Muscovy and the Agreement of Pereiaslau

Khmel’nyts’kyi’s efforts to create an international coalition of the Cossacks, the Ottoman Empire, and its vassal states directed against Poland had failed. The ongo­ing military conflict with Poland moreover, had reached a stalemate.

Muscovy was only one, and initially not the most important, of the several northern Rus’ lands which followed a separate historical development after the transformation of Kievan Rus’ in the thirteenth century. At that time, Muscovy was a principality within the Grand Duchy of Vladimir-Suzdal’, which, alongside Novgorod, was the most powerful center in northern Rus’. From their capital city, Vladimir-na-Kliazma, the rulers of Vladimir-Suzdal’ claimed they were the succes­sors of the grand princes of Kievan Rus’. It was also to Vladimir-na-Kliazma that the head of the Orthodox Rus’ Church, the metropolitan of Kiev, went after the Mongol invasion, and eventually, in 1299, he transferred his residence there. But any possibility of the northern Rus’ lands’ being united under the leadership of Vladimir-na-Kliazma or any other city was thwarted by the Mongols of the Golden Horde.

The rise of Muscovy

It was precisely during the period of greatest Mongol political influence in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the various principalities within the Grand Duchy of Vladimir-Suzdal’ (Rostov, Suzdal’, Tver’, and others) increasingly asserted their independence. Among them was Muscovy, which also proved the most deferential to Mongol rule. As a result, Muscovy was granted certain favors by the Golden Horde. In the fifteenth century, at the end of which the Golden Horde had itself broken up into three khanates (the Crimean, the Astrakhan’, and the Kazan’), the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, led by a series of talented and able rulers, took the opportunity to begin uniting the northern Rus’ lands. This process was largely completed during the reign of Grand Duke Ivan III (reigned 1462-1505) at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is important to note that Ivan III considered as part of his goal to gather together not only the northern, or eth­nic Russian, territories of former Kievan Rus’, but also the ethnic Belarusan and Ukrainian territories. Muscovy, however, was not yet completely independent of the Kazan’ and Astrakhan’ Tatar khanates along its eastern and southeastern bor­ders, which claimed the tribute formerly paid to the Golden Horde. Particularly problematic throughout much of the sixteenth century were the Crimean Tatars, who mounted major attacks against Muscovite lands on an almost annual basis in an effort to extort more tribute as well as take prisoners for their slave trade. Nor was Muscovy a match for the powerful Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which firmly controlled the Rus’ (Belarusan and Ukrainian) lands in the west and south.

The Grand Duchy of Muscovy consequently had for the moment to be content with control only over the northern Rus’ lands.

Beginning in 1448, the metropolitans in Moscow were elected without the approval of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople. Ecclesiastical circles also made possible the revival of chronicle writing in Muscovy and other northern Rus’ lands, in which scribes composed new texts and “improved” the old with the object of having all such accounts support the dynastic claims of the Muscovite princes that they were descended from Riuryk and his Kievan successors Volodymyr the Great and Iaroslav the Wise. Finally, under Ivan III’s successor, Vasilii III (reigned 1505-1533), the idea of Moscow as the Second Kiev was enhanced by the use of an even more prestigious epithet whereby Moscow became the “Third Rome.” Thus, by the beginning of the sixteenth century, Muscovy had all the ideological symbols necessary for implementing its claim to be the political successor of Kievan Rus’, the inheritor of the Orthodox mantle from Byzantium (which had fallen in 1453), and therefore the rightful ruler of all the East Slavs who inhabited the Rus’ patri­mony - Russians, Belarusans, and Ukrainians.

But much still had to be accomplished in the realm of politics.

With his eastern flank secured, the aggressive tsar was able to turn his attention to the west. There the results were mixed. Although in 1558 the Muscovites were finally able to break the power of the Livonian Knights (the last of the Teutonic military orders to survive along the Baltic Sea in what is present-day Latvia and Esto­nia), that achievement created a power vacuum into which Sweden and Lithuania entered. The consequence was almost a quarter century of costly wars between these two powers as well as against Muscovy for control of Livonia. It was also during these struggles that the borderland between Muscovy and Lithuania - the regions around Smolensk, Starodub, and Chernihiv - changed hands several times. And it was this Muscovite threat to Lithuania’s eastern borders that encouraged the grand duchy to draw closer to Poland and to agree to the Union of Lublin in 1569.

