The Early Insurrections

The Polish government and nobility reacted with confusion and ambivalence to the rapid expansion of Cossackdom. It was difficult for the szlachta to understand that the Cossacks – still regarded by many merely as fugitive serfs – had become a distinct, organized social entity.

The first Cossack uprising occurred in 1591. That year, Krystof Kosynsky, a Ukrainian nobleman and leader of the registered Cossacks, received a land grant from the king for his services to the crown. Before he was able to take possession of it, Janusz Ostrozky, starosta of Bila Tserkva and the Polonized scion of the illustrious Ostrozky family, arrogated the land for himself. Realizing that to invoke legal sanctions against a powerful grandee would be useless, Kosynsky took vengeance by leading his Cossacks in a series of raids on the Ostrozky estates. Soon peasants, Cossacks, and even disgruntled military servitors in Volhynia, Bratslav, and Kiev were fighting their own vendettas against their lords.

No sooner had the reverberations from one rebellion faded than another insurrection flared up, this time more widespread. Its leader, Severyn Na-lyvaiko, was, according to a Polish report, “a man of pleasant countenance, exceptional ability and an excellent cannoneer to boot.”⁴ The son of a Galician tailor who died after being beaten by a magnate, Severyn, in his youth, found refuge together with his brother, Damian, at the Ostrozky estate in Ostrih. While his brother went on to become a priest and noted author, Severyn chose “to earn his bread the Cossack way.” In 1595, after leading about 2500 men on a successful raid against the Ottomans in Moldavia, Nalyvaiko returned to Bratslav province and soon came into conflict with the local nobility. Again the Cossacks proclaimed a rebellion against the hated szlachta and again the peasants rushed to join them. More important, the Zaporozhians also came to Nalyvaiko’s aid. Among the rebels’ vaguely articulated goals was the call to establish a region in Ukraine governed solely by Cossacks.

While the Zaporozhians, led by Hryhorii Loboda and Matvii Shaulo, operated in the Kiev and Bratslav regions, Nalyvaiko marched through Galicia, Volhynia, and Belorussia, urging peasants to revolt and spreading havoc among the szlachta. Realizing, however, that the Poles were stronger, the rebels united their forces in the spring of 1596 and began to retreat eastward in hopes of finding refuge in Muscovy.

It seemed to the Poles that after their victory, the Cossack problem had been solved, especially because internal conflicts were becoming increasingly more pronounced among the Cossacks. The well-established, town-based registered Cossacks generally favored negotiation and cooperation with the Commonwealth, hoping that this harmony would secure their status and provide them with the peace they needed to develop their properties, which were often sizable. However, for the majority of Cossacks, consisting of propertyless Zaporozhians and nonregistered Cossacks who were in constant danger of being pushed back into the ranks of the serfs, it seemed that only radical actions could gain for them a better place in society. With tensions between the two factions often expressed by open conflict, it was frequently possible for the Poles to play the two sides off against each other.

Events took a favorable turn for the Cossacks at this critical juncture. Because the Commonwealth became involved in an almost continuous series of wars in the early 17th century, it again turned to the Cossacks as a source of experienced fighters. In 1601, a unit of 2000 Ukrainians participated in the difficult Polish campaign in Livonia, and in 1604 and 1609 the Zaporozhians took part in the Polish intervention in Muscovy’s Time of Troubles. Hardly a meeting of the Polish parliament took place in the early 17th century without a Polish statesman producing a resolution or project that sought to utilize the military usefulness of the Cossacks, while not giving in to their demands for an enlarged register and self-determination.

Historians generally agree that, prior to Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny was the most outstanding Cossack leader. An impoverished nobleman from Sambir in Galicia, he studied in the Ostrih Academy and then made his way to the Zaporozhian Sich where, after making a name for himself as a commander of the famous sea raid against Kaffa in 1616, he was elected hetman. Convinced that the Cossacks were not yet a match for the forces of the Commonwealth, he made conciliation with the Poles the keystone of his policy. He mobilized and led the large Cossack armies that fought for the Poles in the continuous wars against Moscow and the Ottomans. A strict disciplinarian who “generously spilled the blood of those who disobeyed him,” Sahaidachny liquidated roving bands of undisciplined Cossacks and forced them to recognize his authority. To avoid conflict with the Poles, he agreed in 1619 to lower the register to 3000, forbade unauthorized sea raids, and accepted the king’s right to confirm Cossack officers.

