Religious and Cultural Developments

While it is true that in the eighteenth century political and socioeconomic life in Cossack Ukraine was characterized by its increasing integration with that of the Russian Empire and isolation from that of the rest of Europe, in the realm of culture, Ukraine remained a distinct and fertile ground where contemporary ideas in education, art, architecture, and literature from western and, in particular, cen­tral Europe were able to flourish.

Much of the cultural development in eighteenth-century Ukraine was expressed in a religious context, as in earlier eras. The Western-oriented Uniate Church, with its own hierarchy headed by a titular metropolitan of Kiev, functioned primarily on lands in Poland-Lithuania. Analogously, the Orthodox Church remained the dominant religious body in Russian-ruled Ukraine. Like other institutions, how­ever, the Orthodox Church became more and more integrated into the Russian Empire.

The integration of the Orthodox Church

The process of integration had begun in 1686, when the Orthodox Metropolitan­ate of Kiev became jurisdictionally subordinate to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow instead of to the ecumenical patriarch in Constanti­nople. Initially, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine retained many of its traditional privileges, and during the reign of Hetman Mazepa (1687-1709) it even expanded and increased its wealth and prestige. But with the fall of Mazepa and the decline of political autonomy in Cossack Ukraine, the distinct status of the local Orthodox Church was undermined.

Under Tsar Peter I, the Russian Orthodox Church itself underwent a profound structural transformation, and this was to have an impact on Ukraine.

Considering the symbolic value that the Russian Empire placed on linking itself with medieval Kievan Rus’, it is not surprising that in 1743 the title Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia, and Little Russia was restored. Although a few decades later the term Little Russia was dropped, the designation Galicia was retained since it helped provide ideological justification for Russia’s claim to western Ukrainian territo­ries (Galicia, Volhynia, and Podolia), which at the time were still within Poland. Regardless of what he may have been called, in practice the episcopal incumbent in Kiev was little more than the holder of an honorific title, since he had jurisdic­tion only over the Eparchy of Kiev within the Russian Orthodox Church.

After the abolition of the Hetmanate in the 1770s and 1780s, the integration of the Orthodox Church continued. The Holy Synod took over the right of appoint­ing archimandrites (abbots) to monasteries, a right that had been exercised by the Kievan metropolitan; all monastic property was secularized; and forty-two of the existing sixty-one monasteries and convents were closed. In terms of admin­istrative structure, eparchial boundaries were redrawn to coincide with Russia’s new provincial boundaries: by the end of the eighteenth century, the Chernihiv and Poltava eparchies were formed from the Hetmanate, and the Kharkiv eparchy from Sloboda Ukraine.

The Uniates in the Russian Empire fared even worse, especially during the reign of Empress Catherine II. In the 1770s, over 1,200 Uniate churches were given to the Orthodox in the Kiev region’s Left Bank, and after 1793-1795, when the Russian Empire acquired the Right Bank, Volhynia, and Podolia during the Second and Third Partitions of Poland, another 2,300 Uniate churches and over 100 clergy were forced to become Orthodox. Finally, in 1796 the Uniate Metro­politanate of Kiev, whose eparchies on former Polish-Lithuanian territory were still functioning, was formally abolished.

The Uniates could do little to reverse the policy of a government intent on destroying their church. In contrast, the Orthodox in Ukrainian lands were recog­nized and even supported, although only to the degree that they could be made to fit into the framework of the Russian Orthodox Church. The changes in the status of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine were opposed by some Ukrainian hierarchs, but welcomed by others. Those who opposed the changes were either arrested by the tsarist government (Metropolitan Ioasaf Krokovs’kyi in 1718 and Archbishop Varlaam Vonatovych in 1730) or transferred (Metropolitan Tymofii Shcherbats’kyi in 1757). Many others not only welcomed but actually implemented the changes. Among them were the highest officials in the Russian Orthodox Holy Synod: its first president, Stefan lavors’kyi (at the time metropolitan of Riazan’), and its first two vice-presidents, Teodosii lanovs’kyi (archbishop of Novgorod) and Teo­fan Prokopovych (archbishop of Pskov). All were Ukrainians who had previously played dominant roles in the religious and cultural life of the Metropolitanate of Kiev. In the end, the tsarist government and Russian Orthodox Church authorities provided enough incentives to Ukrainian hierarchs to make them actively partici­pate in implementing policies which by the close of the eighteenth century had fully transformed the Orthodox Church in Ukraine into an integral part of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Education

As in previous centuries, the church continued to play a leading role in Ukraine’s educational system. The vast majority of elementary schools were located next to village churches and were run by the parish sexton (diak). By the eighteenth cen­tury, the level of education in Ukrainian territories within the Russian Empire was relatively high, and foreign visitors frequently commented on the degree of literacy among the population at large. For instance, there were more elementary schools per number of inhabitants on Ukrainian territory than in neighboring Muscovy and Poland. In the Hetmanate during the 1740s, of 1,099 settlements within seven regiments, as many as 866 had primary schools. An earlier survey, from 1732, lists 129 such schools in the less densely populated Sloboda Ukraine.