Such foreign military campaigns were extremely costly to Muscovy, and at the time of Ivan IV’s death in 1584 the tsardom was in a shambles. The limited success of Ivan’s foreign ventures was matched by the disastrous results of his domestic policies. These policies were directed at weakening the power of the boyars, the wealthy magnates who had ruled Muscovy during his youth.

Muscovy, Poland, and Ukraine

It was during Muscovy’s Time of Troubles that Poland, strengthened after its uni­fication with Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, came to play a dominant role in Muscovite politics. Polish-Lithuanian armies invaded Muscovy several times at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Poles sup­ported a pretender to the Muscovite throne (the so-called False Dmitrii), and after 1608 Poland’s king put forth his own son, the future Wladyslaw IV, as a candidate for tsar. With the help of the Zaporozhian Cossacks under Hetman Sahaidachnyi, the Poles occupied Moscow on several occasions. Although Polish forces were finally driven out in 1612, Wladyslaw IV, who was indeed elected king of Poland in 1632, continued for the next few years to claim the Muscovite throne.

In 1613, Muscovy’s Time of Troubles came to an end with the election of a new tsar, Mikhail Romanov (reigned 1613-1645). He became the founder of a new dynasty, the Romanovs, who were to rule Muscovy and later the Russian Empire until 1917. Tsar Mikhail and his successor, Aleksei (reigned 1645-1676), succeed­ed in restoring order within the Muscovite tsardom. It was also during their long reigns that the basis of the modern Russian state evolved.

Accordingly, by the mid-seventeenth century the two states which had come to control most of eastern Europe - Poland and Muscovy - had completely differ­ent political structures. Whereas in Poland the authority of the elected king was circumscribed by the Polish nobility (magnates and gentry) through the central diet (sejm) and local dietines (sejmiki), and whereas in the countryside the resident magnates and gentry ran their properties as autonomous entities with almost no interference from a central government, in Muscovy the boyars (magnates) had lost their political prerogatives to a hereditary tsar who ruled the country through an increasingly complex bureaucratic system in which, correspondingly, it became more and more difficult to act without the approval of the central government.

In one respect, Poland and Muscovy were similar. Both came to establish socio­economic and judicial systems that transformed their respective peasant popula­tions into serfs. In Muscovy, that process began in the late fifteenth century and was complete by the mid-seventeenth century. In 1649, a new law code (the Ulo- zhenie) outlined fully all aspects of the service state, in which the primary function of each individual was service to the state. The code, which remained the basis of Russian law until as late as 1833, legalized serfdom and bound the peasants to the land. Land was often awarded to the Orthodox Church or to individuals within the military or civil service, and the serfs attached to land that became their property were forbidden to leave it.

It was during the Time of Troubles (1605-1613) that Ukrainians increased their contacts with Muscovy. Registered Cossacks who served in the Polish army participated in Poland’s numerous invasions of Muscovite territory, which thus became a source of booty. Before long, however, Muscovy became for Ukrainians not simply a place to raid, but a source of aid. This was particularly the case with regard to religious affairs.

As a result of the Union of Brest in 1595, the Orthodox Church was outlawed in Poland-Lithuania. Although the church managed to survive in that country’s Ukrainian- and Belarusan-inhabited lands, thanks to the dedication of a few Rus’ magnates, the brotherhood movement, the monasteries, and the political pres­sure of the Cossacks, its situation remained precarious. This continued to be true even after 1632, when the Orthodox hierarchy was finally permitted to function legally once again. Consequently, during the decades following the Union of Brest the beleaguered Orthodox Church in Poland sought help from other Orthodox states, in particular Muscovy.

