SECTION F THE PEASANTRY

In the countries with the system of hereditary classes the pea­santry usually was the lowest social group, and its economic power and its political influence were weak. Most of the peasantry were not free, and served the members of the upper social class (the no­bility, old gentry, gentilhommes, shliakhta, and dvoriane) who owned the landed estates and exploited the peasants as their indentured labourers.

A similar situation existed in Ukraine before 1648. Some varia­tions were caused by peasant bondage fo a master who very often was a man of different culture and language, and by the existence of the Cossacks, a social group close to the peasantry, whose frequent clashes with the Polish administration undermined the authority of the landowners as well as of the Polish governmental apparatus in Ukrainian regions. Quite often the Ukrainian peasant was able to leave his master and to join a unit of the rebellious Cossack Army.

In 1648 and years following the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Rebellion large numbers of peasants were able to join the Cossack Army. As most of the noblemen and landowners in the Ukrainian regions were Polish or Polonized₁ they were forced to leave the territory of the new Ukrainian state and often chose to fight against it in the ranks of the Polish Army, now the army of a foreign power and hostile to Cossack Ukraine. Consequently the Ukrainian peasants were relieved of their bondage. This was a direct result of a situation when the Ukrainian peasants, who enlisted into the Cossack Army, became defenders of their country and had to be free men. This emancipation changed the situation even of those peasants who did not join the Cossack Army but remained on their land. As the people who cultiva­ted their farms and plots, and, by doing this, consolidated the eco­nomy of the new Ukrainian state, they had to be free and could not depend on or work for the people who served a hostile foreign power.

The situation was different in cases when an owner of a landed estate and the master of a village did not leave Ukraine, but, on the contrary, joined the Ukrainian Army and fought for the new state. The government also had to face this difficult problem in regard to the landed estates of Ukrainian monasteries. In the early phase of the war with Poland many of their peasants joined the Cossack Army. But soon the Hetman Government was showered with the monasteries’ complaints against the unwarranted enlistment of their serfs into the army and their refusal to work on monasterial estates.

The slogans, objectives and aspirations of the struggle against Poland were not explicitly to establish an independent state. For the people of those times the real meaning of the struggle was con­cealed behind proclaimed objectives of a different nature — the struggle against Poland for restoration of the violated rights of the Cossack class, or against the suppression of the Eastern Orthodox Church and its faithful. The Cossack Army was presented as the defender of the Eastern Orthodox Church and its monasteries and, from the point of view of the people of that time, it was inconceivable that, instead of an extension of their rights and improvement of their economic situation after the victory of the uprising, the monasteries were to be faced with infringement upon their rights, and a deterio­ration of their economic conditions. That is why the Ukrainian Go­vernment could not neglect the monasteries’ complaints. Already during Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s rule several governmental edicts pro­hibited enlistment of the monasteries’ peasants into the Cossack Army and required their complete obedience to their masters. ’’Obe­dience” under the conditions of that time meant unpaid labour on the monasteries’ estates, i. e. in effect the restoration of serfdom, though for the time being probably in its mild form. Later, during the rule of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s successors, the rights of monas­teries to the unpaid labour of their peasants were extended and became more and more rigid.

Most of the other peasant settlements in Hetman Ukraine at first became the ’’free villages of the Zaporozhian Army” or the ratushni sela (’’town hall” villages). In the first case the name mani­fested the exclusive dependence of villages on the whole Cossack Army, and in the second that the peasant villages were placed under the local Cossack government (in a ratusha — town hall). These ’’free” or ’’town hall” villages were controlled and governed by the Cossack administrative apparatus. Their inhabitants were obligated to perform several services for the Zaporozhian Army, i. e. for the Ukrainian state. In particular, they had to support the kompaniis’ki (hired, mercenary) regiments, transport loads for the government and its armed forces on their carts and waggons, pay the ’’portions” (taxes proper, in money), and deliver the ’’rations” (tax in kind, i. e. in goods or produce).

But not all the villages became ’’free.” In the northern regions of Hetman Ukraine the estates of those members of the shliakhta who joined the Zaporozhian Army survived and, consequently, they did not lose their lands and peasants’ services. The proud and impres­sive formula, often repeated in eighteenth century Ukraine, that the ’’Cossack sabers abrogated the titles of the shliakhta to landed estates” could not be applied to the Starodub and the northern part of Chernihiv regiments. Here the shliakhta who joined the Cossack Army, as a rule, retained their estates as long as they served the Ukrainian state.

The ’’free villages of the Zaporozhian Army” diminished steadily. In the middle of the eighteenth century few of these villages remai­ned. They became the regular land reserve for rewarding the office holders of the Ukrainian government and the military for their ser­vices. Hetmans and colonels began to grant whole villages, or parts of them, to Cossack officers and officials, as well as to the noble army fellows, under the condition of their service to the state and army.

Quite early we see acceptance of the formula of the ’’customary service” of the peasants to their new masters. This formula was also applied to the old estates of the Shliakhta who served the Cossack Army. In both cases this formula was at first limited only to some special and temporary services to the landowners. But soon the num­ber of these services was extended and they in time approximated the compulsory work of serfs. The Ukrainian peasants were not serfs, legally, because as yet they were not bound to their masters’ estates. Thus their position was better than that of their neighbours — the peasants of Poland and Russia who were enserfed in the fifteenth (Poland) and early seventeenth (Russia) centuries. In Hetman Ukrai­ne the process of enserfment was completed only after the incorpo­ration into Russia, and was carried out by the Russian Government.

In the seventeenth century the Ukrainian peasants were able to move from one estate to another and from one landlord to another (as well as from and to the ’’free villages of the Zaporozhian Army”). Very often they moved to the slobody (free hamlets) — new rural settlements established by the great landowners on the unpopulated tracts of their estates. In these ’’free hamlets” peasants were free from unpaid labour and ’’services” during a certain fixed period. In the first decades of the eighteenth century the movement of pea­sants was still possible but few had the opportunity to do this. This possibility to change a landlord and an estate, even if it was not so easy to carry out, was a very important factor in the relations between peasants and landowners. It made these relations somewhat less rigid and severe; the ’’peasant services” were not so difficult and extensive.

The complete enserfment of the peasants in the Left-Bank Ukraine was carried out by the decree of the Russian Government of May 3, 1783, after the incorporation of Hetman Ukraine into the Russian Empire.