The Ukraine Enslaved

Following the suppression of the Pugachev uprising the Cossacks of the Yaik—now the Ural Army—together with those of the Don Cossacks became a part of the Russian Im­perial Army, allowed to retain their traditional laws and customs, local self-government, and a measure of autonomy.

Due to extravagant spending and a large military force the imperial government was chronically short of funds and con­tinued to search for new sources of revenues. By Elizabeth Γs reign St. Petersburg was eyeing the vast fertile territory of the Zaporozhian Army larger in area than even the Hetmans left­bank Ukraine. Armed conquest, however, was out of the ques­tion as the Zaporozhian Army consisted of a crack force of at least 20,000 men, who moreover could call on the Crimean Khan and the Ottoman Sultan as allies as well as on the 10 Ukrainian Cossack regiments, whose Ioyaltywas not certain in the event of an attempted invasion of Zaporozhia.

Some border regions of Zaporozhia, however, were co- opted by the imperial government to be settled by other Ukrain­ian Cossacks and foreigners who came as defensive military units and were responsible directly to the government. In 1751 Elizabeth I settled several hundred Serbs from southern Hun­gary led by General Khorvat in an east-west strip bordering right-bank Ukraine (still under Poland), and a year later they were joined by Serbs from the Balkans and Bulgarian, Greek, and Rumanian Greek Orthodox settlers. Three years later to reinforce the settled territory—now named New Serbia—more Zaporozhian land was expropriated in another strip off New Serbia, which was settled by 6,000 Cossacks from Sloboda Ukraine. Also, on the northeastern corner of Zaporozhia more Slavic Orthodox settlements were opened under the name of Slavo-Serbia, with its center at Bakhmut. As the Zaporozhians began to clash with the newcomers a number of Serb settle­ments were wiped out and the colonization came to a halt. Then in 1764 the Russian Government undertook a major revision of land boundaries and issued decrees on 2 April, 22 June, and 2 August which reclassified New Serbia and the territory given to the Sloboda Ukrainian Regiment as New Russia (“Nova Rossiya”) and placed under Catherine II s General Melgunov.

Another war with the Ottoman Empire and the Crimea was looming on the horizon, and the imperial government was careful not to alienate the powerful Zaporozhian Army and their brethren in northern Ukraine. With the outbreak of war in 1768 most of the discord and conflict in Zaporozhia over the Haidamakuprising came to an end as Cossackregiments began to move out against the Crimean Tatars and Turks. The Za- porozhians quickly proved themselves to be indispensable against an enemy they knew so well. Russia did not possess a single warship on the Black Sea and the Zaporozhian ^αtchaika^, wolf packs once again proved their worth against the Turkish men-of-war when in 1770 they destroyed an Ottoman fleet at the mouth of the Danube.⁵⁴ On land the Zaporozhian cavalry and infantry often fought as the avant-garde of the Imperial troops and their daring and accomplishments once again spread far and wide. The Crimean Khan had sent a letter to the Sich reminding the Zaporozhians of their recent alliance and inviting them to turn against Catherine II. On receiving a refusal the Khan began the war in January 1769 by overrunning the Za- porozhian detachment at Bar to support the army of the Polish Confederates and engage in the usual plunder. Crossing the Buh River and avoiding the St. Elizabeth fortress, the Tatars succeeded in devastating a great area, up to the Polish Galician border.

In the meantime Catherines generals were assembling two large armies consisting of regular troops and Ukrainian Cossack regiments. During the summer of 1769, ^aKoshovy Ata­man” Kalnishevsky received instructions from Peter Rumi­antsev, the governor-general of Ukraine, to join the Russian army under his command, and taking 10,300 Zaporozhians and 38 boats he moved out towards the Buh River to form a defen­sive line against the great Turkish fortress at Ochakov. Not con­tent in playing a passive role, atamans Holovaty and Nosach conducted deep scouting raids for which they received rewards from General Rumiantsev.

During the summer of 1770 the great storming of Akker- man (Aslan Kerman) took place in which Kalnishevky s men and Tretiaks sailors played a prominent role and were recog­nized by General Panin in a letter of 17 August of that year. As the Tatars were escaping westwards many were intercepted by Tretiaks Tchaika boats and taken prisoner. The Nogai Tatars, who lived between Ochakov and Akkerman on the lower Dnipro, decided on a peace agreement with General Panin and agreed to support the invasion of the Crimea under Dolgoruky, who had replaced Panin as commander of the southern army which was to invade the peninsula. Dolgoruky was also sup­ported by Kalnishevskys 6,000 Zaporozhian Cavalrywhich had gained fame in the fighting at Ochakovwith 500 of The best” Cossacks who knew the Perekop area and were chosen for special duty under Ataman Kovpak. Their job was to spear­head the general advance into the Crimea, provide all the nec­essary patrols, and gather the crucial military intelligence on which the campaign depended.