By the 1620s, Ukrainian monasteries were making frequent requests to the Orthodox tsar in Moscow for money to build churches or to purchase vestments. Then, beginning in 1623 and each year thereafter, Ukrainian monks arrived in Putivl’, Okhtyrka, and other towns along the Polish-Muscovite border begging the tsar to allow them to come to Muscovy in order to practice “the Christian [Orthodox] faith, which the Poles want to suppress.”¹ At the same time, Ortho­dox hierarchs like Metropolitan lov Borets’kyi of Kiev and Bishop Isaia Kopyns’kyi of Przemysl, both secretly consecrated in 1620 but not recognized by the Polish government, sent messages or traveled personally to Muscovy, asking the tsar to take their land and its inhabitants under his “mighty hand.” Even after the Ortho­dox Church hierarchy of Poland-Lithuania was legalized in 1632, traditionalist hierarchs continued to express pro-Muscovite attitudes, especially as they were in opposition to the pro-Polish and Latin-oriented policies of the new Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev, Petro Mohyla.

Finally, large numbers of peasants and discontented Cossacks sought refuge by fleeing to Muscovy. Even before the outbreak of the revolution, in the decade between 1638 and 1648, as many as 20,000 people emigrated from the Left Bank to Sloboda Ukraine, the free-settlement frontierjust north of what is today Kharkiv and the Russian-Ukrainian border (see map 22). The migrants went east for sev­eral reasons. They were fleeing the spread of Poland’s expanding manorial sys­tem, or they were refugees from the Cossack uprisings, the most recent being the unsuccessful ones in 1637 and 1638. Also, in general they hoped to find greater psychological and physical security under tsarist rule.

Precisely what kind of psychological and physical security? First, the Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusans of Poland-Lithuania would no longer be discriminat­ed against or persecuted for their religion under tsarist rule. Second, Muscovy offered greater protection against Tatar raids, which, despite the existence of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, still took their annual toll of the Ukrainian population. The Polish response to the Tatar threat was to build fortified centers near the edge of the steppe zone, staffed, usually, with registered Cossacks. The Tatars naturally could and did ride around these centers. In contrast, the Muscovites, beginning in the late sixteenth century, built a series of fortified lines or abatis (zasechnaia cherta) consisting of felled tree trunks and palisades of sharply pointed logs inter­spersed with wooden blockhouses, some of which developed into fortified towns. These lines were built progressively farther southward and eastward until a major defense system known as the Belgorod Line had been constructed, between 1635 and 1651. The Belgorod Line ran for more than 480 miles (770 kilometers) from Okhtyrka, near the Polish border, straight across Sloboda Ukraine through Belgorod and on to Voronezh, farther northeast (see maps 18 and 22). Along this line twenty cities were founded between 1637 and 1647, half of them in Sloboda Ukraine. An extension known as the Ukrainian, or Izium Line was built from the bend in the Donets’ River near the fortress town of Izium westward to the Dnieper River. Behind these lines emigrants from Ukraine sought refuge. Thus, Ortho­dox inclinations and migrational patterns revealed that a pro-Muscovite attitude among Ukrainians had existed long before Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi ever came on the scene.

Khmel’nyts’kyi and Pereiaslav

Khmel’nyts’kyi himself had become part of this pro-Muscovite trend. Despite his victories in May 1648 over the Polish armies at Zhovti Vody and Korsun’, the Cos­sack hetman remained concerned that the conflict with Poland was not yet over. Hence, between June 1648 and May 1649 he addressed seven letters to Muscovy asking for military assistance, offering Cossack services to the tsar, and expressing the hope that at the very least the Muscovite army would not attack his Tatar allies. At that very moment, however, the tsar was incapable of action, since Moscow itself was facing a serious revolt that was to last through the summer and early fall of 1648. Moreover, the nineteen-year-old, still politically weak Tsar Aleksei was reluc­tant to antagonize Poland, which he would certainly do if a Muscovite-Zaporozhi- an alliance were concluded.

While it is true that at the beginning of the seventeenth century Muscovy had succeeded in reestablishing internal order after the Time of Troubles, in foreign affairs the tsardom remained on the defensive, especially vis-à-vis Polish military might. For instance, as late as 1634, Polish kings still laid claim to the Musco­vite throne, and after military campaigns in 1618 and again in 1633-34 Muscovy was forced to give up to its western rival territories around Smolensk and Severia (including Starodub and Chernihiv). Faced with a renewal of Nogay Tatar raids from the south and a potential Swedish invasion of Livonia, along the Baltic Sea, Muscovy did not feel it could afford to alienate Poland. Thus, Tsar Aleksei’s refusal of Khmel’nyts’kyi’s requests in 1648-49 was understandable.

