Who Were the Hanskis?
But what was Ukraine really like then, and who were the Hanskis? The answers to both questions are complicated. In the 1830s and 1840s, the name “Ukraine” was not used for the western parts of today's Ukraine, then under the Austrians, or even for other western provinces like Podolia and Volhynia.
But it did cover the Kyiv region and lands further east, extending well into what are today parts of southern Russia, specifically the provinces of Kursk and Voronezh (Ukrainians and Russians then called the more eastern parts of these spacious territories “Sloboda [= free, non-serf] Ukraine.” At that time, it was all ruled by the stern Tsar Nicholas I, with his infamous Third Department of political police. On the east, or left bank of the Dnieper River, which ran through the middle of the country, most of the nobility was descended from the old Cossack officer class, and part of the peasantry was still free, being designated as “state peasants.” But on the western, or right bank, where the Hanskis lived, the nobility was almost all Polish, and the peasants were Ukrainian serfs, with far fewer state peasants around and a harder life for the common people. The towns had a very large Jewish population and very few Ukrainian residents. Thus, in this part of Ukraine, Russia ruled, Poles held the land, and Ukrainians worked it.8Coming from one of the most distinguished families of old Poland, which had governed this part of Ukraine, Ewelina and her siblings might have had feelings for Poland, which had risen against the Russian occupiers in 1830-31; many refugees from that abortive effort lived in France. In fact, the three greatest landholding families of Ukraine - Branickis, Potockis, and Rzewuskis - sustained the Confederation of Targowica (a town in central Ukraine), which opposed the reforming king, StanisIaw Augustus Poniatowski (reigned 1764-95) and the progressive constitution of 3 May 1791, which attempted to re-organize the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and save it from its voracious neighbours.
The Confederates brought on Russian intervention and Poland's partition.Ewelina's father loyally served as a senator in the capital, St Petersburg; sister Caroline charmed both the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz and the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin before marrying a Russian general and spying for the Russians, and brother Adam served in the Russian military, helping put down the Polish Rising of 1830, and ending as commander of the Kyiv garrison. He died in 1888 at Verkhivnia, having purchased it from the Hanskis. After i860, he engaged the artist Napoleon Orda as a music teacher, and Orda engraved the famous picture of that great house.9 Brother Henryk, to whom Ewelina was closest, wrote tales of old Poland, including “The Zaporozhian,” but became an apologist for Russian autocracy, declaring Poland dead. Ewelina seems to have had similar attitudes, though perhaps showing some interest in the Romantic writers of the Ukrainian School of Polish Literature, such as Antoni Malczewski and “the nightingale,” Jozef Bohdan Zaleski.10
There was one family member not indifferent to the Polish national cause, and also passionate about the Middle East, and deeply knowledgeable: Ewelina's uncle Count WacJaw Rzewuski/Viacheslav Revusky (1784-1831), whom we met above in chapter 2. Aware of his family's anti-Polish stance, he went his own way, travelled extensively in the Middle East, dressed as an Arab “emir,” bred Arabian horses, and even wrote a book on that subject. He had a chateau at Savran, also in right-bank Ukraine. He was a friend, sponsor, and prolific collaborator of the Austrian Orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Rzewuski patronized the poet Tymko Padura, who wrote in the Ukrainian vernacular about a time when Poles and Cossacks had fought together against common enemies like the Ottomans and the Muscovites. The “Emir,” as he was called, joined the Polish Rising of 1830 but disappeared without trace in battle. It was rumoured that he had escaped to Arabia and lived on among the Muslims.
Poets and authors such as Mickiewicz, SJowacki, and Wincenty Pol magnified his legend.11The family of Ewelina's husband, WacJaw Hanski, was less exalted than the Rzewuskis but very rich. Hanski himself was soft-spoken and sober and a great collector of books and artefacts. He once boasted that none of the furniture at Verkhivnia came from Russia; it was all imported. But he was no intellectual, and Ewelina could not share her intellectual adventures with him. Moreover, his bouts of depression were quite hard on her. He loved her, it was said, but was not in love with her and busied himself with his estates.
Hanski had much prestige as marshal of the nobility of Kyiv province, but in that role carried out instructions from St Petersburg and from Military Governor D.G. Bibikov to disenfranchise the minor nobles, thus greatly speeding up russification. The 340,000 Polish nobles whom he helped to disenfranchise were reduced to peasants, were subjected to heavy taxation, lost access to higher education, and were often forced into the Russian military for twenty-five years of service.
Hanski was known for his severity with his Ukrainian serfs. Ewelinas cousin Stanislaw Rzewuski testified that years later these serfs recalled his brutal behaviour, at a time when noblemen could insult, beat, or even kill a serf virtually scot-free. More conscientious Polish noblemen like the writers Seweryn Goszczynski and Jozef Kraszewski never ceased to denounce the savagery of some of their compatriots. The historian Daniel Beauvois speculates that perhaps Ewelina's romantic and idealized letters to Balzac reflected some kind of subconscious desire to escape from her cruel world.12