"Forever together": marriage of convenience
Pereyaslavskaya Council was the result of war, intrigue and trade, and not the call of the Cossack soul
In the film of Polish director Ezhi Goffman “With Fire and Sword”, filmed fifteen years ago after the novel of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bogdan Stupka, who played Khmelnitsky, addressing the Polish prisoner nobleman (this happened on the eve of the 1648 uprising of the year), he said: Tycoons and a handful of gentry! They have the land, they have a golden liberty, and the rest for them - cattle ... Where are the Cossack privileges? They want to make free Cossacks serfs ... I want to fight not with the king, but with the gentry and the magnates. The king is our father, and the Commonwealth is the mother. If it were not for the magnates, Poland would have had not two, but three fraternal peoples and a thousand faithful sabers against the Turks, Tatars and Moscow ... "
Such a long tirade is not the idle fiction of the director, but the truth. It disproves the steady myth that has erupted into the mass consciousness of our compatriots since pre-Soviet times, that the Ukrainian people, moaning under the yoke of the Polish gentry, literally slept and saw reunion with fraternal Russia of the same faith.
Zaporozhye freemen in robberies and murders
The Little Russian peasantry, perhaps, had similar aspirations, but the Cossacks did not. The Cossacks essentially fought for the restoration of their privileges, similar to those enjoyed by the nobility. Moreover, Khmelnitsky relied in this case on the support of King Vladislav IV, who once claimed the Russian throne, and both outstanding state leaders were long-time acquaintances: the future hetman in 1618 even took part in the campaign of Vladislav, then still prince, to Moscow.
A few years earlier, the Cossacks together with the Polish gentry fought in the army of Grigory Otrepiev against Tsar Boris Godunov. However, the then actions of the Cossacks could be explained by the desire to put on the Russian throne the “legitimate”, as it seemed to them, sovereign. But in fact, this argument does not hold water, if we recall that the Cossacks stained their sabers with Russian blood, fighting also in the army of King Sigismund III - Father Vladislav, who officially entered the war with Russia in 1609. And Sigismund III was known as a zealous Catholic and a pupil of the Jesuits. And the service of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to such a monarch somehow does not fit in with their image of the defenders of the “Orthodox faith”, in which so many of our compatriots believe. Therefore, speaking of the people, the word "fraternal" has to be quoted. What “brotherhood” when the Cossacks shed the blood of their fellow Russians of the same faith?
During the Cossack campaigns of the Time of Troubles, the Cossacks “became famous” by robberies and violence against the civilian population, and in 1618 they burned down and killed the residents of Liven, Yelets, Skopin, Ryazhsk, and the “robberies” of the temples and monasteries did not disdain. Who doubts, let him look at his leisure history Putivl Sofronievsky (in the XVII century called Molchansky) or Rila St. Nicholas monasteries ...
The Russian people called the Zaporozhian Cossacks the "godless zaporozh". By the way, the campaign of 1618 was headed by hetman Peter Sagaidachny - now the national hero of Ukraine. Well, he occupies a worthy place among other "heroes" of the Square: Mazepa and Bandera. Their ideological followers carry out the monstrous genocide of the civilian population in the Donbas.
Someone will object: "Yes, but there are facts of the service of the Cossacks - the same Cossacks - to the Russian Tsar." There are, we do not argue, but in their service to the Russian autocrat, the Cossacks were guided not by religious, as it is pleasant to consider, considerations, but rather mercantile - they were mercenaries. In this capacity, they were noted in the fields of the Thirty Years War, where, as you know, the Catholics fought with the Protestants.
But back to Khmelnitsky and his patron - King Vladislav. The latter took steps (however, unsuccessful), aimed at strengthening the royal power in the country, and Khmelnitsky was here his faithful ally. When the delegation of the Cossacks, which included Bogdan Zinovy, arrived in Warsaw in 1646 to complain about the arbitrariness of the nobility and the magnates, Vladislav told the Cossacks directly: “Have you forgotten what a saber is and how your ancestors earned fame and privilege? ".
Orthodox Catholics
And next year, the monarch promised the Khmelnitsky hetmanship and provided financial assistance - officially for the upcoming war against the Turks. Although we do not think that the king was not aware of the true intentions of the leader of the Cossacks, directed against the willful gentry and in fact independent of the royal power of the magnates.