Khmel’nyts’kyi’s victories during the next two years, however, revealed that Poland’s armies were not invincible after all. Consequently, when the Cossack lead­er, having exhausted his Balkan and Ottoman foreign policy ventures, turned to Tsar Aleksei on numerous occasions between 1652 and 1653, much had changed. The Russian Orthodox Church, led by its new and enterprising patriarch Nikon (reigned 1652-1666), was anxious to reform itself by using the intellectual tal­ents of Rus’ churchmen trained in Mohyla’s Collegium at Kiev. Nikon, who was the tsar’s closest adviser on Ukrainian matters, urged the Muscovite government to support the Cossacks’ requests. It is not surprising, therefore, that it was the Russian Orthodox patriarch who was serving as the mediator when in April 1653 Khmel’nyts’kyi’s envoys asked the tsar to extend his protection over the Cossacks. Finally, in June of that year, Tsar Aleksei agreed to accept the Zaporozhian hetman and his Cossacks “under the tsarist majesty’s high arm.”

As a result of this decision, Muscovite ambassadors were dispatched in late December 1653 to meet with Khmel’nyts’kyi. The meeting place chosen was the town of Pereiaslav, along the Dnieper River, halfway between Kiev and the het­man’s capital of Chyhyryn. According to Muscovite sources, on the day of the ambassador’s arrival the local archpriest led a multitude of Pereiaslav’s citizens to greet the Muscovite envoys and to “thank God for having fulfilled the desire of our Orthodox people to bring together Little and Great Rus’ under the mighty hand of the all-powerful and pious eastern tsar.”²

The negotiations at Pereiaslav lasted for several days during the month of Janu­ary 1654. Disagreements arose because the Cossacks expected that the tsar would swear an oath to them, as was the practice for Polish kings. Moreover, the Ortho­dox metropolitan of Kiev, Syl’vestr Kosiv (reigned 1647-1657), was opposed to negotiations that he feared would lead to the subordination of his jurisdiction to the patriarch of Muscovy. In the end, Khmel’nyts’kyi and the Cossacks did swear an oath of allegiance to the tsar, after which the Muscovite envoys were sent to several other Ukrainian cities to administer the oath.

The 1654 Agreement of Pereiaslav, which resulted in the union of the Cossack- controlled territory of Ukraine with Muscovy, actually consisted of three elements: (1) the oath sworn by the Cossacks and the people of Pereiaslav and other Ukrain­ian cities in January 1654; (2) Khmel’nyts’kyi’s twenty-three “Articles of Petition,” brought to Moscow by his delegates and dated 14 March 1654; and (3) the tsar’s response in the form of a patent and what became known as the eleven “March Articles” issued later that same month. Within the next few months Muscovite offi­cials visited over a hundred towns whose inhabitants swore an oath of allegiance to the tsar, which meant the acceptance of the following basic principles. The Zapo- rozhian army was granted confirmation of its rights and liberties, including the independence of Cossack courts and the inviolability of Cossack landed estates. The Zaporozhian army was to elect its hetmans, who must swear allegiance to the tsars. Chyhyryn was to remain the hetman’s capital, from which relations with for­eign countries (with the exception of Poland and the Ottoman Empire) could be conducted. The number of registered Cossacks was fixed at 60,000, all of whom were to receive wages from that part of the revenue from Ukraine to which the tsar was entitled. The tsar would provide the Cossacks with military supplies. The traditional rights of the Ukrainian nobility were confirmed. Urban dwellers could elect their own municipal governments. Finally, the Orthodox metropolitan and other clergy throughout Poland-Lithuania were to be “under the blessing” of the patriarch in Moscow, who promised not to interfere in ecclesiastical matters.

