53 - The Cossacks, Earlier Staunch Defenders of Ukraine
Authentic Ukrainians, whatever fake-news Putin says, existed for centuries before Russian czars gained control over the territories that now collectively constitute Ukraine.
If Putin refuses to accept the medieval Ukrainian state, beginning in the tenth century (when Kyiv’s great hill-top monastery was constructed for the first time), he really must reckon with the Cossacks. Famed warriors, especially in the seventeenth century, they were Slavs who ruled the Dnieper River valley and most of the lands now being fought over. They were as Ukrainian as they could possibly be until the powerful czars of Moscovy extinguished Ukrainian (i.e. Cossack) independence by the end of the eighteenth century. (See also #13 “The Real Ukraine,” March 22.)
Sometime in the late fifteenth century, bands of adventurous “free men” began calling themselves or possibly answering to the Turkish name kazak, which carries those meanings. They were hunters and fishermen, accustomed to living rough on the steppes of what is now Ukraine. By the mid-sixteenth century, the roving bands had attracted serfs fleeing from harsh landlords and had established a democratic method of ruling their rada, or general assembly, electing officers and a hetman as commander in chief.
The Cossacks were a formidable fighting force, initially defending the heartland of Ukraine from raids by Tatars (who inhabited Crimea before Stalin deported them to Siberia in the 1930s). They fought on land and also crafted swift vessels to navigate the Black Sea and raid Anatolia (modern Turkey).
Because the Cossacks (or early Ukrainians) proved so successful as warriors, they were enlisted as mercenaries by Poland, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a major power in Central Europe. Employed by Polish kings, the Cossacks defended the realm against attacking Turks and Moscovites. Poland also attempted to curb Cossack independence in the late sixteenth century, the Cossacks fighting on numerous occasions to retain their autonomy and their democratic form of governance.
Defenders of the Faith
These battles, mostly between the Cossack Sich, or principality, and the Polish monarchy continued well into the seventeenth century. By then, too, the Cossacks had become firm defenders of Orthodox as opposed to Uniate Catholicism – that is, the Cossacks supported Constantinople over Rome, and did so on a number of fields of combat. Together, in the seventeenth century the Cossacks and a dynamic Metropolitan of Kyiv promoted the Ukrainian quality of Orthodoxy and, simultaneously, advances that led to the establishment in Kyiv of the region’s first Ukrainian institution of higher learning. The Cossacks, famed for their martial prowess, also should be revered for stimulating the rise of a distinctly Ukrainian language and culture.
In the middle years of the seventeenth century, however, a new Cossack hetman led a massive, popular, revolt against heavy-handed Polish tyranny. In 1649, the Cossacks liberated Kyiv from Poland. The city became the capital of a novel, democratically minded, independent, Ukrainian state. Fatally, however, the hetman needed allies and, in 1654, made a deal with Moscow; they attacked Poland together. But Russia had its own design; the Cossacks were compelled to arrange alliances with Sweden, Transylvania, Moldavia, and others to protect themselves against Moscow’s treachery. The Cossacks broke with Moscow and carved out an autonomous region in central Ukraine -- a self-styed duchy. Indeed, the duchy enabled the Cossacks to establish a tripartite commonwealth with Lithuania and Poland.
By 1667, however, the Cossacks weakened as a martial force. In that year, they were compelled to transfer all of the lands beyond (west of) the Dnieper River to Poland, and to suffer under Russian rule east of that major river. Cossack revolts followed, and one hetman allied himself to Ottoman Turkey. That maladroit maneuver put Podolia, a section of Ukraine, under the Ottomans until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
After the 1667 partition of Ukraine, with Russia ruling the east and Poland the west, the Cossacks still were able to govern themselves within the folds of the Russian hegemonic state. But their freedom gradually was extinguished by Russia. And the Ukrainian church now came under Moscow’s Metropolitan.
Hetman Mazepa
When Peter the Great ruled in Moscow in the first decades of the eighteenth century, a Cossack hetman called Mazepa assumed monarchical powers and, while recognizing Peter’s sovereignty, presided over the last great moments of Cossackdom. Higher education was central. The arts flourished. Cossack Baroque style dominated architecture. There was something very much Ukrainian in Kyiv and throughout the domain. But Mazepa tried to ally himself secretly with Sweden’s King Charles II to war together against Moscow.
The Russian imperial regime of the eighteenth century was too resourceful, however, and Peter, and then Catherine, basically created a Russian empire of which the former Cossack principality was just a minor part. The importance of the Cossacks, and thus of Ukraine, faded in the 1650s, and especially after 1675. In that year its original capital was destroyed by Russian troops. And with the demise of the Cossacks, so occurred the burial of Ukraine in the remainder of the seventeenth century and well into and through the eighteenth century
That should be the end this discussion of how the Cossacks were Ukrainians and how, under Peter and Catherine, they remained a formidable fighting force – but for the Russian czars. Their martial arts reputation dates from this period even though they fought just as effectively for themselves in earlier centuries. Indeed, it was only their general opposition to Bolshevism, and Stalin’s exiling of Cossacks to Siberia, that brought about the real retirement of the Cossack war enterprise.
Sloboda Ukraine
But wait, there was a partial reprise for the Cossacks in the eighteenth century. Some of their number evaded Peter and Catherine and settled into Sloboda in what is now eastern Ukraine. Strange as it seems, the Mongols had devastated the area that is today the locus of most of the fighting between Putin’s army and the Ukrainian defenders. Five centuries after the Mongols had marched through what we now call the Donbas, it was largely de-populated. So the Cossacks who preferred their independence to being ruled by the Russian czars created a private domain in and around what is now the Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk districts. They welcomed refugees from other parts of Central Europe, they raided Russia, and they fought against the Tartars.
A sloboda was a colonial settlement free of taxation, and free of overarching sovereignty. It was, to define another word, a “ukraine” or border principality. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were 523 “free” slobodas or fortified settlements in what they called Sloboda Ukraine – the zone today of intense conflict. Catherine abolished their privileges in 1765, but it took another year for the Russian empire to reduce Cossacks to tax-paying subjects. Even so, it was in Sloboda Ukraine where the Ukrainian language and education flourished, with the first university established in Kharkiv, followed by Kyiv, and Odesa.
The eastern regions of Ukraine thus were important historically, and have always been Ukrainian, no matter what Putin chooses to say. Fighting for the contested eastern region is thus wholly appropriate and hardly folly.
More Monday, when I will report about corruption and how to curb its spread