Inspired by the support, Khmelnitsky decided to oppose the gentry, having previously secured an alliance with the Crimean Khan. Of course, the hetman knew very well that not only gentry, but also Little Russian Orthodox peasants, would suffer from the devastating actions of the Tatar cavalry, but the fact was that the fate and ordinary Ukrainians did not particularly worry the Cossacks. For them, as for the gentry, the peasantry was cattle. And there is nothing surprising in this: the Cossacks saw themselves not as part of the Little Russian Orthodox people, but as a rather closed military corporation with their own traditions (quite, by the way, specific), internal structure and laws, and it was not easy to get into it. And the audience in Khortitsa gathered a very heterogeneous one, including in the ethno-religious plan.
Regarding the phrase that Hoffman put into Khmelnitsky’s mouth that the tycoons had not been in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, she would have had not two, but three peoples and sabers not only against the Tatars and Turks, but also against Moscow, then she must admit that contrary to the sources. Thus, the Cossacks took an active part in the Smolensk war of 1632 – 1634, again being noted the ruin of Russian lands.
Again, an interesting detail: an Orthodox Christian and the future prominent statesman of the Commonwealth Adam Kissel fought in the ranks of the Polish army. It was he who repeatedly negotiated with Khmelnitsky when he began the struggle against the gentry.
And again it turns out: the Orthodox shed the blood of fellow believers? And how! It’s just that our ancestors were wild Scythian barbarians in his eyes, and Kissel thought himself, like the entire Polish gentry, a descendant of warlike Sarmatians. It is noteworthy that Prince Jeremiah of Vishnevetsky, one of the strongest magnates of the Commonwealth, was Kissel's ally in the 1632 – 1634 campaign. Suffice it to say that the maintenance of his court was much more expensive than the royal court, his personal guard numbered twelve thousand gentlemen, while the royal according to the decision of the Sejm only two thousand.
It is in modern terms that the main Ukrainian oligarch, Vishnevetsky, became the most serious opponent of Khmelnytsky in 1648. But 15 years before, in the Smolensk war, Khmelnitsky, Kissel and Vishnevetsky were allies. Quite unusual at first glance. After all, we will repeat, Bogdan Zinovy is seen by many in our country as a defender of the Orthodox faith, “from the Poles”, who longed for reunification with Russia. But that’s how he is. In reality, this “Orthodox” Cossack, for the destruction of Orthodox lands, received a sword from the hands of the Polish Catholic king.
And Vishnevetsky, being a staunch Catholic, who voluntarily renounced Orthodoxy, "became famous" in that war by total cruelty, carrying out the scorched earth tactics on Russian lands, and voluptuous sadism towards prisoners - right in the style of the Valashian Lord of Vlad III Tsepesh, remaining in history under named Dracula. And he also crossed, however, not in his youth, as Vishnevetsky, but already at the sunset of life from Orthodoxy to Catholicism.
Khmelnitsky was not the first
With the completion of the unsuccessful war for the Russian kingdom of Smolensk, Zaporozhian raids into the Russian borders did not stop. Thus, the largest domestic Slavic historian, Corresponding Member of the RAS Boris Florea in the article “Zaporizhzhya Cossacks and the Crimea before the Khmelnitsky Uprising” writes: “In the first half of the 17th century, Cossack detachments attacked Russian frontier territories, often undertaken with the connivance of local authorities, were commonplace . Since the beginning of the 40s, however, the number of such attacks has increased dramatically, covering a wider area. The number of these attacks did not subside even when negotiations on an alliance against the Crimea and Turkey began between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1646. ”
Comments on this quotation, belonging to the pen of a respected scientist, are unnecessary, equally frivolous now talk about the original desire of the Cossacks to go "under the high hand of Moscow", and to see them as defenders of the Orthodox faith in general is stupid.
Let us turn to the military component of the history of the Cossack insurrection, and this is exactly what the Khmelnitsky uprising should be called, but certainly not the "liberation movement of the Ukrainian people." Firstly, there was no special movement of the Ukrainian people as such. Repeat, in Zaporozhye a motley public gathered, the peculiar elite of which, as we have already found out, did not go further in its demands to obtain noble privileges.
