19 The Cossack State
The Cossack state that came into being as a result of the Peace of Zboriv in August 1649 was recognized in subsequent agreements with Poland-Lithuania (Zhvanets’, December 1653) and Muscovy (Pereiaslav, 1654).
It initially comprised 120,000 square miles (312,000 square kilometers) that encompassed the Polish palatinates of Kiev, Bratslav, and Chernihiv. At the height of its territorial extent, which lasted until the death of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi in 1657, the Cossack state also included some Belarusan-inhabited lands in the southern part of Lithuania as well as Zaporozhia, which recognized the hetman as its ruler (see Map 18).Within the Kiev-Bratslav-Chernihiv core, the Polish administrative structure was entirely dismantled. In lieu of palatinates, the Cossack state was divided into regimental districts (polky), named after their regimental town centers. Initially, there were sixteen regiments, but that number changed often (usually increasing) in subsequent decades. The regiments were military-administrative units each headed by a colonel (polkovnyk), who served as the supreme military and civil authority over his given jurisdiction. The regimental colonels were elected by all the Cosssacks in a given regiment and they were assisted in their administration by a regimental staff (polkova starshyna) and a council of officers (rada polkovoï starshyny). Each regiment was in turn divided into companies (sotnia), which ranged in number from eleven to twenty-three, depending on the size of the regimental territory. The companies were headed by a captain (sotnyk) and a small company staff (sotenna starshyna).
19.1 Colonel (polkovnyk) of a Cossack regimental district.
MAP 19 THE COSSACK STATE, 1651
At the summit of the Cossack state was the central administration headed by the hetman, who had a broad range of powers.
He was simultaneously the supreme commander of the army, the state’s chief administrator and financial officer, the most important source of legislation, and eventually the supreme judge. The hetman was assisted in carrying out such multifarious tasks by a cabinet general, or officer staff (heneral’na starshyna) made up of nine members, and by two councils: the general military council (heneral’na viiskova rada) and council of officers (rada starshyn). The administrative officers at all three levels of government—the central, regimental, and company administrations—were generally known as the starshyna, or Cossack elite.
19.2 Chancellor (pysar), an important member of the hetman’s cabinet, or general officer staff.
The first seat of the Cossack state was established by Khmelnyts’kyi at Chyhyryn. After 1663, depending on subsequent territorial divisions, the capital was at Chyhyryn for the Right Bank of the Dnieper River (1665-1676) and farther north at Hadiach (1663-1669) and Baturyn (1669-1708) for the Left Bank.
19.3 The Cossack general military council, at times with several thousand participants—townspersons and peasants as well as rank-and-file fighters and Cossack officers—usually met in the Left Bank town of Pereiaslav or along the Rosava River near Kaniv.
The very name of the Cossack state reflected its nature, in that its administrators at all three levels had both military and civil authority. Hence, the state was formally called the Army of Zaporozhia (Viis’ko Zaporiz’ke), or the Zaporozhian Host. Despite this name, the state was the creation of registered Cossacks living in Ukrainian territories farther north and not of the unregistered Zaporozhians. In fact, Zaporozhia only remained part of the Cossack state through the personal leadership of Khmel’nyts’kyi.
After his death in 1657, the Zaporozhians, as before 1648, followed an independent path (see below, Chapter 23).
19.4 Foreign emissaries awaiting an audience with Hetman Khmel’nyts’kyi in Chyhyryn; gravure by Taras Shevchenko.
Neither the Cossack state nor its direct descendant, the Hetmanate, was ever de jure independent; rather, both functioned as autonomous entities within larger state structures, whether Poland or Muscovy. Between 1649 and 1654, and on the Right Bank of the Dnieper River between 1658 and 1676, the Polish king was the ultimate sovereign. The relationship between the Cossack state and Poland was based on a kind of personal union between the hetman and the king. From 1654 to 1657, and on the Left Bank of the Dnieper River after 1663, the Muscovite tsar was the ultimate sovereign over the Cossack state.
19.5 Official symbol of the registered Cossacks and later Cossack state reproduced here from a book (1622) by Kasiian Sakovych.