By 1774 both sides of the conflict were ready to cease hos­tilities. The war was going well for the Russian forces but the Pugachev uprising was threatening the very existence of Cather- ine^,s empire. The death of the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III brought a new ruler of the Porte to the throne, Abdul Hamid I, who was willing to negotiate. A peace treaty was signed on 21 July 1774 in the Bulgarianvillage ofKuchuk-Kainarji, by which Catherine IIs treasury received an indemnity of 4,500,000 rubles. The Crimean Khan was declared to be independent of the Ottoman Sultan, the Azov and Black Sea ports of Kinbur- unu, Yenikol, and Kerch were occupied along with the entire Black Sea coast between the Dnipro and Buh rivers, and Russia acquired commercial navigation rights in Ottoman waters.

The Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Ukrainian Cossack regiments had played a key role in the Crimean, Wallachian, and Moldavian campaigns. On 16 January 1771 imperial envoys arrived from St. Petersburg bringing a gold medal for Kalni- shevskyfrom Catherine II, Studdedwith diamonds and stamped with her image with the inscription “(to) our true subject, KoshovoiAtaman Kalnishevskyofthe ZaporozhskyArmy, and all officers and the whole Army.” Sixteen “kuren” atamans and officers received gold medals, and awards were handed out to all members of the Zaporozhian Danube flotilla, 19 vessels in all, for their exceptional bravery during Rumiantsevs Danube campaign of 1771. Special merit was also received for the survey of the currents, water depths, the prevailing winds and other vari­ables required for navigation. The commanding colonel Yakiv Sudlovsky and his officers were awarded silver medals and al­most 1,000 of the men received monetary bonuses.

Another indication of Zaporozhian prestige was the hon­orary affiliations requested by Russian commanders. General Gregory Panin became an honorary member of the Zaporo- zhian Irklivsky “kuren” and Catherine s young lover Gregory Potemkin, the Governor General of New Russia (Zaporozhia), was assigned to the Kushchivsky “kuren,” and given the Broth­erhood name of Hritsko Nechosa by which he would be known amongst them.⁵⁶ Henceforth in his correspondence with Kalni- shevsky, Potemkinwould address the “Koshovy Ataman” in the respectful manner as “batko,” the Ukrainian word for “father.” Other Russian commanders such as Kutuzov and Prozorovsky were also given honorary memberships in the Irklivsky “kuren,” and a number of prominent civilians became honorary mem­bers of the Zaporozhian Brotherhood such as the great German mathematician Euler, who greatly admired their freedom-loving culture and democratic traditions. The Russian generals had committed themselves to protect the Brotherhood by their hon­orary memberships of the Sich, a responsibility which they would betray. The Ukrainian Cossack contribution to the war effort was particularly crucial since a great dissatisfaction had spread amongst the Don Cossacks, and twenty regiments of the Army refused to go on campaign. When a special regiment was mobilized it, too, refused to move to the front.⁵⁷

The Zaporozhian Cossacks had refused to join the Cri­mean Khan in 1768 in an anti-Russian alliance, a decision they would come to regret. On 23 April 1775 in a secret meeting Catherine II and her advisors decided to occupy and destroy the Zaporozhian Sich, the only obstacle which stood in the way of the imperial expansion to the Black Sea and control of the fertile black earth of the Zaporozhian steppe. It was barely a year since the end of the war and most Zaporozhian units were still deployed against the Turks or had returned to their “palanka” hunting and fishing grounds. In the summer of 1775 Russian imperial troops began to be pulled back from the Danube and the southern steppes and concentrated around Fort St. Elizabethwhile Don Cossackregiments were ordered to move west towards the Dnipro River. General Peter Tekeli, a relative of Governor Khorvat of New Serbia, was put in charge of the gathering army that was to be directed against the Za- porozhian Sich. The Russian military was well aware of the Za- porozhian intrepid fighting abilities and was not taking any chances. By the end of May, 66,000 men were surrounding the Sich: eight regiments of regular cavalry, twenty squadrons of hussars, seventeen squadrons of pikemen, ten regiments of reg­ular infantry, and thirteen regiments of Don Cossacks.⁵⁸ Another force under Prince Prozorovskywas to leave Sloboda Ukraine and advance to the left bank of the Dnipro River to complete the encirclement.

General Tekeli divided his force into five groups, which were to strike simultaneously in different regions of the steppe. Four were to occupy the “palanka” settlements while the fifth and largest group advanced against the Sich stronghold on Khortytsia Island. The treacherous plan was to catch the Cos­sacks by surprise, quickly surround the island, capture the Za- porozhian flotilla, and gain control of the outer walls and the artillery. The Sichwas garrisoned by some 3,000 Cossacks and defended by twenty guns of small caliber, while the “palanka” settlements had even less. The Zaporozhians woke up in the morning to find themselves surrounded by what they thought at first were friendly forces, but all became clear when General Tekeli demanded they throw down their weapons and sur­render. Retreating to the inner fortification the Cossacks split into two factions—surrender to what were overwhelming forces or to stand and fight. Popular tradition has it as recounted by old Cossacks that the rank-and-file and some officers wanted to fight, but “Koshovy Ataman” Kalnishevsky and the senior officers came out against what they saw was a foolhardy gesture in the face of such overwhelming odds.

