The Turning Point

From the time Moscow established its sovereignty over Cossack Ukraine, it strove to transform its nominal overlordship into direct control. For their part, the Cossack leaders, who had been disillusioned during the Ruin with the Polish and Ottoman options, no longer questioned the need to maintain links with Moscow.

A decisive phase in the relationship of the Hetmanate to Moscow occurred during the hetmancy of Ivan Mazepa, one of the most outstanding and controversial of all Ukrainian political leaders. Born on the Right Bank in 1639 into a Ukrainian noble family that was “highly esteemed in the [Zaporozhian] Host,” Mazepa received an exceptionally broad education. After studying in the Kiev Academy, he transferred to a Jesuit college in Warsaw and later entered the service of the Polish king as a gentleman-in-waiting. This provided him with opportunities to travel extensively in Western Europe and to serve as a royal emissary to Cossack Ukraine. After returning to the Right Bank in 1669, Mazepa entered the service of Doroshenko, hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine. On his first diplomatic mission, however, he was captured by the Zaporozhians, who handed him over to the Left-Bank hetman, Ivan Samoilovych. The polished Mazepa managed to turn a potentially disastrous situation into a personal triumph. His international experience and impeccable manners convinced Samoilovych to make him his confidant. These same qualities helped Mazepa establish close contacts with highly placed tsarist officials. In 1687, when Samoilovych was deposed, it was Mazepa who, backed by Russian officials, was elected as his successor.

For most of his twenty-one years in office, Mazepa pursued the traditional policies of the Left-Bank hetmans. With unparalleled consistency he issued over 1000 land grants to the starshyna, thereby greatly strengthening its position. Nor did he neglect his own interests. Thanks to generous grants from the tsar and his own acquisitive instinct, the hetman managed to accumulate nearly 20,000 estates, thus becoming one of the wealthiest men in Europe. A man of intellect and refinement, Mazepa contributed a significant part of his personal wealth toward the support of religious and cultural institutions. An avid patron of Orthodoxy, he built a series of beautiful churches throughout the Hetmanate in the ornate style that some call the Mazepist or Cossack Baroque. His support of the Kiev Academy made possible the construction of new buildings and increased enrollment to 2000 during his term in office. In addition, he endowed many other schools and printing presses in order that “Ukrainian youths might be able to indulge in any aptitude they had for learning.”¹

But while Kievan students and churchmen composed effusive panegyrics in his honor, the peasants and common Cossacks had little good to say about Mazepa. His open, systematic support of the starshyna led to widespread discontent among the masses and the antielitist Zaporozhians. A potentially explosive situation developed in 1692 when Petro Ivanenko Petryk, a well-connected chancellerist, fled to the Sich where he began organizing an uprising against the hetman. Proclaiming that the time had come to rise up against the “blood-sucking” starshyna and to “tear away our fatherland Ukraine from Muscovite rule,” Petryk gained Tatar support for the formation of an independent Ukrainian principality.² However, when his Tatar allies turned against him and attacked the populace instead, Petryk’s popular support dwindled and the revolt petered out. Relations with Moscow

Mazepa’s remarkable rise from prisoner to hetman and his success in controlling the grasping, backbiting starshyna while at the same time ushering in an era of great cultural and economic growth were achievements of the first order.

His close relations with Peter I allowed Mazepa to take advantage of a great Cossack revolt that broke out in 1702 on the Polish-controlled Right Bank. When the region was resettled, the Polish szlachta attempted to drive out the Cossacks. Led by a popular colonel by the name of Semen Palii, the Right-Bank Cossacks rose up in revolt and panic-stricken Polish officials reported that Palii intended to “follow in Khmelnytsky’s footsteps.” The rebel forces already numbered 12,000 when other Cossack leaders, among them Samuilo Samus, Zakhar Iskra, and Andrii Abazyn, joined them. Soon such Polish strongholds as Nemyriv, Berdychiv, and Bila Tserkva fell to the rebels. As the Polish szlachta fled westward, it appeared that a lesser version of 1648 was in the making. Yet, in 1703, the Poles managed to regain much of the lost territory and besieged Palii in his “capital” of Fastiv. At this point, Charles XII of Sweden, Peter I’s archenemy, invaded Poland. In the confusion, Mazepa convinced the tsar to sanction his occupation of the Right Bank. Once again the two halves of Dnieper Ukraine were united and Mazepa was able to take the credit for it.

Map 13 Russian-ruled Ukarine in the early 18th century

Early in the 18th century, however, the mutually beneficial relationship that Mazepa had so skillfully cultivated with the tsar began to show signs of strain. The Great Northern War began in 1700. In this exhausting twenty-one-year-long struggle for control of the Baltic Sea coast, the main opponents were Peter I of Russia and Charles XII, the militarily gifted but politically inept 18-year-old king of Sweden. After suffering a number of disastrous defeats early in the war, Peter I, who was a great admirer of Western ways, resolved to modernize his army, government, and society. All his subjects were exposed to greater centralization, more government controls in all aspects of life, and the elimination of “old-fashioned particularities.” In the process, the traditional autonomy of the Hetmanate, which had been guaranteed in 1654, was placed in jeopardy.