Secondly, the “liberation movement of the people” is a too general and non-explanatory phrase. As noted, it is unlikely that Khmelnitsky and his entourage associated themselves with Little Russian slaves. We already know that arrogant gentry imagined themselves to be Sarmatians. But those they considered exactly their “noble” class. They, of course, did not rank their own peasants as Sarmatians. It is unlikely that Khmelnitsky and his ilk treated the Little Russian peasants differently and certainly did not intend to wage a war of liberation for them.
The very course of military operations is well known: at first, Khmelnitsky's troops won a number of brilliant victories over the armies of the Poettsky and Kalinovsky hetmans. But in the same year 1648 died Vladislav IV. Another unrest began in the country - always occurring in Rzeczpospolita between the death of one monarch and the accession of another.
The country, stunned by the powerlessness and rebellion of the Cossacks, began to roll into chaos, and the first to turn to Russia for help was not Khmelnitsky, but Adam Kissel, already known to us. Finally, in the autumn of 1648 of the year, Vladislav's brother, Jan Casimir, ascended the Polish throne. Khmelnitsky at the time besieged Zamost. Soon he received the order of the new king to lift the siege and ... immediately obeyed. This is not surprising: as we know, the hetman raised weapon not against his monarch, but against gentry and magnates. Having retreated to Kiev, Khmelnitsky began negotiations with Jan Kazimir to stop the bloodshed.
The requirements of the Cossacks were reasonable and moderate: the hetman’s dependence was solely on the king, which could not fail to appeal to Jan Casimir and not to irritate the gentry. The intrigues of the last negotiations were thwarted, and the war continued. The Khmelnitsky army entered upon the crown lands proper, and with them came the Tatars, the eternal enemies of the Commonwealth. The transfer of military operations to Polish territory, the arrival of the Tatars there were an obvious political mistake of the hetman - the king spoke out to meet his army.
A battle was fought under Zborov in which the royal troops were defeated, and Jan Casimir barely escaped captivity - thanks to Khmelnitsky, who did not want the Christian king to be captured by the Crimean Muslims. In the end, Zborovsky peace was concluded, returning their liberties to the Cossacks and increasing the number of Cossack registered troops, that is, under the maintenance of the king, to 40 thousands. Orthodox Kiev Metropolitan received the right to sit in the Senate.
Who would be more profitable to surrender?
It would seem that the conflict has been settled, but the politically short-sighted gentry with some voluptuous ecstasy of digging the grave of his own country, doing everything to thwart the realization of peace achieved in Zborov. Kiev Metropolitan was not allowed into the Senate. And then Pope Innocent X added fuel to the fire, calling on the nobility to fight the Orthodox and declaring Jan Casimir a defender of the faith - Catholic, of course. The Orthodox did not remain in debt: the Corinthian metropolitan surrounded Khmelnitsky with a sword consecrated at the Holy Sepulcher. Thus, the war took a religious character. Recall that in the middle of the XVII century in Europe has not yet subsided the intensity of religious passions, crowned with the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants.
In 1651-m fighting in the Ukraine resumed with a new force. And it is not known what the outcome would have been if it had not been for the treachery of the Crimean Khan Islam-Giray in the battle of Berestechko. The result is the Belotserkovsky Treaty, which significantly reduced the number of the registered troops and resulted in a reduction of the Zaporozhian-controlled voivodship from three to one.
Further seems to be known from school — the war broke out again and, allegedly, as before, on the part of the Cossacks, it bore the character of “national liberation”. But with the historical truth, such an explanation does not harmonize in any way. For the continuation of the struggle of the Polish crown against the rebellious vassal was caused by completely different reasons - one might say family.
The hetman's son, Timofey, offered the hand and heart of the daughter of the Moldavian ruler, Lupula. He agreed, and then took and refused the word. Outraged, Bogdan Zinovy set out to punish the obstinate ruler, threatening him with a devastating campaign of the Zaporozhye-Tatar army. Recall that the Moldovans also professed Orthodoxy, but Khmelnitsky without a shadow of a doubt was ready to bring down Muslim sabers on their heads.
What was to be done to the unfortunate Lord? Seek help from the Sultan? It would not help - an experienced politician Khmelnitsky calculated everything in advance and was just about to act with the unofficial consent of Istanbul. Then Lupul asked for the protection of the Polish king. He sent the army of the full corona hetman (in other words, the deputy commander of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) Martin Kalinovsky, who barred the Cossacks from entering Moldova. As in the case of Vishnevetsky and Kisel, Kalinovsky and Khmelnitsky were once brothers in arms - Martin also participated in 1618 in the Moscow campaign of Prince Vladislav. Perhaps that is why the leader of the Cossacks initially tried to persuade a hetman colleague not to interfere in his almost "family clashes."
