The Right Bank under Polish Rule

Despite the gradual loss of its autonomy, the Hetmanate on the Left Bank remained a distinctly Ukrainian political, cultural, and socioeconomic entity governed by its own native elite for over a century.

TABLE 3 Ukrainian-inhabited lands in the late 18th century

Dividing up the land into the four traditional provinces of Volhynia, Podilia, Bratslav, and Kiev (the city itself remained under Russian control), the Poles proceeded to sell or distribute vast stretches of open land to a few magnate families.

While the countryside rebounded quickly, the revitalization of the urban centers on the Right Bank was a slower process. In addition to the destruction they had suffered, the towns were bedevilled by their old nemesis: the nobles. Ensconced in their self-sufficient country estates, the nobles undermined the development of the towns in various ways: the numerous craftsmen who worked on the nobles’ estates competed with those in the towns; burghers were banned from participating in such lucrative enterprises as milling, textile manufacturing, potash works, and especially the profitable distilleries of the nobles; many towns were towns in name only because they were the private property of magnates, with upwards of 80% of their population consisting of peasants who worked the surrounding lands. Despite these difficulties, some towns, such as Lutsk and Dubno in Volhynia, Kamianets-Podilskyi and Bar in Podilia, and Berdychiv and Uman in the provinces of Kiev and Bratslav, managed to grow perceptibly, thanks mainly to the active role they played in local and international trade.

Almost all the wealth generated by the Right Bank went into the pockets of the Polish “kinglets” whose holdings and extravagance became legendary. The Lubomirski family alone owned 31 towns and 738 villages, while one member of the Potocki clan had 130,000 serfs and was attended at his court by 400 noblemen. An example of the conspicuous consumption of the magnates is provided by a description of one of their banquets at which 60 oxen, 300 calves, 50 sheep, 150 pigs, and close to 20,000 fowl were washed down with 270 barrels of Hungarian wine, not to mention huge quantities of other beverages. With the costs of such extravaganzas being borne by the Ukrainian peasantry, it was evident that the Polish szlachta chose not to draw any lessons from 1648.

Another example of the resurgence of the old habits of the szlachta was renewed persecution of the Orthodox on the Right Bank. With the strong backing of the Polish government and army, the Greek Catholic hierarchy conducted a systematic campaign to undermine the Orthodox clergy and convert its parishioners to Catholicism. It was so effective that, by the 1760s, there were only about twenty Orthodox parishes left in the provinces of Kiev and Podilia. Deprived of their churches, the Orthodox came to view their monasteries as the strongholds of their faith. In 1761, Melkhysedek Znachko-Iavorsky, the young and energetic abbot of the Montronynsky Trinity Monastery and leader of the Orthodox on the Right Bank, began to organize opposition to Catholic and Greek Catholic pressure. His most important act was to ask Catherine II of Russia to come to the aid of the Orthodox of Poland. With the involvement of Orthodox Russia, the religious issue on the Right Bank took on a new and ominous dimension.

Except for the relatively few Cossacks who were hired to serve in the private armies of the Polish magnates, Cossackdom no longer existed on the Right Bank. As a result, in contrast to the situation that had existed in 1648, the oppressed peasantry lacked the leadership that could help it stand up against the szlachta. Nonetheless, a widespread, albeit haphazard, form of popular resistance did emerge. Its participants were called haidamaky. Like the word “Cossack,” the term haidamak was also of Turkic origin and meant “vagrant” or “robber.” From the early 18th century onward, it was applied by the Poles to those runaway peasants who hid deep in the forests from whence they emerged periodically to plunder isolated nobles’ estates. The phenomenon of social outcasts making a living by robbing the rich, often with the support of the masses, was a common one in early modern Europe. In analyzing it, the English historian Eric Hobsbawn coined the term “social banditry.” According to him, “social bandits” were motivated by a combination of simple, predatory instincts and semi-altruistic desires to avenge the oppression of their compariots by expropriating the property of the rich.¹ But apart from these vaguely idealistic motivations, “social bandits” had no well-defined ideology or plan to establish an alternate socioeconomic system to the one that already existed. To a large extent, Hobsbawn’s concept can be applied to the haidamaky.

Appearing initially as a minor irritant, the haidamaky gradually became a major threat to the Right Bank szlachta. One reason for their growing numbers was the expiration of the fifteen-to-twenty-year exemptions from peasant obligations. After so many years of freedom, many peasants refused suddenly to accept enserfment and preferred instead to join the haidamaky. Doing so was made all the easier by the weakness of the Polish army. Because of szlachta unwillingness to finance a large army, the forces of the Commonwealth had dwindled to only 18,000 men.

