THE PROPAGANDA WAR

The election of Skoropadskyi was accompanied by two masterful pieces of propaganda. If Mazepa himself could not be punished, then at least his name could be blackened. For this purpose two ceremonies were arranged.

The ceremony which immediately followed the election had an even greater impact on the deeply religious Ukrainian masses. Its thrust was to show that Mazepa had also sinned gravely against God. This time, Peter I and his entire entourage were present. By special order of the Tsar, all the major Ukrainian prelates were also in attendance. After the installation of Skoropadskyi, the entire assembly filed into church and listened, in a haze of incense and to the sound of solemn hymns, as the name of Mazepa was thrice de­clared anathema. That same day, in the Uspenskii Sobor in Mos­cow, in the presence of the Tsarevich Aleksei and all the leading boiars, Stefan Iavorskyi, once a close friend of Mazepa’s and now the highest ranking churchman in the realm, performed a similar ceremony.¹⁰

These ceremonies had a widespread effect. Large segments of the Ukrainian population joined in the chorus of condemnation and for centuries to come, Ukrainian peasants would not mention the name of Mazepa without appending to it the epithet “accursed.”

Before, during, and after the events in Hlukhiv, Peter I issued a series of manifestoes denouncing Mazepa and his Swedish and Polish allies. The latter answered in kind.

The Swedes were prepared for such a conflict. For the purpose of issuing what the Russians called “alluring letters to the populace” they brought along with them a Cyrillic printing press.¹² Olaf Hemerlin, one of the King’s ministers and a former professor at the University of Dorpat, was considered an expert in East European affairs and was therefore assigned to prepare the Swedish mani­festoes.

Some of the Swedish proclamations had penetrated into Ukraine even before Mazepa’s defection and, given the widespread dissatis­faction with the Russians, caused Peter I some anxiety. But when Mazepa joined the Swedes and provided them with numerous agents who, masquerading as merchants, musicians and beggars, widely disseminated the Swedish propaganda, the problem became more acute. The Tsar sent orders to Ukraine urging the population “to close their ears to these alluring letters.” Anyone caught dis­tributing these manifestoes was immediately executed. Public burn­ings of these letters took place in many Ukrainian towns (which explains, in part, why so few of the Swedish manifestoes have survived).¹³

Menshikov urged the Tsar to counteract the Swedish propaganda by issuing his own manifestoes:

I advise you that at this evil moment it is necessary to keep the common people on our side by all kinds of promises and by the publication of universals which will express all of the Hetman’s mischief against his people so that they should not be persuaded by any of his enticements.¹⁴

Soon afterwards the Tsar instructed the printers in the Kiev Pe­chersk monastery to prepare large editions of his manifestoes (in some cases almost 5,000 copies of a proclamation were printed).¹⁵ These were read in all the towns and villages which were under Russian control. For months each side bombarded the population with its arguments.

Three major issues emerged in the propaganda war of 1708- 1709: (1) the question of Mazepa’s motives, (2) the purported dan­gers that faced Ukraine and (3) the religious dimensions of the defection. In his manifestoes, Peter I struck a theme that has been repeated in traditional Russian, Soviet and often in Western his­toriography. According to him, Mazepa’s actions were motivated by strictly personal, egoistic considerations. As evidence, the Tsar pointed out that the old Hetman wished to return Ukraine “into Polish slavery” for which service he would then receive a princi­pality from the Poles. Unfortunately for Mazepa, one of his letters to Leszczynski discussing Ukraine’s relationship with Poland was intercepted by the Russians and seemingly compromising excerpts from it appeared in the Tsar’s manifesto. Moreover, the Hetman was accused of levying illegal duties and contributions on the population which he then used for his private purposes. On Peter’s orders these contributions were abolished. In this manner the Tsar attempted to transfer the resentment of the masses against the war from himself to Mazepa.¹⁶

The Hetman tried to contradict these accusations. In a series of oaths which he took before his associates and the Zaporozhians, as well as in his manifestoes, the Hetman swore that he acted not for his own benefit but for that of entire Ukraine.¹⁷ (In a letter dated October 26, 1708, Menshikov wrote to the Tsar: “If he did this it was not for himself for but all of Ukraine.”)¹⁸ Why should he, the Hetman argued, who was old, sick, without a wife or children take such a risk? It was, he stated, the increasingly burdensome Russian yoke which caused him to join the Swedes. On the heels of this statement there usually followed a litany of the wrongs committed or threatened by the Russians: the dangers of reforming the Cos­sack order, the resettlement of Ukrainians beyond the Volga and, most important, the systematic liquidation of Ukrainian rights and liberties.