Kalinowski did not listen to Khmelnitsky, although he was already beaten by him near Korsun. The reason is Polish arrogance and the inability to measure one’s own ambitions with real forces. Polish troops were routed near Batog. After that, Timofey did marry the daughter of the Moldavian ruler. But soon Khmelnitsky encountered a new ruthless enemy - the plague. People died by the thousands, famine began on the land devastated by war. To it were added punitive actions as talented as the cruel Polish commander Stefan Charnetsky, known to be addicted to the scorched earth tactics.
Khmelnitsky understood that gentlemen blinded by hatred would hardly go on renewing the Zborovsky treaty and most likely lead the war to extermination — they had already begun to wage it, and not only with their own hands: Warsaw managed to dissolve the alliance of Zaporozhians with the Crimeans who undertook to devastate Little Russia. The hetman, cornered, became more and more persistent in asking Russia for help.
Moscow and other options
The Kremlin hesitated: the Russian government, suffering from the influx of refugees from Little Russia, then suggested that Khmelnytsky move to the Don, seriously fearing that he would become a citizen of the Turkish Sultan, then asked Warsaw to comply with the conditions of Zborowski peace. To get involved in the new war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich did not want to, but the transition of the Cossacks under the rule of the Ottoman Empire was unacceptable.
In a word, the logic of events, and not the free will of the Cossacks, as it is commonly believed, led them in 1654 to Pereyaslavskaya Rada. Who does not remember the classic: "Forever together." But the conditions of this "forever" were very remarkable. Let us dwell on them in more detail: Khmelnitsky cited a curious argument about the need to subordinate to Moscow, listing all possible options: citizenship of the Crimean Khan, the Turkish Sultan, the Polish King and the Moscow Tsar. Hetman noted that the first two disappear because of Islam, and now it is also impossible to remain in the Commonwealth, because now it is “at the mercy of the lords”.
Thus, Khmelnitsky testified that the struggle he had begun for the political privileges of the Cossacks did not bring success and the king himself was not free from the nobility's arbitrariness. And in this situation, the lesser of all evils is to submit to Moscow, which, however, had the following conditions: the registered army is increased to 60 thousand, that is, by 20 thousand more than under the Zborovsky Treaty. The Cossacks themselves choose a hetman who retains the privilege of external relations. The rights conferred by Polish kings and princes to spiritual and worldly persons remain indestructible. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich agreed with all these points, the only prohibition of communicating with the Polish king and the Turkish sultan without a special royal decree.
Three years after the Pereiaslav Council, Khmelnitsky died, the hetman's mace passed into the hands of Ivan Vyhovsky, who hastened to conclude the Hadiach Treaty with the Poles, according to which the lands controlled by the Cossacks returned to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the name of the Grand Duchy of Russia.
It was really a real attempt to reanimate the Polish-Lithuanian state plunging into chaos. And Vyhovsky, like Khmelnitsky, felt more like a Polish gentleman than a subject of the Russian Tsar. But a significant part of the Cossacks did not support the hetman - for nine years of bloody struggle, the souls of the Cossacks and gentry turned out to be imbued with hatred for each other, which was largely promoted by the irrational cruelty of Vishnevetsky and Charnetsky. In the end, Vyhovsky lost the hetman's mace, which had passed to Khmelnytsky’s son, Yuri, but he also concluded the Slobodischensky treatise with Poland, which transferred the Cossack lands under the authority of the white eagle.
However, the wheel of history could not be reversed: gaining strength, Russia began to return the lost territories, including Little Russia, to its hand. The once mighty Rzeczpospolita could only snap at separate military victories, but Warsaw was no longer able to seriously oppose Moscow on the military-political scene.
The fate of Zaporizhzhya lands was predetermined. But this was by no means an unequivocal choice of the Cossacks, as evidenced by some of the episodes cited here from the hetmanship of Bogdan and Yury Khmelnitsky and Vyhovsky. And even with the completion of the rich in the events of the XVII century, the Cossacks did not calm down, for which the example is the fate of another hetman - Mazepa.
