Bohdan Khmelnytsky

There is no reliable information about Khmelnytsky's activities from 1622 to
1637. All later accounts of his exploits in wars against the Tatars, Turks,
and Russians (1632–4) have no documentary foundation. Only one fact is certain—that
in the 1620s he joined the registered Cossacks. Sometime between 1625 and 1627
he married Hanna Somko, a Cossack's daughter from Pereiaslav, and settled on
his patrimonial estate in Subotiv near Chyhyryn. By 1637 he attained the high
office of military chancellor. His signature appeared on the capitulation agreement
signed at Borovytsia on 24 December 1637 that marked the end of a Cossack rebellion.

There are grounds to believe that Khmelnytsky belonged to the faction of officers
that favored an understanding between the Zaporozhian Host and Poland. Subsequent
events, however, dashed any hopes of reconciliation. By the Ordinance of 1638
the Polish king revoked the autonomy of the Zaporozhian Host and placed the
registered Cossacks under the direct authority of the Polish military command
in Ukraine. The office of military chancellor, which Khmelnytsky had held, was
abolished and Khmelnytsky was demoted to a captain of Chyhyryn regiment. In
the fall of 1638 he visited Warsaw with a Cossack delegation to petition King
Wladyslaw IV Vasa to restore the former Cossack privileges.

In the next few years Khmelnytsky devoted his attention mostly to his estates
in the Chyhyryn region, but in 1645 he served with a detachment of 2,000–2,500
Cossacks in France, and probably took part in the siege of Dunkirk. By this
time his reputation for leadership was such that King Wladyslaw IV Vasa, in
putting together a coalition of Poland, Venice, and other states against Turkey,
turned to him to obtain the support of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. In April 1646
he was one of the Cossack envoys in Warsaw with whom the king discussed plans
for the impending war. These events contributed to his reputation in Ukraine,
Poland, and abroad, and provided him with wide military and political contacts.

Khmelnytsky, however, had been regarded with suspicion for many years by the
Polish magnates in Ukraine who were politically opposed to King Wladyslaw IV
Vasa. The new landowners of the Chyhyryn region, A. Koniecpolski, Crown Hetman
Stanislaw Zolkiewski, and his son, Crown Flag-bearer A. Zolkiewski, treated
Khmelnytsky with particular hostility. With the collusion of the Chyhyryn assistant
vicegerent D. Czaplinski, who bore some personal grudge against Khmelnytsky,
they conspired to deprive Khmelnytsky of his Subotiv estate. In spite of the
fact that Khmelnytsky received a royal title to Subotiv in 1646, Czaplinski
raided the estate, seized movable property, and disrupted the manor's economy.
At the same time Czaplinski's servants severely beat Khmelnytsky's small son
at the marketplace in Chyhyryn. Under these conditions of violence and terror
Khmelnytsky's wife died in 1647, and towards the end of the year A. Koniecpolski
ordered Khmelnytsky's arrest and execution. It was only the help and the surety
put up by his friends among the Chyhyryn officers, and particularly by Col Mykhailo
Krychevsky, that saved Khmelnytsky from death. At the end of December 1647 he
departed for Zaporizhia with a small (300–500-man) detachment. There he was
elected hetman. This event marked the beginning of a new Cossack uprising, which
quickly turned into a national revolution (see Cossack-Polish War).

Khmelnytsky was married three times. His first wife, who was the mother of
all his children, died prematurely. His second wife, Matrona, whom he married
in early 1649, was the former wife of his enemy D. Czaplinski. In 1651 while
Khmelnytsky was away on a military campaign, she was executed for conspiracy
and adultery by his son Tymish. In the summer of 1651 Khmelnytsky married Hanna
Zolotarenko, a Cossack woman from Korsun and the widow of Col Pylyp (Pylypets).
Surviving him by many years, she entered a monastery in 1671 and adopted the
religious name of Anastasiia. Khmelnytsky had two sons and four daughters. His
older son, Tymish Khmelnytsky, died on 15 September 1653 in the siege of the
Moldavian fortress of Suceava (see Battle of Suceava). The younger son, Yurii
Khmelnytsky, was elected during his father's lifetime heir apparent under Ivan
Vyhovsky's regency. Eventually, Yurii twice held the office of hetman. Khmelnytsky's
daughter Kateryna (Olena) was married to Danylo Vyhovsky, and after his death
in Muscovite captivity she married Hetman Pavlo Teteria. The second daughter,
Stepaniia, was the wife of Ivan Nechai, who died in Muscovite exile. She later
became a nun in Kyiv. The names of the other two daughters are unknown. One
of them was married to Capt Hlyzko of Korsun regiment, who died in 1655 fighting
against Poland. The other was married in 1654 to L. Movchan, a Cossack from
Novhorod-Siverskyi. Khmelnytsky's line died out at the end of the 17th century.
The Khmelnytskys were numerous in Left-Bank Ukraine and Russia but were of a
different lineage. Khmelnytsky was buried on 25 August 1657 in Saint Elijah's
Church in Subotiv, which he himself had built.

