On the reasons for the people's hatred of the Little Russian "gentry"
"Significant" felt like conquerors in the newly conquered land. They did not leave the feeling that they act as temporary workers, by the will of fate ascended to the pinnacle of power. Therefore, trying to take advantage of this time and enrich themselves. At any moment the event could ruin their happiness.
When 1672 was sent to exile by hetman Demyan Many-sinful, the government, fearing possible unrest, sent special representatives to various places of Little Russia to study the mood of the population and its reaction to the event. When they returned, the envoys said that “no one intervenes for the hetman, they also talk about the entire foreman, that they, the mob, became hard for them, oppress them with all their work and extortion ...” Moreover, they said about the foreman that if not for the great soldiers sovereign, "then all the foreman would have beaten and looted ..."
They also hated Peter H. Doroshenko, the hetman of Right-Bank Little Russia, who did not submit to Moscow (1665 — 1676). Hetman all his rule was guided by the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate, which caused constant wars with the Commonwealth, Russia and Left Bank Little Russia. The region was constantly flooded with Poles, Crimean Tatars, Ottomans and various predatory rabble. Chigirin was turned into a real center for the sale of people into slavery. The cities and villages were not prodykhu from the Crimean Tatars. For this reason, Doroshenko hated everything. As a result, his activity led to the fact that Right-Bank Ukraine came to a state close to the desert.
Mazepa caused no less hatred. The chief of the Streletsky order, Shaklovity, who visited Little Russia in 1688 on behalf of Princess Sophia, with a gracious word to the hetman and a secret assignment to check on his loyalty, reported that there was no inclination to change in Mazepa’s actions, but the population did not like him. They do not trust him, they believe that he is a “soul of the Pole” and conducts secret correspondence with Polish panami. The transition of Mazepa to the side of the Swedish king caused general national hatred towards him. He was called none other than "damned Mazepa", "damned dog Mazepa", etc.
The figures of the hetmans, expressing in themselves the main features of the social stratum dominating in the region, only accumulated the overt hatred that the people had for the elders, dreaming about its destruction. And the population of Little Russia has repeatedly attempted to destroy the "significant". So, in 1663, Bryukhovetsky was elected hetman on the “black rada” in Nizhyn, and his rival Yakim Somko (Samko) and his comrades were killed. This conflict led to the beating of the newly-minted "nobility". People managed to calm down only a few days.
The fear of their own people was so great that the Cossack officers tried with all their might to change the electoral system so that only pre-selected “representatives” of the Cossacks were present. In the spring of 1672, the foreman held a special meeting in Baturin. They accepted a petition to the sovereign, in which the foreman asked the tsar to hold elections for a new hetman without ordinary Cossacks, peasants and burghers, so that there would not be any distemper. They also asked to send troops so that in case of unrest they would protect the foreman. In addition, I was glad to be invited to spend in Konotop, closer to the counties of Great Russia, so that I could quickly escape deep into Russia. The government fulfilled the wishes of the foremen. Moreover, the elections had to be held in fire order, secretly from the people. So choose Samoylovich.
The election of the next hetman was generally held in the wagon train of the Russian army, which was returning from the Crimea. The fall of Samoylovich caused popular unrest. Cossacks and men attacked nobles and merchants. The Cossacks of the Hadiach regiment in general raised a riot, killed their colonel and began to exterminate other "significant" ones. Only the intervention of the soldiers stopped the riot. The commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Prince Golitsyn, decided not to delay the elections in order to avoid new outbreaks of popular discontent. From 50-th. Little Russian troops carefully selected the electors: 800 cavalry and 1200 from infantry. They unanimously proclaimed hetman Mazepa.
Hetmans and foremen did not believe ordinary Cossacks. Already under hetman Ivan Vygovsky (from 1657 to 1659 a year), detachments of foreigners — Germans, Serbs, Vlachs, and even Poles — began to support the hetman's power. In the future, the process of relying on mercenaries only intensified (another similarity with modern Ukraine). Since 1660-s, not only hetmans, but also colonels began to start “companies” - hired groups. Along with the Cossack regiments, the “Serdyuk” regiments are formed, made up exclusively of foreigners (mainly Poles). Doroshenko had up to 20 thousand Serdyuk. Mazepa also had several such regiments with him. Contemporaries noted that the hetman Mazepa always had with him only “the hunting regiments, the company and the Serdyutsky”, hoping for their loyalty, and in these regiments there is not a single natural Kozak man, all Poles ”.