In the film of Polish director Ezhi Goffman “With Fire and Sword”, filmed fifteen years ago after the novel of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Bogdan Stupka, who played Khmelnitsky, addressing the Polish prisoner nobleman (this happened on the eve of the 1648 uprising of the year), he said: Tycoons and a handful of gentry! They have the land, they have a golden liberty, and the rest for them - cattle ... Where are the Cossack privileges? They want to make free Cossacks serfs ... I want to fight not with the king, but with the gentry and the magnates. The king is our father, and the Commonwealth is the mother. If it were not for the magnates, Poland would have had not two, but three fraternal peoples and a thousand faithful sabers against the Turks, Tatars and Moscow ... "
Such a long tirade is not the idle fiction of the director, but the truth. It disproves the steady myth that has erupted into the mass consciousness of our compatriots since pre-Soviet times, that the Ukrainian people, moaning under the yoke of the Polish gentry, literally slept and saw reunion with fraternal Russia of the same faith.
Zaporozhye freemen in robberies and murders
The Little Russian peasantry, perhaps, had similar aspirations, but the Cossacks did not. The Cossacks essentially fought for the restoration of their privileges, similar to those enjoyed by the nobility. Moreover, Khmelnitsky relied in this case on the support of King Vladislav IV, who once claimed the Russian throne, and both outstanding state leaders were long-time acquaintances: the future hetman in 1618 even took part in the campaign of Vladislav, then still prince, to Moscow.
A few years earlier, the Cossacks together with the Polish gentry fought in the army of Grigory Otrepiev against Tsar Boris Godunov. However, the then actions of the Cossacks could be explained by the desire to put on the Russian throne the “legitimate”, as it seemed to them, sovereign. But in fact, this argument does not hold water, if we recall that the Cossacks stained their sabers with Russian blood, fighting also in the army of King Sigismund III - Father Vladislav, who officially entered the war with Russia in 1609. And Sigismund III was known as a zealous Catholic and a pupil of the Jesuits. And the service of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to such a monarch somehow does not fit in with their image of the defenders of the “Orthodox faith”, in which so many of our compatriots believe. Therefore, speaking of the people, the word "fraternal" has to be quoted. What “brotherhood” when the Cossacks shed the blood of their fellow Russians of the same faith?
During the Cossack campaigns of the Time of Troubles, the Cossacks “became famous” by robberies and violence against the civilian population, and in 1618 they burned down and killed the residents of Liven, Yelets, Skopin, Ryazhsk, and the “robberies” of the temples and monasteries did not disdain. Who doubts, let him look at his leisure history Putivl Sofronievsky (in the XVII century called Molchansky) or Rila St. Nicholas monasteries ...
The Russian people called the Zaporozhian Cossacks the "godless zaporozh". By the way, the campaign of 1618 was headed by hetman Peter Sagaidachny - now the national hero of Ukraine. Well, he occupies a worthy place among other "heroes" of the Square: Mazepa and Bandera. Their ideological followers carry out the monstrous genocide of the civilian population in the Donbas.
Someone will object: "Yes, but there are facts of the service of the Cossacks - the same Cossacks - to the Russian Tsar." There are, we do not argue, but in their service to the Russian autocrat, the Cossacks were guided not by religious, as it is pleasant to consider, considerations, but rather mercantile - they were mercenaries. In this capacity, they were noted in the fields of the Thirty Years War, where, as you know, the Catholics fought with the Protestants.
But back to Khmelnitsky and his patron - King Vladislav. The latter took steps (however, unsuccessful), aimed at strengthening the royal power in the country, and Khmelnitsky was here his faithful ally. When the delegation of the Cossacks, which included Bogdan Zinovy, arrived in Warsaw in 1646 to complain about the arbitrariness of the nobility and the magnates, Vladislav told the Cossacks directly: “Have you forgotten what a saber is and how your ancestors earned fame and privilege? ".
Orthodox Catholics
And next year, the monarch promised the Khmelnitsky hetmanship and provided financial assistance - officially for the upcoming war against the Turks. Although we do not think that the king was not aware of the true intentions of the leader of the Cossacks, directed against the willful gentry and in fact independent of the royal power of the magnates.
