THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT

To understand the Ukrainian framework of Mazepa’s uprising of 1708 one must begin with the Khmelnytskyi Revolution of 1648. The two events could not have been more different. As stated earlier, Khmelnytskyi’s uprising was aimed against the Polish or polo- nized nobility (the szlachta).

Yet despite these vast differences there were organic links between the two Hetmans and their respective causes. It was Khmelnytskyi who formulated the agreement with the Tsar in 1654 which Mazepa so desperately tried to maintain more than sixty years later. And it was Khmelnytskyi who laid the foundations for the creation of the starshyna-ehte whose leading representative and embodiment Ma­zepa would later become. Finally, it was Khmelnytskyi who, when he became disillusioned with the Tsar, began to consider and even actively sought the sovereignty of other overlords, setting thereby a precedent which Mazepa (and all the Hetmans before him) would assiduously follow. Because these three links created an element of continuity in the policies of all the Hetmans between 1648 and 1708, they deserve to be examined more closely.

S∞n after 1648, Khmelnytskyi and the Zaporozhian Host, the new masters of Ukraine, found themselves in a precarious position; on the one hand, they were too weak to wage a successful war against the vengeful Poles and, on the other, they were too strong to be decisively defeated or incorporated by any power in Eastern Europe.

Employing terminology which was reminiscent of Moscow’s extension of its sovereignty over Novgorod, Kazan and its other acquisitions, the Tsar declared that he was willing to accede to the “pleas” of the Ukrainians and accept them “under his high hand.” As a sign of special favor, he then conferred on his new subjects the generous rights and privileges which they had requested, in a manner which implied that the grant was discretionary. While in its tone and style it was quite consistent with traditional expres­sions of the Muscovite Tsar’s autocratic pretensions, the Pereiaslav Treaty had a strikingly unique feature. The rights which the Ukrainians had been granted were unprecedented in their scope and, more importantly, in their implications. Among the more important rights which Aleksei Mikhailovich conferred was his acquiescence to respect the customs and traditions of Ukraine, to allow the Host to elect its own officers which he was then to con­firm, to permit Ukrainians to judge themselves according to their own laws without any interference from the Tsar’s representatives, and to allow Hetmans to receive foreign envoys except those from such enemies of the Tsar as Poland and the Porte.

In effect, these rights gave the Ukrainians self rule. Moreover, they were, to a large extent, similar to the privileges which other nobilities could expect to receive from their sovereigns elsewhere in Europe. Therefore, Khmelnytskyi, who insisted that the Tsar swear to honor the rights which he had granted, reluctantly agreed to drop his demand (which the Muscovite envoys argued was in­compatible with the autocratic image of their ruler) because what he considered to be a formality, albeit an important one, should not stand in the way of an agreement which gave the Ukrainians much of what they wanted.¹¹ Thus, the Treaty of Pereiaslav was a compromise of sorts between the forms of Muscovite autocracy and the content of feudal vassalage.

This Janus-faced nature of the treaty meant that no matter how the Tsar wished to interpret the agreement, the Ukrainian Het­mans and the Starshyna always considered that it represented a for­mal and irrevocable guarantee of their rights. And that if this guarantee were not honored, the Starshyna felt, as did elites every­where in Europe, that it no longer owed the Tsar its obedience and allegiance. It was in this sense that Mazepa viewed the treaty and for this reason that he considered himself to be “legally” justified in breaking with Peter I once the latter refused to honor many of the basic provisions of the agreement reached in 1654.

The relatively rapid emergence of the new Cossack elite after the turmoil of 1648 provided the Ukrainian interpretation of the Pereia- slav Treaty with its most dedicated (and self-interested) support­ers.¹² In some ways, the appearance of this starshynα-nobility was paradoxical. After all, Khmelnytskyi’s revolt was anti-noble and strongly egalitarian in spirit. Nevertheless, the rise of the starshy na was also predictable. The expulsion of the szlachta created in the upper levels of Ukrainian society a gap which had to be filled. Al­though it possessed the typically egalitarian overtones of all fron­tier societies, the basic socio-economic and political structure of Ukraine was and remained a hierarchical one. As such, it had a functional need for a nobility, that is, for the relative few who were not bound by work in the fields and who could afford to devote themselves to the land’s military and political needs (a service for which they then extracted a crushing socio-economic price from the rest of society).

From the outset of the 1648 revolt it was apparent from where this new elite would emerge. As the Zaporozhian Host mastered the land, its leaders—the Starshyna—began to slip naturally into the role vacated by the Polish szlachta. Indeed, it would not be long before the Starshyna would quite consciously seek to transform itself in the image of its Polish predecessors.

By the 1670s, the outlines of this nascent Ukrainian nobility had become discernible although their numbers were still difficult to estimate. A very rough estimation reveals that at the outset of the 18th century, when the population of the Hetmanate was approxi­mately 1.1 million people, the Starshyna consisted of about 1000 families.¹³ A relatively small number of these families, largely stemming from Right Bank Ukraine, were descended from the pre- 1648 Orthodox, Ukrainian (Ruthenian) nobility. The majority of the Starshyna descended from the officers and registered Cossacks of the pre-1648 era. The cream of the Ukrainian Cossack elite was the heneralna Starshyna_f that is, members of the Hetman’s Staffand the ten colonels (polkovnyky) of the Ukrainian Left Bank regiments. For all of the Cossack leaders the example of the Polish szlachta and its pacta conventa with its king served as a model of the rela­tionship they wished to achieve with their own sovereign.

But perhaps the most direct political effect of the 1648-1657 period on Mazepa and his predecessors arose from the precedent which Khmelnytskyi set in his dealings with the Tsar. In case after case, the Khmelnytskyi insisted on the equality of Ukrainian in­terests with those of their new overlord. Having assumed that the acceptance of Russian suzerainty would rebound to the good of his land, the Hetman made it quite clear that he was willing to con­sider the selection of a different sovereign if this did not prove to be the case.

Angered in 1656 by an armistice which Alexei Mikhailovich had signed in Vilnius with the Poles without Cossack participation in the negotiations—the Starshyna openly called this action a betrayal by the Tsar—Khmelnytskyi embarked on a policy which was ad­vantageous to the Ukrainians but which ignored and even harmed the interests of the Tsar. At this time Karl-Gustav was conducting a war against both Poland and Russia. Khmelnytskyi proposed mili­tary cooperation between the Swedes and Cossacks which would be aimed against the Poles. But soon rumors, not unsubstantiated, began to fly that the Hetman was planning to accept Swedish sov­ereignty and turn against the Russians. When the Tsar sent his envoys to complain to the Hetman, Khmelnytskyi angrily replied: I will never break with the Swedish King for there has always been a long-lasting friendship and cooperation between us. It existed for more than six years, even before we came under the high hand of the Tsar. Moreover, the Swedes are an honest people; when they pledge friendship and alliance, they honor their word. However, the Tsar, in establishing an armistice with the Poles and in wishing to return us into their hands, has behaved most heartlessly with us.¹⁴

Similarly, the Hetman maintained his close contacts with the Crimean Tatars even though the latter had devastated Russian lands. And despite oft repeated expressions of Muscovite displeas­ure, he energetically negotiated with the Ottoman Porte and con­tinued to consider the Sultan as a potential overlord.¹⁵ By these actions, Khmelnytskyi not only set a precedent for pursuing Ukrain­ian interests by means of foreign aid but he drew the attention of foreign powers to the Ukrainian problem.

Although Khmelnytskyi had been on the verge of breaking with Moscow, he in fact never did so. In this respect, his successors were much more resolute.