Forerunner of Pereyaslav
In January of this year, 359 is celebrated as the Pereiaslav Rada, a landmark event that was given the official name “the reunification of Ukraine with Russia” in Soviet times, and before that it was called the “reunification of Russia”. Nowadays, this event is attempted to give another interpretation, with a negative connotation, in the context of “stitching the country” according to Galician patterns.
Apparently, those witches are right who say that we live in a country with an unpredictable past. Political accents that change when assessing past events in order to please the current political environment are capable of modifying descriptions of the same events in such a way that to the uninitiated it may even seem that we are talking about completely different historical facts.
Probably historians of the XVIII-XIX centuries. they would be a little puzzled if they knew that instead of the "reunification of Russia" there will appear a "reunification of Ukraine with Russia." And the former historians of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the teachers of scientific communism, who are now struggling in the field of “history of Ukraine”, 25 years ago and in a terrible dream would not have dreamed of their current “historical works” on a “temporary military alliance of the two powers.”
Conjunctions in historical science are profitable for their authors and heralds, beneficial for politicians and propagandists, but truly murderous for historical truth and an adequate understanding of reality. After all, even those who pay tribute to the world-historic significance of the Pereyaslav Rada are in the thrall of the stereotype that Ukraine’s reunification with Russia took place in 1654, and not the transfer of the Zaporozhyan Army from the citizenship of the Polish king to the Russian kingdom (www.alternatio.org) .
At the same time, in the public consciousness, Ukraine is understood as the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and its successor, the current Ukrainian state. Meanwhile, if you look at things without prejudice, then the inconsistency of such a point of view becomes immediately apparent - after all, only lands controlled by Bogdan Khmelnitsky became part of the Russian state on Pereyaslavskaya Rada.
Somehow it was forgotten that at that time Bogdan Khmelnitsky was subject only to some parts of the territories of the present Poltava, Sumy, Kiev and Chernihiv regions, it was 10 — 12% of the present territory of Ukraine. The rest of its territory is the fruit of Russian victories. weapons, the art of Russian diplomacy and ... gifts "elder brother."
Therefore, celebrating the anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada, which determined the fate of Eastern Europe for many centuries, we should not forget that finding a number of territories of the current Ukrainian state in its composition has no direct or direct relation to the Pereyaslav Rada, but is only its remote consequence.
Suffice it to recall that the Right Bank of the Dnieper remained in the Commonwealth until the second half of the 18th century, when, in the reign of Catherine II, it was liberated from Polish rule. The same applies to the Northern Black Sea region (the historical name is Novorossia), won back from the Turks and Tatars, again in the reign of Catherine II.
Casual mention should be made of the merits of Lenin, under which the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (kornilov.name/kniga) was eliminated, as a result of which the vast industrial regions of Donbass and Dnieper became part of Ukraine (for the sake of increasing the percentage of the proletariat in peasant Ukraine). We should not forget about the role of Stalin, in which Galicia, Volyn, Transcarpathia, Northern Bucovina and Southern Bessarabia became Ukrainian. And it would be quite indecent to forget about the role of Khrushchev, who presented the Crimea.
The Kharkiv region stands as a special feature in the list of territorial acquisitions of Ukraine - as the territory first donated to Ukraine and from all the current Ukrainian lands was the longest in Russia. At first glance, such a statement may seem unexpected and even outrageous, but if you are impartial to face historical truth and open obscure pages of history, the facts will convince the most suspicious of what was said (not to be confused with blinded — these are not able to convince any facts, even the most obvious ). What are these facts?
The most unknown of them is that the territory of the present Kharkiv region legally became part of the Russian state at the very beginning of the 16th century. - in 1503
How did this happen? It should be remembered here that the scattered Russian principalities could not resist the invasion of Batu, during which they were defeated and devastated and later became easy prey for the rapidly rising Lithuanian principality. Thanks to the mastery of the vast spaces of the former Kievan Rus (including the Seversk lands, which included the present Kharkiv region), Lithuania became the largest state in Europe at that time. But, staying at a rather low level of cultural development, Lithuania absorbed the cultural achievements of the conquered Russia, so some historians believe that at a certain stage there existed two Rus - Moscow and Lithuania.