Inspired by the support, Khmelnitsky decided to oppose the gentry, having previously secured an alliance with the Crimean Khan. Of course, the hetman knew very well that not only gentry, but also Little Russian Orthodox peasants, would suffer from the devastating actions of the Tatar cavalry, but the fact was that the fate and ordinary Ukrainians did not particularly worry the Cossacks. For them, as for the gentry, the peasantry was cattle. And there is nothing surprising in this: the Cossacks saw themselves not as part of the Little Russian Orthodox people, but as a rather closed military corporation with their own traditions (quite, by the way, specific), internal structure and laws, and it was not easy to get into it. And the audience in Khortitsa gathered a very heterogeneous one, including in the ethno-religious plan.
Regarding the phrase that Hoffman put into Khmelnitsky’s mouth that the tycoons had not been in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, she would have had not two, but three peoples and sabers not only against the Tatars and Turks, but also against Moscow, then she must admit that contrary to the sources. Thus, the Cossacks took an active part in the Smolensk war of 1632 – 1634, again being noted the ruin of Russian lands.
Again, an interesting detail: an Orthodox Christian and the future prominent statesman of the Commonwealth Adam Kissel fought in the ranks of the Polish army. It was he who repeatedly negotiated with Khmelnitsky when he began the struggle against the gentry.
And again it turns out: the Orthodox shed the blood of fellow believers? And how! It’s just that our ancestors were wild Scythian barbarians in his eyes, and Kissel thought himself, like the entire Polish gentry, a descendant of warlike Sarmatians. It is noteworthy that Prince Jeremiah of Vishnevetsky, one of the strongest magnates of the Commonwealth, was Kissel's ally in the 1632 – 1634 campaign. Suffice it to say that the maintenance of his court was much more expensive than the royal court, his personal guard numbered twelve thousand gentlemen, while the royal according to the decision of the Sejm only two thousand.
It is in modern terms that the main Ukrainian oligarch, Vishnevetsky, became the most serious opponent of Khmelnytsky in 1648. But 15 years before, in the Smolensk war, Khmelnitsky, Kissel and Vishnevetsky were allies. Quite unusual at first glance. After all, we will repeat, Bogdan Zinovy is seen by many in our country as a defender of the Orthodox faith, “from the Poles”, who longed for reunification with Russia. But that’s how he is. In reality, this “Orthodox” Cossack, for the destruction of Orthodox lands, received a sword from the hands of the Polish Catholic king.
And Vishnevetsky, being a staunch Catholic, who voluntarily renounced Orthodoxy, "became famous" in that war by total cruelty, carrying out the scorched earth tactics on Russian lands, and voluptuous sadism towards prisoners - right in the style of the Valashian Lord of Vlad III Tsepesh, remaining in history under named Dracula. And he also crossed, however, not in his youth, as Vishnevetsky, but already at the sunset of life from Orthodoxy to Catholicism.
Khmelnitsky was not the first
With the completion of the unsuccessful war for the Russian kingdom of Smolensk, Zaporozhian raids into the Russian borders did not stop. Thus, the largest domestic Slavic historian, Corresponding Member of the RAS Boris Florea in the article “Zaporizhzhya Cossacks and the Crimea before the Khmelnitsky Uprising” writes: “In the first half of the 17th century, Cossack detachments attacked Russian frontier territories, often undertaken with the connivance of local authorities, were commonplace . Since the beginning of the 40s, however, the number of such attacks has increased dramatically, covering a wider area. The number of these attacks did not subside even when negotiations on an alliance against the Crimea and Turkey began between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1646. ”
Comments on this quotation, belonging to the pen of a respected scientist, are unnecessary, equally frivolous now talk about the original desire of the Cossacks to go "under the high hand of Moscow", and to see them as defenders of the Orthodox faith in general is stupid.
Let us turn to the military component of the history of the Cossack insurrection, and this is exactly what the Khmelnitsky uprising should be called, but certainly not the "liberation movement of the Ukrainian people." Firstly, there was no special movement of the Ukrainian people as such. Repeat, in Zaporozhye a motley public gathered, the peculiar elite of which, as we have already found out, did not go further in its demands to obtain noble privileges.