Khmelnytsky's greatest achievement in the process of national revolution was
the Cossack Hetman state of the Zaporozhian Host (1648–1782). His statesmanship
was demonstrated in all areas of state-building—in the military, administration,
finance, economics, and culture. With political acumen he invested the Zaporozhian
Host under the leadership of its hetman with supreme power in the new Ukrainian
state, and unified all the estates of Ukrainian society under his authority.
Khmelnytsky not only built a government system and developed military and civilian
administrators, including Ivan Vyhovsky, Pavlo Teteria, Danylo Nechai and Ivan
Nechai, Ivan Bohun, Hryhorii Hulianytsky, and Stanyslav Morozenko, out of Cossack
officers and Ukrainian nobles, but also established an elite within the Cossack
Hetman state. In spite of setbacks and difficulties, this elite preserved and
maintained its gains in the face of Muscovy's invasion and against Polish and
Turkish claims almost to the end of the 18th century.

Khmelnytsky's Realm (Khmelnychchyna). The national uprising of 1648–57 headed
by Khmelnytsky liberated a large part of Ukrainian territory from Poland and
established a Cossack Hetman state that was abolished only in the 1780s. Khmelnytsky's
uprising induced some changes in the political system of eastern Europe, and
brought about certain changes in the socioeconomic structure of Cossack Ukraine.
It gave rise to a new elite of Cossack officers that eventually, in the 18th
century, evolved into a Ukrainian variant of the Polish nobility and, in the
19th century, into a Ukrainian variant of the Russian nobility.

The Cossack state, or ‘kozatske panstvo,’ emerged long before the Khmelnytsky
period. According to historians such as Ivan Krypiakevych, Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko,
and Lev Okinshevych, a Ukrainian Cossack state—the Zaporozhian Sich—was established
as early as the 16th century. V'iacheslav Lypynsky believed that the Cossacks
‘in a nationally alien Poland slowly became a state within a state.’ But the
Zaporozhian Sich and the Cossack estate were only embryonic forms of the Cossack
state that was established in the 17th century on old Cossack territories—the
Dnieper region, including Kyiv—and on the recently colonized southern Left-Bank
Ukraine. The Cossacks claimed these lands as their own by right of conquest
and use. From the time of Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, Cossackdom as
a ‘state within a state’ became absorbed into the Cossack world view. This view
was accepted in Poland and in Western Europe, particularly in Sweden and Transylvania;
eg, in 1628 Prince Bethlen-Gabor of Transylvania said: ‘The Cossack people can
secede from Poland and build its separate Commonwealth ... if only it finds
for its struggle a wise and noble leader and organizer.’ Khmelnytsky turned
out to be that leader.

The first reports about Khmelnytsky's uprising and his alliance with the Turks
and Crimean Tatars informed the Polish government that this was more than just
a rebellion. Both Crown Hetman Mikolaj Potocki and Adam Kysil, the voivode of
Bratslav who was knowledgeable in Ukrainian affairs, wrote in March and May
1648 respectively that the Cossacks ‘absolutely want to rule in Ukraine’ and
that Khmelnytsky ‘will form a new duchy.’

In Ukrainian political circles there were different ideas on the structure
of the new state. Among the Orthodox nobility and higher clergy the conception
that two sovereigns—the Kyiv metropolitan and the hetman of the Zaporozhian
Host—would enter into relations with Poland was quite popular. But Khmelnytsky's
military victories in 1648–9 and his triumphal entry into Kyiv in 1648, at which
he was hailed as ‘the Moses, savior, redeemer, and liberator of the Rus’ people
from Polish captivity ... the illustrious ruler of Rus’,’ weighed on the side
of a Cossack state. In February 1649 during negotiations with a Polish delegation
headed by Adam Kysil in Pereiaslav, Khmelnytsky declared that he was ‘the sole
Rus’ autocrat’ and that he had ‘enough power in Ukraine, Podilia, and Volhynia
... in my land and principality stretching as far as Lviv, Kholm, and Halych.’
It became clear to the Polish envoys that Khmelnytsky had ‘denied Ukraine and
all Rus’ to the Poles.’ A Vilnius panegyric in Khmelnytsky's honor (1650–1)
asserted: ‘While in Poland it is King Jan II Casimir Vasa, in Rus’ it is Hetman
Bohdan Khmelnytsky.’