Close ties of the Russian state and Lithuania, dynastic marriages, to a large extent - a community of cultures, it would seem, could lead to the union of the two states. Perhaps it would have happened, but the omnipresent Vatican intervened in the process, and managed to convert the Lithuanian elite to Catholicism (while the majority of its citizens, descendants of Kievan Rus, were Orthodox).
Due to the Catholic expansion at the turn of the XV and XVI centuries. persecution of Orthodox Christians intensified in Lithuania, accompanied by attempts to convert them to Catholicism. “They build Latin gods in Russian cities, take wives from husbands, children from their parents, and baptize them into the Roman Law. And can I see the indifferently oppressed Orthodoxy? ”Wrote the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III. Moreover, the Catholic expansion affected not only commoners, but also the nobility, and in its number - the daughter of Ivan III Elena, who was married to the Grand Duke of Lithuania Alexander.
Religious contradictions became one of the reasons for the aggravation of relations between the Russian state and Lithuania. Under these conditions, the princes Simeon of Chernigov, who owned Chernihiv, Starodub, Gomel, and Lyubech, and Vasily Rylsky, who owned Rylsk and Novgorod-Seversky (including the lands of the present Kharkiv region), called on Grand Prince Ivan III to rescue them and the cities under their control from the Lithuanian yoke. And as if anticipating what was done after a century and a half by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, they were asked to accept them together with their patrimonies into the Russian state.
Ivan III began a war with Lithuania, which lasted for several years and ended in 1503, a number of lands were conquered by Lithuania from Lithuania, and among them was the Seversk lands, which included the territory of the present Kharkiv region.
Thus, this year marks 510 years since the entry of the lands of the current Kharkiv region into the Russian state.
It happened just a decade after Columbus discovered America, half a century before Kazan and Astrakhan joined the Russian state, eighty years before the conquest of Siberia, and one hundred fifty years before Pereyaslavl!
The ownership of this territory to the Russian state long before Pereyaslav Rada is confirmed by the “Book of the Great Blueprint”, one of the first descriptions of the Russian state, and maps of Guillaume de Boplan, a French officer, military engineer and geographer, who in 30 — 40. XVII century. stayed on the Polish service and left the most interesting materials about the then Ukraine.
In the "Book of the Big Blueprint", one of the first geographical descriptions of Russia, compiled in the Moscow Discharge Order in 1627, describes the southern territory of the Russian state, which indicates the Kharkov rivers: Lopan, Kharkov, Udy. The fact that this is exactly the territory of Moscow State is also evidenced by the fact that it never entered the Hetmanate, was subordinated to the Belgorod voivode, the Ambassadorial order, and not the city of the Little Russian Order created in Moscow in 1663.
Subsequently, the territory of the region was incorporated into the Azov province, and then the territories were created here Sloboda-Ukrainian and Kharkov provinces, whose population differed in their legal status from the population of other provinces of modern Ukraine. Actually, officially, Kharkiv region became officially related to Ukraine only at the turn of 1917 — 1918, when the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets moved to Kharkov, expelled from Kiev by the Central Rada, and then the Kaiser troops invited by the Central Rada came, which, in fact, laid the current border between Kharkov and Belgorod.
Another contemporary who left us a certificate of border delimitation between the Russian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century is Guillaume Lavasseur de Boplan. He was one of those who implemented the plans of the Polish government to build a system of fortresses on the south-eastern borders of the Polish state. During 17 years, he erected or planned to erect a fortress and various kinds of barriers, designed both to protect against Tatar raids, and to keep Cossack freemen in submission.
Looking for places convenient for fortifications, de Boplan perfectly acquainted with the topography, ethnography, way of life and the position of Ukraine and the places closest to it and left interesting notes about it. In addition, on behalf of the Polish King Vladislav IV and the Crown Hetman Konetspolsky de Boplan was engaged in the detailed mapping of South Russia. Returning to his homeland, he published an essay about Ukraine Description d'Ukraine and detailed maps of Ukraine and Poland back in 1660 in France, later reprinted many times.