Secondly, the “liberation movement of the people” is a too general and non-explanatory phrase. As noted, it is unlikely that Khmelnitsky and his entourage associated themselves with Little Russian slaves. We already know that arrogant gentry imagined themselves to be Sarmatians. But those they considered exactly their “noble” class. They, of course, did not rank their own peasants as Sarmatians. It is unlikely that Khmelnitsky and his ilk treated the Little Russian peasants differently and certainly did not intend to wage a war of liberation for them.
The very course of military operations is well known: at first, Khmelnitsky's troops won a number of brilliant victories over the armies of the Poettsky and Kalinovsky hetmans. But in the same year 1648 died Vladislav IV. Another unrest began in the country - always occurring in Rzeczpospolita between the death of one monarch and the accession of another.
The country, stunned by the powerlessness and rebellion of the Cossacks, began to roll into chaos, and the first to turn to Russia for help was not Khmelnitsky, but Adam Kissel, already known to us. Finally, in the autumn of 1648 of the year, Vladislav's brother, Jan Casimir, ascended the Polish throne. Khmelnitsky at the time besieged Zamost. Soon he received the order of the new king to lift the siege and ... immediately obeyed. This is not surprising: as we know, the hetman raised weapon not against his monarch, but against gentry and magnates. Having retreated to Kiev, Khmelnitsky began negotiations with Jan Kazimir to stop the bloodshed.
The requirements of the Cossacks were reasonable and moderate: the hetman’s dependence was solely on the king, which could not fail to appeal to Jan Casimir and not to irritate the gentry. The intrigues of the last negotiations were thwarted, and the war continued. The Khmelnitsky army entered upon the crown lands proper, and with them came the Tatars, the eternal enemies of the Commonwealth. The transfer of military operations to Polish territory, the arrival of the Tatars there were an obvious political mistake of the hetman - the king spoke out to meet his army.
A battle was fought under Zborov in which the royal troops were defeated, and Jan Casimir barely escaped captivity - thanks to Khmelnitsky, who did not want the Christian king to be captured by the Crimean Muslims. In the end, Zborovsky peace was concluded, returning their liberties to the Cossacks and increasing the number of Cossack registered troops, that is, under the maintenance of the king, to 40 thousands. Orthodox Kiev Metropolitan received the right to sit in the Senate.
Who would be more profitable to surrender?
It would seem that the conflict has been settled, but the politically short-sighted gentry with some voluptuous ecstasy of digging the grave of his own country, doing everything to thwart the realization of peace achieved in Zborov. Kiev Metropolitan was not allowed into the Senate. And then Pope Innocent X added fuel to the fire, calling on the nobility to fight the Orthodox and declaring Jan Casimir a defender of the faith - Catholic, of course. The Orthodox did not remain in debt: the Corinthian metropolitan surrounded Khmelnitsky with a sword consecrated at the Holy Sepulcher. Thus, the war took a religious character. Recall that in the middle of the XVII century in Europe has not yet subsided the intensity of religious passions, crowned with the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants.
In 1651-m fighting in the Ukraine resumed with a new force. And it is not known what the outcome would have been if it had not been for the treachery of the Crimean Khan Islam-Giray in the battle of Berestechko. The result is the Belotserkovsky Treaty, which significantly reduced the number of the registered troops and resulted in a reduction of the Zaporozhian-controlled voivodship from three to one.
Further seems to be known from school — the war broke out again and, allegedly, as before, on the part of the Cossacks, it bore the character of “national liberation”. But with the historical truth, such an explanation does not harmonize in any way. For the continuation of the struggle of the Polish crown against the rebellious vassal was caused by completely different reasons - one might say family.
The hetman's son, Timofey, offered the hand and heart of the daughter of the Moldavian ruler, Lupula. He agreed, and then took and refused the word. Outraged, Bogdan Zinovy set out to punish the obstinate ruler, threatening him with a devastating campaign of the Zaporozhye-Tatar army. Recall that the Moldovans also professed Orthodoxy, but Khmelnitsky without a shadow of a doubt was ready to bring down Muslim sabers on their heads.
What was to be done to the unfortunate Lord? Seek help from the Sultan? It would not help - an experienced politician Khmelnitsky calculated everything in advance and was just about to act with the unofficial consent of Istanbul. Then Lupul asked for the protection of the Polish king. He sent the army of the full corona hetman (in other words, the deputy commander of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) Martin Kalinovsky, who barred the Cossacks from entering Moldova. As in the case of Vishnevetsky and Kisel, Kalinovsky and Khmelnitsky were once brothers in arms - Martin also participated in 1618 in the Moscow campaign of Prince Vladislav. Perhaps that is why the leader of the Cossacks initially tried to persuade a hetman colleague not to interfere in his almost "family clashes."
