Socioeconomic and Cultural Developments in the Cossack State

The momentous events of the revolutionary era that began in 1648 under Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi brought changes in the balance of power among the region’s lead­ing states - Poland, Muscovy, and the Ottoman Empire.

For instance, the crown, or royal estate, represented by the Polish king before 1648, was now represented, at least on territory under Muscovite hegemony, by the tsar of Muscovy. Two groups, the Rus' gentry and the Cossacks, had their sta­tus recognized, while others, such as the Roman Catholic and Uniate clergy and the Jews, were driven out of Cossack-ruled lands and forced to live on Right Bank Ukrainian territory that remained under Polish rule. Finally, most peasants in the Cossack state were freed from their labor obligations and the other duties owed to their estate landlords.

Social structure

The new estate of the nobility resulted from a merger of some older nobles with members of the Cossack elite, or starshyna. Whereas the upheaval of 1648 and succeeding years forced the Polish and polonized magnates and gentry to flee the lands under Cossack rule, many of the lesser gentry of Orthodox Rus' back­ground joined the Cossack cause, first fighting in Khmel'nyts'kyi’s armies and then joining the administration of the fledgling Cossack state that came into existence in 1649. In fact, many of Khmel'nyts'kyi’s successors in the office of hetman (Ivan Vyhovs'kyi, Pavlo Teteria, Ivan Mazepa) were members of the gen­try who joined the Cossacks.

region of the Cossack state (the old Chernihiv palatinate, with its region of Starodub), where, with the exception of the Polish and polonized Rus' mag­nates, who were driven out, the status of the nobility effectively did not change. In other words, service to the Cossack state rather than hereditary status from Polish times was what allowed the former Rus' gentry to retain its position as the elite in Ukrainian society.

The desire for hereditary noble status had been the goal of the upper-echelon, or registered, Cossacks well before 1648. Whereas all Cossack efforts to enter the noble estate had been unsuccessful during Polish rule, entry now became possible in the new Cossack state.

The Distinguished Military Fellows were drawn from among the most economi­cally prosperous Cossacks and nobles in the service of the Cossack state. The larg­est proportion were from the starshyna, who manned the highest military and administrative posts in the government. Since the state, especially at times of great instability such as the Period of Ruin, was unable to pay for the services of its administrators, it recompensed them by assigning to each official post properties such as landed estates, mills, fishing ponds, or the privilege of distilling alcohol (propinatsiia). In a continuation of the previous Polish practice, Cossack officials were initially allowed to keep these properties only on a temporary basis, that is, for as long as the state needed their services. It was not long too before the peasants who resided on such lands were expected to carry out the ‘customary service,’ although this time to the new landlord, a Cossack governmental official. By the end of the seventeenth century, many of these Cossack ‘service officials,’ like their noble counterparts, had gained the right to retain the property assigned to them even after leaving governmental service. This meant they were able to maintain landholdings within their families, who then received a hereditary gen­try title to be held by the future descendants of these new members of the Cossack nobility. In this manner, the former Polish and polonized Ukrainian magnates and gentry were replaced by Orthodox Ukrainian families loyal to the Cossack state, families to which some of the leading figures of the time belonged - Nemyrych, Mazepa, Skoropads'kyi, Apostol, Myklashevs'kyi, Horlenko, Kochubei - each of whom acquired landed estates of enormous size and wealth.

In theory, such privileges were available to all Cossacks on the register, the number of whom was set as high as 60,000 following the agreement of Pereiaslav in 1654 but was later reduced by the Muscovite government to 30,000 in 1669. In practice, however, access to the noble status was limited to the Distinguished Mili­tary Fellows. These were primarily officials in the immediate entourage of the het­man’s administration (Fellows of the Standard, or bunchukovi tovaryshi), military leaders in the central administration (Military Fellows, or viis'kovi tovaryshi), and the leading officials of the regimental districts (Fellows of the Banner, or znach- kovi tovaryshi). As members of the Distinguished Military Fellows, they had their names entered on special rosters (komputy), which later served as proof of mem­bership in the highest social stratum in the Cossack state. Having attained such status and privileges, the Cossack nobles were intent on maintaining the exclusive­ness of their group and were therefore reluctant to allow newcomers into their ranks.