Unprecedented demands were made upon the Ukrainians by the tsar during the war. For the first time, Cossacks were expected to fight solely for the tsar’s interests. Instead of warding off their traditional Polish, Tatar, and Ottoman enemies close to home, Ukrainians now had to confront modern Swedish armies in far-off Livonia, Lithuania, and central Poland. It became painfully obvious during these campaigns that the Cossacks were no match for the regular European armies. Year after year, their units would return from the north with casualty rates as high as 50%, 60%, and even 70%. Cossack morale worsened when, in 1705, in an effort to coordinate his forces, Peter I assigned Russian and German officers to the Cossack regiments. Contemptuous of what they regarded as inferior troops, these foreign officers often used Cossacks simply as cannon fodder.

Peasants and townsmen in Ukraine also became disgruntled on account of the war. They protested that Russian troops, quartered in their towns and villages, badly mistreated the local populace. “From everywhere,” Mazepa wrote to the tsar, “I received complaints against the willfulness of the Russian troops.”⁴ Even the hetman himself began to feel insecure as rumors spread that the tsar intended to replace him with a foreign general or a Russian favorite.

The grievance that finally forced Mazepa to seek an alternative to Russian overlordship involved the issue of protection. When Charles XII’s Polish ally, Stanisław Leszczyński, threatened to invade Ukraine, Mazepa turned to Peter I for aid. The tsar, facing a Swedish invasion, replied: “I cannot even spare ten men; defend yourself as best you can.”⁵ For the hetman, this was the last straw. When Peter I broke his commitment to defend Ukraine from the hated Poles – a guarantee that constituted the basis of the 1654 treaty – the Ukrainian hetman no longer felt bound to remain loyal to him. On 28 October 1708, when Charles XII diverted his drive on Moscow and moved into Ukraine, Mazepa went over to the Swedes in the hope that his land would be spared from devastation. About 3000 Cossacks and many leading members of the starshyna followed him. The terms under which the Ukrainians joined Charles were established in a pact concluded the following spring. In return for military aid and provisions, Charles promised to protect Ukraine and to refrain from making peace with the tsar until it was completely free from Moscow and its former rights restored.

It was with “great wonderment” that Peter I learned of “the deed of the new Judas, Mazepa.” Within days of the hetman’s defection, Prince Aleksander Menshikov, the Russian commander in Ukraine, attacked the hetman’s capital at Baturyn and massacred its entire population of 6000 men, women, and children.

Frightened by the terrible example set in Baturyn, cowed by the Russian troops in their midst, and put off by the Protestant Swedes, much of the Ukrainian populace refused to join Mazepa. It preferred to wait and see how matters developed. Surprisingly, the one numerically significant segment of the Ukrainian population that did side with the hetman was the Zaporozhians. Although they had often been at odds with him because of his elitism, they regarded Mazepa as a lesser evil than the tsar. But the Zaporozhians were to pay dearly for their decision. In May 1709, a Russian force destroyed their Sich and the tsar issued a standing order for the immediate execution of any Zaporozhian who was captured.

Throughout the fall, winter, and spring of 1708–09, the rival forces maneuvered for strategic positions and competed for popular support in Ukraine. Finally, on 28 June 1709, the Battle of Poltava – one of the most decisive battles in European history – took place and Peter I emerged the victor. As a result, Sweden’s attempt to dominate northern Europe ended in failure and Russia, now assured control of the Baltic coast, rose to become one of the great powers of Europe. For the Ukrainians, the battle marked the end of their attempts to break away from Russia. It was now only a matter of time before the Hetmanate would be completely absorbed in the expanding Russian Empire. Indeed, Peter I considered the English subjugation of Ireland to be a fitting model for his plans regarding Ukraine.

Closely pursued by Russian cavalry, Mazepa and Charles XII sought refuge in Ottoman-ruled Moldavia after their defeat. It was here near the town of Bender that a dejected 70-year-old Mazepa died on 21 September 1709. Pylyp Orlyk (1710–42)

About fifty leading members of the starshyna, almost 500 Cossacks from the Hetmanate, and over 4000 Zaporozhians had followed Mazepa to Bender. These “Mazepists,” as the refugees are sometimes called by historians, constituted the first Ukrainian political emigration. In spring 1710, they elected Pylyp Orlyk, Mazepa’s chancellor, as their hetman-in-exile. Anxious to attract potential support, Orlyk drafted the Pacta et constitutiones, often referred to as the Bender Constitution, which obligated him to limit the prerogatives of the hetman, to eliminate socioeconomic exploitation, to preserve the Zaporozhians’ special status, and to work for the political and ecclesiastical separation of Ukraine from Russia if he were to regain power in Ukraine. With the backing of Charles XII, Orlyk concluded alliances with the Crimean Tatars and the Ottoman Porte and early in 1711 launched a combined Zaporozhian/Tatar attack against the Russians in Ukraine. After some impressive initial successes, the campaign failed. For the next several years, Orlyk and a small group of followers wandered from one European capital to another in search of aid for their cause. Eventually, the hetman-in-exile was interned in the Ottoman Empire. But, he never ceased to bombard French, Polish, Swedish, and Ottoman statesmen with manifestos about Ukraine’s plight or to plan with his son, Hryhor, ways of freeing his homeland from the “Muscovite yoke.”