Kalnishevsky and his officers convinced most of the rank- and-file that their only option was to surrender, and the Church Archimandrite also came out in favor of not shedding “Christian blood.” On the next day 5 June 1775 the Khortytsia Sich gates were opened to the Russian army without a shot fired, but per­haps resistance would not have been futile. Pugachev was still fresh in people s minds, and a Zaporozhian stand against Tekeli s troops could have brought many Don Cossacks to their side followed by Ukrainian Cossack regiments. Certainly the com­bined Cossack strength would have been a match for Tekeli s imperial army and could have ignited another revolutionary uprising in Ukraine and southern Russia to end tsarist despot­ism.

With the surrender of the Sich, Russian infantry poured through the gates to relieve the Cossack garrison of weapons, many of exquisite Ottoman craftsmanship captured during the war. It turned out some of the osauls, colonels, and atamans were complicit in the surrender and had been approached by General Tekeli in exchange for imperial officer status and land grants. Other officers in higher authority such as the Army judge, the Secretary, colonels and atamans were arrested on the spot. Peter Kalnishevskywas also arrested and taken away, and it was only determined later that he was imprisoned in a monas­tery on the northern SolovetskyIsland, without a trial or an en­quiry. Other captive Zaporozhian Cossack officers were also dispersed throughout Russian monasteries without trial and were never heard of again. Locked up and under constant sur­veillance, Peter Kalnishevsky, a hero of the Turkish War, sur­vived for 25 years in the monastery prison until 1796, when he was freed by Catherine s son Paul following her death. He chose to remain in the monastery, however, until his death in 1803 at the age of 113!

Following the surrender of the Sich, on 14 August 1775 Empress Catherine II issued a decree, which must stand as one of the most treacherous and hypocritical documents in history:

We desire to announce by this means throughout Our entire Em­pire... that the Zaporozhian Sich has already been totally de­stroyed, together with the eradication for all time, of the very name ofZaporosky Cossacks, for no less reason than the outrage of Our Imperial Majesty at the behavior and audacity of these Cossacks in disobedience of Our Supreme commands.⁵⁹

There followed a list of six “transgressions” which the Za- porozhian Cossacks were supposed to have committed, without a word of their loyal service during the Turkish War. As for Catherine s lover Potemkin, who had betrayed his Cossacks, he too would become a victim of Catherine s treachery. Out of favor, he died 5 October 1791 of malaria in an open field at the age of 52 with his one eye covered with a 5 kopek coin provided, ironically, by a Cossack in his escort. Potemkins last words to the Empress in a letter were, “I do not Icnowwhat is to become of me.”

The great territory of the Zaporozhian Army, now New Russia, was distributed amongst Catherines favorites, the no­bility, and foreign colonists. Some individuals such as the newly appointed Procurator-General of Ukraine (now “Little Russia” and “New Russia”), Prince A. Viazemsky, were given 550,000 acres, Potemkin received 400,000 acres, and notables such as the deposed Ukrainian Hetman Rozumovskygot up to 100,000 acres. Others received less, but every noble was allowed at least 3,000 acres of fertile black-earth soil.⁶⁰ Many brought their serfs with them, while the free peasants, who had been under Cos­sack protection, were converted into serfs by Catherine s son Paul I just before his murder in 1801 by a clique of nobles. Half of the Zaporozhian lands, however, some 12 million acres, were reserved for Greek and Serb Greek Orthodox colonists as well as German-speaking Catholics and Protestants. Some of the first to arrive were the pacifist Mennonites from Prussia, 230 families who in 1789 received 160 acres each on Khortytsia Is­land where the last Zaporozhian Sich had stood. All settlers received money grants, freedom of religious worship, and an exemption from taxation for a fixed period of time, and Men- nonites were guaranteed an exemption from military service. By 1845 there were some 100,000 non-Ukrainians on the steppe, although Ukrainians remained in the majority.⁶¹

Before his death Potemkin s last act of service to Empress Catherine was his leadership in a new Turkish-Crimean war, in which Ukrainian Cossacks would again play an important role.⁶² Many Zaporozhian Cossacks had dispersed following the fall of the Sich but some were allowed to settle on their old territory, now renamed “New Russia.” A hard core of some 5,000 men would not accept imperial Russian rule and sought refuge with the Turkish Sultan. They were received with open arms, and were granted land between the Danube delta and Bender where they could fish and build a Sich. The Zaporozhian Cossacks were soon finding themselves in a difficult situation as the Sultan began using them to put down unrest among the Mol­davian Orthodox Christian population.

