozhia. That same year Orlyk led the first of several campaigns against Musco­vite forces in the Right Bank, although he failed to obtain the support of the local inhabitants, largely because of the pillaging and enslavement of civilians carried out by his Crimean Tatar allies. After the defeat of Orlyk’s last campaign in 1714, he went permanently into exile.

Tsar Peter I was worried by Orlyk’s incursions into the Polish-controlled Right Bank and, in particular, by an Ottoman declaration of war against Muscovy, prompt­ed by diplomatic activity in Istanbul on the part of Charles XII. In response, Peter led a Muscovite army in an attack on the Ottoman Empire. Along the way, his troops occupied the Right Bank and scattered what remained of Hetman Orlyk’s forces. By July 1711, the Muscovite forces were deep into the Ottoman principality of Moldavia, where they hoped to obtain help from the local Orthodox popula­tion. This time Peter went too far, however, and his Muscovite forces were resound- ly defeated by the Ottoman Turks along the lower Prut River.

Thus, two years after his triumph at Poltava, Peter experienced a major setback at the hands of the Ottomans. As a result, Muscovy was forced to surrender the fortress at Azov as well as other territory along the northern shore of the Sea of Azov which it had fought so hard to acquire during the last decades of the seven­teenth century. Muscovy also had to remove its forces from the Right Bank and to renounce any claim to that region of Ukraine which was to remain part of Poland. In the wake of this reassertion of Ottoman power, the remaining Zaporozhian Cos­sacks from Orlyk’s army accepted protection from the Ottoman Empire and estab­lished a new sich at Oleshky, near the mouth of the Dnieper River (see map 17).

In a sense, the years between 1687 and 1711, dominated in eastern Europe by the figures of Charles XII of Sweden and Peter I of Muscovy and in Ukraine by that of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, were an extension of the Period of Ruin that had racked the country after the death of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi in 1657. From the very beginning of Mazepa’s tenure as hetman, his Cossack armies had been called on to participate in Muscovy’s wars against the Ottoman Empire in the south and against Sweden in the north. Only at the very end did Mazepa abandon his alliance with the tsar in return for a vaguely conceived independence under a Swedish pro­tectorate. Mazepa’s decision came too late and without preparation. In the end, its only result was to divide Ukrainian society even further, to make it more depend­ent than ever on Muscovy, and to hasten what turned out to be the dissolution of Cossack autonomy.