Below the uppermost echelons of the starshyna, who entered the noble estate, the remaining Cossack estate consisted of lower-level officers and rank-and-file members. While in subsesquent years a certain number of these ordinary Cos­sacks did by various means enter the hereditary noble group of the Distinguished Military Fellows, the vast majority were unable to do so. Not surprisingly, those who were left out, the common Cossacks (cheni), resented their upper-class brethren-turned-gentry, and they rebelled against the hetman and his entourage, notably during the Period of Ruin. The stronghold of the rank-and-file Cossacks remained Zaporozhia, which continued to serve as an asylum for all kinds of dis­contented people from the Hetmanate and other parts of Ukraine.

Like the noble and Cossack estates, the clerical estate underwent internal rearrangement. The Catholic and Uniate clergy, both of which were dependent upon and associated with Polish rule, were driven out of the Cossack state.

The so-called white, or married, clergy also had a favorable status in the Cos­sack social structure. They too were exempt from taxes, and their male offspring generally entered the priesthood or the Cossack civil service. Priests often became Cossacks - usually members of the starshyna - and vice versa. The ease with which the offspring of priests could enter the noble and Cossack strata precluded the development of a closed clerical estate. The interests of the clerical estate per se were most consistently maintained and defended by the black, or monastic, clergy.

The fifth and perhaps the least important of the social estates was that of the townspeople, or burghers. Their status depended on the rights enjoyed by urban areas. Twelve cities in the Cossack state enjoyed the self-governing privileges of Magdeburg Law, whereby the municipal government had control over its own courts, finances, and taxes. Some of these cities had received the privilege from Poland before 1648 (Kiev, Novhorod-Sivers'kyi, Starodub, Pereiaslav, Poltava, Nizhyn, Baturyn, Chernihiv); a few more received it from Cossack courts (Oster, Poltava, Kozelets'). Most of the other towns, especially the new ones which sprang up in the Left Bank, did not enjoy the privileges of Magdeburg Law and were con­sidered by Cossack leaders as sources of personal profit and income for the state.

One group in traditional Ukrainian society, the Jews, who lived partly in the towns and partly in the countryside, had its status radically changed after 1648. Previously an integral part of the Polish arenda economic system, the Jews were initially barred from lands under the control of the Cossacks unless they con­verted to Christianity. Some did convert, thereby giving up their Judaism but remaining as urban-dwelling merchants and in some instances becoming Cos­sacks. A few ‘Jewish’ Cossacks rose to leading positions in the government (from the Hertsyk, Markovych, and Kryzhanivs'kyi families). Those who did not convert were exiled to the Polish-controlled Right Bank, although they frequently visited the Cossack state and later the Hetmanate as merchants at annual fairs or as lead­ers of trade caravans.

The last and largest estate was the peasantry. The status of the peasantry was naturally affected by the patterns of landholding. In a sense, the whole seven­teenth century witnessed a struggle among three types of landholding system on Ukrainian territory: (1) the manorial estate (latifundium), on which peasants owed certain labor duties; (2) the communally owned peasant land; and (3) the individual peasant homestead. The first type, the manorial estate, was a product of Polish rule and was limited to areas under its control. The second and third cat­egories, communal and individual peasant holdings, were typical of those territo­ries beyond the direct control of Polish governmental authority, that is, the Cossack borderlands of the far eastern Left Bank and, in particular, Zaporozhia. In these two regions, communal ownership seemed to prevail until the early sev­enteenth century.

