UKRAINIAN GRIEVANCES

In Ukraine, the war’s dual burden was especially resented. Com­pared to the rest of the Tsar’s lands, Ukraine bore a dispropor­tionately high share of the war’s human and material costs.

Complaints related to the war began to pour in from every seg­ment of Ukrainian society. Peasants and townsmen most often protested about the behavior of Russian troops in their villages and towns. Between 1705-1708 both the Hetman and the Tsar received a constant stream of complaints relating how Russian officers al­lowed their men to beat and insult Ukrainians, rape their wives and daughters, destroy their homes, drive off their cattle and, in some cases, kill them. “From everywhere,” Mazepa wrote to Mos­cow, “I receive complaints about the willfulness (Svoevolstvo) of the Russian troops.”³

Alarmed by the situation, Peter I ordered his commanders in Ukraine to appoint special officers who would be given the right to use the death penalty in order to prevent such behavior by his troops. But the problem worsened when, in 1708, the Russians began to apply the scorched earth policy in the face of the invading Swedes. In the fall of 1708, Peter I felt constrained to issue a series of ukazs to mollify the Ukrainians.

We have forbidden our Great Russian troops, under pain of death, to despoil or harm the Little Russians. Several willful miscreants have been executed already near Pochep. And if some harm has been caused by the burning of dwellings and bread this has been brought on by the extreme necessity of depriving the enemy of shelter and provisions so that they might perish for lack of them.⁴

Admitting that the Ukrainians suffered from the Russian troops which moved through their land, Peter I went on to say that, “in view of the war with the Swedish king, these difficulties are un­avoidable; it is necessary to bear these difficulties for the general welfare of the state.... I myself do not spare my own person for this purpose.”⁵

Peasant discontent in Ukraine was matched by that of the Cos­sacks on campaign. For the latter, the war brought a series of pain­ful novelties. Instead of traditional Polish, Tatar or Ottoman ene­mies close to home, the Cossacks had to fight, at their own cost, modern Swedish armies in distant Livonia, Lithuania or central Poland. During these campaigns, it became clear that the Cossacks were no longer a match for regular European regiments. Peter Γs German and Russian commanders treated the Cossacks accord­ingly: they were utilized as auxiliaries and, quite often, simply as cannon fodder. This did little good for Cossack pride and even less for their chances of survival. Year after year their regiments returned from the north with casualty rates as high as 50, 60 or even 70 percent.⁶

Cossack morale worsened in 1705 when Peter I, in an effort to coordinate his forces, assigned Russian and German commanders to Cossack units. Contemptuous of what they considered to be inferior troops, these officers, in the opinion of their Cossack sub­ordinates, were needlessly cruel and arrogant. Moreover, when the Ukrainians returned from the campaigns, they were often set to work, under bullying Russian supervisors, building fortifications such as those of the Perchersk fortress in Kiev.

Even the highest levels of Ukrainian Cossack leadership were not immune from insult and injury. In 1705, Dmytro Horlenko, the acting Hetman of the Cossack forces in Lithuania, was accosted by Russian soldiers, thrown from his horse which was confiscated for mail service, and barely escaped a beating.⁷ Mazepa himself learned that the Tsar’s favorite, Alexander Menshikov, regularly disposed of mercenary troops which the Hetman had paid for and he never bothered to inform the Hetman about this. In one of the campaigns, the Tsar placed the Hetman under the command of Menshikov. Mazepa found this to be especially galling since he suspected the Russian of plotting to remove him from office. More­over, he felt that it was below his dignity to serve under such a low­born parvenu.⁸

But what upset the Cossacks, especially the Starshyna_f most of all were the rumors of Peter Γs plans to reorganize them. A deeply worried Horlenko informed Mazepa of his suspicions that the Tsar intended to dispatch Ukrainians to Prussia for training as dra­goons. Another of the Hetman’s officers claimed that he saw the Tsar’s ukaz to this effect and only the exigencies of the war led to the cancellation of the order.⁹ To understand the staτshyna's sen­sitivity on this issue it must be recalled that the Cossack military organization corresponded to their socio-economic status: to alter the former meant, in the view of the Starshyna_f to change the latter.