War with the Russian Empire was again looming and they would have to fight against other Ukrainian Cossacks. When a revolt broke out in occupied Crimea in 1783 Potemkin recruited a corps of 1,000 former Zaporozhians led by Anton Holovaty and in the following year many other Zaporozhian Cossacks left Ottoman territory to settle between the Buh and the Dnister rivers, where they became known as the Cossack Army of the Buh. In 1787 the Ottoman Sultan declared war on Catherine II, who now reversed her decision and authorized the formation of a new Cossack army, so long as the name ^aZaporozhian^w was not used. With Sidor Bily as the ataman, all flags and army regalia confiscated from the Khortytsia Sich were restored, to­gether with the ranks of many former officers in what became the CossackArmy of the Black Sea.

The war began with an inconclusive naval engagement on SJune 1787 in the 38 mile wide Liman estuary of the Dnipro River, and the following unsuccessful Turkish attack on the Kinburunu fortress. The Buh Cossacks took part in the naval engagement under the newly appointed AdmiralJohn Paul Jones, the Scotsman who had commanded a battleship against the British Crown during the American Revolution. In May an army of 50,000 men under Potemkins command, which in­cluded thousands of Ukrainians, besieged the great fortress of Ochakov for the entire summer, without daring to storm the walls for fear of suffering high casualty rates. Finally, on 6 De­cember 1788 with GeneralAlexander Suvorovin charge, at 4:00 in the morning six columns of 5,000 men each attacked the walls. By sunrise the assault, in which the Cossack Black Sea Army took a prominent part, was over, ranking as one of the bloodiest slaughters of the war with tens of thousands of men killed on both sides. In the following year the heavily garrisoned Ottoman strongholds of Akkerman and Bender surrendered without a fight, while Belgrade and Bucharest fell to the Aus­trians, who had declared war on Turkey. No troops were better than the Cossacks at storming fortifications, for which they were well known.⁶³

The road to the Danube lay open and by the fall of 1790 the imperial Russian and Ukrainian troops, with the Black Sea Cossacks, were before the walls of Ismail, one of the greatest citadels in Europe and reputed to be impregnable. The massive walls and towers were surrounded by a deep moat and defended by 35,000 Ottoman troops, with 265 pieces of artillery. Before the fortress stood the Russian Imperial force of30,000, with a massive battery of600 cannons, but commanded by three gen­erals, the besieging army was making little headway. All attacks were repulsed, and by November Potemkin decided to send for Suvorov and place him in overall command of field operations.

In early December Suvorov informed the defenders that if they did not surrender, in five days an assault would begin in which no one would be spared when the citadel fell. The offer was re­jected and the attack began at dawn. Avoiding the massive walls and towers Suvorov s men launched a Cossack-style concen­trated attack on the gates and broke into the fortification, which fell in bloody hand-to-hand fighting with quarter neither asked nor given. Due to its formidable walls Ismail was a storehouse of great wealth, military equipment and other supplies, much of which fell to Suvorov s men, who as promised were allowed a three day sack of the wealthy fort and its town. The gateway to the Danube had fallen, and the Turkish Sultan capitulated with a treaty signed on 31 December 1791, at Jassy, Moldavia. The mouth of the Dnipro River with the great fortress of Ochakov, the coast and territory between the Buh and the Dnis- ter rivers, and the Crimean peninsula were ceded to the Russian Empire, with Sebastopol to become the permanent Imperial Black Sea naval base and Odessa the main Black Sea port.

Many Zaporozhian Cossacks had refused to serve Empress Catherine II and remained under the Turkish Sultans jurisdic­tion on the Black Sea delta of the Danube. Most returned to fight the Turks as the Army of the Buh, which in 1792 was re­named the Black Sea CossackArmy In 1791 following the end of the war Colonel Anton Holovaty put a request to Catherine II for land in the contested territory between the Don Cossacks and the Caucasian Mountains. Not wishing to lose valuable fighting men, and seeking to enlarge her territory, the Empress agreed to allow the Black Sea Cossacks to move into the region and carve out the territory inhabited by the warlike Muslim Chechens and other tribes. That the Ukrainian Cossacks were fighting men to be reckoned with was observed by one of Napoleons marshals, General A. Marmont, who was forced into exile following the revolution of 1830. He spent some time in Ukraine in 1834 and while traveling along the shores of the Black Sea observed the lifestyle and training of the Cossacks which began early in a boys life: “The Cossacks provide troops which have no equal in Europe.... Their value lies in special areas as a result of their mode of life before entering the (im­perial) service.”⁶⁴