Kalinowski did not listen to Khmelnitsky, although he was already beaten by him near Korsun. The reason is Polish arrogance and the inability to measure one’s own ambitions with real forces. Polish troops were routed near Batog. After that, Timofey did marry the daughter of the Moldavian ruler. But soon Khmelnitsky encountered a new ruthless enemy - the plague. People died by the thousands, famine began on the land devastated by war. To it were added punitive actions as talented as the cruel Polish commander Stefan Charnetsky, known to be addicted to the scorched earth tactics.
Khmelnitsky understood that gentlemen blinded by hatred would hardly go on renewing the Zborovsky treaty and most likely lead the war to extermination — they had already begun to wage it, and not only with their own hands: Warsaw managed to dissolve the alliance of Zaporozhians with the Crimeans who undertook to devastate Little Russia. The hetman, cornered, became more and more persistent in asking Russia for help.
Moscow and other options
The Kremlin hesitated: the Russian government, suffering from the influx of refugees from Little Russia, then suggested that Khmelnytsky move to the Don, seriously fearing that he would become a citizen of the Turkish Sultan, then asked Warsaw to comply with the conditions of Zborowski peace. To get involved in the new war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich did not want to, but the transition of the Cossacks under the rule of the Ottoman Empire was unacceptable.
In a word, the logic of events, and not the free will of the Cossacks, as it is commonly believed, led them in 1654 to Pereyaslavskaya Rada. Who does not remember the classic: "Forever together." But the conditions of this "forever" were very remarkable. Let us dwell on them in more detail: Khmelnitsky cited a curious argument about the need to subordinate to Moscow, listing all possible options: citizenship of the Crimean Khan, the Turkish Sultan, the Polish King and the Moscow Tsar. Hetman noted that the first two disappear because of Islam, and now it is also impossible to remain in the Commonwealth, because now it is “at the mercy of the lords”.
Thus, Khmelnitsky testified that the struggle he had begun for the political privileges of the Cossacks did not bring success and the king himself was not free from the nobility's arbitrariness. And in this situation, the lesser of all evils is to submit to Moscow, which, however, had the following conditions: the registered army is increased to 60 thousand, that is, by 20 thousand more than under the Zborovsky Treaty. The Cossacks themselves choose a hetman who retains the privilege of external relations. The rights conferred by Polish kings and princes to spiritual and worldly persons remain indestructible. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich agreed with all these points, the only prohibition of communicating with the Polish king and the Turkish sultan without a special royal decree.
Three years after the Pereiaslav Council, Khmelnitsky died, the hetman's mace passed into the hands of Ivan Vyhovsky, who hastened to conclude the Hadiach Treaty with the Poles, according to which the lands controlled by the Cossacks returned to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the name of the Grand Duchy of Russia.
It was really a real attempt to reanimate the Polish-Lithuanian state plunging into chaos. And Vyhovsky, like Khmelnitsky, felt more like a Polish gentleman than a subject of the Russian Tsar. But a significant part of the Cossacks did not support the hetman - for nine years of bloody struggle, the souls of the Cossacks and gentry turned out to be imbued with hatred for each other, which was largely promoted by the irrational cruelty of Vishnevetsky and Charnetsky. In the end, Vyhovsky lost the hetman's mace, which had passed to Khmelnytsky’s son, Yuri, but he also concluded the Slobodischensky treatise with Poland, which transferred the Cossack lands under the authority of the white eagle.
However, the wheel of history could not be reversed: gaining strength, Russia began to return the lost territories, including Little Russia, to its hand. The once mighty Rzeczpospolita could only snap at separate military victories, but Warsaw was no longer able to seriously oppose Moscow on the military-political scene.
The fate of Zaporizhzhya lands was predetermined. But this was by no means an unequivocal choice of the Cossacks, as evidenced by some of the episodes cited here from the hetmanship of Bogdan and Yury Khmelnitsky and Vyhovsky. And even with the completion of the rich in the events of the XVII century, the Cossacks did not calm down, for which the example is the fate of another hetman - Mazepa.
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