18 The Khmel’nyts’kyi Uprising of 1648

The year 1648 witnessed yet another, although much larger-scale, Cossack revolt against Poland. In retrospect, however, the events of that year turned out to be a major turning point in the history of eastern Europe and, in particular, of Ukraine’s relationship to Poland-Lithuania.

Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi was, like his father, a registered Cossack who fought alongside the Polish military and who served loyally in the commonwealth’s frontier administration throughout much of the first half of the seventeenth century. Following Poland-Lithuania’s defeat at the 1620, Battle of Tutora/Cecora, he was imprisoned by his Ottoman captors for two years in Istanbul, as a result of which he learned much about Ottoman and Crimean politics. Upon his release Khmel’nyts’kyi served with the registered Cossacks in his native region of Chyhyryn, just south of Cherkasy near the Dnieper River. There he lived comfortably and administered a small landed estate. He was known to favor an increase in the number of registered Cossacks and an extension of their privileges.

In 1647 Khmel’nyts’kyi clashed with local Polish officials over financial and personal matters. He was not able to receive satisfaction from the Polish legal system and instead was arrested. He managed to escape, however, and fled to Zaporozhia, where he arrived in January 1648. Despite their general suspicion of registered Cossacks, Khmel’nyts’kyi managed to gain the trust of the Zaporozhians, who elected him their supreme leader, or hetman. When the Polish authorities got wind of Khmelnyts’kyi’s actions, which included an alliance with the Crimean Tatars, they launched a preemptive attack under the direction of commonwealth’s supreme military commander.

18.1 Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi (1595-1657), hetman of the Zaporozhian Host from 1648 until his death.

MAP 18 THE KHMEL’NYTS’KYI ERA

Somewhat unexpectedly, Khmelnyts’kyi’s Cossacks together with his Crimean Tatar allies defeated the Poles in two battles, at Zhovti Vody (May 5-6, 1648) and Korsun’ (May 15-16). Not only were the leading Polish commanders captured or killed in these clashes, but the very day of the Battle of Korsun’ the king died, plunging Poland-Lithuania into a period of political uncertainty until the Diet (Sejm) elected a new king.

The news of the Cossack victories and the destruction of Poland’s large eastern army prompted widespread peasant revolts throughout the Kiev palatinate during the summer of 1648. The peasants vented their anger at the Polish landlords and their Jewish estate managers, while the Orthodox clergy called for vengeance against Roman Catholic and Uniate priests. The spontaneous upsprings with their loss of life and property became even more widespread, as Zaporozhian leaders like Maksym Kryvonis and Danylo Ne-chai led marauding Cossack and peasant forces throughout the Kiev palatinate and farther west into the Bratslav and Podolia palatinates. Again, the Poles attempted a preemptive attack, and again they were defeated by Khmel’nyts’kyi at the Battle of Pyliavtsi (September 21-24, 1648) in far northeastern Podolia palatinate.

Flushed with success, Khmel’nyts’kyi moved further westward, successfully besieged L’viv (October 6-10) in the heart of Galicia, and turned northward toward the capital of Poland itself, Warsaw. Along the way, he besieged Zamosc (November) but then decided against proceeding further. Instead, he opted for negotiations with the newly elected king, Jan Kazimierz (r. 1648-1668). The king agreed to recommend that the Polish-Lithuanian Diet (Sejm) accept Khmelnyts’kyi’s demands, among which were: the restoration of traditional Cossack privileges; amnesty for all participants in the revolt; the dismantling of the fortress at Kodak in order to allow free access for Cossacks to the Black Sea; and the abrogation of the Union of Brest and thereby the Uniate Church.

18.2 Polish cavalry of the kind that fought against the Cossacks during the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising.

While Khmel’nyts’kyi waited for the commonwealth’s response he returned home. On his way, he stopped in Kiev in January 1649, where he was greeted by the local Orthodox hierarchs together with the visiting patriarch of Jerusalem. These high church officials hailed Khmel’nyts’kyi as a modern-day Moses leading the Rus’ people out of Polish bondage. For his part, the Cossack hetman accepted his new role as liberator and “independent ruler of Rus’.” In this regard, it is important to remember that Khmel’nyts’kyi was speaking on behalf not only of the people of Ukraine but of all the Rus’, that is, the Ukrainians, Belarusans, and other Orthodox living in Poland-Lithuania. It is within this larger political and cultural framework that Khmel’nyts’kyi was to try to forge a firm alliance with neighboring Orthodox Moldavia and that immediately—with strong encouragement from the church hierarchs—he began negotiations with the tsar of Muscovy.

Finally, in August 1649, after Khmel’nyts’kyi set out westward once again and surrounded a large Polish army in Galicia, the Cossacks reached an agreement which came to be known as the Peace of Zboriv. According to its provisions, the number of registered Cossacks was raised to forty thousand; the Orthodox metropolitan was given a seat in the Polish Senate, and an amnesty was granted to all nobles who had participated in the revolts up to that point.

The agreement of Zboriv also defined Cossack territory to consist specifically of the palatinates of Kiev, Chernihiv, and Bratslav, collectively designated as Ukraine. There the Polish military, Jews, and Uniates were forbidden to be quartered or to reside. Not surprisingly, large segments of the population were displeased with the Zboriv agreement, since other than the forty thousand Cossacks on the new register, all others who called themselves Cossacks, as well as rebellious peasants, were expected to return to the landed estates from which they fled. Nevertheless, the Cossacks and the Orthodox leadership were satisfied with the Peace of Zboriv, which recognized the existence of a Cossack state.

18.3 Khmel’nyts’kyi enters Kiev on Christmas Day (January 6, 1649) and is greeted by Orthodox church hierarchs, as depicted in 1912 by the Bukovinian-Ukrainian painter Mykola Ivasiuk.