The Dialogue That Never Happened

Although it seems incredible in retrospect, Catherine's rule began on a positive note for the Hetmanate. Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky was among those who helped the German-born empress ascend the Rus­sian throne.

The spirit and expectations of the time are well reflected in a long poem by Semen Divovych, a secretary at the hetman's chancellery in Hlukhiv. In the words of Andreas Kappeler, Divovych's work was 'the swan song of the autonomous Hetmanate.'⁸ Entitled 'A Conversation between Great Russia and Little Russia,' the poem was completed on 21 September 1762, less than three months after Catherine's accession. It offered a historical excursus on Ukrainian-Polish and Ukrainian- Russian relations, based predominantly on the anonymous 'Brief Description of Little Russia' (1734).⁹ The poem's historical narrative, which stressed the glorious deeds of the Cossacks and their loyalty to the Russian emperors, was the basis for the assertion of two main points. The first was that Great and Little Russia constituted two equal parts of a single state linked by their loyalty to the common sovereign. Secondly, Divovych demanded the equalization of Little Russian ranks with those of Great Russia. Since the Hetmanate's ranks did not correspond to the imperial system, which was based on Peter I's Table of Ranks, Little Russians found themselves at a disadvantage vis-a-vis their Russian counterparts. While the first of Divovych's arguments bolstered the cause of Ukrainian autonomy, the second advocated the integration of the Hetmanate's elites into imperial society and the Russian imperial system in general.

Divovych resolved the disagreement on these issues between Great and Little Russia in favour of the latter. Impressed by the tale of the Cossacks' heroic deeds and their loyalty to the tsars, illustrated inter alia by Rozumovsky's role in Catherine's ascension to the throne, Great Russia accepts the Little Russian 'truth.' She says to Little Russia:

Enough - I now accept your truth;

I believe it all; I respect you and acknowledge your valour;

Hence I shall adjust your ranks to the measure

And will never renounce friendship with you.

We shall live in unprecedented harmony from now on

And both serve faithfully in one state.¹⁰

In making his argument in favour of Little Russian distinctiveness and equality with Great Russia, Divovych touched upon a number of important issues pertaining to eighteenth-century Ukrainian identity. First of all, the text of the poem indicates that the author did not think in terms of a common Russo-Ukrainian history or identity but recog­nized only the state and its ruler as common or 'all-Russian.' Beyond that, his world was clearly divided into two parts, Little Russian and Great Russian. For him, even the imperial ranks were 'Great Russian,' not 'imperial.' Little Russia, which Divovych alternatively calls 'Ukraine,' had an origin and history different from those of Great Rus­sia. It began with the legendary period of Khazar dominance and then came under the rule of Polish kings (among whom Stefan Batory won the author's special praise for his organization of the Cossacks) and Russian tsars. Crucial for Divovych (and, apparently, for his contempo­raries) was the confusing issue of the Little Russians' and Great Rus­sians' exclusive claims to the name 'Russia.' In the 'Conversation,' Divovych asserted his compatriots' right to call their land 'Russia,' simultaneously stressing the differences between the two countries:

GREAT RUSSIA: Do you know with whom you are speaking, or have you forgotten?

I am Russia, after all: why do you ignore me?...

LITTLE RUSSIA: I know that you are Russia; that is my name as well.

Why do you intimidate me? I myself am trying to put on a brave face.

I did not submit to you but to your sovereign,

Under whose auspices you were born of your ancestors.

Do not think that you yourself are my master,

But your sovereign and mine is our common ruler.

And the difference between us is in our given names:

You are great, I am little; we live in neighbouring lands.¹¹

The 'Conversation' impresses one as the strongest manifestation of Ukrainian political and historical distinctiveness since the times of Het­man Ivan Mazepa, and it comes as little surprise that Divovych rein­forced his argument with a number of themes taken from the discourse of Mazepa's days. Among them were the Khazar myth, which estab­lished the separate ethnic origins of the Cossacks; the idea of Ukraine's voluntary submission to the rule of the Russian monarchs; the cult of Bohdan Khmelnytsky as the guarantor of Little Russian rights and free­doms; and, last but not least, the idea of the Little Russian nation as col­lective possessor of rights granted by the Polish kings and Russian tsars.¹² Of course, given prevailing circumstances, Divovych put as much distance as possible between himself and Hetman Mazepa's leg­acy. He stressed that Mazepa alone, not Little Russia as a whole, had committed treason in 1708 and pointed out that the Great Russians had had quite a few traitors of their own, thereby dismissing the accusation that the Ukrainian hetmans and Ukrainians in general were unreliable subjects. Declaring himself a loyal subject of the tsars, Divovych never­theless indicated his preference for a republican form of government: in the 'Conversation,' Little Russia notes that Great Russia does not rule it in a republican manner.

Was Divovych alone in expressing such dangerous views? It appears not. Catherine's ascension to the throne, followed by her ukase of May 1763, which reinstated chamberlains' courts in Ukraine and pro­claimed that the Hetmanate should be administered according to 'Lit­tle Russian rights,' aroused great expectations among the elite of the Hetmanate.

The speech in question was modelled on Polish political speeches of the era, which lamented the decline of the fatherland and looked to the glorious past for inspiration. For the author of the Hlukhiv speech, such a 'golden age' was the era of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, when Ukraine had been assured of the recognition of its rights and privileges by the Russian tsars. The speaker's praise for the rights granted to the 'Rus' nation' under the Commonwealth ('of which the above-mentioned republic should boast even today to the whole world') and his state­ment that Little Russia's troubles had begun with its transfer to the rule of the Russian tsars found certain parallels in declarations made by Hetmans Ivan Mazepa and Pylyp Orlyk concerning their breaches with Muscovy. The difference, however, was that the Hlukhiv speaker pointed a finger not at the Russian rulers but at the Little Russian elites: in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he accused them of acting self­ishly and neglecting the common good. The anonymous author of the speech saw the source of the problem in the growing preponderance of the Cossack Host over the nobility and called for a return to the judi­cial system and privileges of the Khmelnytsky era, probably unaware (or disregarding the fact) that in those days the Host had indeed ruled supreme.

Most of these proposals (with the notable exception of the one to codify and translate the Little Russian laws) were included in the peti­tion submitted to the empress. It asked Catherine II to confirm the privileges granted to the Little Russian hetman, the estates, and the 'whole nation' by Lithuanian princes, Polish kings, and Russian tsars. It also asked for the continued election of hetmans, the creation of a Little Russian Diet (General Council), reform of the court system according to the provisions of the Lithuanian Statute, recognition of Little Russian ranks, and confirmation and amplification of the rights of Cossack officers, rank-and-file Cossacks, and burghers. The reform of the tax system suggested by the authors of the petition was intended to equalize Ukraine with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in its trade with the rest of the empire.¹⁵ The satisfaction of the Hlukhiv council's demands would effectively have established a distinctive political, social, and economic system in the Hetmanate, differentiating it from the rest of the empire and helping to materialize Divovych's vision of Little and Great Russia as countries united by little more than allegiance to their joint ruler.¹⁶

At the same time, the program of the Hlukhiv council was more modest than the vision advanced by Divovych. The authors of the Hlukhiv speech and petition had to be much more careful in formulat­ing their views than did a Ukrainian officeholder writing to his peers. Thus, for example, they made no mention of the Khazar origins of the Cossacks, which established Ukraine's distinct, non-Rus' origins.