Russia’s First Invasion of Ukraine – Ukrainian Historical past DOCUMENTARY

In our last video on the history of the pre-modern Ukrainianpeoples, we covered the rise of the Cossacks and the Rebellion of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, which ledto the formation of the independent Cossack state: an early-modern nation distinctly Ukrainianin language, culture, and religion. After achieving independence, the road aheadfor the Cossack nation was incredibly perilous: it would require the Ukrainian people to walk therazor’s edge between the massive, territorially ravenous Empires that surrounded them. In thisvideo, we will explore the society of the Cossack Hetmanate nation and provide a whistlestop tourthrough the first half of its tumultuous history. Our enemies in day to day life tend not to bethese massive empires, but online criminals,.

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Websites, and can even changethe price of things you buy. It works on all kinds ofdevices from PCs to smart TVs, and you can have it on up to sixdevices at once for the same price. Secure yourself and open up the internet now, and if you use our link, nordvpndot com slash kings and generals, they will throw in an extra gift on top when youbuy a two year plan. And there’s a risk free 30 day money back guarantee if you change your mind.Go to nord vpn dot com slash kings and generals. At its inception, the Cossack Hetmanate’s mostconcerning neighbour was still Poland, which, although bloodied by Khmelnytsky’s victoriesover them, had no intention of the Ukrainian.

Plains slipping permanently from its grasp.Knowing that a prolonged struggle against the Poles was inevitable, Hetman Bohdan looked tosecure strategic alliances for his new nation. The Ottoman Empire seemed the most logical option forthis since the Turkic Tatars of Crimea, vassals of the Ottoman Sultan, had been instrumentalallies in his military successes thus far. Unfortunately for him, Ottoman manpower wasat the time occupied with battling the pesky Venetians in the Mediterranean. So, rather thanhaving the mighty Imperial army at his back, the Cossacks had to rely on a continuedalliance with the Crimean Tatars. Although ostensibly a friend to Khmelnytsky,the Crimean Khan had no interest in seeing his traditional Cossack rivals grow too powerful. Atthe battle of Berestechko in the summer of 1651,.

The Tatar host left the field, condemning the coreof the Cossack army to annihilation at the hands of Polish artillery. Realizing quickly the Tatarswere unreliable allies, Hetman Khmelnytsky looked to develop other partnerships. With the Ottomansunavailable and the Poles obviously off the table, there remained only one major power inthe region who he could entreat with. So it was that for the first time in history, theUkrainian nation appealed to the Muscovites Tsars. On the 8th of January, 1654, Hetman Khmelnytsky,alongside a council of his Cossack officers, met with the representatives of the MuscoviteTsardom in the town of Pereiaslav, and there, they swore allegiance to their newsuzerain: Tsar Aleksei Romanov of Russia. During the 20th century, Soviet historianswould herald this day as a glorious reunion:.

The Ukrainians rightfully reunited withtheir fraternal twin, the Russians. However, it must be stressed that this wasnot how the Ukrainians of the time saw it. By the 17th century, the cultures ofKyiv and Moscow were deeply diverged, and although they shared a religion, they wouldnot have considered each other to be brothers. At Pereiaslav, the Cossack officers and Muscovitediplomats needed interpreters to be able to speak to each other. Khmelnytsky and his Cossackofficers decided to swear to the Tsar for pragmatic reasons, not ethnic ones. Indeed, aswe have seen, Khmelnytsky’s first choice was an alliance with the Muslim Ottomans, not his fellowOrthodox Russians! The fact of the matter was that the Russians were offering the Cossacks the bestdeal at the time. In exchange for their fealty,.

The Russians provided the Hetmanate with militaryprotection and a guarantee that the Cossacks would remain autonomous and self-governing. Moreover,the Cossack registry system, the cap on the total amount of registered Cossacks was raised to60,000, up from the 40,000 the Poles had allowed. It was a good deal at the time, but eventually,the Russians would break all the promises they made on that chilly January morning in Pereiaslav.Before we continue on with the march of history, let us first pause and explore what the societyof Ukraine looked like during this era. It should be noted that, within the Cossack Hetmanate,only a small percentage of the population was actually Cossacks. The chief economic base ofthe nation was made up of land-tilling farmers. The emergence of the Cossack state marked anuptick in personal freedoms for the Ukrainian.