When the negotiations between the Cossack envoys and the Muscovite govern­ment were finally completed in August 1654, the tsar’s title was changed from Tsar of All Rus’ (vseia Rusii) to Tsar of All Great and Little Rus’ (vseia Velikiia i Malyia Rusii). Thus, without having made any special effort, Tsar Aleksei had taken a significant further step toward Muscovy’s goal, set out in the late fifteenth century by Grand Duke Ivan III, to unite under one Orthodox ruler all the lands formerly within the sphere of medieval Kievan Rus’.

The Agreement of Pereiaslav

The following excerpts are from the Articles of Petition brought to Moscow by Hetman Khmel’nyts’kyi’s delegates on 14 March 1654.

Before Your Tsarist Majesty we, Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, the Hetman of the Zaporo- zhian Army, and the entire Zaporozhian Army as well as the entire Ruthenian Chris­tian world, bow our forehead to the face of the earth.

1. In the beginning, grant that Your Tsarist Majesty will confirm our rights and our military freedoms as they have existed for ages in the Zaporozhian Army, which was governed by its own laws and which possessed its own prerogatives in matters of property and of justice; grant that neither a military commander nor a boyar nor court official shall interfere with the courts of the Army and that its members be judged by their own elders....

2. That the Zaporozhian Army to the number of sixty-thousand men always be at full strength.

3. That the gentry that has turned to Russia and taken an oath, in accordance with the immaculate commandment of Christ, to You, Our Great Sovereign, Your Tsarist Majesty, continue to retain the class privileges of their estate. That from among their own elders they continue to select their own judicial officials and to hold possession to their own property and freedoms, as it had been under the Polish kings.

4. That in the cities there be selected from among our own worthy people officials who are to govern or supervise Your Tsarist Majesty’s subjects and who are to trans­mit to Your Tsarist Majesty’s treasury the incomes justly belonging to it.

5. That to the office of hetman there be attached the district of Chyhyryn with all of its appurtenances in order that it might continue to provide income to that entire office.

6. That the Zaporozhian Army on its own select from within itself a hetman and make him known to His Tsarist Majesty since this is an ancient custom of the Zapo­rozhian Army.

7. That no one take away Cossack properties.

8. That to the general secretary of the Zaporozhian Army there be allocated, because of the kindness of His Tsarist Majesty, one thousand gold pieces for the employees of his office and a mill to provide for quartermaster needs.

9. That to each colonel there be assigned a mill because expenditures are great.

10. Additionally, for justices of the Zaporozhian Army three hundred gold pieces to each, as well as a mill, and for each court recorder, one hundred gold pieces.

11. That the chiefs of staff of the Zaporozhian Army and the regimental chiefs of staff that are on permanent military duty be granted a mill.

12. For the manufacture of ordnance equipment and of artillery and for all per­sons employed with ordnance, we request attention to both the problems of winter and of quarters.

13. That the rights granted through the centuries by princes and kings to both clerical and lay persons not be violated in any way.

14. That envoys from foreign lands coming to the Zaporozhian Army with good intentions be freely received by the Lord Hetman and the Zaporozhian Army.

15. Inasmuch as in other countries tribute is paid in one sum, we also wish to give in the accepted manner to those persons appointed by Your Tsarist Majesty.

16. Our envoys are to seek an agreement to the effect that no visiting commander shall violate our rights. And wherever among local people there are qualified persons, these shall see that justice is done with respect to violations of local laws and tradi­tions.

17. That His Tsarist Majesty write down our privileges in charters stamped by seals, one for Cossack freedoms and a second for the freedoms of the gentry, so that these freedoms might be forever. And when we shall receive this, we ourselves are to maintain order among ourselves. He who is a Cossack shall have Cossack freedoms, and he who is a land-working peasant shall give to His Tsarist Majesty the customary obligation, as before.

18. With respect to the Metropolitan there are to be discussions, and concerning this matter we have given oral instructions to our envoys.

19. That His Tsarist Majesty send troops quickly and directly to Smolensk with­out delay, so that the [Polish] enemy might not improve his position and consolidate with others.

20. That for any eventuality a contingent of persons, around 3,000 or preferably more, should be stationed here along the border with the Poles.

