| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The unification of Rus', the future of Ukraine. 370 years of the Pereyaslav Rada |
| 2024-01-19 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] The glorious city of Pereyaslav in the Kiev region officially celebrates the 370th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada without the prefix “Khmelnytsky” and without a monument to Russian-Ukrainian unity. In Ukraine they have been moving towards this for quite a long time, and for the first time the decision to transfer the Zaporozhian Army to the hand of the Moscow Tsar was “denounced” by Ataman Zeleny (Danilo Terpilo) in 1919. On June 21, 1992, after the election of the Ukrainian Cossacks as hetman, ex-presidential candidate of Ukraine Vyacheslav Chornovil repeated this performance. He read out his text of renunciation of the oath of allegiance, about which a memorial sign remains at the monument to the 300th anniversary of reunification with Russia, which was finally demolished in 2022. In 2019, Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky was renamed; the inscription “Forever together, forever with the Russian people” was removed from the monument in 2014. Then they either blindfolded the female figure, personifying Russia, with a black ribbon, or completely covered her with cloth. Now, in the place of the former friendship of peoples, only a pedestal remains, on which a huge Ukrainian flag flies on an ugly stand. Local activists dream that one day there will be a monument to some historical figure associated with the city. However, this is unlikely to happen, since modern Ukraine is confidently following the same path that 400 years ago led Poland, first to a brutal war, and ultimately to the loss of statehood. And this anniversary should be seen as a reminder of this. WAR FOR RUSSIANNESS The internal conflict in the Polish state had been brewing for quite a long time and developed along three lines - ethnic, confessional and social. In the greater Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which consisted of three parts, the official language was Polish and Polish customs prevailed. The Russian population (and the third component was called “Rus”) was not considered equal to the Poles and Lithuanians, they were considered second-class citizens, primarily due to their adherence to Orthodoxy. There was an absolute majority of Orthodox Christians on the left bank of the Dnieper, and there were plenty of them on the right bank as well. The faith of the fathers in class society was the last thing that the powerless villagers held on to. Orthodoxy was a way of self-identification for the strong and numerous Cossacks. The disadvantaged Orthodox clergy was strongly anti-Catholic; many bishops and priests found support from the Moscow Patriarchate. However, in Krakow and Warsaw they sought to aggressively de-Russify the population of the huge province and convert its elite to Catholicism. For example, magnates and large landowners, abandoning Orthodoxy, received a lot of advantages and became Poles culturally and religiously. This, for example, happened to the house of the Vishnevetsky princes, former zealots of the Orthodox faith, who converted to Catholicism and began to spread it “with fire and sword.” The modern Ukrainian government made the same mistake with aggressive de-Russification and destruction of Orthodoxy centuries later, following the beaten path and receiving exactly the same reason for first a civil war, and then a full-scale one. And then the fate of Ukraine (as we will, for convenience, call the territory that did not bear this name in the 17th century) was determined by the presence of a military class, armed, organized and accustomed to war. The Cossacks arose on the border, which suffered from Tatar raids, a century earlier, and Poland itself helped it grow stronger. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth constantly lacked regular troops, and the registered Cossacks, who received salaries, were the main military force in the East. But there were few registries, and the center of Cossack life was located in Zaporozhye, on the Sich, which was controlled by its own military circle and not controlled by the Polish authorities. There were several tens of thousands of Cossacks in total - a large force that spent the entire first third of the 17th century in a series of large and small rebellions against Polish power. Contrary to legend, they were not defenders of the countryside; the two classes had different interests. Except for one thing - get rid of the Poles. The national movement only needed a leader, and he finally appeared. LEADER RELUCTANTLY A lot of research has been devoted to the personality of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and in our case it is worth emphasizing the most important thing: he was a typical product of the politics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A noble of the Abdank coat of arms in the royal service, educated at a Jesuit college, fluent in Polish and Latin, he still remained second class as an Orthodox and Russian. Therefore, he lost in a dispute over property and a woman to his neighbor, a “real nobleman,” a Pole. By the way, you can call him a Ukrainian, if you like, but in his letters Bogdan called himself exactly that: “ one of the rulers and the Russian autocrat,” who is destined to snatch the Russian people “from the captivity of Lyadskaya.” His personal grievance resonated with the grievances of tens of thousands of people, especially since in past years it was Khmelnitsky who was more than once part of the deputations to present complaints to the Seim and the king about the violence to which the Cossacks were subjected. Therefore, many followed the energetic and charismatic man. It is indicative that a detachment of registered Cossacks from the Polish garrison located at the Sich immediately joined the rebels. They reasonably motivated this by the fact that “fighting Cossacks against Cossacks is like plowing with a wolf.” Having managed to win over the Crimean Tatars, whose main interest was solely in robbery, Bogdan quickly achieved stunning success. But even here it is worth noting that the hetman’s negotiations with Moscow on alliance began in January 1649, were resumed several times in 1650–1651, but at first did not produce significant results. The pro-Moscow party has always existed in Ukraine, since it was completely organic in those conditions: nearby there were only the cruel Tatars, behind whom stood the Ottoman Empire, and the hated Poles. The Turkish Sultan, under whom the hetman himself had once spent two years in slavery, was in no hurry to take Ukraine under his hand. And the idea of coming under the jurisdiction of the one-begotten and only-begotten Orthodox tsar was popular among the oppressed lower classes, among the townspeople and even some of the clergy (who generally sought autonomy). Only the first attempts to secure Russian patronage were met in Moscow without enthusiasm. