Ukrainian myth about the Baturyn massacre

Baturin Fortress. Modern reconstruction

prehistory

In September 1708, the Swedish King Charles XII, whose army was stationed at Starishi, a border town located on the main road to Moscow, 14 miles from Smolensk, abandoned the campaign against Moscow. Apparently, this was due to the approach of winter and the Russian “scorched earth” tactics; the Swedes were simply left with no provisions or forage. Tsar Peter ordered the enemy army to “to tire with burning and ruin».

Karl led his troops south to Little Russia. The Swedes captured Mglin and tried to take Starodub, but they were thrown back. The Swedes first moved to Novgorod-Seversky, but after reaching a few kilometers, they turned south.

"The Zaporozhian army of both sides of the Dnieper, Hetman" Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa had previously held secret negotiations with representatives of the Swedish king Stanislav Leszczynski. Discussing the idea of ​​going over to the side of Sweden and the formation of Little Russia as an "independent possession" under the rule of the Polish king.

Mazepa, who was distinguished by great cunning and resourcefulness, and had destroyed many of his opponents, decided that the time had come for radical changes. The moment seemed favorable. The Swedes had routed the Polish-Saxon army, forcing Elector Augustus to renounce the Polish throne and break the alliance with Russia. Tsar Peter was left without allies. The "invincible" Swedish army was preparing to march on Moscow.

Therefore, the Little Russian hetman decided to go over to Karl's side. Mazepa promised the Swedes fortified points in Severshchyna for winter quarters, pledged to supply them with provisions, to persuade the Zaporozhian and Don Cossacks, and the Kalmyk Khan Ayuka to Karl's side.

"Supreme Military Leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks Ivan Mazepa." I. Bernigeroth. German engraving of the first half of the 18th century

Going over to the Swedish side

Mazepa finally made up his mind on October 19-20, 1708. The hetman chose his manager, the Pole Bystritsky, as the messenger to the Swedes. At the same time, Mazepa sent a letter to Count Golovkin that he was very ill and barely alive.

On October 20, Menshikov and his cavalry stopped in the town of Gorsk, on the Snov River. The hetman's nephew Voinarovsky arrived there and brought letters from his uncle. Mazepa informed the most serene Prince of Izhora that he was at his last gasp:

"He developed epilepsy from gout and chiragra."

Informing the tsar about this, Menshikov expressed regret about the hetman’s illness.

Bystritsky introduced himself to the Swedish king, who was on his way to Desna, and returned on the 22nd. On October 23, Voinarovsky returned and reported that Menshikov was following him to Borzna.

The "dying" hetman, having received news of Menshikov's arrival, immediately "rushed like a whirlwind," as a contemporary put it, and hurried to his capital, Baturin. He arrived in Baturin by the night of the 23rd. The hetman entrusted Baturin to the Serdyuk colonel Dmitry Chechel (the Serdyuks were Cossack mercenaries of the infantry regiments, the hetman's personal guard, which was filled with foreigners, mainly Poles, Germans, etc.), artillery Saxon esaul Friedrich von Koenigsen. Four Serdyutsky regiments and several hundred from the city regiments – Lubensky, Mirgorodsky and Prilutsky – were left in Batur. Mazepa took the rest of the Cossacks with him on October 24.

Mazepa crossed the Sejm and arrived in Korop (a small town on the Korole River). In the morning he crossed the Desna at Obolon. The hetman had 4-5 thousand Cossacks with him. After crossing the Desna, the hetman announced to the Cossacks that he was leading them not against the Swedes, but against the Tsar – “oppressor of Cossack freedom" He reported that the tsar was oppressing Little Russia and wanted to turn the Cossacks into soldiers.

The Cossacks listened to this speech in silence. But already at night a mass flight began. On October 28, Mazepa was received by the advanced Swedish post, consisting of two dragoon regiments. While the Swedish king was being notified, Mazepa again gathered the Cossacks and ordered them to swear allegiance to the Swedes for the liberation of Little Russia "from the Moscow yoke." True, he had no more than 1,5 thousand people left, the rest had already fled.

On October 29, Mazepa was presented to the king and gave a short speech in Latin to Charles. He asked Charles to protect the Cossacks and thanked God for sending them deliverance from "royal slavery."