The Khmel'nyts'kyi revolution of 1648 undermined the manorial type of land­holding, as Polish landlords were driven from those parts of Ukraine held by the Cossacks, and peasants left their manors to join the rebel armies. Nonetheless, the manorial system was not abolished entirely, because the Ukrainian gentry land­owners who fought with Khmel'nyts'kyi as well as the Orthodox monasteries expected their peasants to remain and continue to perform their labor obliga­tions. Thus, the second half of the seventeenth century, especially on the Left Bank, witnessed a struggle between the reimposition or continuation of the manorial system on the part of the Cossack gentry and Orthodox monasteries on the one hand, and the tendency of demobilized rank-and-file Cossacks and recal­citrant peasants to set up individual homesteads on the other hand.

As a result of the revolution of 1648, all manors {latifundia) belonging to the Polish crown were declared free military villages. They included (1) lands given to Cossack officers as remuneration for their services; and (2) lands within self­governing villages inhabited by peasants, who retained their personal freedom although they had to pay taxes. These two types of free military village repre­sented approximately 50 percent of all landed property in the Cossack state. The other half consisted of lands owned outright by Cossack and Ukrainian gentry (33 percent) and lands under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox church (17 percent).

The last decades of the seventeenth century and especially the eighteenth cen­tury witnessed the transformation of free military villages held by Cossack officers into de facto hereditary landholdings as well as an increase in the size of already- existing hereditary manorial estates, whether owned by the Cossack gentry or by Orthodox monasteries. Both these trends tended to reduce the number of free peasant homesteads. At the same time, the labor obligations and other duties of peasants living on the hereditary manors continued to increase, with the result that by the end of the seventeenth century it was common practice for peasants to have to work two days a week for their landlords. Nonetheless, the peasants in the Cossack state and, later, the Hetmanate never became fully enserfed. They retained their freedom of movement and personal rights as long as the Het­manate existed.

Thus, while the Khmel’nyts'kyi revolution of 1648 and the Period of Ruin which followed (1654-1686) witnessed great political and military changes, including the incorporation of the Left Bank and Zaporozhia into the tsardom of Muscovy, the basic social structure in those regions, with its nobility, Cossacks, clergy, and peasants, and the noticeable absence of a strong urban estate, remained unaltered and essentially the same as under Polish rule.

Economic developments

Given the almost unending military conflict that took place throughout much of Ukrainian territory during the Khmel'nyts'kyi era and Period of Ruin, it is not surprising that the economy generally suffered a decline during the years 1648 to 1686. Before 1648, Ukraine’s economic wealth had been increasingly based on agriculture, especially the growing of grain such as wheat, which was shipped north from the Right Bank and exported through the Polish port of Danzig/ Gdansk on the Baltic. The Khmel'nyts'kyi revolution and subsequent military con­flicts had a devastating effect on this trade, which can be graphically illustrated by the following figures. In 1648, Polish grain exports through Danzig reached 32 million hundredweight units (1.5 million metric tons); by 1715, they had decreased to less than 1 million hundredweight units (45.5 thousand metric tons), a mere three percent of the pre-revolutionary figure.

The figures reveal not simply a loss of production, but also a change in the type of produce grown in Ukraine and a change in trade patterns. With respect to the type of produce, there was less emphasis on wheat and more on barley, hops, buckwheat, oats, millet, hemp, and flax. Mulberry trees for silk production were grown in certain areas, especially near Kiev. Added to these agricultural products were alcohol, tar, wood, and, especially, potash. As for trade patterns, commerce with Poland decreased during the Period of Ruin, while trade with the Cossacks’ new sovereign, Muscovy, increased. Even more important, however, was Cossack trade with the Islamic world, especially the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate. This trade actually dominated the Cossack state and Hetmanate until the first quarter of the eighteenth century. To the Ottoman Empire were sent meat, furs, and grain in return for silk, Oriental rugs, velvet, Persian textiles, cot­ton material, and fruits. And with the Tatars Ukraine exchanged grain for horses, cattle, and sheep. Most of this trade was carried out by Turkish, Armenian, Jewish, and Greek merchants, especially from the multinational urban areas along the Crimean coast. Some of these traders moved north, where they settled perma­nently and came to play an important role in the towns and cities of Ukrainian lands within Poland and Muscovy.