Anton Holovatywas preceded by Colonel Sidor Bilywith 4,000 Cossacks who had landed on the eastern shores of the Sea OfAzovinAugust 1792, and soon there were some 13,000 men in the newly acquired lands, many with families. By usual practice they settled along a river, the Kuban whose delta sep­arates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea, and were given a de­gree of self-rule. To provide more wives, thousands of young Ukrainian women agreed to be shipped to the new territories, where they were joined by other migrants from Ukraine. During the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812 TsarAlexander I had authorized the formation of Cossack regiments on the left-bank Ukrainian provinces, with the promise their Cossack status would remain after the war. Fifteen cavalry regiments were formed at the mens own expense, but in 1816 in the usual fashion the Tsarist government reneged on its promise. The newly formed Cossackregiments were given the option to dis­band or leave Ukraine, and most agreed to be shipped to join the Zaporozhian Cossacks on the Kuban River. In 1861 follow­ing the Crimean War the Ukrainians were joined by others in­cluding some Don Cossacks and were renamed the Kuban Cos­sack Army, with their capital in Katerinodar (today Krasnodar) near today’s Black Sea port of Sochi. Their Ukrainian distinc­tiveness was recognized by the German medical doctor Moritz Wagner, who passed through the Kuban region in 1843. He ob­served that unlike other “Russian” Cossacks, those of the Black Sea Army were beardless, grew mustaches, and had neither Greater Russian, Tatar, nor ^aCircassion features.”⁶⁵

During the Crimean War of 1853-56 the Black Sea Cos­sacks distinguished themselves in action, particularly during the French, British, and Ottoman siege of Sebastopol. Officially referred to as the Black Sea Scouts (“plastuny”) to avoid the use of the name “Cossack” or “Ukrainian,” they earned 4 out of 5 Crosses of St. George (the highest award for bravery in the Russian Imperial armed forces) in Sebastopol, which was under the command of Admiral Paul Nakhimovhimself, also a Ukrain­ian.⁶⁶ The naval quartermaster Peter Kishka became a particular celebrity for his exploits, an ability to penetrate enemy lines and trenches during nighttime to gather intelligence and pris­oners for interrogation. Kishkas greatest feat was when he cap­tured ten British soldiers single-handedly and brought them back to Sebastopol. One of the greatest descendants of the Kuban Cossacks, however, would be a man of peace who played such a prominent role in bringing the Cold War and the Soviet Union to an end, leading to the creation of an independent Ukraine—Mikhail Gorbachev.

Victory in the Turkish War of 1768-75, the suppression of Pugachev’s uprising and the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich established the imperial government as the unchallenged authority within its borders. There still remained autonomous countries such as Ukraine, with its different political system, its own laws, and ruled by a Hetman who was in command of the Ukrainian armed forces. To consolidate Imperial rule, Catherine II introduced a new centralized and more uniform administrative system by which it would be easier to gather more tax revenue, and in which everyone could feel “Russian.” This was explained by Catherine II to the newly appointed im­perial Procurator-General A. Viazemsky following Hetman Rozumovsky s forced resignation:

To call them (Ukraine, Latvia, Finland) foreign... and to deal with them on this basis is more than a mistake, and can accu­rately be called stupidity. These provinces, and Smolensk (Be­larus) too, must be brought... to the point where they Russian­ize and stop looking like wolves at the forest...,∙ when there is no Hetman in Little Russia (Ukraine), then we must ensure that the age (period) and the name of the hetman disappear, not only that one person or another be elevated to this dignity.⁶⁷

This was because, as was pointed out to the newly appointed Governor-General of Ukraine S. Rumiantsevin 1764: “...until now Russia (i.e., the imperial coffers) has had very little benefit and revenue from this (Cossack Ukrainian) people, and in the time of the last Hetman s (Rozumosky s) administration almost none at all.” The Empress then listed the fundamental “prob­lems” which Rumiantsevwould have to overcome, and in par­ticular he should keep in mind “(the) deep-seated and equally noticeable inner hatred on their (the Ukrainians’) part of things Great Russian.”⁶⁸

The Ukrainian Cossackterritorial regimental system was abolished in 1782 and replaced by three provinces, Kyiv, Cherni­hiv, and Novhorod-Siversk, each under an appointed Russian governor, and the integration of Ukraine into the Russian ad­ministrative system brought Ukrainian autonomy to an end. The Cossacks were reorganized into ten imperial cavalry regi­ments, and in return for six years of service the troopers were given small freeholds. All other Cossacks were either enserfed or fled, Usuallyto Siberia, when by a decree of May 1783 known as the Charter of the Freedom of the Nobility most peasants became attached to landed estates and converted into serfs. The decree also granted nobles Inviolabilityofperson and property (except for treason, theft, robbery, or “deceit”), the right of trial by one’s peers, exemption from forced state service and payment of taxes, ownership of serfs with all their property, and exemption from the quartering of state troops. The decree also deprived Jewish communities (the “kohals”) in Ukraine and Belarus of all internal authority, except for fiscal and re­ligious matters.⁶⁹ Following the death of Catherine II, her son Paul I abolished the system in Ukraine when he was crowned in 1796, and introduced an administration along the lines of the Hetmanate—probably under the influence of powerful Ukrainians at court. But in 1802 under Alexander I, following Paul’s assassination by a clique of nobles, the process of inte­gration resumed.

