Social Change in the Hetmanate

By the 18th century, the newly formed elite was already well ensconced at the top of the Hetmanate’ s social order. The demise of Cossack egalitarianism was almost inevitable because East European societies knew of no other way of ordering their political and socioeconomic life than by allowing a nobility to control the land and the peasantry on it in return for defending and governing this territory.

The most evident manifestation of the triumph of elitism in the Hetmanate was the Society of Notable Military Fellows (Znachne viiskove tovarystvo). Its rolls contained the names of male adults from starshyna families who did not yet hold office, but who were eligible to do so if an opening appeared. By the 1760s, the Military Fellows were ranked according to an elaborate hierarchy that included about 1300 names. In addition, there were roughly 800 individuals who actually held office. Thus, about 2100 adult males, out of a total male population of over one million, constituted the elite in the Hetmanate of the mid 18th century. In 1785, when the imperial government attempted to incorporate the Ukrainian elite into the Russian nobility (dvorianstvo), this number increased severalfold. Because St Petersburg was unsure of how to define nobility in the Hetmanate, thousands of Ukrainian petty officers and wealthier Cossacks claimed noble status, many using falsified documents.

With elite status came land. It was granted to the starshyna by the hetmans and tsars. In many cases, the officers also illegally privatized their office-related lands. As a result, by 1735, over 35% of the cultivated land in the Hetmanate was the private property of the elite. And their offices gave them control of an additional 11% of the land.

Like everywhere else in Europe, wealth was distributed most unevenly among the elite. A few families, particularly those whose members were hetmans, colonels, or members of the general staff, acquired vast latifundia by virtue of their influence and contacts. Mazepa, for example, owned 19,654 estates; Skoropadsky 19,882; and Apostol 9103. The holdings of the average starshyna member, however, were modest, usually consisting of a single estate with about 30 peasants – about one-third of the holdings of an average Russian nobleman. These figures indicate that in the Hetmanate, the elite was relatively more numerous and enserfed peasants fewer than in Russia. But rich or poor, the Cossack starshyna (or shliakhta, as it styled itself) exploited both peasants and Cossacks alike. From the former it demanded increasingly onerous rents, labor duties, and personal services; from the many impoverished Cossacks, it bought or extorted land and attempted to impose upon them the obligations of peasants.

The social antagonism between the chern (“rabble”) and the starshyna had important political ramifications, for it allowed the tsarist government to play one segment of Ukrainian society off against the other. Thus, in the 17th century, Moscow supported the masses against the Cossack elite when it attempted to throw off the overlordship of the tsars, while in the 18th century, the tsars helped the officers, chastised after the failure of their separatist attempts, to exploit the peasantry, thereby strengthening the dependence of the Ukrainian elite on its Russian sovereigns. Thus, although some members of the starshyna were still committed to the Hetmanate and its traditions of self-government, the primary loyalties of many focused, for practical reasons, on the Russian sovereign and the empire.

This imperial orientation came to the fore especially after 1785 when Catherine II, in her Charter to the Nobility, equated the Ukrainian elite with the Russian nobility.

By the late 18th century, Ukrainians occupied some of the highest positions in the empire. In the 1770s and 1780s, the Bezborodkos, Zavadovskys, Kochubeis, and Troshchynskys provided chancellors and ministers for the empire and helped many fellow Ukrainians obtain influential posts in St Petersburg. The numerous personal opportunities and advantages that imperial service provided explain to a large extent why the resistance of the Ukrainian elite to the abolition of the Hetmanate was so weak. And because advancement in imperial service demanded familiarity with imperial culture, many Ukrainian nobles abandoned their colorful Cossack dress, adopted European fashions, and began to speak Russian and French. Only a few, condescendingly viewed as romantics, bemoaned the passing of the Hetmanate and the glories of the Cossack past. Cossack decline

The Cossacks had emerged from the uprising of 1648 with extensive privileges. In return for military service, they could own land and were exempted from taxation. They enjoyed self-government, could participate in trade, and had the right (formerly reserved for nobles) to distill alcoholic beverages. Thus, while most Cossack landholdings were scarcely larger than those of the peasantry, their rights were almost as great as those of the expelled Polish nobles. The only privilege denied Cossacks was the right to demand labor obligations from the peasantry, a right reserved for nobles alone. Despite these advantages, a steady deterioration was noticeable in the status of the rank and file Cossacks beginning from the late 17th century.

As a result of the growing influence of the starshyna, common Cossacks lost such important political prerogatives as the right to elect their officers and to participate in councils. Even more harmful to their welfare were the Cossacks’ economic problems. The crux of these problems lay in the fact that Cossacks were expected to function both as farmers and as soldiers. During the pre-1648 era, this dual role had been feasible because campaigns were brief, booty plentiful, and Polish government subsidies provided extra income. But, under the tsars, military conflicts, such as the twenty-one-year-long Great Northern War, dragged on interminably. And when Cossacks were not fighting, they were often forced by Russian officials to work on construction projects.