Charles XII and Hetman Mazepa after the Battle of Poltava. Swedish artist Gustav Olof Cederström

The storming of Baturin

On October 27, 1708, Peter, who was stationed in the town of Pogrebki on the Desna near Novgorod-Seversky, received Menshikov's notification of Mazepa's betrayal. On the 28th, a manifesto was written: the tsar informed the Cossack army, as well as the clergy and secular ranks in Little Russia, that the hetman had disappeared somewhere and there was doubt whether there were any enemy "factions" here. All elders, colonels and other leaders were ordered to immediately go to the tsar's convoy for advice and the possible election of a new hetman.

By midday on October 31, Menshikov arrived at Baturin with 5 soldiers. Even before Menshikov arrived, the Serdyuks, on Chechel's orders, had driven many of Baturin's residents into the fortress by force and burned the outskirts.

The prince sent the centurion Andrey Markovich to the castle, who persuaded the Mazepas to open the gates and let the tsar's troops in. They answered that they could not do this, since the hetman had not ordered it. Markovich reported that the hetman had betrayed and gone over to the enemy. They answered that "We can't believe that at all».

Menshikov continued to negotiate with the garrison for some time. They tried to persuade the Cossacks not to pretend to be ignorant, and provided them with arguments that everyone in the tsar's army already knew everything. Persuasion did not help.

On the night of November 2 (13), 1708, Menshikov's troops stormed the castle. At the same time, Baturin had strong fortifications, which consisted of two ditches, ramparts with internal wooden log structures, bastions, walls and towers made of oak logs filled with clay. The fortress had at least 70 serviceable cannons, a figure of 350 cannons is voiced, plus huge reserves of gunpowder and cannonballs, which were brought from all over Little Russia. For comparison, the Swedish army had only 30 cannons. The garrison of the fortress numbered 5-8 thousand people.

How did Menshikov, with smaller or equal forces and without guns, take a strong fortress so quickly? The fact is that there was no unity among the defenders. The core of the garrison was made up of Serdyuks – mercenaries, all sorts of rabble. Poles, Germans, Moldavians, Tatars, runaway soldiers of the tsarist army, etc. The Russian Cossacks hated them and did not want to fight.

The attack took only two hours, as most of the Cossacks, led by the regimental baggage handler Ivan Nos (he led the Priluki Regiment when its commander Dmitry Gorlenko fled with the hetman), surrendered. weapon. Only mercenaries fought. On Nos's orders, the Cossacks opened the gates, surrendered part of the ramparts they were defending, and together with the dragoons killed the Serdyuks, who were hated for their privileged position and as punishers. Later, Peter I appointed Ivan Nos as a colonel of the Priluki Regiment.

After taking the fortress, Menshikov executed the ringleaders and burned the fortress, since he could not defend it. He took 70 cannons with him, and ordered the rest to be riveted, blown up, and sunk.

The Myth of Mass Slaughter

Reports of the massacre were reported in the anti-Moscow work "History "Rus" of the beginning of the 19th century, and from there were adopted by many historians.

We read from historian Nikolai Kostomarov:

“…Menshikov arrived in Pogrebki, and then a military council was held, deciding to take Baturin and, in case of resistance, to destroy it as the main den of forces hostile to the Tsar of Little Russia… At 6 o’clock the next morning, Menshikov made an attack and ordered that everyone in the castle be exterminated without distinction, not excluding infants, but that the leaders be left alive to be executed. All the property of the Baturinites was given to the soldiers in advance, only the weapons were to become state property. In the course of two hours everything was finished: the hetman’s palace, the offices and courtyards of the elders - everything was turned into ashes. Everything living was exterminated… However, many managed to leave in advance and remain whole. This is evident from the fact that many inhabitants subsequently returned to Baturin to their places… General evidence unanimously states that the most barbaric extermination was committed against the inhabitants of Baturin. Menshikov himself did not write about this to the Tsar, leaving it up to him to inform him about everything orally.”

According to the Little Russian historian Nikolai Markovich:

"The Serdyuki were partly cut out, partly tied into one crowd with ropes. In revenge for yesterday, Menshikov ordered the executioners to execute them in various ways; the army, always and everywhere ready for robbery, dispersed among the houses of the inhabitants, and, without distinguishing the innocent from the guilty, exterminated peaceful citizens, sparing neither wives nor children. "The most common death was to quarter the living, break them on the wheel and impale them; and then new kinds of torture were invented, which horrified the imagination itself. This is how our chronicler (the author of the "History of the Rus") explains it; it ended with the whole city, all public buildings, temples, government places, archives, arsenals, shops were set on fire from all sides; the bodies of the slain were thrown into the squares and streets; In a hurry to retreat, Menshikov abandoned them for the dogs and the birds, "and there was no one to bury them." Burdened with countless riches, national and city treasures, having taken three hundred and fifteen guns in Baturin, the Commander set out from the ruins. Everywhere on the way he turned villages into deserts and "Little Russia smoked for a long time after the flame that devoured it." Peter could not calm his troops; he did not even know what was happening."