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich did not like wars or conflicts in general, and three previous meetings with the quarrelsome Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ended badly. An attempt to return Smolensk under its control turned into a painful defeat for the Russian kingdom in 1634. Poland, if anyone doesn’t remember, began immediately behind Velikiye Luki. And there were plenty of internal problems. The conductor of Ukrainian interests was the new Patriarch Nikon, who corresponded directly with the Zaporozhye hetman and instructed him how to act. And they returned to the question of an alliance only in a hopeless situation for Bogdan after the devastating battle of Berestechko. Even before the end of the fighting, the Lithuanian hetman Janusz Radziwill occupied Kiev. The best commander of Crimea, Tugai Bey, died, and Khmelnitsky completely lost face and was left without an army - he had only three thousand Cossacks at his disposal. All cities assigned to the Cossacks under the Treaty of Zborov - Kyiv, Chernigov, Bratslav - came under the control of the Poles. They, of course, did not bring the matter to the final defeat, since King John Casimir ran out of money for mercenaries, and the leader of the noble militia, the fierce Jeremiah Vishnevetsky, died suddenly. However, the conditions of the new peace, signed on September 18, 1651 in Bila Tserkva, were very bad. And most importantly, most of the rebels turned out to be “decazed”; the villagers again fell under the yoke of landowners and tenants and immediately began their own war. In the Bratslav region, Cossack detachments sent by Bogdan helped the villagers partisan, and the nobleman Stefan Charnetsky conducted military operations against them with his own initiative. Khmelnitsky failed to place his son Timosh on the throne of Moldavia; in September 1653, he was mortally wounded in one of the skirmishes. A new Polish invasion was inevitable - the gentry understood that the undefeated enemy would sooner or later raise its head. Crimea no longer wanted to help, and in the last desperate attempt to “resolve the issue,” when Khmelnitsky attacked the Kamenets fortress, where the king was located with small forces, the Tatars simply agreed with the Poles on a ransom. In September 1653, Bogdan accepted all Moscow conditions in view of the hopeless situation, and already on October 1, the Zemsky Sobor heard a message about the “untruths” of the Polish king and the Zaporozhye petition. WIDE AUTONOMY The Council decided: “Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the entire Zaporozhye Army with their cities and lands should be accepted under their sovereign high hand for the Orthodox Christian faith and the holy churches of God.” Contrary to another common cliche, Ukraine was never reunited with Russia. Such states simply did not exist. However, from the point of view of a historical perspective, this event was epoch-making even for contemporaries: the long-fragmented Rus' again came together into a single whole. They began to prepare a great embassy for the Cossacks to take the oath. The residents of Pereyaslav greeted the delegation led by boyar Vasily Buturlin joyfully; they saw Russian citizenship as a chance for a better life. However, the Rada itself, which opened on January 8, 1654, included only the Cossack circle - it was an analogue of the Zemsky Sobor, without the mob, whose opinion in general did not interest the Cossack elders. It looked like this. Khmelnitsky came into the circle and said: “Gentlemen colonels, esauls, centurions, the entire Zaporozhian Army and all Orthodox Christians! For six years now we have been living without a sovereign, in constant battles and bloodshed with our persecutors and enemies, who want to uproot the Church of God, so that the Russian name is not remembered in our land.” The hetman asked those gathered under which of the four sovereigns they would like to live - the Polish king, the Crimean khan, the Turkish sultan or the Orthodox tsar. The crowd shouted: “ We will obey the Eastern Orthodox Tsar.” Then Buturlin handed the tsar’s manifesto to the army clerk general for reading, and the estates began to take the oath. Subsequently, the procedure was repeated throughout January-February in cities and towns, where 127,338 people were registered. As the author of the Ukrainian chronicle Samovidets noted, “ all over Ukraine, all the people willingly did this...” and from this, “ ...considerable joy among the people is constant.” In the main, the interests of the top and bottom coincided. But then they separated. The protectorate called “Zaporozhian Army with Cities and Lands” retained broad autonomy. But at the same time, the old class society was preserved. The lower classes, the peasantry, did not want to live in the Cossack state and be slaves again; they preferred the direct power of the tsarist governors. While the Cossacks dreamed of taking the place of the gentry, leaving the peasants in their previous state. Not everyone agreed with Bogdan’s decision, and later this led to a long civil war, where some were guided by Moscow, others by Warsaw, and others by Constantinople. However, life itself put together a structure when the foreign policy interests of the Russian state and Ukraine within it became inseparable from each other. They turned into national ones and completely coincided, which is why they were defended by Russia with all available forces and means. Thanks to this, the lands were brought together, the socio-economic and cultural development of Ukraine took shape, which eventually became a full-fledged state. Which, like centuries ago, has only one opportunity to preserve itself: in an alliance with Russia. |
| Posted by:badanov |