Yet Sahaidachny’s most outstanding achievement was that he perceived the Cossacks in terms not only of their specific class interests, but also as a potential leading force in Ukrainian society as a whole. It was he who allied the rough, militarily potent Cossacks with the politically weak Ukrainian religiocultural elite. The link was forged in dramatic fashion: in 1620, Sahaidachny enrolled himself and the entire Zaporozhian Host in the Kievan brotherhood. This step was meant to demonstrate that henceforth the Zaporozhians intended to uphold Ukrainian religious and cultural demands.

In that same year, Sahaidachny, together with the Orthodox clergy, invited the patriarch of Jerusalem, Teofan, to visit Kiev in order to consecrate a new Orthodox hierarchy. Since the Poles had threatened to arrest Teofan as a spy, the hetman guaranteed his safety.

After Sahaidachny’s death, conflict again dominated Cossack/Polish relations. It had appeared initially that it might be avoided because the deceased hetman’s immediate successors, Olifer Holub and Mykhailo Doroshenko, were his close associates and shared his conciliatory views. But Cossack dissatisfaction, especially among the nonregistered, became intense after the Khotyn campaign of 1621, when over 40,000 battle-hardened Cossacks returned to Ukraine with no intention of accepting the serf status the government demanded and yet with no hope of being entered in the register. Some congregated at the Zaporozhian Sich while most returned to their towns and villages. Disgruntled and restless, they were only waiting for an opportunity to vent their frustration. Doroshenko attempted to redirect their animosity and, in the mid 1620s, organized a series of sea raids against the Ottomans, informing the startled Muslims that “the [Polish] king may have made peace with you, but we did not.”⁵ And for the first time the Cossacks became involved in the factional strife of the Crimea by supporting an anti-Ottoman candidate for the position of khan.

For the Poles, the Cossack notion of themselves as a state within a state was most irritating. The king complained in parliament that “domestic anarchy is again coming to the fore [in Ukraine], creating difficulties for us and involving us in conflicts with our powerful neighbors.

In 1625, Koniecpolski moved in Ukraine with about 8000 men. A force of about 6000 Cossacks, led by Marko Zhmailo, set out from the Zaporozhian Sich to meet him. After a series of unsuccessful encounters with the Poles, the Zaporozhian officers again reinstated the moderate Doroshenko as hetman and negotiations ensued, ending in a compromise. The register was raised to 6000, something which pleased the wealthier (“more deserving”) Cossacks who were included in it, but the majority of the rank and file was expected to return to bondage.

When the register was completed, Doroshenko proceeded to rationalize the organization of the 6000 “legal” Cossacks. They were divided into six regiments (polky) based in Kiev, Kaniv, Korsun, Bila Tserkva, Pereiaslav, and Cherkasy. Each regiment was then divided into companies (sotni), which were based in the smaller towns on regimental territory. Cossack officers had both civil and military authority over all the Cossacks in their area, while the hetman and his staff, elected by the Cossacks but confirmed by the king, had overall command. Thus, despite close Polish supervision, the registered Cossacks perfected their self-administration. The Zaporozhian Sich, in contrast, the bastion of the most militant and “illegal” Cossacks, although formally subject to the hetman, maintained de facto autonomy.