At the secondary level, the most important institution remained the Kievan Col­legium, established by Metropolitan Petro Mohyla during the 1630s and trans­formed into an academy in 1701. In the eighteenth century, the Kievan Academy provided a twelve-year program in philosophy and theology. Latin remained the most important language of instruction, followed by Church Slavonic and Greek. As part of the general process of integration throughout the empire, however, Russian became the language of instruction in all subjects after 1765. By the sec­ond half of the century, besides courses designed to prepare young men for the priesthood, engineering, modern languages (German and French), music, and painting were being taught. The secular subjects notwithstanding, an increasing emphasis was placed on the training of clerics. Thus, before the 1780s, of the some 1,150 students studying each year, 75 percent planned secular pursuits, whereas three decades later, of over 1,100 students, more than 95 percent were preparing for the priesthood.

The importance of the Kievan Academy was felt far beyond Ukraine. It was the oldest and most influential center of higher learning within the borders of the Russian Empire.

Besides the Kievan Academy, there were secondary schools and/or theologi­cal seminaries in Chernihiv (est. 1689, theological seminary 1776), Pereiaslav (est. 1738), Poltava (est. 1779, later transferred to Katerynoslav), and Novhorod- Sivers’kyi (est. 1785). Particularly important was the Kharkiv Collegium, which began in 1726 as a seminary for the Orthodox Eparchy of Belgorod but in 1734 was renamed a college and soon expanded its curriculum to include science and mathematics in order to train students for secular careers. The Kharkiv Collegium was second only to the Kievan Mohyla Academy in the quality of its educational programs.

Because in Orthodox Christianity musical instruments were banned, the human voice took on special importance and was an essential part of religious services. In order to ensure a steady supply of vocal musicians, the Kievan Academy and vari­ous seminaries provided extensive programs in choral singing, and a special school to train singers for the imperial court was established in 1738 in the Hetmanate’s capital of Hlukhiv. Such a musical environment did indeed have an impact, so that three of the Russian Empire’s greatest choral composers in the eighteenth cen­tury were from Ukraine - Maksym Berezovs’kyi, Dmytro Bortnians’kyi, and Artem Vedel’ - the last two of whom studied at the Kievan Mohyla Academy before mov­ing to St Petersburg to continue their careers.

Finally, as part of Russia’s territorial expansion beyond the Hetmanate into southern Ukraine and the opening of the province of New Russia, during the second half of the eighteenth century the imperial government established pro­fessional schools in the new cities of lelyzavethrad (a medical-surgical academy), Mykolaiv (an agricultural school), and Katerynoslav (a music school). Thus, at the elementary as well as the secondary and professional levels, Ukrainian territories in the Russian Empire had a relatively well developed educational system during the eighteenth century.

Architecture and painting

The eighteenth century witnessed the flourishing of Ukrainian architecture and painting. The almost uninterrupted sequence of revolts, civil war, and foreign inva­sions that had marked the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising, the Period of Ruin, and the last years of the Mazepa era finally came to a close. This meant that in most Ukrainian lands - Galicia and the Right Bank under Polish rule and Transcarpathia under Austrian rule, as well as the Russian-ruled Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine - a period of peace and stability had arrived. Not surprisingly, this era coincided with what has been described as the golden age of Ukrainian art.

In architecture, the flurry of reconstruction and new building in the Ukrain­ian or Cossack baroque style that characterized at least the first half of Mazepa’s rule was continued during the era of stability following the hetman’s downfall. The baroque churches, modeled especially on churches in Poland, became ever larger in size. Often topped with several gilded or azure domes, these structures also had elaborate facades marked by the typical baroque half-columns and incom­plete pediments, and heavily decorated interiors ingeniously illuminated by the illusionary use of light. Despite the fact that these buildings were for Eastern-rite Christians and were located within the borders of the Orthodox Russian Empire, they clearly looked Catholic in spirit, prompting critics to deride them as products of the “Ukrainian Jesuit baroque.”