Beginning with Khmel'nyts'kyi, most Cossack hetmans passed decrees to stimu­late foreign trade. The reason for their encouragement of trade was simple: in a period of war and the breakdown of the traditional economic relationship with the Polish lands in the west, the Cossack leadership needed a constant source of income, and one of the most reliable sources was the duties and tariffs levied on foreign trade.

The Cossacks also promoted industry, although not until after 1686 was sub­stantial growth in this sector possible. Until 1648, the most important industry was iron mining and processing. On the eve of the revolution, there were about 100 ore pits and iron works in the Ukrainian lands, owned by either the nobility or the monasteries. Both the nobles and the monasteries used manorial peasants to work in these industries as part of their labor duties. When the revolution drove out the Polish magnates, the peasants refused to work. Only the monastery-owned indus­trial enterprises continued to function and even to flourish because of the increased need for iron for armaments and the decline in the total number of operational plants. By the 1750s, there were only twenty-eight iron plants left, mostly in the Polish-ruled Right Bank.

Church and state

Religion remained an important part of life in Ukraine under the Cossack state. The Cossacks had been defenders of Orthodoxy since the early seventeenth century; accordingly, the Orthodox church gained from the changes that took place after 1648. In fact, the Orthodox church was made the beneficiary by Khmel'nyts'kyi and his successors of properties confiscated from the Uniate and Roman Catholic churches located in Cossack-held territory. The increasing social and economic prestige of the Orthodox church also prompted its leaders to expect to play a more decisive role in governmental affairs. The result was fre­quent misunderstanding between church hierarchs and Cossack hetmans.

Even more problematic was the Cossack state’s foreign policy and its implica­tions for the Orthodox church in Ukraine. Although many hierarchs in Ukraine had looked to Muscovy for support, especially during the first half of the seven­teenth century, the attitude of some began to change after the church’s position was legalized in Poland in 1632 and when the dynamic Petro Mohyla became met­ropolitan. Mohyla’s successors, Syl'vestr Kosiv (reigned 1647-1657) and Dionysii Balaban (reigned 1657-1663) were openly opposed to Muscovy, in particular because they feared that the Orthodox church in Ukraine, still under the jurisdic­tion of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, might be subordinated to the patriarch in Moscow. It was with this concern in mind that Metropolitan Kosiv remained unenthusiastic during the Pereiaslav negotiations of 1654. In response to the tsar’s demands that the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kiev be placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow, Kosiv reiterated that his church’s ‘first freedom’ was obedience to the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Such dichotomous views on the question of jurisdiction for the Orthodox Metro­politanate of Kiev remained unresolved during the years of uncertainty that marked the Period of Ruin.

It was not long, however, before the fears of Kosiv and his successor, Balaban, proved justified. As early as 1654, the Orthodox eparchies of the Kievan metropol­itanate located in Belarus and Russia (Mahiliou, Smolensk, Polatsk, Turau) were unilaterally placed under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Moscow. Whenever bishops in these eparchies died, the Moscow patriarch appointed new ones, whom he considered the ‘guardians’ for Muscovy of the Metropolitanate of Kiev. In Kiev itself, the last metropolitan to recognize the authority of Constantinople died in 1675; thenceforth, the see was administered by Moscow-appointed ‘guard­ians.’ Eventually, the tsar’s government directed the Cossack hetman Ivan Samoilovych to organize a synod (church council) to elect a metropolitan for Kiev who would be expected to recognize the patriarch of Moscow as his superior. In 1685, Bishop Gedeon Chetvertyns'kyi of Luts'k was elected Orthodox metropoli­tan of Kiev (reigned 1685-1690), and before the end of the year he traveled to Moscow to be consecrated by the patriarch. Early the following year, the ecumen­ical patriarch of Constantinople, otherwise suspicious of Muscovy’s intentions, approved the appointment. The decisive factor was pressure on the ecumenical patriarch by the Ottoman government, which in the political circumstances of the moment was concerned not to alienate Muscovy.