The most socially divisive outcome of Catherine’s imperial policies in Ukraine was the creation of a native ruling class on the left bank, something which had not existed since the 16th Centuryunder Polish rule. Cossack officers (and those who could prove noble ancestry) were given the same rights and privileges as those possessed by the Russian nobility. This included the sole right to possess landed estates, which began to be formed by the frequent expropriations of the lands of rank-and-file Cos­sacks, and forcing them into serfdom. A popular folk song­ballad from the Poltava Province has come down to us which begins as: “Hey, bethought the Basilevskys/The whole world to take,/And send free Cossacks into slavery.” A description fol­lows of a violent revolt in which family members were killed.

For a second time in their history since the 16th century the peo­ple ofRus-Ukraine were abandoned by their elite leadership.⁷⁰ More Ukrainians came under Russian imperial rule during Catherine II s last years of rule. In May 1792 Russian Imperial troops crossed the Dnipro River into Polish-held right bank Ukraine, and despite initial minor victories the 65,000-man Polish army led by King Stanislaw Poniatowski sued for peace in June of the same year. In the following year Prussia attacked Poland from the north and west, joining Russia in the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, in which Prussia acquired some 21,000 square miles while Russia annexed 90,000 square miles of right-bank Ukraine with parts of Volynia. The occupation provoked a strong resistance among the Catholic Polish and Lithuanian population, and in 1794 an uprising broke out under the leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a military engineer who had served in the American Revolu­tionary Army. With a force of 70,000 troops and 70,000 local militias the uprising achieved initial success, particularly in Lithuania where Vilnius fell into rebel hands, but Kosciuszko was defeated and Vilnius fell on 11 August of the same year. The imperial Russian authorities were supported by the Ukrain­ian population, particularly on the right-bank provinces where much of the land-owning nobility was Polish.

King Stanislaw Poniatowski abdicated on 12 February 1795 and the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom disappeared from the map as the third and final partition took place, with Prussia tak­ing the rest of Greater Poland and Mazovia while Russia occu­pied the rest OfUkrainian Volynia, Belarus, and Lithuania. Al­though the Polish poet Ignacy Krasicki described the partition as a lamb being devoured by two wolves, in reality they who lived by the sword perished by the sword. It was simply that the sword of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility was not wielded as well as that of their foe, particularly the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Not content with the abolition of the Cossack adminis­tration and Ukrainian autonomy on the left-bank provinces, Moscow embarked on the destruction of all traces of a Ukrain­ian identity as Russian nationalistic chauvinism began to take hold of the imperial government. First, churches and monas­teries were ordered to surrender their estates together with the peasants working on Church land. Unlike monasteries in Rus­sia, those in Ukraine were involved in education, ran printing presses, and often had the best schools. Now freedom of speech through the printed word was sharply curtailed, as was the Mo- hila Kyiv Academy with its associated colleges, which were turned into theological seminaries for priests. Then in 1783, Russian was introduced as the exclusive language of instruction, which allowed the Academy to be dominated by Russian stu­dents and teaching staff. The establishment of a Ukrainian uni­versity, which was one of Hetman Rozumovsky s favorite proj­ects, was forbidden, and most village and parish schools in the previous seven Cossack regimental administrations were closed—they had numbered about 1 per 1,000 inhabitants, with­out counting schools run by monasteries. The village schools had been maintained by local inhabitants and elected authorities hired teachers on a contractual basis. Nowvirtually the entire Ukrainian educational system was destroyed, and we know that even a Centurylater the nine Ukrainian provinces on both sides of the Dnipro River had only 1,320 elementary, sec­ondary, and higher schools attended by 67,000 students or.50 percent of the population. This contrasts with the three largest regions of ChernyhivProvince for example, which in 1768 had one elementary schoolper 746 inhabitants.⁷¹ Bythe middle of the 19th century, the Minister of the Interior Count PeterValuev could boast that Teaching in all schools (in Ukraine) is without exception conducted in the common Russian language and nowhere is the use of the Ukrainian language permitted.”⁷²