Among the more important native architects of this era was Ivan Hryhorovych- Bars’kyi. He was best known for his Kiev structures, such as the Trinity Church of the St Cyril Monastery (1750s), the Church of the Holy Protectress in Podil (1766), and the pavilion-like municipal water fountain known as the Felitsiial (Samson’s Fountain, 1748-49), as well as for his contribution (together with that of Andrii Kvasov) in the completion of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God (1752-63) in Kozelets’.

Other architectural trends prevalent in western Europe at the time - neoclassi­cism and the rococo - were brought to Ukrainian lands by foreign architects. The restraint and simplicity of neoclassicism were visible in the main belfry of the Mon­astery of the Caves (1731-45) and especially in the reconstruction of the Kievan Academy (1736-40), both by the German architect Johann-Gottfried Schaedel, and in the palace for Kyrylo Razumovs’kyi at Baturyn (1799-1803), by the Ital­ian architect A. Rinaldi. In contrast, the rococo, which evolved from the baroque, carried on the baroque’s interest in elaborate decorative elements but used much finer lines that created a sense of lightness and delicacy. Although the technique was employed in some of the structures designed by Hryhorovych-Bars’kyi, it is in the work of the Italian architect Bartolomeo-Francesco Rastrelli that the most outstanding examples are found. Most famous for his impressive structures in imperial St Petersburg, Rastrelli also brought the rococo to Kiev in commissions for Empress Elizabeth I, which he carried out in the stately Mariins’kyi Palace (1747-55), and in the exquisite splash of gold and azure in the Church of St Andrew (1747-53).

Not surprisingly, the baroque was even more prevalent in western Ukrainian lands, which were within the sphere of the Roman Catholic cultural influences of Poland and Hungary. It is from this period that derive the proportionally mas­sive baroque St George Cathedral in L’viv (1745-60) and Town Hall in Bucha- ch (1751), both by Bernard Merderer-Meretini, the Pochaiv Monastery Church (1771-83) by Gottfried Hoffman, and the very Italianate Dominican Church in L’viv (1745-49) by Martin Urbanik.

Wooden architecture was known throughout Ukraine, but it was particularly extensive in the Carpathian Mountain region, where lumber was abundant. Churches entirely in wood were constructed in great numbers, especially in moun­tain villages during the eighteenth century. These structures, small in scale, still dot the landscapes of southern Galicia as well as Transcarpathia and the Rusyn/ Ukrainian area of present-day northeastern Slovakia - the latter areas with their rustic settings providing especially elegant and subtle renditions of Gothic and baroque styles in wood.

Painting also flourished in eighteenth-century Ukraine. Since Ukraine func­tioned as a conduit for Western cultural influence, it is not surprising that it was there that the heretofore restrictive rules of Byzantine iconography first broke down among the Orthodox East Slavs. Not only was post-Renaissance naturalism introduced into Ukrainian paintings and murals of religious inspiration, but secu­lar portraiture also became popular as a result of the demands of the Polish noble estate and upwardly mobile Cossack starshyna. But notwithstanding latter-day art historians who speak in glowing terms of a Ukrainian school of painting under Flemish influence, the portraits from this period are rather awkward, unrefined in style, and hardly comparable to those of even second-rate artists in Flanders. As for religious paintings, most of them reflect Polish baroque models, whose sentimen­tality, imbued with the Catholic enthusiasm of the Counter Reformation, is often of dubious aesthetic value.

Literature and history writing

In its literary production, eighteenth-century Ukraine was typical of the baroque era, with its wide variety of themes and stylistic complexities. Style often became an end in itself, with the result that, as in the scholastic milieu of the Kievan Acad­emy, form became more important than content. The language used in literature and other writings was a highly stylized form of Church Slavonic (and sometimes Latin or Russian). The opacity of Church Slavonic and its divorce from the spoken Ukrainian vernacular contributed to the formalistic and not particularly vibrant qualities of most literary works of the period, which were in sharp contrast to the spirited religious polemics that characterized the seventeenth century.

Perhaps the most popular branch of literary activity was drama. This genre devel­oped during the seventeenth century under the influence of Polish and Latin plays staged in the brotherhood schools and at the Kievan Collegium. By the eighteenth century, Ukrainian drama had evolved into a distinct form in the works of writers like Dmytro Tuptalo, Teofan Prokopovych, and Hryhorii Konys’kyi. In a cultural environment where religion continued to play a dominant role, it is not surprising that the three authors mentioned above were churchmen and that the most widely produced plays were Christmas and Easter dramas, enactments of the lives of saints, and morality plays. There were also a few works of a largely or exclusively secular nature, the best known being the historical play by Teofan Prokopovych, about the Kievan prince Volodymyr the Great (Vladymyr, 1705) and a drama by an unknown author about the Cossack hetman Bodhan Khmel’nyts’kyi (Mylost'Bozhyia, or The Mercy of God, 1728). Other secular genres, albeit of smaller proportions, were the intermediia, or interlude, and, later, the vertep, or puppet play; these were often per­formed during the entr’actes of morality plays and were distinctive for their comi­cal nature, occasional political satire, and use of the Ukrainian vernacular.