Because this protracted, exhausting service had to be borne at the Cossacks’ own expense, many fell into debt. As a result, numerous Cossacks sold their lands to their starshyna-creditors, often under pressure and invariably at low prices, and continued to live on their former properties as tenants who fulfilled peasant-like obligations. Only a few Cossacks managed to join the rapidly closing ranks of the starshyna. Thus, the “downward mobility” of the Cossacks reduced their number from 50,000 in 1650, to 30,000 in 1669, and to 20,000 in 1730.

Worried by the dwindling supply of cheap fighting men, tsarist authorities forbade the sale of Cossack lands in 1723 and again in 1728. But these measures were ineffective because they addressed only the symptoms and not the real cause of the problem. In 1735, the government of the Hetmanate attempted more thoroughgoing reforms. It divided Cossacks into two categories: the wealthier, battle-ready Cossacks, called vyborni, and those who were too impoverished to fight, called pidpomichnyky. While the former were away at war, the latter were expected to collect and deliver supplies, act as messengers, and even work the land of the fighting men. The pidpomichnyky were taxed, but only at half the rate of peasants.

The condition of the Left Bank peasants (one of Eastern Europe’s few free peasantries), like that of the Cossacks, deteriorated steadily from the high point it had reached immediately after 1648. But even the hetmancy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky had presaged the return of the old order, for the hetman had allowed certain Ukrainian monasteries to continue collecting their traditional dues from the peasants who lived on their lands. The major decline in the peasants’ status came in the 18th century, when the free, self-governing “military villages” in which the peasants lived were turned over from the land fund of the Hetmanate to individual starshyna landlords.

Initially, these landlords collected modest rents and expected additional services from their tenants such as chopping wood or transporting hay. In Mazepa’s time, the maximum labor obligation rose to two days a week; although this burden was heavy compared to the period when Left Bank peasants had no obligations at all, it was still only one-half to one-third of what Polish and Russian peasants were forced to provide. Only a generation later, however, the average labor obligation rose to three days a week. In some cases, it reached as many as four or five days per week.

Yet as long as the peasant had the right to depart, he could move to a more lenient landlord, to another village, or to the open steppe. For this reason, the starshyna, backed by the Russian government, gradually increased the limitations on peasant mobility. In 1727, a law stipulated that peasants who left their lords forfeited the property they had left behind and, in 1760, peasants were required to obtain written permission from their landlords if they desired to leave them. As they lost their legal right to departure, many peasants in the Hetmanate resorted to illegal flight. A favorite destination for thousands of runaways was the lands of the Zaporozhians, providing one of the reasons for Catherine II’s destruction of the Sich. In 1783, Catherine took the final step when she forbade Left Bank peasants from leaving their lords under any circumstances. Thus, 130 years after his liberation in 1648, the Left Bank peasant once again became a serf.

TABLE 2 Social structure of Left-Bank Ukraine (1795)

The neglected townsmen

In the agrarian, village-based society of the Hetmanate, the position of townsmen was decidedly underprivileged. Except for such hetmans as Mazepa and Apostol, the Cossack administration neglected them at best and tried actively to undermine them at worst. Burghers were denied access to any offices outside their own towns. Even within their own towns, their governing and judicial bodies could exercise no authority over the numerous members of the starshyna, Cossacks, and peasants who resided there because these were subject to the Cossack administration. Consequently, there were numerous instances in which the majority of a town’s population consisted of Cossacks and peasants who were not subject to its laws. In some cases, the starshyna simply liquidated the autonomy of small or weak towns and placed their inhabitants under its direct jurisdiction. As a result, the number of towns in the Hetmanate dropped from 200 in 1723 to 122 sixty years later.

Not only were townsmen politically disenfranchised, they were also economically disadvantaged. Because Cossacks were not liable to taxation, they could sell their wares in the towns without paying local duties. Meanwhile, in order to provide their towns’ treasuries with funds, burghers were compelled to pay a tax on the products they sold. Townsmen thus often owned fewer shops and stalls in their towns than did Cossacks, soldiers from the Russian garrisons, or even monks. Under the circumstances, the population of most Left Bank towns was modest, averaging between 3000 and 5000 inhabitants. (See also table 2.)

In the midst of this general stagnation, however, there were pockets of prosperity and growth. Because of its role as an administrative, military, commercial, and cultural center, Kiev’s population rose from 11,000 in 1723 to approximately 43,000 in the 1780s. Towns like Starodub and Nizhyn, located in the north near the Russian trading centers, also prospered. An insight into the kind of economic activity that took place in these prosperous towns may be gained from the following data on the city of Nizhyn: in 1786, it had 387 outdoor shops, 6 coffee shops, 29 smithies, 73 public houses (shynky), 124 taverns, 8 brick-making operations, 2 sugar refineries, and 15 windmills. On the whole, though, economic growth in Ukrainian cities was slow throughout the 18th century. This fact made the coming boom in southern Ukraine all the more dramatic.

Map 15 Extent of colonization