On the terms of the empire. How Russia gradually liquidated the Hetmanship and what is the real Ukrainian question

It so happened that the choice of fate by the lot of Russia always led Ukrainians to disaster. Thrown up by the Kremlin ruble, every time it fell down with the disadvantageous side for Ukraine upside down.

Bohdan Khmelnytskyi’s attempt to create his own state with the help of Moscow has ended Ruin. The state-building efforts of Ivan Mazepa, who were not helped by Machiavellian techniques in flattering Peter I, were equally unsuccessful.

Advertising:

Hope to preserve such and such autonomy for Ivan Skoropadskyithe successor the damned Petro Mazepy, ended in failure. In 1722, the king formed Little Russian College – a state body that managed Ukrainian lands.

Skoropadsky died a few months later. He was buried in the ancestral tomb – Gamalivsky Monasterywhich in the 20th century will be turned into a colony of strict regime.

“Golden Autumn” of the Hetmanship under the cap of St. Petersburg for Kyril Razumovskyifavorite Elizaveta Petrivnaended humiliatingly. In the fall of 1764, under pressure from Empress Catherine II, he renounced his title.

Kateryna created Second Little Russian Collegefinally liquidated the Hetmanship. Ukraine has turned into an ordinary Russian province, as the Russians still see it, and this is how they justify their crimes.

attempts Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi to restore the Ukrainian state in the first quarter of the 20th century also led to defeat. He lost power in late 1918 after issuing “Federal Charter” – a document that utopianly envisioned the development of Ukraine as part of non-Bolshevik Russia on equal terms.

A few years later, Simon Petlyura’s Directory fell, and the Ukrainian People’s Republic ceased to exist. Millions of Ukrainians died during the famine and World War II.

On the 260th anniversary of the liquidation of the Hetmanate and in the days that continue peace negotiations regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war, UP mentions how the Cossack elite was gradually disenfranchised in order to eliminate any hints of Ukrainian statehood.

Rules of the game If you take medal from the Russians, do not forget about its reverse side.

In 1700, Ivan Mazepa received from Peter I the Order of Andrew the First-Called – the new, highest award in the Moscow kingdom, which the tsar had introduced two years before. Mazepa became the second knight of this order in history after its first owner – Fedor Golovin, one of Peter’s closest associates. But he stayed in this status for a short time.

Nine years later, when Mazepa openly opposed Muscovy and joined the alliance with Sweden, the hetman were anathemastripped of all regalia. However, one was left – a special one was engraved Order of Judasawarding Mazepa with the label of a traitor.

Looking back, it is obvious that Mazepa’s submission to the Moscow tsar was destined to fail from the very beginning. He became hetman as a result of complex political intrigues, which has always been a common political practice. But, unlike most of his predecessors, he received the mace, accepting extremely unfavorable conditions for the Hetmanship.

Signing up under Kolomatsky articles in the summer of 1687, he volunteered for the Kremlin rules of the game, which he later tried to change. In many ways, he succeeded. However, in the end Mazepa was equally unable to deceive the Muscovites and their fate.

The monument to Mazepa, which was erected near the village of Kolomak in the Kharkiv region for the 330th anniversary of his election as hetman

Photo: Kharkiv City Council (2017)

The Kolomna Articles, under which Mazepa came to the desired power, significantly strengthened Muscovy’s control over the Cossack state. The election of the hetman or his removal was impossible without a royal decree. The change of assistants among the general foreman also had to be coordinated with Moscow.

The document encouraged denunciations the sovereign to the hetman. Among the conditions on which Mazepa agreed to become the ruler of Ukraine was the placement of a Moscow rifle regiment in the capital Baturyn. Allegedly for protection.

The Kolomna articles initiated a process that would be called “Russification” today. According to the document, Mazepa had “the people of Little Russia will be united with the people of Great Russia by all means and methods”. And to prevent the propagation of the idea that the Hetmanate is something more than just a part of the Muscovite Empire.

After Peter I came to power in 1689, the hetman, who supported the tsar, signed new, more favorable agreements with the Kremlin Moscow articles. Thanks to the alliance with the young overlord, Mazepa was able to improve his position for the development of his own state.

But later, when Muscovy faced global challenges and set a course for wide expansion, it became clear: the state-building aspirations of Ukrainians do not bypass the Kremlin. Human and financial resources were pumped out of Ukraine for the conquest of new lands in Europe. The maintenance of Russian garrisons on their territory fell on the shoulders of Ukrainians.

No matter what Mazepa’s political genius was, no matter how strong a push culture, economy, and institution-building received for him, the desire to live according to one’s own mind ended tragedy in Baturin.

Read also: Baturin, ongoing. The real root causes of Russian aggression – from Mazepa to the present day

Standardization Taught by Mazepa’s state-building impulses, the king could only continue to grind the Hetmanship. Peter I did not count on the fact that in 1709 he was helped by representatives of the loyal part of the Cossacks to defeat the Swedes near Poltava.

Loyalty to the tsar had no effect on the empire’s plans to pacify Ukraine forever. The new hetman Ivan Skoropadskyi’s attempts at a simple-minded request to expand the rights of autonomy ended with an even greater reduction in privileges.

Moscow governors received extended powers to control Ukraine. They could intervene in court cases. And if we were talking about problems of “national importance”, then they did not pay attention to the local judiciary at all. The empire thus strengthened repressive bodies.

The administrative reforms of Peter I were aimed primarily at more effective tax collection for waging wars of aggression, and were also aimed at the “standardization” of lands. They influenced all aspects of life, including Ukrainian culture and identity formation.