Peasantry. Under the Commonwealth, they had beenreduced to serfs and shackled to the fields of rich landowners, while under their new Cossackoverlords, they were now able to move around as they pleased, and while many of them still workedon land owned by the Church or the Cossack elite, almost half of the state’s land was made upof free, self-governing peasant villages. The next rung on the social hierarchywas the townspeople, who inhabited the Hetmanate’s main urban centers. Towns in theHetmanate were protected by the Magdeburg law, a charter of rights that enabled cities to beself-governing entities. Like with the peasants, the Cossack elites gave the townspeople afree hand, provided they paid their taxes. Standing above the general population were theregular rank-and-file Cossacks, the elite warrior.

Caste of the Hetmanate. In exchange for militaryservice to the state, each Cossack received an exemption from taxation, the right to own land,and the right to participate in the election of the Hetmanate’s leader. Further up the ladder wasthe clergy. After throwing off the bonds of their Catholic overlords, Orthodox Christianity was oncemore the state religion of the old Rus heartland, and this was reflected in the amount of landand privileges the Orthodox Church accrued under Cossack rule. Under the Hetmanate, Churches andmonasteries were exempt from taxation, while up to 17% of the state’s total land belonged to theChurch. As a result, the Orthodox hierarchy grew almost as powerful as the Hetmanate’s nobility.For indeed, the nobles made up the highest strata of the Hetmanate’s society. The hetmanate’s rulingclass was made up of two elements. The first was.

The highest-ranking officers of the registeredCossack army. Alongside them were remnants of the Szlachta, the old nobility of the PolishCommonwealth. While most of these antiquated aristocrats, particularly the Catholic ones, hadbeen swept out of Ukraine during Khmelnytsky’s uprising, the ones who had sided with theCossacks during the rebellion were allowed to retain their estates and privileges, albeitnow without the right to exploit serf labor. For all of its history, the highest authorityin the Cossack Hetmanate was, unsurprisingly, the Hetman, the head of state who commandedthe Cossack army, conducted foreign relations, issued decrees, appointed officials, grantedlands, and sometimes served as a judge for high-level legal disputes. Traditionally, theHetman was always chosen by the rada: an electoral.

Body consisting of all registered Cossacks.This made the Hetmanate a relatively democratic country at a time when absolute monarchiesdominated Europe. In later centuries, Karl Marx remarked that the Cossacks had forged thecontinent’s “first democratic Christian republic.” Other than the Rada, another importantgovernmental was the starshyna, a smaller council of the most powerful officersin the Cossack army whose members functioned as both the highest commanders of the statemilitary and as the heads of the various branches of civilian government, suchas finance, taxation, and the judiciary. The Cossack Hetmanate was territorially dividedinto administrative bodies called polki, each of which was controlled by a regiment ofthe Cossack army led by a colonel: the polkovnyk..

Outside of this system entirely, another group ofCossacks, the Zaporozhian Host, lived beyond the Dnipro River's rapids. Although nominally partof the Hetmanate, the Zaporizhians maintained a largely separate government from the mainCossack state, having their own electoral body, the Sich Rada, and their own leader, the KishOtaman, who served on a one-year term limit. The signing of the treaty of Periaslav immediatelytriggered a massive war between Muscovy and Poland over control of Ukraine, initiating a devastatingera of history known to Ukrainians as “the ruin.” In August 1657, Bohdan Khmelnytsky passedaway, and the rada elected his 16-year-old son, Yurii Khmelnytsky, as his successor.However frail and prone to epilepsy, young Yurii lacked the commanding aura requiredto keep the rowdy Cossacks in line. Thus,.