The elimination of schools in Ukraine was a conscious PolicyfollowedbyEmpress Catherine II, as she pointed out to a naive Russian noble in a letter: “The day the peasants learn how to read and write, my dear Count, is the day you and I lose Ourpositions (in society).”⁷³ Following Catherines death a sus­tained policy to destroy Ukrainian culture and history was stepped up and became paramount. The Ukrainian language was declared to be simply a peasant dialect of “Russian” and its use in print and public functions was also made illegal, while Kyiv-Rus and its entire history became “Russian.” The first major crackdown came with the arrest of the ten members of the secret Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in 1847 in Kyiv for advocating the abolition of serfdom, the return of education in Ukraine, and its introduction in the rest of the Em­pire. The most prominent member of the Brotherhood was Taras Shevchenko, who would become Ukraine’s revered na­tional poet and one of the greatest literary figures of Europe. Although Ukrainian historians commonly assume that he was arrested and banished from Ukraine for his membership, O. Andriewsky pointed out that the official government investi­gation concluded there was no evidence for Shevchenkos mem­bership in the Brotherhood. Rather, he was sentenced for the “seditious spirit and impertinence” of his popular and influential Ukrainian poetry. The cynical government report reveals the oppressive and self-serving laws of the Russian Imperial Gov­ernment, according to which Shevchenko

... expressed a lament for the imaginary enslavement and calami­ties (suffered) by Ukraine; he proclaimed the glories of hetman rule and former freedoms (enjoyed by) the Cossacks, and with unbelievable depravity slandered the members of the imperial family, forgetting that they were his personal benefactors.⁷⁴

Born a serf whose freedom was bought by the Russian Karl Bruellov in 1838, Taras Shevchenko was exiled to Siberia for ten years following his “trial,” after which he settled in St. Pe­tersburg being exiled from Ukraine for life, where he died in 1861 at the age of 47.

The first general prohibitions against the Ukrainian lan­guage, both spoken and written, came in 1863 following the humiliating defeat of the Russian Imperial army in the Crimean War, where most of the infantry consisted of mobilized serfs. The ban came when on 18 July 1863 the Minister of the Interior Peter Valuev issued the following circular in which

... the minister of the interior, pending agreement with the min­ister of education, the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, and the chief of police, has deemed it necessary to issue an order on censorship concerning the publication of books in the Little Rus­sian (Ukrainian) language. Only those works which are in the category ofbelles-lettres are permitted; the approval of books in the Little Russian language that have religious content, as well as those of a pedagogical nature, or that which are intended for mass consumption is to cease.... A Lesser Russian language has not, does not, and cannot exist, and that its dialects as spoken by the masses are the same as the Russian (Muscovite) language with the exception of some corruption from Poland.⁷⁵

A totalitarian decree, mired in wishful thinking and igno­rance. It was followed by the Ems Ukas (Order) in 1876 from the Ministry of the Interior intended to “suppress the dangerous activity of Ukrainophiles/ which further banned the import of Ukrainian books, such as original publications, lyrics, the use OfUkrainian in the theater, and translations of foreign books with Ukrainian. There followed an order to the Ministry of Ed­ucation to remove all Ukrainian books from school libraries and monitor all Ukrainian teachers: “With regard to disloyal or questionable (Ukrainophile) teachers, they should be trans­ferred to provinces in Great Russia and replaced by new teachers from Great Russia/⁷⁶ The repressive “Ukas” was in fact non­sensical in nature, since it banned the use of the “Little Russian dialect” which the Commission on Ukrainophile Propaganda in the southern Provinces of Russia (on which the “Ukaz” was based) claimed did not exist! Clearly logic was not a strong point of the Russian Imperial commissions.

Thanks to the gross inefficiency of the Imperial civil service both edicts were not always observed, but nevertheless many individuals found themselves harassed and persecuted. We have the report of an anonymous correspondent who wrote in 1863:

Ifyou think that Ukrainians at least have freedom in private life, then you are mistaken. Ifyou wear Ukrainian clothes, you will be taken to the police or beaten up on the street. If you speak Ukrainian, you will never be taken into (government) service, but instead will be placed under police surveillance.... If you sing Ukrainian songs, you will be thrown into jail. If an officer over­hears you on the street, he will take you to the police station and say, “Stop speaking khakhol’’⁷⁷

Although in Muscovy a “khakhol” originally referred to the Cossack hairlock, by the 19th century it was used as a deroga­tory term for a Ukrainian. Peasants were frequently charged with “disturbing the peace” and taken to court for singing Ukrainian folk songs. We know from court records, for example, the case of 18-year-old UkrainianVolodymyr Sinehub who was thrown in jail in 1863 for teaching old Cossack folk songs to the boys of the village!⁷⁸

The drastic Russian policy to eradicate all traces of Ukrain­ian identity was Ultimatelyunsuccessful as there were too many differences between the two cultures, as admitted in 1845 by the Russian intellectual Mikhail Pogodin:

The Great Russians live side by side with the Little Russians (Ukrainians), profess one faith, share one fate and, for many years, one history. But how many differences there are between the Great Russians and the Little Russians! In certain respects, we (the Great Russians) have more in common with the French than with them!... What is the nature of our similarity? That is a very difficult question....⁷⁹

Although some of the ennobled Cossack officers became Russified (as did many city dwellers) most remained conscious of the fact they were descendants of Ukrainian Cossacks, which was aided by genealogical research since to obtain noble status they had to prove Cossack officer ancestry. In the absence of a national ideology such as nationalism personal motivation was Usuallyfamily-Oriented. Although an idealized sort of pride was maintained through memories of their Zaporozhian ancestors, the attainment of noble status was seen as something of value even if it meant serving an alien system and culture.