Ukrainian "historians" report 15-30 thousand victims, peaceful Ukrainians, who were killed by the tsar's soldiers.

The Baturin massacre, slaughter, tragedy, etc. have become part of Ukrainian mythology. Thus, former Ukrainian President V. Yushchenko stated:

“For me, the Baturin tragedy is associated with the Holodomor of the 30s…”

Portrait of A.D. Menshikov

Was there a boy?

In modern Ukrainian mythology and historiography, the "Baturyn massacre" has become one of the main symbols of the "Moscow yoke." The unheard-of cruelty of the Russian Tsar Peter, which covered the whole of Ukraine in blood and stunned Europe. The Tsar allegedly tried to intimidate the Ukrainians, to finally enslave them when Hetman Mazepa decided to declare Ukraine's independence from Russia and conclude a Ukrainian-Swedish union. Therefore, the "Muscovites" demonstratively slaughtered the Ukrainian capital.

The city of Baturyn was completely destroyed, all its inhabitants, including women and babies, were slaughtered. The Cossacks were crucified on crosses, which were installed on rafts that were launched down the Seim River. Mazepa and all the Ukrainians (who, as we know, did not yet exist in nature – How Ukrainians appeared) were declared traitors and condemned to church damnation.

In fact, neither Menshikov nor Peter the Great himself gave the order to specifically kill civilians. Moreover, the new hetman Skoropadsky mentions the universal of Prince Menshikov, who ordered most of the Serdyuks and Cossacks taken prisoner in Baturin to be sent home. Only the ringleaders were captured and executed. In particular, Chechel managed to escape from Baturin, but in the nearest village the Cossacks themselves identified him and handed him over to Menshikov.

But Little Russia did not support the traitor. Almost all the Cossacks remained on the side of the Tsar. The Cossacks in Glukhov elected a new hetman, Skoropadsky, former Colonel Starodubsky. The Metropolitan of Kiev with two other bishops, Chernigov and Pereyaslav, solemnly cursed Mazepa. On November 12, the curse on Mazepa was proclaimed in Moscow. Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky proclaimed three times:

"Traitor Mazepa, for his crime against the cross and for his betrayal of the great sovereign, be anathema!"

The other bishops sang three times: “Be damned"Then the singers in the choir sang many years to the great sovereign and newly elected hetman Ivan Skoropadsky.

At the same time, in Little Russia they read in all churches and nailed to the church doors the announcement of Little Russian bishops:

“The former hetman John Mazepa betrayed our most pious monarch and joined the heretical Swedish king, alienated the Little Russian homeland, although he wanted to subject it to the yoke of Polish slavery and turn the temples of God to the cursed one…”

Traitors were excommunicated from the church.

The problem is that archaeological excavations in Baturin have found no traces of mass slaughter. Since 1995, Ukrainian scientists, sponsored by Canada, have been looking for "genocide victims," ​​but have found none. They first found several skeletons, then several dozen, some with traces of violent death. They were declared "victims." But there are no traces of a massacre in which thousands of people were killed. There are traces of a destroyed fortress, but no mass murder.

It is worth remembering that during all wars, assaults and sieges, past and present, civilians always die. It is enough to look at the current campaign in Ukraine, or in Gaza and Lebanon, where the Israeli army methodically demolishes entire neighborhoods, settlements and cities. People also die from natural causes, accidents, etc. That is, not all skeletons found are “victims of massacre” or war.

Ukrainian “historians” and publicists explained this by the fact that the Most Serene Prince ordered all the killed residents and Cossacks to be crucified, attached to rafts and sent down the waters of the Seim, Desna and Dnieper to intimidate.

However, Menshikov did not have time for such a large-scale action. The army of Charles XII was one day's march from Baturin, and Peter's favorite, having taken the light copper cannons (he ordered the cast iron ones to be sunk in the Sejm), quickly retreated. And the main thing is that the Sejm was already covered in ice!