On the reasons for the people's hatred of the Little Russian "gentry"
Thus, there was irreconcilable antagonism, a real internal war, between the "nobility" of Little Russia and the rest of the population. Cossack officers seized all the fruits of the people's victory in the war 1648-1654. and became a real curse of the liberated from the Poles of Little Russia, bringing it to the ruins. Russian Pansy replaced Polish magnetism, retaining the same concepts and traditions that prevailed in the Commonwealth. The new dominant social group seized the lands of the exiled Polish gentry, began to lay claim to the possession of their former serfs and to inherit the political power of magnatism.
It is clear that this caused the people to hate self-proclaimed gentlemen. The Khmelnytsky Universal and the character of the war of liberation promised the people to extend the Cossacks' rights to all the southern Russian lands and drive out the gentlemen forever. However, the people were deceived in their expectations. Immediately after the defeat of the Poles, the Cossack officers began to turn into a new gentry in the image and likeness of the Polish, that is, with the preservation and even development of the worst features of the Polish nobility. Already under Khmelnitsky, those gentry who went over to the Cossacks received confirmation of their ownership of villages. The elders for military services began to receive the village. New landowners, especially large ones, began to use their position to develop new serf relations. On the one hand, they sought to subjugate and pacify the peasants, who were sent to them by the hetmans of the villages, and on the other, tried to turn the Cossacks into peasants, taking advantage of the lack of a precise distinction between the two classes.
It was a typical self-capture, the appropriation of another's property. The people were indignant and filed numerous complaints with the Malorossiysk Order. People complained about the arbitrariness of "significant". However, there was a war, and the government turned a blind eye to these violations. State support inspired confidence and encouraged Cossack officers to take new ones. They already not only sat down, but also perceived cities as their property, taxing them with arbitrary payments and taxes.
Interestingly, new landowners quite often proved their rights with the help of the Lithuanian Statute - the set of laws of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that is, relying on the laws of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, against which the people fought against the orders and laws. In its third edition (1588), after the conclusion of the union with Poland, the Lithuanian Statute provided for the complete enslavement of the peasants. Based on Polish laws, the foreman tried to implement the principles of estate and gentry privilege. The foreman viewed herself as a gentry estate — the term “Little Russian gentry” became firmly established in the official language from the middle of the 17th century. The elder began to claim the same rights and privileges in Little Russia as the Polish gentry used to. With such a system, the masses turned into disfranchised “flaps”.
It is clear that this caused active resistance of simple Cossacks, peasants and townspeople. References to the laws of the Commonwealth had no weight among the people. The people perceived the newly-minted "Little Russian lords" unequivocally: as a gang of hated upstarts who are trying to seize what they have never owned and cannot belong to. From the point of view of the people, the property assigned to "valued", and especially the ownership of peasants, did not have any legal basis, since they were actually seized, "taken with a saber." This blatant contradiction between the claims of the Cossack elder and the absence of any support for custom or law was obvious to everyone.
Hetmans as the highest officials of Little Russia not only did not prevent merciless exploitation and plunder of the local population, but also encouraged, often themselves, in the front ranks of thieves and robbers. Kiev voevody Sheremetyev about the hetman Bryukhovetsky informed in 1666: he “is very self-interested ... in all cities many monastic organizations (estates), also bourgeois mills take away; but he, the hetman, from all the Little Russian cities ... he takes bread from the burghers ... "The Pereyaslavl voivode Verderevsky also reported about the mass robbery of the city.
The Getman of the Mighty Sin also justified his last name. Without restraint, hetman Samoilovich also robbed. It is clear that the example of the hetmans whet the appetites of the foreman to incredible proportions. The greed of the new nobility knew no bounds, crossing the borders of the elementary instinct of self-preservation. In pursuit of profit, many "significant" people even lost what they could gain with great difficulty and risk, others lost their heads. And still they could not stop. We lived today, seeking to enrich themselves by any means, without disdaining the dirtiest and bloody.