The starshyna council elected another Hetman,Ivan Vyhovsky, who deposed Yurii bloodlessly. Ivan was of Szlachta stock, belonging to apowerful Orthodox noble family of old blood. This caused problems, for many withinthe Cossack ranks were concerned that the resurgence of the old nobility would resultin a rolling back of Cossack privileges. Chief among the discontented were the Cossacks ofthe Zaporizhian host, who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Vyhovsky’s rule. Meanwhile,Russia worked to spread further seeds of discord, undermining Vyhovsky’s rule by acceptingdiplomatic missions from his political enemies. Moscow played a game of divide and conquer,exploiting internal divisions within the Cossacks to make it easier to eventually bringtheir territory under full Russian control..

In early 1658, the Zaporizhian Kosh Otaman,Yakiv Barabash, and the polkovnyk of Poltava, Martyn Pushkar, entered into anopen revolt against the Hetman. Responding to steel with steel, Vyhovskysummoned his loyal Cossack host and, aided by an alliance with the Crimean Tatars,crushed the dissidents at a battle near Poltava. Convinced that Russian agents had orchestrated therebellion against him, Vyhovsky broke ties with Moscow, with his rada voting to seek shelterin the bosom of their old overlords, Poland. The Poles were all too happy to accept thereturn of their wayward Cossack vassals. The result was the Union of Hadiach: a treatyrecognizing the Hetmanate as a third co-equal partner in the commonwealth alongside Poland andLithuania. As expected, Moscow was furious at this.

Development and launched a full-scale invasion toforce the Cossacks back under the Tsar’s control. This would end in disaster for the Russians,for at the battle of Konotop in June of 1659, the Muscovite army, alongsidetheir Zaporizhian Cossack allies, were utterly destroyed by Vyhovsky’sCossacks and their Tatar allies. However, Vyhovsky’s battlefield triumphswere nullified by his diplomatic failings. Ultimately, the Union of Hadiach failed to liveup to the expectations and hopes of his followers, with Poland seeking to limit the Hetmanate’sterritory to just the palatinates of Kyiv, Bratslav, and Chernihiv while keeping westernUkraine under direct Polish rule and reducing the Cossack registry from 60,000 back down to40,000. This infuriated the Cossack elites,.

Who, previously loyal to Vyhovsky, nowturned on him and forced him into exile. Despite winning every battle he fought, Vyhovsky’stenure as Hetman ended largely in failure. In his place, the rada re-elected the young manhe had once deposed: Yurii Khmelnytsky. Pivoting away from Poland and back to Russia, Yuriisought to renew the arrangement his father had once made with the Tsar. Moscow was not soinclined. In the Pereiaslav Articles of 1659, the autonomy of the Cossacks was severelyrestricted: with the Hetmanate stripped of the right to dictate its own foreign policywithout Moscow’s approval or confirm the election of Hetmans without the approval of the Tsar.These conditions were unbearable to the fiercely independent Cossacks, and soon, Yurii turnedagainst his Muscovite overlords and vacillated.

Back to Poland, only to find the Polish King hadreneged on the Union of Hadiach and that the new terms for incorporating the Cossacks into theCommonwealth were far less favorable than before. Every time the Cossacks switched sides in theongoing Muscovy-Polish war for control of Ukraine, they lost additional elements of theirsovereignty. Yurii abdicated and retired to a monastery in 1663, and shortly afterward,the unity of the Hetmanate broke down altogether, with the Cossacks on the right bank of theDnipro electing Hetmans who were pro-Poland, and those on the left bank electing Hetmanswho were pro-Muscovy. This divide reached its logical conclusion in 1667 when the Muscovy-Polishwar came to an end, and the two states, notably without any Cossack leaders present to offertheir input, partitioned the Hetmanate between.

Themselves at the treaty of Andrusovo, with Polandtaking the right bank, and Tsars taking the left. Some Cossacks were not so eager to lettheir fatherland be sundered in twain at the whims of ravenous Imperial greed. One ofthese patriots was Petro Doroshenko, who was elected Hetman in Right Back Ukraine in 1665.Immediately after the partitions of Androsuvo, Doroshenko revolted against Poland and, with thehelp of the Crimean Tatars, crushed a Polish army at the battle of Brailiv, forcing the Polish Kingto reaffirm the autonomy of the Cossacks on his side of the Dnipro. Shortly after, Doroshenkoand his host thundered into the Left Bank, where the local Cossacks had revolted against theTsars about 0.1 seconds after Muscovite officials had tried to tax them. There, Doroshenkomanaged to secure control and have himself.