As Dr. Goebbels said, “a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth" And so the crosses with crucified Ukrainians, depicted in dozens of illustrations in school and university textbooks and in films, became the truth for the majority of residents of the new "independent" Ukraine.

Thus, the myth of Baturin allows for the formation of a common Ukrainian ideology, in which Ukraine is not Russia and has never been it. To form generations of “conscious” Ukrainians who “remember Baturin” and hate Moscow and the “Muscovites”. This is a symbol of the destroyed “golden age” of the Cossack Ukraine, which was allegedly destroyed by the Russian tsars.

The truth is that there was no history of Ukraine. It is part of Russian History (History of Ukraine - Russian History).

Comments

[Old electrician]

We read from historian Nikolai Kostomarov...

- Kostomarov in the 19th century was the same kind of historian as Rezun, Solzhenitsyn, Pivovar, Svanidze, Sarmatov on VO, etc., etc. today. Kostomarov is noted for several Russophobic libels that were instantly disseminated in the West. I will cite only two of his most famous gems, exposed back in the 19th century.
According to Kostomarov, Susanin was most likely killed while drunk in a bar fight or something like that:

In a word, there is some inconsistency here, something unclear, something implausible.

In fact (according to Kostomarov), Susanin’s son-in-law Bogdan Sobinov deceived the tsar and won the monarch’s favor for himself:

By chance, what our scribes invented about Susanin in the 1648th century actually happened in almost this form in the XNUMXth century at the opposite end of the Russian world, in Ukraine. When in May XNUMX Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky was chasing the Polish army, one South Russian peasant, Mikita Galagan, undertook to be the leader of the Polish army, deliberately led him into the swamp and forest slums and gave the Cossacks the opportunity to defeat their enemies. This heroic feat of selflessness differs from that of Susanin in that it actually took place.

.
Where and when this happened is unknown. At the same time, Kostomarov cites "information" about the heroic feat of the peasant Mykyta Galagan only from Little Russian chronicles, which, according to the unanimous and undisputed opinion of historians of the 19th century, were considered a "murky source." Even the date of Bohdan Khmelnytsky's death is given with an error. Therefore, the question of questions is whether Mykyta Galagan really existed, or whether he was a product of market bandura players from beginning to end.
Kostomarov's second historical discovery is a horrific picture of how, during the capture of Warsaw by Suvorov's troops in 1794, Christian Cossacks raped and then killed Christian nuns and dragged babies on pikes through the streets. In this case, Kostomarov did not bother to confirm his lies with any documents at all.
Kostomarov was a rabid Ukrainian nationalist who advocated independence. Therefore, in all cases, as was the case with his fakes about Ivan Susanin, Cossacks with babies on pikes, the "Baturin massacre" and so on, his only goal was to throw a fat piece of dirt on the history of the "Muscovites" he hated. In particular, Kostomarov's myth about babies on Cossack pikes was enthusiastically picked up in the West. Having begun in the 19th century, this propaganda campaign reached its apogee before the First World War. At that time, the favorite "horror story" of the Kaiser's propaganda, which was planting an atmosphere of Russophobia and anti-Slavic hysteria in Germany and Austria, was precisely the image of a Cossack with a baby impaled on a pike. In the media of Germany and Austria-Hungary, the description of the Russians simply took on the character of a slogan: the Cossacks rape even old women, gouge out children's eyes or smash their heads with a rifle butt, rip open the bellies of pregnant women, and sprinkle pepper on the wounds of prisoners (wasteful, refined Eastern sadism from the point of view of stingy burghers). Spicy details about the atrocities of the Cossacks were a common topic of newspaper and magazine publications. Posters with the terrifying mugs of Cossacks and unfortunate babies adorned the walls of German cities during the war without gaps. The majority of the German citizen at the beginning of the 20th century was sincerely convinced that cannibalism in Russia was not only flourishing, but was also encouraged by the government. Therefore, none of the ordinary people doubted that an avalanche of these unbridled barbarians was ready at any moment to roll like a merciless steamroller to Berlin.
Subsequently, the myth of the bloody Cossacks was replaced by the myth of the bloody Bolsheviks, and in our time the myth of the bloody Russians reigns.
Nowadays Kostomarov has become a fashionable "historian". However, referring to the fakes of "historian" Kostomarov as a reliable source is an indecent limit of historical unprofessionalism.