The haidamaky were especially dangerous to the szlachta at times when the Poles were distracted by international conflicts or crises. Thus, in 1734, when the Russians and two Polish factions were fighting over the election of a new Polish king, an officer in the private army of Prince Jerzy Lubomirski by the name of Verlan deserted and proclaimed a revolt against the pany (lords). Falsely declaring that he had the support of the Russian empress, Verlan mobilized about 1000 haidamaky and peasants into Cossack-style units and embarked on an extended plundering raid through Bratslav, Volhynia, and Galicia. Polish forces finally forced him to seek refuge in Moldavia. Encouraged by his success, other haidamak bands sprang up to emulate Verlan’s achievements. The szlachta, however, fought fire with fire It bribed a noted haidamak leader, the Zaporozhian Sava Chaly, to hunt down his compatriots. For several years, Chaly performed his task most effectively until he was assassinated by Zaporozhians on Christmas day in 1741. In 1750, haidamak outbursts again increased substantially. In the province of Bratslav alone, 27 towns and 111 villages were plundered. Only the arrival of army reinforcements quelled what had become a major conflagration.

“Social banditry” was also widespread in Western Ukraine, especially in the Carpathian highlands. There, bands of outlaws, called opryshky, usually numbered thirty to forty men and frequently attacked noblemen, rich merchants, and Jewish leaseholders. The most famous of the opryshky was Oleksa Dovbush who, in a manner reminiscent of the mythical Robin Hood, distributed among the poor much of the booty he robbed from the rich, thus gaining great popularity among the Carpathian highlanders.

Koliivshchyna 1768 was a year of general unrest. In the Commonwealth, the szlachta was becoming increasingly irritated by the constant intervention of Catherine II of Russia in Polish affairs. First she pushed through the election of her lover, Stanislaw Poniatowski, as king of Poland; then she forced the Poles to guarantee religious freedom to the Orthodox. Infuriated by Russian bullying, the Polish nobles formed the so-called Confederation of Bar in February 1768 and attacked the Russian troops based in their homeland. For the Orthodox of the Commonwealth, these were anxious times. Many were convinced that the Bar Confederates would turn on them because of the support they received from the Russians. Others decided to strike at the szlachta before it attacked them.

In May 1768, a band of seventy haidamaky, led by Maksym Zalizniak, a Zaporozhian from the Left Bank, set out from the Montronynsky Monastery. As they moved northward into the settled parts of the Right Bank, Zalizniak’s men urged the peasants to revolt. Their manifestos declared: “The time has come to liberate ourselves from slavery … to take vengeance for all the suffering, scorn, and unprecedented oppression that we have suffered at the hands of our masters.”² Within days, the band was inundated with recruits from the peasantry and roving haidamaky. Town after town fell to the rebels: Fastiv, Cherkasy, Korsun, Bohuslav, and Lysianka. By early June, over 2000 haidamaky surrounded Uman, a well-fortified town in which thousands of nobles, Catholic and Greek Catholic priests, and Jewish leaseholders had sought refuge. The fate of Uman was sealed when Ivan Honta (Gonta), an officer in Stefan Potocki’s guard, went over to the rebels with his entire unit. When the town surrendered shortly thereafter, a merciless massacre ensued in which thousands of men, women, and children were brutally killed.

Late in June, the entire provinces of Kiev and Bratslav and parts of Podilia and Volhynia were in rebel hands. Only the presence of Polish and Russian troops in the other West Ukrainian lands prevented them from joining the revolt. The downfall of the rebellion was brought about unexpectedly by the Russians. Worried that the uprising might spread to the Left Bank, Catherine II ordered her commander, General Mikhail Kretchetnikov, to aid the Poles. On the night of 6 July 1768, Kretchetnikov invited the unsuspecting Zalizniak, Honta, and other haidamak leaders to a banquet at which they and their astounded followers were arrested. After surrendering Honta (who was tortured and executed) and 800 of his men to the Poles, the Russians exiled Zalizniak and the rest of the haidamaky to Siberia. For the next several years, the Polish commander, Jozef Stepkowski, continued to exact a terrible revenge on the Ukrainian peasants, thousands of whom he tortured to death at his headquarters at Kodnia. Thus the last great uprising of the Ukrainian peasantry against its Polish lords came to an inglorious end.