In agreeing to the expanded register, the Poles hoped that “their” registered Cossacks would control the others. When the ostensibly pro-Polish Hrytsko Chorny was elected hetman in 1629, it seemed that the Commonwealth had found the perfect man for the job. But, in his efforts to please the government authorities, Chorny infuriated many Cossacks, and, early in 1630, a group of Zaporozhians abducted him to the Sich where he was tried and executed. The Zaporozhians and nonregistered Cossacks now elected the daring Taras Fedorovych (nicknamed Triasylo) as their new hetman, and he led a strong force of rebels back into the settled areas. Again Koniecpolski, leading an army of royal troops and registered Cossacks, had a difficult campaign to fight. This time he was less successful than he had been before, and, in a treaty concluded at Pereiaslav in August 1630, the rebellious Cossacks won surprisingly liberal terms: the register was enlarged to 8000; Triasylo went unpunished; and the rebels were granted amnesty. The nagging problem of the thousands of non-registered Cossacks that lay at the root of the rebellion remained unresolved, however.

In 1635, the Commonwealth applied a new method for dealing with unruly Cossacks, On the Dnieper just above the Sich, the Poles constructed the impressive fortress of Kodak in the hope of checking the Zaporozhians. But, within months of its completion, Ivan Sulyma and a detachment of Cossacks destroyed the fortress and wiped out its garrison. Unfortunately for Sulyma, a group of registered Cossacks, anxious to curry favor with the Poles, handed him over to the royal authorities to be executed. Soon afterwards, in August 1637, yet another rebellious Cossack army, led by Pavlo Pavliuk, took the field against the Poles. As Pavliuk’s forces moved northward from the Sich, peasants from the Right Bank and, for the first time, from the newly colonized Left Bank joined the rebellion in large numbers. But once again the rebels were outmaneuvered on the open field and, in December 1637, were decisively beaten by the Polish army at Kumeiki near Chyhyryn. This loss, however, did not signal the end of the rebellion, for it continued on the Left Bank under the leadership of Iakiv Ostrianyn and Dmytro Hunia until it was finally quashed in the summer of 1638.

Victorious and eager to avenge themselves, the Poles were not in a mood to bargain. Instead, they dictated their terms. According to the ordynacija or regulations formulated by the parliament, the register was lowered to 6000 and even the registered Cossacks lost their right of self-administration. The office of hetman was abolished and replaced by that of a Polish commissioner appointed by the king. Cossack colonels and adjutants were to be selected from among the szlachta. Strict limits were established on areas where Cossacks were allowed to settle and anyone trying to make his way to the Sich without permission was to receive the death sentence. The many thousands of Cossacks who were not included in the register were classified as serfs. In addition to these draconian measures, the magnates, especially Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (Vyshnevetsky), the Polonized grandnephew of the famous Baida Vyshnevetsky and the largest landowner in Ukraine, instituted a reign of terror in the land, indiscriminately torturing and killing anyone even vaguely suspected of disobedience. Cynical Polish noblemen rationalized this brutal approach in the following way, at the same time offering a revealing insight into the szlachta perception of the Cossack problem: “The Cossacks are the fingernails of our body politic. They tend to grow too long, and need frequent clipping.” And, indeed, during the ensuing decade – a period of unprecedented calm and stability often referred to by Polish historians as the Golden Peace – it seemed that in dealing with the Cossacks, the repressive approach was the most effective.

It is useful to examine the reasons why the five major Cossack/peasant revolts that occurred in Ukraine during the forty-five-year period under consideration were all unsuccessful. To a great extent, failures resulted from the fact that, despite the leading role played by the Cossacks in the revolts, many of the rebels were peasants and, therefore, the uprisings possessed some of the weaknesses inherent in all peasant revolts. Usually spontaneous, these revolts lacked detailed planning and long-term goals. Besides redressing their immediate grievances, both Cossacks and peasants had little idea of what they wanted to achieve. Although endowed with a surfeit of bravery, the rebels were often limited and erratic in their military undertakings because peasants were reluctant to fight beyond the bounds of their own localities or during the planting and harvesting seasons. Socioeconomic differences among the Cossacks added to the problem of inconsistency of action: the rank and file, with little to lose, usually rushed into rebellion, while the well-established starshyna generally opted for negotiations, compromise, or capitulation. Yet, despite the setbacks, each successive uprising reflected the growing strength and military sophistication of the rebels. Their numbers grew, their tactics improved, and Cossack identification with the plight of the peasantry and the defense of Orthodoxy deepened. The decadelong Golden Peace merely masked a problem that was waiting to explode again.