This meant that the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Kiev, which in the western Rus' lands (Poland-Lithuania and the Cossack state) had been under the author­ity of the ecumenical patriarch since Kievan times, after 1686 was recognized as being within the jurisdiction of the autocephalous Russian Orthodox Church headed by its patriarch in Moscow. Kiev’s previous semi-independence under the authority of a distant and politically powerless ecumenical patriarch was now exchanged for rule by a geographically closer Russian patriarch who, in close cooperation with Muscovy’s tsar, was anxious to ‘reunite’ under one church juris­diction the Orthodox world of all the East Slavs. While it is true that Uniate met­ropolitans of Kiev simultaneously held office (elected by church councils and approved by the pope), they were never able to reside in Cossack- and Muscovite- controlled Kiev. Instead, they were forced to move from residence to residence in Polish-Lithuanian territory that had not yet come under Muscovite or Russian rule. Thus, the year 1686 marks another important step in Muscovy’s efforts to implement its long-standing claim to the political, religious, and cultural heritage of lands once belonging to Kievan Rus'.

Cultural developments

Cultural life in the Cossack state also reflected greater rapprochement between Ukrainian lands and Muscovy. Despite the military and social disruptions during the Period of Ruin, which had weakened the traditional centers of learning such as the Kievan Collegium and the brotherhood schools, a degree of intellectual activity continued. Older printing presses in L'viv (Galicia), Pochaiv (Volhynia), and Kiev continued to publish books, and new printing shops were founded in Novhorod-Sivers'kyi and Chernihiv. Most of the book production from this period consisted of sermon literature by churchmen like Bishop Lazar Ba- ranovych (reigned 1657-1694), Antonii Radyvylovs'kyi, and loanikii Galiatovs'kyi, the rector of the Kievan Collegium and the author of the most famous work in the sermon genre, Kliuch razuminnia (The Key to Understanding, 1659). But perhaps the most outstanding religious work to date from the period was the collection of episodes in the lives of monks in Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves. The tales had been gathered together as early as the thirteenth century but were not published until the seventeenth century. They first appeared in Polish (1635) and finally in Church Slavonic (1661) under the title Paterik (Kievo-Pecherskii Patent), compiled by the influential monastery’s archimandrite, Inokentii Gizel'.

The Cossack state also provided an appropriate environment for another kind of literary endeavor - the recounting and writing of history. At the level of the broad populace, the oral folk tradition expressed in epic songs (dumy) from the early seventeenth century was continued and enriched by songs about Khmel'nyts'kyi, his successors, and other Cossack exploits. Perhaps even more ideologically significant was the copying of medieval chronicles from the Kievan period, with new chronological supplements that traced the exploits of the Cos­sacks. Several works of this nature were compiled during the 1670s and 1680s, including the Kroinika z litopistsov starodavnikh (Chronicle from Ancient Chroni­clers) by Teodosii Safonovych and the Obshimyi sinopsis ruskii (Comprehensive Rus' Chronicle) by Panteleimon Kokhanovs'kyi.