[Mazunga]

also a lie what kind of galagan shmalagan they arranged a farce you understand everyone has known for a long time that the Swedes were led into the swamps by the Tajik guide Sardor and those Poles were finished off by the Uzbek daredevils Odiy-Oscars we need to learn the correct history))

[Olgovich]

Quote: Old electrician

I will cite only two of his most famous pearls, exposed back in the 19th century.

and how many of them were there?
Here he is about Pozharsky:

, we must imagine Pozharsky as a completely different person than we are accustomed to imagine him as; we did not even notice that his image was created by our imagination due to the scarcity of sources... Eit is nothing more than a vague shadow, like many other shadows, in the form of which our sources passed on to posterity historical figures of the past.

Didn't show anything...*

.
The same about Minin

[PC]

Wonderful comment! Thank you.

[Olgovich]

The rather strong fortress was taken so quickly only because the local residents, seeing the Russian troops (and they were going to defend themselves from... Swedes) raised a rebellion against the mercenaries of the Swedish Mazepa, at the same time Menshikov struck. Having destroyed the supplies, he quickly retreated - he simply did not have time to search for delights with rafts

The locals handed over the Zamazepins to Menshikov, they later fought as partisans against the Swedes, and they, “destroyed,” began to rebuild their homes in December 1708.

[oleg Pesotsky]

Finally, articles have appeared that somehow refute the myths invented by Ukrainian Banderites. The only question is - isn't it too late? The population of Ukraine /and especially the youth/ has already been subconsciously ingrained with the tale of how Menshikov burned Baturin. Having slaughtered all the inhabitants. Russian propaganda, stupid and clumsy, once again proved unable to somehow reduce the degree of the conflict or even avoid it altogether.

[north 2]

By the way, today's Ukrainian money "flaunts" not only the portrait of Mazepa, but also the historian Kostomarov. Ukraine is also going to include Bandera in the highest denomination of its banknote... So strangers are not allowed there. And if you consider that dozens of streets and squares in today's Ukraine are named after this Kostomarov and they still have not been renamed despite the general epidemic of Russophobia there, then it is clear that Kostomarov was a "historian" not about what happened, but about what and who he liked and was liked. Here, one colleague has already written in the comments that Svanidze could just as well be called a "historian"...

[Trapperxnumx]

Oles Buzina (eternal memory) once wrote well about Baturin.
In the end, even if we assume that Menshikov really did completely destroy the city and its defenders, we should not forget that Charles XII was very close to Baturin and there was no time to be soft-hearted with obvious traitors.

[Viktor Sergeev]

I agree that the Baturin massacre is on par with the Holodomor; the two lies are worth each other.

[Alexey Lantukh]

I agree that the Baturin massacre is on par with the Holodomor

Not exactly. The famine of 1933 (not Holodomor) happened in Ukraine, as well as in Russia and Kazakhstan. However, it was not directed against Ukrainians as a nation, as Ukrainian propaganda lies about.

[PC]

Yes, they have made up such tales about this famine that it’s amazing.

[Sergey Dymsky]

The inhabitants of the former Ukraine will have to learn history anew, where there will be no place at all for such a state entity as Ukraine. There will be geographical concepts of the outskirts of Rus, the outskirts of Poland.

[Cartographer]

Is there ice on the rivers in Ukraine on November 2?

[PC]

At that time, winters were much harsher than they are now.

[MCmaximus]

Never was this, and here again.
More foreign writings. And today we see the same thing. In 200 years they will take today's newspapers and again read all sorts of fables.
Any soldier is not an angel. But slaughtering everyone in a row is not typical for our army at all. Any of our men is a potential soldier. Ask anyone: would he slaughter women and children? Anyone will say - why?

[MCmaximus]

In addition. Since it is better not to write long comments from a phone.
I read the memoirs of a German. Bauer. During the war, our prisoners worked for him. He considered our captured soldiers to be the most good-natured oafs. Who were constantly fussing over children. Children of their enemies! There was a phrase that if there is a Russian worker somewhere near children, then you don’t have to worry about the child. There can’t be a better nanny. This is about men who went through German camps and the war.

[Simulations]

The late Oles Buzina dispelled many myths of modern Ukrainian history in his books, in particular about the Baturyn massacre, for which he was killed. "Ghoul Taras Shevchenko" - the name alone is worth a lot.