Elected Hetman of Left Bank Ukraine, therebysuccessfully reuniting Ukraine under his rule. However, this triumph was fleeting, and beforelong, both Poland and Russia had encouraged the election of rival Hetmans who defied Doroshenkoand toed their respective party lines, before regrouping their forces and returning tobring the respective halves of Ukraine to heel. Thoroughly backed into a corner, Doroshenko wasforced to invite player three into the game: the Ottoman Empire. In 1669, the CossackHetmanate pledged fealty to Sultan Mehmed IV. Three years later, the Ottomans marched a100,000-strong army across the Danube, where they rendezvoused with Doroshenko’s Cossacks.They vanquished a Polish force at the battle of Chervenikva and occupied land as far west as Lviv,forcing the Poles to relent. In the 1672 Treaty of.

Buchach, the Bratislav and Kyiv Voivodeships wererecognized as autonomous Cossack territories under Ottoman suzerainty, while the PolodiaVoivodeship became a direct Ottoman Province. At the onset, Doroshenko’s gamble with theOttomans had paid off, but it soon became evident that the price the Ukrainian peoplehad paid for such an alliance was far too high. As the Sultan’s armies cleaved through the land,they massacred and pillaged indiscriminately. As Turkish soldiers turned Churches into Mosques,and Crimean Tatars carried out slave raids on the local Christian populace, Doroshenko becameincreasingly unpopular for his collaboration with the infidels. While all this was happening,Moscow had largely managed to pacify the Cossacks on their side of the Dnipro by backpedalingon their attempts to restrict their autonomy,.

Reaffirming the terms of the 1648 treaty ofPeriaslav and giving them increased independence. As the right bank Ukraine burned, many ofits inhabitants fled to the Left Bank. Thus, while the Polish and Ottoman-dominated parts ofUkraine became a desert, its refugees fled east, enriching the cultural and economic influenceof the Muscovy-dominated part of Ukraine. In 1676, Tsar's forces, supported by theirLeft-Bank Cossack Allies marched upon Doroshenko’s capital at Chyhyryn. The Hetman, whoonce had grand dreams of reforging a strong and united Ukraine, was forced to swear allegianceto the Tsar and abdicate in disgrace. Meanwhile, the Zaporizhian host, led by their Otaman IvanSirko, took up arms against the Ottoman Empire. According to legend, when Sultan Mehmeddemanded the submission of the Zaporizhians,.

Sirko and his comrades replied, inclassical belligerent Cossack fashion, with every possible profanity in the Ukrainianlanguage. The composition of this most vulgar letter has since been immortalized in Ilya Repin’s1891 painting, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Ultimately, the ambitions of Doroshenko backfiredspectacularly and resulted in the Cossack Hetmanate permanently losing control over all ofRight Bank Ukraine except for the city of Kyiv. Ottoman influence in the region did not lastlong, for the Sultan gave low priority to that part of his Empire’s frontier, focusing themajority of his resources on the Mediterranean. As a byproduct of the Great Turkish War of 1683,the Poles were able to re-establish control over the region by 1690 and, within the next decade,fully dismantled the structures of the Cossack.

Government in the area. However, in the LeftBank, the Hetmanate survived with its culture, government, and unique political systemintact, albeit with the ever-thickening shroud of Muscovite authoritarianismthreatening to smother it for good. In our next episode on the storiedhistory of the Ukrainian people, the tale of the Cossack Hetmanate will continuewith the reign of the dynamic Ivan Mazepa, and end with the final annexation of theUkrainian state into the Russian Empire. To stay tuned for that subscribe and hitthe bell button, please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing – it helps immensely.Recently we have started releasing weekly patron and youtube member exclusive content.Consider joining their ranks via the link in.

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