Several genres of poetry were produced during the eighteenth century, includ­ing spiritual verses, love and erotic poetry, epigrams, parodies, and patriotic verses glorifying contemporary leaders. The best-known creators in these genres were Ivan Velychkovs’kyi, Klymentii Zynov’iev, Dmytro Tuptalo, and Stefan lavors’kyi.

There is one writer who stands out among all others from the eighteenth cen­tury, Hryhorii Skovoroda. Although he wrote numerous lyrical poems (Sad bozhest- vennykhpesen’, or Orchard of Divine Songs, 1735-85), he is best remembered in Ukraine and Russia for his philosophical writings. As the “Ukrainian Socrates,” Skovoroda looked to the classical past and in particular followed the admoni­tion of Socrates, Know Thyself. Most of his philosophical writings (in Russian or russianized Church Slavonic) and his teachings as a “wandering scholar” from 1769 until his death a quarter century later had to do with the search for hap­piness - not happiness derived from material wealth, but happiness attained through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, he argued, would allow the individual to live life according to the natural order and therefore in accordance with God’s will. Despite his use of philosophical models from ancient Greece, Skovoroda typi­fied the other-worldly religious spirit that continued to dominate the culture of eighteenth-century Ukraine.

Among the few writers to depart from the purely religious motivation charac­teristic of eighteenth-century literature in Ukraine was a group of what might be called “Cossack intellectuals.” As the intellectual exodus from Ukraine to Muscovy that began in the late seventeenth century continued and even intensified dur­ing the eighteenth century (for instance, it is estimated that between 1700 and 1762 as many as 70 percent of the upper Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy alone were natives of either Ukraine or Belarus), the places of some of these cleri­cal intellectuals were taken by Cossacks serving in the Hetmanate administration. These intellectual chancellerists were most interested in the historical exploits of the social stratum they claimed to represent - the Cossacks. Accordingly, the tradi­tion of Cossack chronicles, begun in the previous century, was continued in works like the Litopys Samovydtsia, or Samovydets’ Chronicle, probably by Roman Rakushka; Events of the Most Bitter... War... between the Zaporozhian Hetman Bohdan Khmel 'nyts kyi and the Poles, by Hryhorii Hrabianka; and the four-volume Tale of the Cossack War against the Poles, by Samiilo Velychko, all compiled during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. The works of Hrabianka and Velychko, in particular, pre­sented the Khmel’nyts’kyi revolt as a Ukrainian national uprising, and it was this interpretation that deeply influenced the subsequent Ukrainian national move­ment when these chronicles were published for the first time between the 1790s and the 184.os.The Cossack chroniclers continued a tradition established by their medieval forebears, whose aim was simply to record the events of a given epoch without concern for historical perspective. Beginning in the 1730s, however, a new kind of work began to appear, one which traced historical events in Ukraine from the days of Kievan Rus’ and connected them with the Cossack period. Such an approach implied a sense of historical continuity which, in the minds of certain readers, might provide an ideological justification for the maintainance of Cos­sack autonomy. The first work of this kind was the popular and readable Kratkoe opisanie Malorossii (A Short Description of Little Russia), written in the 1730s but not published until four decades later. Several similar historical treatises were writ­ten during the last decades of the Hetmanate’s autonomous existence, and their authors (Hryhorii Pokas, Petro Symonovs’kyi, Stepan Lukoms’kyi) all argued from historical and political precedent for the idea of Cossack distinctiveness. Although the attempts to sustain autonomy for the Hetmanate after the 1780s eventually proved futile, the work of these Cossack chroniclers set the stage for a fundamen­tal change from a cultural environment in which religious concerns were foremost to one in which secular ideas and a concern for the rights of the individual and the nation would be pervasive.

For this change in Ukraine’s intellectual evolution to be effected fully, a new mind-set and ideology had to be introduced. That ideology would come in the form of nationalism, the precepts of which, as we shall see, would dominate Ukrain­ian thinking throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. But before turning to that new era in the history of Ukraine, however, it is necessary to review events in the eighteenth-century Right Bank and Galicia.