21. That there be paid 100 efimki to each colonel, 200 gold pieces to each regimen­tal chief of staff, 400 gold pieces to each chief of staff on the highest staff level, 100 gold pieces to each centurion, and 30 gold pieces to each Cossack.

22. If the [Crimean Tatar] Horde should become aggressive, then it will be neces­sary to move against them from Astrakhan’ and Kazan’.

23. That His Tsarist Majesty will henceforth order the supplying of rations and powder for artillery for the fortress of Kodak, which was constructed at the frontier with Crimea and in which the Lord Hetman at all times posts 400 men and provides them with all kinds of provisions.

source: John Basarab, Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton 1982), pp. 230-236.

The Agreement of Pereiaslav subsequently proved an important turning point in eastern European history. It signaled a gradual change whereby Muscovy, not Poland, became the dominant power in the region. As for Ukraine, 1654 ended a six-year period which marked the culmination of more than a half century of Cossack struggle for autonomy within Poland. When the Polish solution no longer seemed feasible, the Cossacks sought autonomy within Muscovy instead.

Historians have debated at length the juridical significance of the agreement - or treaty, as some say - at Pereiaslav. Some consider it to reflect the incorporation of Ukraine into the tsardom of Muscovy with guarantees for autonomy, whether based on a treaty (B.E. Nolde) or on personal union (V. Sergeevich). Others con-

sider Ukraine to have become a kind of semi-independent vassal state or protector­ate of Muscovy (N. Korkunov, A. lakovliv, M. Hrushevs’kyi, L. Okinshevych). Still others see it as no more than a military alliance between the Cossacks and Muscovy (V. Lypyns’kyi, O. Ohloblyn), or an “atypical’’ personal union between two juridi­cally equal states (R. Lashchenko).

Aside from the debates among legal scholars and historians, Pereiaslav and its instigator, Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, have taken on a symbolic force in the story of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia and have become the focus of either praise or blame. For instance, in the nineteenth century the Ukrainian national bard, Taras Shevchenko, designated Khmel’nyts’kyi the person responsible for his people’s “enslavement” under Russia (see chapter 29). The government of Tsar Alexander III (reigned 1881-1894), however, erected in the center of historic Kiev a large equestrian statue of Khmel’nyts’kyi, his outstreched arm pointing northward as an indication of Ukraine’s supposed desire to be linked with Russia. After World War II, the Pereiaslav myth was resurrected, this time by Soviet ideologists, who, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the agreement in 1954, transformed the event into the ultimate symbol of Ukraine’s “reunification” with Russia, from whom it had been forcibly separated by foreign occupation since the fall of Kievan Rus’.

Whatever writers subsequently have speculated about Pereiaslav, one thing is certain. After 1654, the tsardom of Muscovy considered Cossack Ukraine, which it henceforth referred to as Malomssiia/ Little Russia, its legal patrimony. Since the tsar was an autocrat, whatever rights or liberties he granted the Cossacks at Pereiaslav were “gifts” he could take back whenever he wished. As it turned out, the Agreement of Pereiaslav was understood differently by the Cossacks and Mus­covy, with the result that from the very outset misunderstandings arose between the two parties. Matters became even more complicated in 1659, when in connec­tion with the election of new hetman (Khmel’nyts’kyi’s son Iurii), the Cossacks were obliged to accept a revised version of the 1654 Articles of Petition together with New Articles (18 points) drawn up in Muscovy. The second Agreement of Pereiaslav from 1659 was the only one referred to by Muscovy in its future negotia­tions with the Cossacks; that is, each time a new hetman took office.

Despite the disputes about the textual validity of Pereiaslav one (1654) and Pereiaslav two (1659), and despite ongoing military conflict and change of borders in the region, all Ukrainian territory east of the Dnieper River, together with Kiev, was to remain within the Muscovite, later Russian state. At the end of the eight­eenth century, further territorial acquisitions were made, whereby most Ukrainian lands (with the exception of Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia) found them­selves within the Russian Empire. It is with Pereiaslav, then, that one can speak of the beginnings of the Muscovite or Russian phase in Ukrainian history.