SECTION B DIVISION OF THE POPULATION INTO SOCIAL ESTATES THE NOBILITY (SHLIAKHTA)

The middle of the seventeenth century, when the new Ukrainian state was established, was a period characterized by the existence of hereditary estates or classes in Europe. Such a social structure existed in Western as well as in Eastern Europe: France, Italy, Spain, the German states, Bohemia, etc.

Could the Ukrainian state organization of that time reject this form of social relations? It seems that the Ukrainian state could not be an exception to the general rule. However, the populist Ukrai­nian historiography of the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century disagreed with this position. For its representa­tives Ukraine became a ’’democratic republic” in the middle of the seventeenth century when the division into hereditary classes and the former socio-economic relations were abolished (D. Miller). A new system was established of ’’free work on a free land” (A. Efi­menko). And, they said, only later in an offensive of the Cossack nobility against its own people this order of democracy and equality in government, and justice as well as freedom in socio-economic re­lations was destroyed. In their opinion the Cossack nobility won and it established a new system of social inequality — serfdom and exploitation of peasants, and the violation of the political rights of the Cossacks.

It is clear that these scholars conveyed their own beliefs in social revolution — which they anticipated to come in their own time — into the past of the Ukrainian people. We cannot condemn them. Their wishes and expectations were the expression of their noble and lofty beliefs. But for us these views no longer hold true. When we state that the life of the seventeenth century was not or­ganized, let us say, in a socialist system and when we find there a system of social inequality, it does not mean that we have to praise and justify these conditions.

The shliakhta, the upper social class of Ukraine when it was a part of Poland, did not disappear after the victory of the Ukrainian Revolution in 1648. The position of the old Ukrainian historiography, which, as we had already mentioned, wished to see in the events of 1648-1654 the victory of a social movement directed toward the revo­lution and change of previous social relations, has to be revised and corrected, especially in consideration of the works of the Ukrainian historian Viacheslav Lypynsky. He proved convincingly that a signi­ficant part of the new Ukrainian governmental apparatus as well as the army command was in the hands of the Ukrainian shliakhta that joined the Ukrainian Cossacks, evidently for the struggle for national liberation of Ukraine, and not a movement directed against their own social interests. These were the best members of the upper class who could not renounce and forget their own people. Lypyn- sky’s works showed, among the heroes and outstanding leaders of the national struggle in 1648 and following years, such members of the Ukrainian shliakhta as secretary-general (and later hetman) Ivan Vyhovsky and his brothers, Paul Teteria, the colonel of the Pereiaslav Regiment (and the hetman in the 1660’s), Daniel Nechai, the colonel of the Bratslav Regiment and the hero of several Cossack songs, his brother Ivan Nechai, the leader of the Belorussian Co­ssacks, the colonel Mrozovytsky (called Morozenko in a popular Cossack song).

In the first years after 1648 members of the Ukrainian shliakhta continued to regard themselves as the upper social group. It was shown by the fact that during the negotiations of 1654 in Pereiaslav the representatives of the shliakhta came to the Russian envoy, Úî³àã³ï V. Buturlin, and confered with him about the preservation of their rights and privileges. As we have already mentioned, the leading members of the Ukrainian legation to Moscow in March 1654, Colonel P. Teteria and Judge-General S. Bohdanovych-Zarud- nyi, were members of the shliakhta; they demanded and received from the Russian government a special confirmation of the Ukrainian shliakhta’s old rights and privileges.

On the other hand the Revolution of 1648 shook the foundation of these privileges and the members of the Ukrainian shliakhta who preserved their landed estates at first lost their right to the impaid labour of the peasants on their lands. But the very fact that a mem­ber of the shliakhta preserved his estate ensured the continuity of his privileged social position as a man in the service of the new state. In a document issued on June 24, 1657 we read that Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky confirmed the title to the landed estates near Chernihiv of a Ukrainian Shliakhtych, Lucas Nosachovych. ”His estate obligated him to serve in the (Polish state’s) cavalry” stated the letter patent, and ’’now he has to serve in our army.” Such an act shows us that Lucas Nosachovych preserved the social position which he had under the rule of Poland.

The restoration, to a degree, of previous social relations was most clearly revealed in those parts of Hetman Ukraine where these relations were the least shaken, as in the northern regions of the new state. According to a letter of Hetman D. Mnohohrishnyi in 1670 the shliakhta of Liubech district ’’from the beginning of this war [i. e. — from the Revolution of 1648] fought for the common cause of our people,” and served the new state as they had served before in Poland. Each of them had ”to serve according to the old rules in the army during military campaigns or to send a Cossack with a good horse and equipment.” The large number of the shliakhta who ser­ved in the Cossack Army and preserved their estates resided in the ethnically Belorussian area of Starodub. Here these men as the do­cumentary materials of the archives of Chernihiv prove — were reinforced by the immigrants of noble origin from Belorussia.

We could expect that when this upper hereditary class later regained the right to the unpaid labour of peasants it would re­establish itself in the same form as it was in Poland. But the shliakh­ta in Hetman Ukraine was rather small. A social group which as­pires to become the upper class must gain not only a privileged eco­nomic position, but also at the same time must satisfy the needs of society by providing leaders, military commanders and government officials. A stable society cannot base its social system only on the social and economic privileges of its upper groups; the social system must function and serve the whole society. As far as the Ukrainian state of the seventeenth century had proved its vitality it should be assumed that its social system was stable and strong enough to take care of its military, political, and economic objectives and pro­blems for a relatively prolonged period of time. In this system shliakhta continued to exist as a part of the new upper class of the Ukrainian state, but its members seldom displayed their affiliation with their old group; more often this affiliation was not mentioned at all. Only in the late eighteenth century, when the Ukrainian upper class was joining the ranks of the Russian dvorianstvo (nobility), and when the Russian Government required full evidence of ’’noble position,” many families in the north of former Hetman Ukraine opened the drawers with the old yellowed documents that showed their belonging in the past to the shliakhta class in Poland or Belo- russia. But during the existence of the Ukrainian Hetman State these documents were hidden in the old drawers because in this state the ’’noble army fellows” (notable military fellows — znatni viis’kovi toυaryshi) became the new upper social group and mem­bers of the shliakhta tried to join their ranks.