According to the maps of de Boplan, on the eve of the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the border between the Russian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth passed from Putivl along the River Teren, the upper reaches of the Sula and further along the Vorskla River. The territory of the present Kharkiv region was clearly located within the Russian state.
This is also confirmed in the writings of the Ukrainian historian Dmitry Bagaley. Here's how in his “History of Sloboda Ukraine” (first published in 1918), he describes the creation of the city of Valki (50 km west of Kharkov): “The old Moscow mosque in Slobozhanschyna Buli Valki is worse. Koll there a buv val that rіv, yak about tse kazhe "Book of the Great Drawing". VOvoda Turgenev at 1636 rotsi writing about Valki: “And Valki zvіsnі z elders”. And at 1646, the Moscow squadron made a fool of the tract of the Valki, the Mozhskiy Ostrozh.
Ibid D. Bagaley indicates that the most populated place before Khmelnytsky in the territory of the present Kharkiv region was Chuguevsky district - with the villages of Kamennaya Yaruga, Pokrovskoye, Kochetok, Vvedenskoye, Peschanoye, Ternovoye, Pyatnitskoe, Vasishchevo, etc. inhabited by Great Russians. testifies Dmitry Bagaley, the land was allotted by the Moscow government back in 1647.
There are also earlier evidences of the development of the region by the forces of Russian servicemen. Thus, in the history of the present Pechenezhsky district of the Kharkiv region, there are preserved charters on the allocation of land here in 1599 to the Belgorod serviceman Maslov (www.pechenigi-rda.org.ua) of land as payment for the sovereign's service. Even more eloquent is the emergence of the town and fortress of Tsareborisov (from 1919 - Krasny Oskol), founded by voivode B. Ya. Belsky in the reign, as the name implies, Boris Godunov - in 1599.
And not far from Tsareborisova there was a much older settlement - Svyatogorsky Monastery, which was first mentioned in the work of a diplomat, traveler and historian of the XVI century. Sigismund Herberstein's “Notes about Muscovy,” where he described his journey in 1526.
It is worth recalling that when Russian servicemen built cities and fortresses on the territory of the present Kharkiv region, the future unifier of Russia (or Ukraine with Russia, as is commonly believed in modern historiography) Bogdan Khmelnitsky just started walking and learned to speak his first words ... And it will be many more years until the relay of the reunification of Russia, launched by the princes of Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky, will be in the hands of the hetman.
Kharkiv region experienced two settlement waves — the Russian, when from the beginning of the 16th century, after the war with Lithuania and the joining of the Seversk territories to the Russian state, Russian servicemen were sent to the lands of the future Kharkiv region to guard the frontiers and develop the region, and Ukraine’s, when 150 years later the outskirts of the Russian state received refugees from the Right Bank of the Dnieper (among them are the ancestors of the author on the maternal side). With the permission of the Russian Tsar, Ukrainian refugees settled here, creating the so-called. Sloboda - settlements, whose inhabitants were released from a number of duties.
So from the middle of the XVII century. Slobozhaschina emerged - a region of the Russian state, along with Great Russians settled by refugees from Ukraine - representatives of the Ukrainian ethnos (although at that time they were considered parts of one people). This led to the emergence of a unique ethnic rafting, which is sometimes called “Slobozhansky subethnos”
Best of all, Nikolay Gogol characterized him in his famous letter 1844: “What kind of soul I have — hochlyatsky or Russian — I don't know myself. I only know that in no way would it give an advantage to either a Russian citizen over a Russian, or a Russian over a Russian. Both natures are too generously endowed by God, and, as if on purpose, each of them separately contains in itself what is not in the other - a clear sign that they must replenish one another. For this, the very stories of their past life are given to them unlike one another, so that the various forces of their characters are brought up separately, so that later, merging together, to form something more perfect in humanity ... Russian and Little Russian are twins' souls, replenishing one another, relatives and equally strong. "
The reader may have a completely legitimate question: why does the author so insistently mention Kharkiv region? After all, in 1503, it was far from the only territory that changed its citizenship from Lithuanian to Russian. The answer should be sought in the subsequent Russian history.