All the juices were squeezed out of the peasants, which led to the general escape from the Hetmanate. By the end of the XVII century, this movement reached its peak. If earlier, fleeing from the Poles, the Crimean Tatars and Turks, the Russians left entire cities and counties from the right bank of the Dnieper to the left, then the resettlement in Mazepa’s hetmanship took the opposite direction. If after the Ruins (civil war between 1657 and 1687 years), Right-Bank Little Russia was a perfect desert completely devoid of population, now numerous settlements have re-emerged, where the Poles lured people with promises of various benefits and exemption from duties for a certain number of years. Tsar Peter in 1699, was forced to appeal to the Polish king with a request - not to allow the crown hetman and local panas to populate Right Bank Little Russia. At the same time, the king instructed Hetman Mazepa to increase the severity of supervision so that people would not run into the settlements on the right side of the Dnieper.
However, this could not stop the exodus of the population. Predatory new nobility forced people to flee again under the rule of the Poles. And the Polish authorities were happy to populate the empty land, providing at first benefits to newcomers. No less intensely, people fled from the Hetmanate to the Sloboda Ukraine and the neighboring Great Russian counties. But the movement in this direction was hampered by vigorous actions of local authorities. In fact, with its incredible greed and cynical robbery of the people, the “Little Russian nobility” doomed Little Russia to depopulation, social protest, poverty and economic ruin.
Moscow contributed to this process by actively supporting the "Little Russian gentry". Again, here is the analogy with modern Ukraine and the Russian Federation: for more than two decades, Moscow has economically supported the Ukrainian authorities and the Ukrainian “elite” oligarchy, allowing predators to safely rob ordinary people and use the “pipe” that goes to Europe. the top. The result is sad - new Ukrainian "significant" people have betrayed the people, went over to the side of the United States and the European Union, staged terror against those Russians who openly oppose the policy of informational, social and economic genocide. A Little Russia turns into a springboard for war with Russia.
The Russian government has almost always met the material desires of the foreman, generously presenting her with new estates and numerous benefits. Almost every hetman's visit to Moscow was accompanied by the issuance of the next portion of chartered letters to villages, mills, land holdings and various crafts. Under Mazepa, the enslavement of the South Russian population was actually completed, stretching for more than half a century. Mazepa, a 1701 station wagon, forced all peasants, even those who live on their plots, to a weekly two-day serfdom (panschina) in favor of landowners.
The huge scale of theft and exploitation of the population in the Hetman is eloquently indicated by the fact that Mazepa, fleeing together with the Swedes from Poltava, prudently took with him so much money that he could loan the Swedish king 240 thousand thalers. After death, 100 left thousands of chervonets, countless jewels, gold and silver.
It was during the hetmancy of Mazepa that the enrichment of "significant" (noble) at the expense of the rest of the population of Little Russia and securing their privileged status reached the highest degree. Mazepa consciously formed the “Little Russian nobility”. In the Ukraine, finally formed two opposing groups: the nobility and the "mob". Getman persistently invited to the service of Polish gentry and made of them an honorary detachment ("hetman nobles"). Mazepa tried to create the core of the hereditary nobility in the Ukraine. Under Mazepa, the process of “rasskazchivaniya”, which had begun earlier, reached its peak. Getman encouraged the elders to attribute the Cossacks to the number of their own people and take away their land. At the same time, it was strictly followed that the peasants and commoners did not leave their estates and did not fall into the Cossack hundreds.
Cossack elite from the time of Pereyaslav Rada sought to introduce serfdom, destroyed during the war of liberation. Moreover, this serfdom sought to restore the Polish model. The elders could not borrow it in Russia, because the relations of peasants and nobles there were fundamentally different. In Russia, the peasants were not powerless "flakes". The Little Russian nobility sought to copy precisely the Polish order. It is clear that the socio-economic relations introduced by the Little Russian foreman could not be accepted by the population. They were built on the Polish model, alien and hated by the Russian people.
As a result, the power of the "valued" rested only on the authority of the Russian tsar, his soldiers, and also the sabers of foreign mercenaries. "Little Russian nobility" had no social support. And it was not only a matter of social egoism and economic oppression, but also the pronounced anti-national character of petty government. Cossack officers actually re-created the occupation regime, which choked the Russian people alien socio-economic orders.