The monument to Peter I in Poltava was removed only in 2025, the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion and the tenth year of the war

Photo: Poltava City Council

In order to control every step of the hetman in domestic politics and diplomatic relations, Peter I placed his overseer Andrii Izmailov next to Ivan Skoropadskyi. The tsar also began a policy of subjugation of Zaporizhzhya Sich, which was completed by Catherine II, eliminating this last center of libertarianism in the empire.

Shortly before the death of Ivan Skoropadskyi, Peter created the Little Russian Collegium, a state body whose activities replaced the hetman’s role as the “wedding general”. Attempts by Skoropadskyi’s successor, hetman Pavel Polubotko, to go into opposition to the collegium ended tragically for the latter – with torture and death in the Petropavlovsk fortress.

Despite the fact that Polubotok did not support Mazepa in 1709, for which he received from Peter I significant possessions of the disgraced hetman, the king ordered his arrest. Polubotka’s struggle for the restoration of the autonomous rights of the Hetmanate was regarded as anti-Russian. Today’s Kremlin propagandists would call her “Russophobic”.

See also: Monastery of enhanced regime. What awaits the Skoropadsky burial ground near Shostka

minds The path to the restoration of the Hetmanship after the death of Peter I lay through the heart of a woman, the daughter of Tsar Elizabeth. This road was paved by the son of the registered Cossack Hryhoriy Rozum – Oleksiy.

Oleksiy Rozum, a talented church singer from what is now Chernihiv Oblast, entered the court chapel in St. Petersburg. Became the lover of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, changed his surname to Razumovsky. He received estates, privileges and the humorous secret title “night emperor”. An unexpected turn of fate changed the life not only of Oleksiy and his family, but also gave Cossack Ukraine a false hope of revival.

Yelyzaveta Petrivna thanked her “secret husband” for initially appointing his younger brother Kirill as president of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Later, she issued the decree “On the existence of the Hetman in Little Russia according to former customs and customs”, making Kyril Razumovsky the hetman in 1750.

The “Pokorshchyna” manor in Kozelka is the remains of one of the family estates of the Cossack family of Rozumy in Chernihiv Oblast

What some historians call the “golden autumn” of the Hetmanate became its swan song. Kyrylo Razumovsky had a little more than 10 years to try to change the rules of the game in favor of the Cossack elders. But, taking into account the oath he gave to the empress – “to be a faithful, kind and obedient slave and subject and to lead the people of Little Russia to loyalty and obedience”, – this plan was doomed to failure.

In the first years of the hetmanship, Kyrylo Razumovsky tried to limit the actions of Russian officials, changing the composition of senior officers at his discretion. The imperial court was worried about the intensification of political life in Little Russia. Despite her restrained attitude towards the existence of the Hetmanship, Elizaveta was forced to put an end to “administrative arbitrariness”. She also put an end to the remnants of the Hetmanship’s financial independence – canceled the customs border on the Ukrainian lands that were part of the Russian Empire.

Read also: Exchange of territories, bribery and protection of Orthodoxy. How the Kremlin negotiated an armistice and divided Ukraine in the 17th century

Question Catherine II completed the absorption of Ukraine by Russia. “Little Russia, Livonia and Finland are provinces governed on the basis of privileges confirmed to them– she wrote in one of the secret instructions. – To violate them by suddenly abandoning them would be very indecent, but to call them foreign and treat them on the same basis would be more than a mistake.”

“These provinces should be led in the easiest way to the point that they would shake off and stop looking like wolves at the forest.” – set the goal of the empress.

With the coming to power of Kateryna, representatives of the Cossack elite resorted to long-established and very naive tactics. Assuring the new ruler of their loyalty, bowing their knees to her, the elders tried to bring back the old days.

Among the points of the “Petition of the Little Russian Nobility” – this document was drawn up in Glukhiv and handed over to the tsarina at the beginning of 1764 – was, in particular, the restoration of customs duties on the border of Ukraine and Russia, and the deprivation of Ukrainians from free quartering of Russian troops on their territory.

The descendants of the Cossack nobility said they wanted more money to finance their own army. And they also asked for the reform of the judicial system in Ukraine, taking into account local interests and specifics.

The aspirations of Ukrainians did not fit into the colonial policy of Catherine II. Angry at Kirill Razumovsky for allowing autonomist sentiments to develop, the empress forced him to renounce the mace.

In November 1764, Catherine abolished the hetmanship and continued to bring Ukraine under the imperial denominator through the newly created Second Little Russian Collegium. Governor-General Petro Rumyantsev took up the matter, who “reconciled” local legislation with the all-Russian legislation, so that all spheres of Ukrainian life did not differ from Russian.

At the end of 1775, Catherine II thanked the Cossacks, who helped win the Russian-Turkish war, by liquidating the Zaporizhzhya Sich.

During at least the last four centuries, Moscow and St. Petersburg had the same answer to the “Ukrainian question”. It took different forms, but the essence still remains unchanged: from the point of view of the Russians, Ukrainians do not have the right to live as they see fit.

In 1845, even without the experience of the bloody 20th century, Taras Shevchenko wrote the mystery “The Big Cellar”. This is a political, historiosophical work about the struggle and terrible consequences of “cooperation” with Russia.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Mazepa, and other hetmans who stepped on the same rake did not have Shevchenko’s works – clear and unambiguous about the essence of the Russian empire?

But there is an even bigger problem. All that Shevchenko wrote about alliances and agreements with Russia were, but not fully understood by those who supported the Bolsheviks during the time of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, survived the Holodomor, and then continued to hope for Soviet power. Signed Budapest Memorandum. Collected congresses in Severodonetsk and antimaidans. Compiled gas contracts. Went to Kharkiv and Minsk agreements.

And the only Ukrainian question, important for Ukraine itself, remains as before: has anyone who seeks compromises with Russia understood the essence of Russia?

Evgeny Rudenko – UP