Khmelnytsky claimed the divine right to rule over Cossacks as early as 29 July
1648, when in a letter to a Muscovite voivode he titled himself ‘Bohdan Khmelnytsky,
by Divine grace hetman with the Zaporozhian Host.’ This formula was repeated
in all official Cossack documents. In a letter from the Hlukhiv captain, S.
Veichyk, to the Sevsk voivode, Prince T. Shcherbatov, written on 22 April 1651,
the following title is used: ‘By God's grace our Great Ruler, Sir Bohdan Khmelnytsky,
the Hetman of the entire Zaporozhian Host.’ Foreigners addressing Khmelnytsky
titled him ‘Illustrissimus Princeps’ or ‘Dux.’ Greek metropolitans who visited
Ukraine in 1650 prayed for him during the liturgy as ‘the Ruler and Hetman of
the Great Rus’.’ The Turkish sultan called him a prince and monarch, and other
foreign rulers called him ‘illustrissimus dux.’

The Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 did not change the political status of Ukraine,
or the title or authority of its hetman. Although the presence of a Russian
garrison in Kyiv and the tsar's new title ‘Tsar of Little Russia, Grand Prince
of Kyiv and Chernihiv’ laid symbolic claim of Muscovite supremacy in Ukraine,
the ‘Zaporozhian Host’ remained a separate, independent state known as the Rus’
state, or Hosudarstvo rosiiske, as it was called by Khmelnytsky in his letter
of 17 February 1654 to the tsar. In Muscovite sources it was called the Little-Russian
state (Malorossiiskoe gosudarstvo). It had its own head of state—the hetman
of the Zaporozhian Host, elected for life—its own government and army, foreign
policy, legislature and judiciary, finances, and independent religious and cultural
life.

Khmelnytsky retained full state powers in both internal and external affairs.
The hetman continued to be ‘the master and hetman’ of the Ukrainian state, ‘the
supreme ruler and master of our fatherland,’ as he was called in official Ukrainian
documents. Metropolitan Sylvestr Kosiv referred to him in 1654 as ‘the leader
and commander of our land.’ Khmelnytsky referred to himself as ‘the master of
the entire Rus’ land’ (1655) and as ‘Clementiae divinae Generalis Dux Exercituum
Zaporoviensium’ (letter to C. Serban, the ruler of Wallachia, 1657). General
Chancellor Ivan Vyhovsky described Khmelnytsky to a Transylvanian envoy in 1657
thus: ‘As the tsar is a tsar in his realm, so the hetman is a prince or king
in his domain.’ Ukraine's status as a sovereign state received international
recognition. The Korsun Treaty of Alliance with Sweden of 6 October 1657 recognized
Ukraine as ‘a free people, subject to no one’ (pro libera gente et nulli subjecta).

Khmelnytsky's Cossack state can be regarded as a new political entity—‘Ukraine
of the Zaporozhian Host,’ as it was known in Moscow—or as a restoration of the
old Rus’ state (Hosudarstvo rosiiskoie, as Khmelnytsky called it in his letter
to the tsar of 17 February 1654). In all his negotiations with Sweden and Transylvania,
Khmelnytsky demanded that his claims ‘to all old Ukraine, or Rus’ (Roxolania),
wherever the Greek faith and their language still exist, as far as the Vistula
River,’ be recognized.

The issue of the legitimate historical boundaries of the Cossack state brought
the Belarusian question to the forefront of Ukrainian politics. The Zaporozhian
Cossacks were interested in Belarus as early as the 16th century, as is evident
from Hryhorii Loboda's and Severyn Nalyvaiko's campaigns. Khmelnytsky paid close
attention to Belarus from the very beginning of his uprising. He supported the
Cossack movement led by Konstantin Paklonski in eastern Belarus. A Belarusian
regiment under the control of the Zaporozhian Host existed in 1655–7. In 1656
Khmelnytsky took under his protection Slutsk principality, which belonged to
Prince B. Radziwill, then in 1657 Staryi Bykhau, granting it the right to free
trade with Ukraine, and finally, on 8 July 1657, at the request of the Pynske
nobility, Pynske, Mazyr, and Turiv counties. These actions greatly disturbed
Muscovy, which began, in V'iacheslav Lypynsky's words, ‘the struggle of two
Rus’es over the third Rus’.’ Although Khmelnytsky's death put an end to Ukraine's
expansion into Belarusian territory, the tradition of a ‘Rus’ state’ was preserved
in the policies of Ivan Vyhovsky, and traces of it can be found even later.

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