An incident which seemed to confirm the fears of the Ukrainian Cossack elite occurred during the Tsar’s visit to Kiev in 1706. After some heavy drinking, Menshikov blurted out to Mazepa—with reference to and within the hearing of many of the Starshyna— that, “It is time to rid the Tsar of these enemies.”¹⁰ Later, when the Hetman was already in touch with the Swedes and it suited his purposes to agitate the Starshyna_f he informed his officers that, as a close confidant of the Tsar, he had heard comments like Menshi­kov’s quite often.

Just as we always prayed to God for the soul of Khmelnytskyi and blessed his name for freeing Ukraine from the Polish yoke, so we and our children will forever curse your soul and bones if, as a result of your hetmancy, you leave us in such slavery!¹²

Although this comment came at a time when Mazepa and the star­shy na were already on the verge of joining the Swedes, it illustrates well the repercussions which the Tsar’s war effort had on the Ukrainian Cossack elite.

Despite signs of favor—at Peter’s recommendation the Hetman was named a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and was honored with the Cross of St. Andrew—Mazepa himself began to feel in­secure in his position. There were strong indications between 1705-1708 that the Tsar wanted to “promote” him out of office.¹³ A well-founded rumor had it that Peter I, in order to entice the Duke of Marlborough into his service, offered him the Princedom of Ukraine.¹⁴ And Prince Boris Sheremetev, a member of the old boiar aristocracy and a personal friend of the Hetman, warned that the ambitious Menshikov was “digging a hole” under Mazepa in the hope of obtaining the hetmancy for himself.¹⁵ The old Hetman was well aware of the possibility of such machinations. Referring to the prestigious but empty title of Roman Prince which he re­ceived in 1708, he said, “They want to satisfy me with the Prince­dom of the Holy Roman Empire and then deprive me of the het­mancy.”¹⁶ Insecurity and resentment were beginning to under­mine even the unmatched loyalty of the Ukrainian Hetman.

The grievance which finally convinced Mazepa to begin serious negotiations with the enemy involved the issue of protection.

I proposed to his Tsarist Majesty that, should the Swedish King and Stanislaw divide their troops and the former go into the Muscovite realm and the latter into Ukraine, we, with our weak army, ruined by frequent campaigns and wars, would not be able to defend ourselves against the enemy. Therefore, I requested from his Tsarist Majesty... that he be so pleased as to give us at least 10,000 of his regular troops. His Tsarist Majesty replied to me: “Not only 10,000, but I cannot even spare ten men; defend yourself as best you can.”¹⁷

For Mazepa, this was the last straw. Confronted with the threat of Polish invasion, a disaster which would not only devastate the land but also destroy the Cossack order established more than fifty years earlier, the faithful vassal heard from his sovereign a blunt refusal of aid. To be sure, Peter I had, first and foremost, to care for his own lands. But this was just the point: an insurmountable dis­tinction had been drawn between the interests of the Tsar and those of the Hetman. For the Hetman this meant that the Pereiaslav Agreement—the basis of his loyalty to the Tsar—was no longer mutually beneficial and, therefore, could no longer be binding.

Mazepa’s line of argument constantly repeated and stressed cer­tain phrases and ideas: rights and privileges; overlordship freely chosen and open to recall; and protection, always the issue of pro­tection. For anyone with an acquaintance with medieval political theory, these concepts strike a familiar note. They are the com­ponents of the contractual principle, European feudalism’s most common regulator of the political relations between sovereigns and regional elites. One needs only to recall the basic elements of this principle, so widespread and so cherished by the nobilities of seventeenth-century Europe, to see how it coincided with the thrust of Mazepa’s arguments.

The contractual arrangement was an act of mutual obligation. The vassal promised his lord obedience, service, and loyalty in return for the latter’s protection and respect for the vassal’s privi­leges and the traditions of his land. If the vassal had good reason to believe that his lord was breaking his obligations, he had the right — the famous jus resistendi—to rise against him to protect his interests. Thus, in theory, the lord as well as the vassal could be guilty of disloyalty. Throughout Europe, the contractual principle rested on the Prevailingcornerstone of legal and moral authority— custom. The German Schwabenspiegel_f one of the primary sources for customary law in East Central Europe, provided a concise sum­mary of the principle: “We should serve our sovereigns because they protect us, but if they will no longer defend us, then we owe them no more service.”¹⁸ Mazepa’s position could not have been stated more succinctly.