Those with an intellectual and literary bent began to write histories of Ukraine, pointing out its unique features born in the Cossack movement. The first to appear which had a big influence on future histories was the political and violently anti­Polish and anti-Russian “Istoria Rusov ili Maloi Rossii” (His­tory of Rus or ofLittle Russia), written in Russian by an anony­mous (and to this day unknown) author. Probablywritten early in the 19th century it first appeared privately in manuscript form in the late 1820s, and was published in 1846. It embraces republication principles such as the concept that no government can rest on tyranny without the consent of the people, who have a right to overthrow it when deprived of their natural rights to life, liberty and (personal) property. The “Istoria Rusov” praises Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky for liberating the people, as well as Hetman Polubotok for standing up to Peter I for which he paid with his life. It contrasts the Ukrainian love of freedom with the Russian subordination to despotic rule where “serfdom and slavery in the highest degree reign among the Muscovite people... it is as if (Russia’s) people were created only that they might become serfs.”⁸⁰ Even before the appearance of the book, support for tsardom was thin—for example travelers reported that the Marshall of the nobility in the Poltava district of Pyri- atyn, Vasil Lukashevych, proposed toasts to Napoleon with the local gentry, and all drank to “the republic.”

Many Ukrainian soldiers in the Russian army had also be­come politicized during their stay in occupied France in 1813, and reports were coming from the Pereiaslav region of demo­bilized serfs declaring that if called up again they would fight the Russians rather than the French. As serfdom took hold the Ukrainian countryside erupted in violence and hardly a week passed without a landlord s manor going up in flames, with members of the family killed. Many men, rather than submit to serfdom, began to resort to highway robbery, a favorite act being the kidnapping of noble families’ daughters for ransom. In 1854 peasant attacks increased threefold and many had to be put down by military force. In Vasylkivsk County in the Kyiv Province, for example, serfs armed with pitchforks, axes, and homemade pikes besieged a detachment of troops which had been sent to guard the village of Bykova Hreblia. In the nego­tiation which followed the Russian commander advised the serfs to return to their homes and wait for the Tsar s mercy, which would surely come. As recounted by an eyewitness, the serfs did not lend much credence to the officer ^,s promises, and besides, there was not much to go back to. As described by a peasant during the trial which followed, the landlord, who owned 30,000 serfs, kept 12 purebred Dutch cows to provide milk for his pack of English dogs, but he the peasant did not even have a spoonful of milk for his child.⁸¹ The largest known revolt broke out in 1855, again in the Kyiv Province following Tsar Nicholas Γs call to form Cossack regiments to fight in the Crimea and the Caucasus Mountains in exchange for freedom. The declaration was badly understood by the peasants whose knowledge ofRussian was limited, and when informed of their error tens of thousands of peasants revolted, and it took sizeable Russian forces to suppress the revolt using great brutality.

The Crimean War shook tsarism to its foundations. The fighting against modern French and British troops exposed Rus­sian military backwardness, not only in weaponry and general technology but especially the low morale and fighting spirit of the drafted serfs. The exception was the siege of Sebastopol, whose defense was in the hands of a Ukrainian, Admiral Nakhi­mov, who treated his men with respect, listened to their views and observations, and frequently visited them in the trenches and the firing lines. When Tsar Nicholas I died in 1855, the throne passed to his son Alexander II, who decided to imple­ment reforms in the usual Russian manner—from above. By the Imperial Manifesto of 19 February 1861 the serfs were set free (“emancipated”) but the problem of land ownership and its availability to the peasants was mainly ignored. Tsardom in Ukraine, however, continued to be highly unpopular as was ob­served by the German scientist J.G. Vohl following his travels in Eastern Europe during 1838-41. Love and adoration of the tsar so common amongst the Russians was completely alien and incomprehensible to the Ukrainians: “The Ukrainians obey the tsar because they are forced to, but they consider his au­thority alien and imposed... the Ukrainian is aware of the fact that his country concluded a treaty with Muscovy, only to be deceived by the latter.”⁸²

Ukraine would suffer Tsarist despotism for more than half a century, until the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 dur­ing which, reminiscent of the great anti-tsarist Cossack up­risings, the Imperial structure came crashing down to reveal a strong Ukrainian self-identity.