Clearly the most important and subsequently the most influential historical work to date from this period was the Sinopsis Hi kratkoe sobranie (Synopsis, or A Short Collection) attributed to Inokentii Gizel'. First published in Kiev in 1674, it was republished in 1678, in 1680, and then in several subsequent editions in Mus­covy up until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Sinopsis quickly became the most popular and widely used textbook in Ukraine and Muscovy. Although it is described by some as the first textbook of Ukrainian history, it is in fact the first attempt at providing a historical continuum for the history of the East Slavs from earliest times to the seventeenth century - and one, moreover, which justified Muscovy’s self-perception as the successor to the Kievan inheritance. According to the Sinopsis, the autocracy of the Muscovite tsars derived from the Kievan grand princes. Thus, Moscow, the capital of all Rus' (as indicated in the tsar’s title), was the natural successor to Kiev. From such a perspective, the union of Cossack Ukraine with Muscovy in 1654 was viewed as simply the logical conclu­sion of history - a renewal of the unity of the Rus' lands. Gizel' even added an eth­nic element, speaking of a so-called Slaveno-Rus' nation. And in what was to become the classic pattern of the ‘foundation myth’ (dear to the hearts of all ide­ologists of nation-building), Moscow was described as having been founded by Mosokh, the sixth son of Japheth and a grandson of Noah. Hence, with biblical sanction, the city’s ostensible founder was now transformed into the forefather of all the Rus' peoples. In the end, whether or not it was actually Gizel' who com­posed the Sinopsis, and if so, whether subsequent editions may have changed the emphasis of the original text, the fact remains that this influential book origi­nated in an Orthodox cultural environment in Kiev. Moreover, it was that envi­ronment which formulated the first comprehensive historical framework for what later would become the Russian imperial view of eastern European history - namely, the linear displacement of power centers from Kiev, to Vladimir-na- Kliazma, to Moscow, and eventually to St Petersburg (see chapter 2).

Such a state of affairs, whereby intellectual leaders from peripheral areas were willing to provide an ideological underpinning for the new political order, was of course nothing new in Muscovy. After all, it had been the monk Filofei from pro­vincial Pskov in the far northwest (at the time a satellite of Muscovy’s enemy Novgorod) who provided Muscovy with its epithet ‘the Third Rome’ soon after his native city fell to its eastern neighbor at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Now, in the second half of the seventeenth century, intellectuals from Kiev and Left Bank Ukraine were in the vanguard in promoting and justifying Muscovite rule in their homeland.

The apogee in the close relations between local Cossack rulers and the Ortho­dox church, and correspondingly in the influence of Ukrainian Orthodoxy in Muscovy, was reached during the reign of Hetman Ivan Mazepa. In his own desperate search to build a local power base, the ‘newcomer’ Mazepa quickly befriended the Orthodox church, further enriching it with gifts of money, land, and even whole villages. Together with the new Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev, Varlaam lasyns'kyi (reigned 1690-1707), Mazepa helped to maintain the Kievan church’s traditional autonomy in the face of the patriarch of Muscovy, under whose jurisdiction the Orthodox church in Ukraine found itself after 1686.

Mazepa also had a strong personal commitment to education and the arts, and the Orthodox church benefited directly from his cultural patronage. The Kievan Collegium, which had declined during the devastations of the Period of Ruin, was revived under Mazepa. Finally, at the hetman’s instigation, a tsarist decree was issued in 1694 transforming the Collegium into an academy, which meant that it gained administrative autonomy and could expand the range of subjects taught. In 1700, another collegium was established in Chernihiv, and higher education in Ukrainian lands was thereby strengthened further. These schools, especially the Kievan Academy, attracted and produced some of the leading Orthodox teachers and writers found anywhere in eastern Europe at the time, including Syluan Ozers'kyi, loasaf Krokovs'kyi, Stefan lavors'kyi, and Teofan Prokopovych.

Perhaps the most monumental and lasting cultural achievement came in church architecture, marked by the initiation of several major projects during the first decade of Mazepa’s rule, that is, before the Great Northern War began to take its financial and military toll. In fact, it is mainly on the basis of its architec­tural monuments that the whole era of Mazepa has been remembered as the flowering of the Ukrainian Cossack baroque. Although Baturyn remained the administrative capital of the Cossack state, it was to Kiev that Mazepa turned his attention. During the 1690s, the hetman initiated the construction of the Church of the Epiphany (Bohoiavlennia) and the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, also known as the Great Nicholas (Velykyi Mykola), with its monumental wooden icon­ostasis, completed in 1696. Mazepa’s tenure was also characterized by the restora­tion of several earlier structures, to which undulating baroque facades and cupolas were added. Among the restored and in some cases completely trans­formed structures in Kiev were the Collegiate Church of the Assumption in the Monastery of the Caves, the Monastery Church of St Michael of the Golden Domes, the St George Church of the Vydubets'kyi Monastery (restored 1601­1701), and, finally, the monumental eleventh-century Byzantine-style Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, or Cathedral of St Sophia. By the mid-seventeenth century, the St Sophia had deteriorated to a virtual ruin. Restoration was begun under Metro­politan Petro Mohyla and continued by Mazepa between 1691 and 1705, and externally the cathedral was transformed into the baroque structure familiar to observers today.