As the researcher Sergey Rodin notes (“Renouncing the Russian name. Ukrainian chimera”), the Hetman’s was modeled after the Pan Polish Commonwealth, “distinguished by cruelty, inhuman exploitation, lawlessness, unprecedented corruption and constant threat of betrayal ...” Therefore, the overwhelming majority of the population favored the destruction of the Hetmanate and the establishment in the Ukraine of the system of socio-economic relations that were characteristic of the rest of Russia. Moreover, these requirements appeared immediately after the death of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. The tsarist messenger Ivan Zhelyabuzhsky, returning from Little Russia in 1657, informed that the Cossacks and tradesmen were complaining about hetman rule. They repeatedly told the ambassador that "it would be good if the great sovereign sent to Little Russia to rule the edge of his governors." In the future, these requirements have been repeated more than once.
It cannot be said that Moscow did not understand the danger of the situation. However, they did not dare to disturb the established order. The actual power belonged to the "significant", they had in their hands military and economic power. This had to be considered. In addition, they were dangerous constant readiness to rely on Russia's external enemies: the Poles, the Crimean Tatars, the Ottomans and the Swedes. With the external threat, the central government was forced to accept the vacillation and the predatory essence of the “Little Russian gentry”. Only under Catherine the Great, when the process of annexation and development of the Northern Black Sea region, the creation of Novorossia was going on, with a sharp weakening of external enemies - Turkey, Poland, Sweden, the elimination of the Crimean Khanate and the serious growth of the military-economic power of the Russian Empire, the long overdue question of the destruction of the Hetmanate and the device Little Russia on a nationwide basis will be positively resolved.
What attracted the "Little Russian gentry" in the Polish order
The Russian government could not completely arrange the Cossack sergeant, as it restrained the process of unrestrained robbery of Little Russia and the general enslavement of its population. This irritated the foreman and served as a source of her constant readiness for treason. Poland, with its gentry liberty, or even the Ottoman Empire (Sweden, Austria) as a remote overlord who would not interfere in the affairs of the elders, seemed to be a better option than Russia. The Russian autocracy scared the foreman.
The Polish order and life were most attractive for Little Russian "pans". Here the foreman most attracted the relationship of landowners and peasants. Serfdom in Poland began to take shape at the end of the 15th century. According to the statute of 1496, the peasants (flakes) were deprived of their personal freedom. The only son of a peasant had no right to leave the master's possessions, was attached to the ground. If there were several sons in the family, only one of them retained the right to go to the city to receive education and craft training. The statute of 1505 was attached to the land of the peasants without any exceptions. Before 1543, the runaway peasant could buy off a return. The statute of 1543 banned the redemption of money, the landlords were given the right not only to recover monetary losses, but to pursue the escaped. From the same time the landowner could sell, mortgage, donate and bequeath the peasants, with or without land, with family or alone. It was total enslavement. The liberation of the peasant now depended only on the will of the landowner. The land was owned by the gentry. The peasant was a user of the land and carried duties for her, the kind and number of which depended entirely on the gentry. The peasant had to buy goods that were not in the subsistence economy (salt, etc.), only in the master's tavern, and the products of his economy only to be handed over to the Pansky estate. The grain was threshed in the master's mill, the tools were bought and repaired in the master's forge. Freedom of earnings was also limited. The number of large and small livestock was specified, as were the weaving of the peasants. There were many other restrictions on the freedom of peasants, and tricks that enriched the gentlemen.
The peasants had no right to appear in court without their landlord and complain about their pan. The landowner administered the trial of the peasants personally or through their commissars. Landowners could use torture during the investigation and apply all types of punishment, including the death penalty. The landowner could execute a clap and did not give anyone a report. Shlyakhtich could have killed an alien peasant, and in most cases he remained without punishment. Is that compensated for material damage to the owner. Polish serfdom was exceptionally cruel and inhuman to the peasants (the overwhelming majority of the population). In fact, it was slavery. The life of clap was valued so low that the dog was sometimes more expensive. It was precisely such an inhuman and savage system that the Little Russian "lords" wanted to introduce. They dreamed of being the complete gentlemen in Little Russia.
In this case, the gentlemen themselves did not want and did not know how to manage estates. The vast majority of them “lived beautifully” - they burned their lives, spending it in various entertainments. We lived and had fun in the palaces, in major cities and the capital, went abroad, where they amazed foreigners with their luxury (created by the merciless robbery of ordinary people). Pans gave both clan and crown, granted to life possession of the estate in the management of clerks, usually Jews (Jews). Therefore, the Jews, together with the Poles, were at the forefront of the enemies of the southern Russian population. During the uprisings they were exterminated mercilessly. The Jews, while renting the estate, received all the rights of a landowner, up to and including the rights of the death penalty. It is clear that in order to beat off the expenses - the rent, the clerks exploited the peasants mercilessly.