As might be expected, both sides proclaimed that they had the best interests of Ukraine at heart. In one of his most publicized proclamations, Peter I stated:

We can without shame assert that no people under the sun can boast of their liberty and privileges more than the Little Russian people under our Imperial Highness, because not a single penny from the Little Russian land is allowed to be taken into our treasury.... And with our troops, maintained at our own expense, we defend the Little Russian land, the Holy Orthodox churches and monasteries and towns and villages from the Muslim and the heretic onslaught.¹⁹

In his own manifestoes, Skoropadskyi denied that “Moscow, that is, the Great Russian people, are inimical to our Little Russian interests.” He added that the Tsar “promised with his own gra­cious lips and signed with his own hand the royal order that pre­serves our liberties and graciously guarantees our rights.”²⁰

The Swedes also entered the rhetorical fray. Bemoaning the “tearful state” of the Ukrainians under Russian rule, Charles promised “with God’s help... to protect and defend this oppressed nation until they can cast off the Muscovite yoke and return to their ancient liberties.”²¹

In one of his last universals, Mazepa added another set of reasons for “disassociating ourselves from the disadvantageous, unfortu­nate and futureless protectorate of the Muscovites”:²² it was the Tsar’s duty to protect Ukraine from destruction, yet not only was he unable to fulfill his obligations in Ukraine but his own land was exposed to the Swedish invasion. Before his defection, early in 1708, Mazepa became extremely disillusioned when, upon asking Peter I for 10,000 Russian soldiers to help defend Ukraine, the Tsar replied: “Not only 10,000, but I cannot even give you 10 men. De­fend Ukraine as best you can. ’ ’ If the Tsar was unable or unwilling to defend Ukraine, then Mazepa had to do it in the only manner open to him: by exchanging the protection of the Tsar for that of the Swedish king.

But perhaps the most effective arguments, those that played best on the feelings of the masses, were those of a religious nature. Here Peter I had a distinct advantage. By joining the Swedes and the Poles, Mazepa was open to the accusation that he was betraying Orthodoxy by dealing with Catholics and Lutherans. To empha­size this point, Russian propaganda circulated exaggerated ac­counts of Swedes, supposedly on Mazepa’s advice, keeping their horses in Orthodox churches and otherwise desecrating holy places. The Hetman was also accused of plotting to introduce the hated union with Rome into Ukraine.²⁴

In attempting to counter these accusations, Mazepa and the Swedes came up with some far-fetched counter-accusations of their own. They stated that the Tsar was engaged in secret negotiations with the Pope for the purpose of suppressing the Greek faith and of introducing Catholicism in his lands. Proof of this was the alleged establishment of Jesuit-run schools in Moscow. Mazepa also added that if the greatly honored Khmelnytskyi could turn to the Otto­man infidels for aid against the enemies of Ukraine, then turning to a Christian monarch like Charles XII for aid against “our eter­nal enemies, the Muscovites” was certainly acceptable. Many of his agents were sent into Ukraine with express orders to convince the population that the Hetman had “acted for the faith.”²⁵ But, with the church leaders on the side of the Tsar and with himself involved with Catholics and Lutherans, Mazepa had a difficult time con­vincing Ukrainians that he was acting in the best interests of Orthodoxy.

For months salvos of rhetoric echoed throughout Ukraine. The “manifesto war” served to publicize the values that each side con­tended it stood for. However, factors more concrete than propa­ganda played the primary role in convincing Ukrainians as to whom to support.