In the realm of culture and its integral relationship with Orthodoxy, the era of Mazepa was thus characterized by an increasingly pronounced tendency among Ukrainian intellectuals to welcome their homeland’s new relationship with Mus­covy. Mazepa’s patronage both raised the level of culture in Ukraine and increased the influence of Ukrainian culture and thought in Muscovy itself. The second half of the seventeenth century witnessed the beginnings of an exodus of Ukrainian intellectuals from the Kievan Collegium and, later, Academy to Mos­cow that would increase during the first decades of the eighteenth century. For their part, Muscovite tsars and patriarchs were more than anxious to tap the talent of those trained in the Kievan Academy, and a steady stream of figures like Epi- fanii Slavynets'kyi, Symeon Polots'kyi, Dmytro Tuptalo, and, eventually, Stefan lavors'kyi and Teofan Prokopovych were brought to Moscow, where they almost single-handedly transformed the educational, religious, and cultural life of the newest leading power in eastern Europe, Muscovy.

The transformation of Ukraine after 1648

The era that began with Khmel'nyts'kyi’s revolution against Polish rule in 1648 ended more than a half century later with Ukrainian lands still under the rule of eastern Europe’s three leading powers - Poland, Muscovy, and the Ottoman Empire. The relationship among these three powers with regard to Ukraine had changed, however. Muscovy was clearly the dominant force by the beginning of the eighteenth century.

In the midst of the international struggle for control of Ukrainian lands, the indigenous Cossacks also strove to carve out their own political destiny either by forming a semi-independent state or, in the case of Zaporozhia, by rejecting all formalized structures in favor of a traditional frontier society with little or no gov­ernmental presence. Neither the proponents of statehood nor those of an under­developed frontier were able to achieve their goals without outside aid. Both groups, therefore, turned at various times to Poland, Muscovy, the Ottoman Empire, and powers even farther afield, such as Sweden. In the end, the orienta­tion toward Muscovy proved the most lasting, with the result that the Hetmanate and Zaporozhia became, as Sloboda Ukraine had previously become, fully a part of the Muscovite sphere. Certain Cossack leaders at times may have questioned the Muscovite orientation, but they were unable to stop the extension of that state’s sphere of influence over Ukrainian lands.

During these same decades, which witnessed efforts in the direction of Cossack statehood, Ukrainian lands also experienced important socioeconomic and cultural transformations. Whereas the basic social structure remained intact, the composition and interrelation of the different strata were altered. The most important change was the replacement of the Polish nobility with a fledgling Cos­sack nobility and Orthodox clerical estate as the new elite in Ukrainian society. As for Ukraine’s economy, its primary dependence on Poland came to an end, being replaced by greater interaction with the Crimean and Ottoman world to the south as well as a slow but steady trend toward interaction with Muscovy in the north. In terms of culture, the Orthodox church, which included virtually all of Ukraine’s intellectual leaders, was steadily being drawn into the orbit and service of Mus­covy. The reorientation toward Muscovy in various quarters of Ukrainian society can therefore be seen as largely voluntary. It began among Orthodox sympathiz­ers in the 1620s and 1630s, reached an important milestone with Khmel'nyts'kyi’s momentous decision of 1654, and continued to develop during the rest of the sev­enteenth century, culminating during the era of Mazepa. The process was to go on throughout the eighteenth century.