It was especially hard for the Russian peasants. Yet the Polish "flakes" were their own blood and faith. They prayed in the same churches together with the gentry, spoke the same language, had common customs, traditions and holidays. The landowner could not mock the faith, nationality and traditions of the Polish “flaps”, he also held back Jews in that respect. Russian is another matter: in relation to them socio-economic, legal mayhem was complemented by religious and national discrimination. The life of Russian peasants under the rule of the gentry and the Jews turned into hell. And the participation of Jews in the economic life occupied by the Poles of Little Russia was enormous. So, by the year 1616, more than half of the Russian lands belonging to Poland were rented by Jews. Only the princes of Ostrog were 4 thousand. Jews tenants.
Due to the complete robbery of the peasantry, the gentry could lead a carefree, “beautiful” life. There were legends about the waste and luxury of the Polish gentry. Foreigners were surprised that an ordinary dinner in the Pansky palace looked like a royal feast in some Western European country. Silver and gold dishes, a variety of dishes and dishes, foreign wines, musicians and crowds of servants made up the obligatory order of a pan dinner. Extravagance prevailed in clothes too, everyone tried to impress those around them with their wealth. Thrift was considered bad form. Each pan and tycoon had a lot of hangers-on, comrades. They existed at the expense of their masters and did nothing. Pans and mrs surrounded themselves with crowds of noblewomen. Some magnates had whole “harems”, following the example of noble Muslims. After the girl got bored, she was attached - she gave in marriage to a poorer “companion”, brightening up the damaged goods with gifts. There were several thousand such parasites in the courts of the largest magnates. The magnates had their own armies and their unions (confederations) imprisoned their kings on the throne.
Huge money was spent on empty luxury and amusements. And for the defense of the borders or the ransom of the captives from the Turkish captivity there was always not enough money. Money was taken from Jewish moneylenders. They took a huge interest, without any hope of ever getting out of debt bondage.
In fact, the brilliance and luxury of the Polish gentry concealed his spiritual wretchedness, social parasitism and predation. Commonwealth descended enormous funds for entertainment. At the same time, the money was not enough for the needs of the army, when it was necessary to repel the blow of external enemies, for reliable protection of borders and other urgent needs. The nobility itself was financially dependent on Jewry, although it despised him. Pans and gentry preferred to spend their lives in pleasures, traveling around European cities, surprising the people there with insane luxury and spending. And in Poland itself, especially in Warsaw and Krakow, feasts, balls and theaters went on in a continuous succession. All this led to the complete enslavement and robbery of the majority of the population - the peasantry. In the end, this led to the death of Rzeczpospolita. It has completely decomposed.
It was this system that the Little Russian "lords" dreamed of copying. They also wanted to feast and ride along borders, never answering. They wanted to completely enslave the peasants and ordinary Cossacks, to turn them into "flakes" - disfranchised slaves, "two-legged tools." Naturally, the people responded to this with fierce hatred. Having thrown off the yoke of Polish and Jewish domination, the Russian people were not going to become slaves of the latter-day masters again. This caused the internal instability of the Ukraine. The people hated the “new gentry”, and the foreman wanted complete liberty (irresponsibility), which was hampered by the power of the Russian tsar.
It must be said that in the future, in the epoch of palace coups, the flawed psychology of the Polish gentry and the “Little Russian gentry” will be significantly spread among the Russian nobility. At this time, the Western European ideal of a noble man was adopted. This will be one of the prerequisites for the death of the Russian Empire.
In the modern Russian world, spiritual wretchedness and social parasitism of the “elite” led to a civil war in the Ukraine and pose a terrible threat to the future of the Russian Federation.
Sources:
Grabensky V. History Polish people. Minsk, 2006.
Efimenko A. Ya. The history of Ukraine and its people. SPb ,, 1907.
Kostomarov N. I. Cossacks. M., 1995.
Kostomarov N. I. Mazepa. M., 1992.
Rodin S. Denying the Russian name. Ukrainian chimera. M., 2006.
Ulyanov N. The Origin of Ukrainian Separatism // http://lib.ru/POLITOLOG/ulianow_ukraina.txt.
Information