A century later, during the Time of Troubles that swept Russia (these events are strongly associated with short-term kings Boris Godunov and Vasily Shuisky, seven-boyars, both False Dmitry, Polish intervention and the liberation of Moscow by the national militia of Minin and Pozharsky), all the conquests of 1503 were lost - Chernihiv, and Novgorod-Seversky again became Polish. And only the territory of the future Kharkiv region remained in the Russian state and subsequently sheltered thousands of refugees from the Right Bank of the Dnieper, who fled from repression of the Polish troops after the defeat of the Cossacks under Berestechko.
The rapid development of the region, the creation of the university, the transformation of Kharkov into a large commercial and industrial center, and subsequently into a transportation hub, attracted many talented and enterprising people to Kharkiv region. Serbs and Volokhs, Germans and Jews, Greeks and Poles, Armenians and Georgians, and of course, Russians and Ukrainians contributed to the development of not only Kharkiv region - their discoveries and achievements enriched world science and culture. But characteristically, representatives of different nations were able to fully realize themselves and become great precisely in the bosom of Russian culture, and this is completely natural - only world-class culture creates the conditions and provides opportunities for the full disclosure of the creative potential bestowed on man by nature.
Over the past 500 years three times (except for Tatar raids), attempts have been made to tear Kharkivshchyna from the Russian world, expel the Russian language and culture from here, and such actions have always been carried out under foreign patronage and plunged Kharkiv citizens into disasters and deprivations. And what is gratifying is that they always ended in failure: it suffices to recall the collapse of such attempts made by the Kaiser in 1918 and the Führer in 1941 — 43. You can be sure that the current plans of the “Washington Regional Committee” to separate and oppose our peoples will not come true - the only question is how long these attempts will continue and how far they will reverse the development of the region.
And the matter is not even in the opposition that “de-Russification” (or rather, the cutting of its roots) has on the Kharkiv people. On our side, the logic of historical development, the need for economic survival, awareness of civilizational affiliation and just kinship: about a third of Kharkiv citizens and over 40% of Belgorod residents have relatives on the other side of the recently created Russian-Ukrainian border.
And this is confirmed for someone, perhaps, by an unpleasant, but objectively existing reality: in the vastness of Slobozhanshchina (Kharkiv, Belgorod and partially Sumy and Voronezh regions) there is one people living. The people, who are equally friendly towards both Russian and Ukrainian culture, considering them equally native. And no less honored his story. It is enough to remember that the annual celebration of the anniversary of the Pereyaslav Rada, held in Kharkiv for many years, continues today - even after the authorities removed it from the list of events and stopped funding, all this is done by the public.
And if you really pursue a policy in the interests of our peoples, and not overseas puppeteers, who in Ukraine and Russia see only figures on the world chessboard, then the future of our states should not be seen from the top of the new Berlin Wall being built between Kharkov and Belgorod.
And an example that would be worth borrowing is in the coexistence of our countries and the arrangement of their borders, the effectiveness of which was shown by the EU countries, the same the USA and Canada. Taking into account their experience in using the advantages offered by cooperation, for example, in the format of Euroregions, in this case, Slobozhanschina Euroregion, whose capabilities at this stage should be used more intensively to at least partially restore broken centuries-old ties between border areas.
And of course, one cannot ignore the advantages and direct economic benefits that Ukraine will give to the membership in the Customs Union. So that not only, instead of asking for indentured loans, Ukraine should be able to earn the necessary funds, but also realize the precepts of Taras Shevchenko: “do not live wheat, like gold and gold, will remain naval one sea і to the sea - Slov'yanska land”. Such as in Slobozhanshchina it was during the last five hundred years.
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