The Politics of the Tsars

The papers by Boeck¹⁷ and Mininkov¹⁸ offer a number of important insights into the history of relations between the Don Cossacks and the Muscovite authorities, as they reveal the strategies applied by both sides in the long process of negotiating their respective rights and obli­gations.

might be argued that this was not so different from (and probably orig­inated with) the policy of Moscow's rulers towards their eastern neigh­bours and vassals. The latter, as Andreas Kappeler has shown, entailed the establishment of 'a loose protectorate, which was concluded by means of an oath, by installing a loyal ruler. From the Russian point of view that established a client status to which it could always refer in the future, whereas the other side saw it at the most as a personal and temporary act of submission.'¹⁹ The fact that the Moscow and Don Cossacks had different interpretations of the oath of 1671, or that the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Muscovite authorities took different views of their respective obligations under the conditions brokered at Pere- iaslav in 1654, did not affect the readiness of the Muscovite authorities to use those treaties as an instrument of subordination, as they had done in their relations with nomads.

Kappeler's research indicates another parallel between Moscow's policy towards the Cossacks and its approach to the steppe nomads - the pitting of one group of new subjects against another. Still, there were important differences between the implementation of that policy in the Don and other Russian areas and in Ukraine. In the first instance, the Russian government often tried to use the Cossack officer stratum to curtail Cossack unrest. Examples of the 'betrayal' of the interests of the Cossack masses by well-to-do Cossacks in the uprisings led by Stepan Razin and Emelian Pugachev and the handing over of their leaders to the authorities (much lamented in Soviet historiogra­phy) attest to the success of that policy. In the Ukrainian case, we also see examples of Cossack officers handing over their hetmans to Mos­cow (the fate that befell Demian Mnohohrishny and Ivan Sam- oilovych), but those were cases of conflict within elite ranks, not of elites being used to curtail the antigovernment activities of the masses. There are almost no instances of the latter in the 'Muscovite' history of Ukrainian Cossackdom, but they abound in its pre-1648, 'Polish- Lithuanian' period. Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, who led the Host in the late 1610s and early 1620s, stands out as a hetman who was able to steer clear of a direct Cossack confrontation with officialdom, but a number of his less fortunate followers, such as Hryhorii Chorny, paid with their lives for choosing loyalty to the government over loyalty to the Host. These episodes in the history of Ukrainian Cossackdom's relations with the Commonwealth authorities find clear parallels in the history of the Don and other Russian Cossack hosts and their dealings with Muscovy.

The situation seems less clear when it comes to the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks' relations with Muscovy.

Playing masses against elites turned out successfully in Ukraine but was a tactic rarely applied by Moscow in its relations with other Cos­sack hosts. Why was that so? There is more than one answer to the question, but what seems certain is that Moscow approached the Het- manate with tactics normally reserved for enemy states, not for its own subjects or Cossack hosts under its jurisdiction. In the former instance, the exploitation of social tensions as a means of destabilization was viewed as a legitimate way to make the elites more accommodating towards Russian demands. In the second instance, such destabilization was evidently regarded as unacceptable, for the Moscow government itself would have to deal with the consequences of social upheaval in the 'no-man's-land' on its borders.

This brings us to the all-important issue of the Cossack state. The Hetmanate offers students of Cossackdom the sole instance of a suc­cessful Cossack uprising followed by the transformation of the politi­cal, social, and economic institutions created by Cossackdom into an apparatus of state power and control of a large territory with a long tradition of existence under conditions different from those prevailing among the Cossacks. The history of the Hetmanate provides rich mate­rial for the comparative study of Cossackdom and for informed specu­lation in the genre of virtual history concerning what might have been expected of Russian Cossackdom if one of the uprisings led by Razin, Kondrat Bulavin, or Pugachev had been successful. The creation of the Hetmanate may be seen as a logical result of the evolution of the Cossacks from steppe bandits and tradesmen into a military force in the service of magnates and the state, and then into a distinct social order cognizant of the need for a polity of its own in order to protect its interests effectively. It might also be regarded as the Cossacks' ultimate response to the pressure applied to them by the dominant powers of the region.

What strategies did the Cossacks employ in their negotiations with the state? One was to use their military service to the state as a lever to maintain and extend their social, economic, and political prerogatives. In the Ukrainian case, that strategy led to the spectacular growth of the Cossack register and its concomitant rights and privileges in the first decades of the seventeenth century. In the Russian case, it ensured the growth and continuing existence of some of the Cossack hosts well into the twentieth century.

The history of Cossackdom is punctuated by revolts that were even­tually suppressed by the authorities, with the notable exception of the Khmelnytsky Uprising. While such revolts often brought immediate setbacks, in the long run they generally helped the Cossacks maintain their autonomy vis-a-vis the state. Last but not least in the repertoire of Cossack dealings with the authorities was the tactic of fleeing state jurisdiction. On the level of small Cossack bands and individuals, that strategy ensured the longevity of Cossackdom and its continuing pen­etration into ever more remote parts of the Eurasian steppe. On the level of organized Cossack hosts, that 'ultimate' argument was often used as a threat by the Don Cossacks and actually implemented by the 'Nekrasovites,' who fled to the Crimean jurisdiction in 1709. The Ukrainian Cossacks, for their part, often fled to Muscovy after the failed uprisings of the first half of the seventeenth century, foreshad­owing Khmelnytsky's decision to accept the Muscovite protectorate in 1654. Khmelnytsky's failed attempt to enlist the Ottomans as his politi­cal sponsors in the mid-seventeenth century inspired later attempts by Hetman Petro Doroshenko (1665-76) and the Zaporozhians after the Battle of Poltava (1709), who became subjects of the Crimean khan after Aleksandr Menshikov destroyed the Sich on the orders of Peter I.

One more question that the comparative approach to the history of Cossackdom helps pose, and can be helpful in answering, is why Cossack institutions survived longest under Muscovy, while succumb­ing much earlier under Ottoman, Crimean, and Polish rule. This ques­tion cannot be answered merely by indicating the vastness of Russia and the long existence of an open frontier in the East. One should also take account of the various policies adopted towards the Cossacks by their home states and the ways in which the Cossacks responded to them. A comparative approach to the history of the Cossack hosts exposes the flaws of Cossack-centred historiography in both its Ukrai­nian and Russian incarnations, for that historiography regards the cur­tailment of Cossack freedoms as the main goal of Moscow's policy. In reality, the ruling elite in Moscow was often more than reluctant to extend the power of the tsar over the tumultuous Cossack hosts. It is safe to suggest that foreign-policy considerations, and not the urge to restrict Cossack freedoms, were paramount in the formulation of Mos­cow's policy towards the Cossacks for most of the seventeenth century. The desire not to provoke powerful enemies such as the Ottomans and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as reluctance to become involved in 'unruly' Cossack politics, dictated caution in Moscow's relations with the Cossacks, as evidenced by the policy pursued towards Ukraine in the late 1660s by the Ambassadorial Office under Afanasii Ordin-Nashchokin.