Who was Ivan Mazepa, and why is he considered a “traitor” in Russia?
The tsars, as well as later Soviet and Russian ideologists, presented the Treaty of Pereiaslav as the restoration of primordial historical ties rather than the Cossack elite's pragmatic decision.
Any subsequent attempt to break away from the Russian state was therefore viewed as more than high treason; it was also an assault on the Russian identity itself. There were a few such attempts in the decades after Pereiaslav, but the one launched by Hetman Ivan Mazepa in 1708-1709 was by far the most famous (or infamous, from the Russian point of view).During the late seventeenth century, the Ukrainian territories along the Dnipro River, with the exception of Kyiv, were split between Poland and Russia. Although back then the city stood on the western bank, it remained part of the Cossack polity. (Today the sprawling metropolis of Kyiv straddles both banks of the Dnipro.) The territory of present-day southern Ukraine remained under the Ottomans' control, enforced by their Tatar vassals. All of these masters also appointed their own hetmans in Ukraine. Historians commonly refer to this period as the "Ruin," in reference to the constant warfare and devastation that characterized it. A modicum of political stability on the Russian side of the border only ensued during the long tenure of Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687-1709), who enjoyed good relations with his sovereign, Peter I, the reform-minded Russian tsar.
Mazepa had long-term political ambitions, and his goal was to consolidate the Cossack officer class and incorporate the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnipro into the Hetmanate. The timing was not right, however. Social tensions in the Hetmanate were on the rise, because Cossack officers were turning into landowners needing agricultural labor, and because Peter I used the Cossacks mercilessly as manpower in his protracted Northern War with Sweden and on his grand construction projects. The tsar also gradually dismantled the Cossacks' autonomy and officer privileges.
The latter factor in particular led Mazepa and a group of Cossack officers to conspire against the tsar. In 1708 Mazepa switched sides in the war by allying himself with King Charles XII of Sweden. However, not all the Cossacks followed him, and Peter I had another hetman elected in Mazepa's place. In 1709 Peter I and the loyalist Cossacks solidly defeated Charles XII and Mazepa in the Battle of Poltava (in central Ukraine). Mazepa soon died in exile, but not before being formally excommunicated and anathematized by the Russian Orthodox Church. The anathema against Mazepa was read in churches for centuries and, in fact, has not been lifted to this day.Although Mazepa was no modern ethnic nationalist, in the late Russian Empire his name became a term of abuse for Ukrainian patriots, who were called "Mazepists" (mazepintsy). One can still encounter this derogatory moniker in the Russian public discourse. Because of this Russian and Soviet stigma, much of Mazepa's legacy is only now becoming public knowledge in independent Ukraine, in particular his patronage of architecture and the arts. Mazepa's own striking life, which included, besides political turnarounds, alleged romantic misadventures as a young page at the Polish royal court and a marriage late in life to his goddaughter, also made for a great story. Byron and Pushkin wrote romantic poems about him, and Tchaikovsky made him the subject of an opera.