SECTION E CLERGY. THE TOWNSPEOPLE

While the above mentioned classes of Hetman Ukraine under­went change which resulted in the disappearance (shliakhta) or de­cline (Cossacks) of some of them, and ascent of others (the noble army fellows), the social position of the clergy and the townspeople changed far less.

The clergy was not a separate hereditary class; it was rather a social group with some traces of a hereditary class. There were very few changes in its social position after 1648. The clergy was for the most part exempted from the rule and jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Government and was controlled by the church hierarchy. In gene­ral, the Ukrainian clergy was governed by the general statutes (canon law) of the Eastern Orthodox Church which were accepted in Ukraine from the period of early feudalism.

The clergy was divided into the ’’white” (secular) and ’’black” (monastic) groups according to the church’s canons and rules. Mem­bers of the second group were bound by vows to celibacy and to life in monasteries and abbeys. The latter were the legal entities with special rights and privileges granted by the Ukrainian state. Among them was the right to own landed estates with serfs, which was preserved even in the periods when other social groups lost this privilege (some monasteries preserved their estates even during the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Rebellion). The landed property of monaste­ries played an important role in the subsequent restoration of agra­rian relations based on forced labour by the rural population. The Ukrainian monasteries lost most of their estates in the late eigh­teenth century, during the rule of Catherine II, when the ecclesias­tical estates were ’’secularized,” i. e. confiscated by the Russian state.

The history of the Ukrainian clergy was greatly influenced by Ukrainian relations with Russia. In 1654 many Ukrainian clergymen were opposed to the alliance with the Russian state.

As a social group the Ukrainian secular clergy, during the Boh- dan Khmelnytsky Rebellion and the first years after Bohdan Khmel­nytsky’s death, accepted into its ranks many new elements. The increased participation of the parishioners in the election of their priests led very often to the election of members of the Cossack class (later the noble army fellows). The character of Shram, a Cossack priest and colonel in the Black Assembly, a novel by Pante­leimon Kulish (his prototype was Ivan Popovych, the Colonel of the Pavoloch Cossack Regiment) completely reflected the character and spirit of that time. There were, on the other hand, many cases of enlistment by clergymen’s sons into the Cossack Army, where they joined the ranks of the noble army fellows. Many political and mili­tary leaders of Hetman Ukraine were the sons of the secular clergy. It is enough to name Ivan Samoilovych, one of the most outstanding hetmans, who greatly influenced the development of the Ukrainian state.

In 1757 Hetman Cyril Rozumovsky took notice of the social position of ’’the clergymen’s children who were out of service.” These were the children of the secular clergy who were not ordained into priesthood and, as a result, lost their social standing. Under the conditions of that time they had to join one of the hereditary classes of the Ukrainian society. Hetman Roszumovsky ordered that hence­forth the sons of archpriests were to be registered in the ranks of banner fellows and the sons of ordinary priests in the group of ’’selected Cossacks.” The Hetman understood that all these ’’children” wished to join the upper social class, and he concluded his order with an expression of assurance that the ’’ablest among them” could later be transferred to the category of banner fellows as à reward for their diligent service.

The burghers of the Ukrainian towns comprised a category which during the feudal and early postfeudal period were rather strictly separated from other social group. This separation was in­creased by the fact that the townspeople had a special form of self- government based on the norms of German-originated ’’Magdeburg Law.”

There has been lively scholarly discussion of the results of this separation. While in Western Europe it led to the flourishing of cities and towns, in Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, and Ukraine it brought their decay. In our opinion the debaters somewhat overesti­mated the influence of Magdeburg Law as the principal source of the prosperity, or decline, of Ukrainian (as well as Polish, Lithuanian and Belorussian) cities. If the municipal self-government and its cele­brated Magdeburg Law which separated the burgher class of Ukrai­nian cities from other social groups had indeed played there a negative role this could be explained by the fact that some medi­cines could not in equal measure help different organisms. The ’’or­ganisms” of Ukrainian cities were not sufficiently developed, as their economic situation was rather backward. The separation was carried out too strictly and, as a result, it could not advance the economic, political, and cultural development of Ukrainian cities and towns. The weakness of the burgher class and the economic underdevelop­ment of Ukrainian cities meant that they had little influence on the Ukrainian historical process, by comparison with the cities of Wes­tern Europe.

The Ukrainian towns (especially the larger urban centres) en­tered the turbulent time of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Rebellion as distinct units governed by the adopted norms of foreign law and inhabited by an urban social class which was strictly separated from other groups. Moreover Ukrainian towns were not influential poli­tical and economic centres of the country. Consequently participa­tion of the townspeople in th⅛ events of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Rebellion was, in general, not collective activity but only general assistance to the rebellious Cossacks.

The special and somewhat disadvantageous position of the Ukrainian cities and the burgher class resulted also from the fact that the rulers of the new state, did not always understand their proper role as the governors of the whole people. The Ukrainian cities and their burgher populations received less attention from the new Ukrainian state than the Cossack Army and settlements. Con­sequently the Ukrainian cities often sought confirmation of their old privileges and their Magdeburg-type self-government (in the case of Poltava, a new grant of municipal privileges) not from the Het­man state but from the Russian Government. This led to increased dependence by several Ukrainian cities on the Russian garrisons. Hetman Ivan Brukhovetsky₁ who tried especially hard to consoli­date the Russo-Ukrainian alliance, even refused to govern the Ukrai­nian cities, and in 1665 transferred them to the direct jurisdiction of the Russian Government (including the collection of taxes and revenues). This was not carried out and, after the events connected with Ivan Brukhovetsky’s ’’treason,” the agreement of 1665 was invalidated.

Later on, during the rule of Ivan Samoilovych and Ivan Mazepa, the burgher class of the cities took a more active part in Ukrainian political life. This was expressed in the participation of urban repre­sentatives in the enlarged sessions of the Cossack Officers’ Council, an institution of the parliamentary type. The subsequent decline of the Cossack Officers’ Council was detrimental to the interests of the Ukrainian ’’third estate” because at the sessions of this council the townspeople were able, for the first time, to consolidate themselves into a country-wide special group, which could present and defend its common interests.

There were no important changes to be found in the Magde­burg-type municipal government of the towns of Hetman Ukraine in comparison with the proceeding period. These towns were gover­ned by their elected magistrates — υiity and burgomasters (mayors), Iavnyky (jurors), and councillors (τaitsi). There were some cases during Cyril Rozumovsky’s rule when the noble army fellows — members of the upper class — held the leading positions in the mu­nicipal government of some larger Ukrainian towns. These facts show the political decline of Ukrainian cities and their burgher class in the eighteenth century, although in the late seventeenth century — the time of Ivan Samoilovych and Ivan Mazepa — they were starting to develop into influential centres of Ukrainian poli­tical and economic life.

The small towns had no independent mayors and magistrates. The elected functionaries in a small town were subordinated to a local Cossack leader, in most cases, to the Cossack officer called horodovyi Otaman (town chief or lieutenant). The tradesmen of Ukrainian towns preserved in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen­turies their old organization of guilds directed by their elected officials.