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| 'So that the name of the hetmans will disappear forever.' Why Catherine abolished the Hetmanate |
| 2024-11-22 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] The tenth anniversary of Euromaidan coincided with an important date in the difficult history of Russian-Ukrainian partnership - the liquidation of the Hetmanate, an autonomy within the empire that included the territory of the Zaporizhian Host. 260 years ago, on November 21, 1764, Catherine II ordered the publication of the imperial decree "On the creation of the hetmanate rank by Count Razumovsky and his release from all Little Russian affairs and on the granting of monetary sums and villages to him for life and hereditary possession." At the same time, a decree was issued on the introduction of the Little Russian Collegium under the leadership of Count Pyotr Rumyantsev, and a little later (in 1782) the regimental military-administrative structure was liquidated. In the Ukrainian vision, all this, of course, is understood as the destruction of statehood, identity, with subsequent cruel enslavement. And in a simplified understanding, the unification of the system of state administration with the abolition of autonomy (and the subsequent destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich) looks like monarchical tyranny, the strangulation of the original Cossack "privileges". Reflecting on the fate of Little Russia, as well as Livonia and Finland, the empress noted: "These provinces, including Smolensk, must be brought to the point where they become Russified by the easiest means and stop looking like wolves in the forest." And when there is no hetman in Little Russia, Catherine wrote to the prosecutor general Alexander Vyazemsky, "then we must try to ensure that the name of the hetman disappears, not just that some person is created." But we have gathered here, of course, not to repeat stuffy cliches, but to once again delve into the reasons for the political decisions of the 18th century, which, of course, did not have such amazing simplicity as “hatred of everything Ukrainian.” POLISH DIRECTOR First of all, it is worth explaining where the Hetmanate came from and who ruled it. There were four hetmans in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - two crown hetmans in Poland, one in Lithuania, and one who led the Zaporozhian Host. It appeared (if we do not count the legendary period of Dmitry Baida-Vishnevetsky ) after the Union of Lublin in 1569, when the newly created Polish-Lithuanian state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, began to think about stable protection of the “eastern outskirts”, the border of the Wild Field, from Tatar raids. On June 2, 1572, King Sigismund II Augustus signed the corresponding universal, according to which Crown Hetman Jerzy Jazlowiecki hired the first three hundred Cossacks for service. They took an oath of allegiance to the king and were required, in full combat readiness, to repel the invasions of wild Tatars, participate in campaigns (including Moscow) and generally maintain order. They were entered into a special list - a register that confirmed the rights and privileges associated with state service. In the future, almost all "Cossack-peasant uprisings", presented in Soviet and early Ukrainian historiography as a pure struggle for justice, required an expansion of the register. Nikolay Samokish. Attack of Zaporozhian Cossacks on a convoy. 1900s. That is, they fought for wages. And the constantly growing registered army spread its regimental and hundred system over an ever larger territory, starting with the town of Trakhtemyriv on the Dnieper, south of Kyiv, where the Polish king transferred the kleinods, the main military symbols - the banner, the bunchuk, the hetman's mace and the seal. Officially, it was called "His Royal Grace's Zaporozhian Army". Accordingly, having sworn allegiance to the Moscow Tsar in 1654, it became known as "His Royal Majesty's Zaporozhian Army". "Our great sovereign, against his sovereign enemies, has a large and countless army, and its structure is different:... the Don, Terek, and Yaik Cossacks fight with fire; and the Zaporozhian Circassians - with both fire and archery," reported the ambassador to Venice, steward Ivan Chemodanov, in his description of the Russian army. In addition to the registered people, there were also the "lower class" who lived, in fact, in the Zaporizhian Sich, which periodically moved to a new location. Free lawless people who lived from robberies, fishing and simple farming in the farmsteads. The instigators of those very various rebellions for getting into the state, who were also free to choose their hetman. In fact, the nobleman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who suffered from the Polish power, went to them. And the very concept of "Hetmanate", that is, a quasi-state formation under the hand of a military leader, appeared during the war of the "separatist and traitor" against his state. On November 22, 1649, at the six-week Warsaw Sejm, the Zboriv Peace Treaty was ratified between Khmelnytsky and King Jan Kazimierz, following the victory of the Cossack-Tatar army in the Battle of Zboriv. Incidentally, another fact of treason in the eyes of the Poles: the Commonwealth should have been protected from the Tatars, and not attracted to war and plunder. Naturally, here too, one of the main demands was to increase the register to 40 thousand Cossacks, and a separate point was made to record the ownership of the southern border town of Chigirin personally by Khmelnitsky, who expanded his holdings and increased the number of serfs. But most importantly, the territory of the Zaporozhian Host was actually (albeit briefly) officially recognized as an autonomy with broad rights. Its borders included three voivodeships - Bratslav, Kiev and Chernigov. Cossacks were forbidden to be outside these delineated lands, and accordingly, crown troops were not allowed to be stationed on Cossack territory, nor were Jews allowed to conduct any economic activity. As a result, the "Zaporozhian Host with cities and lands" went into service of the Russian Tsardom, and the territory under the control of the hetman (from some point on, two hetmans, right-bank and left-bank) became the Hetmanate. "Ukraine" was a nomadic name, and the more the Ruin devoured the "Ukrainian lands", the more often it was used to refer to the territory of Slobozhanshchina with its center in Kharkov, which was under the control of Moscow. UNNECESSARY LIBERTIES Trust in the politicians of Little Russia and personally in the hetman was seriously undermined by the ugly act of Ivan Mazepa, who became a natural oligarch in the service of Tsar Peter I. And it was not yet widely known that Bohdan himself entered into secret negotiations with the Swedes, who in the middle of the century began to devour Poland, almost immediately after concluding an alliance with Moscow. All the negativity went to his successor Ivan Vyhovsky, who in 1658 concluded the Gadyach Union with the Poles, which crossed out the Pereyaslav Treaty. And Bohdan's son, the weak Yurko, generally placed his bets on Turkey. Catherine's expression "like wolves in the forest" seemed to generalize many similar events. And the tension between the Hetmanate and Moscow had the same basis as in the case of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: according to the concepts of the Cossack elders, they were supposed to receive financing from the overlord, and rule their territory and, in fact, the serfs independently. “Give us as much money as we ask for, and don’t interfere” - approximately the same political tradition has been preserved in Ukraine to this day. For Russian boyars, voivodes and clerks, citizenship meant unconditional obedience, and the cities of the Hetmanate were administered by sent Moscow chiefs who did not take into account either local laws and traditions or the powers of the Hetman administration. Russia has accordingly retained this approach to this day. And in the 17th century, the unbridled behavior of the Cossacks, accustomed to looting and outrages against the civilian population over the long years of war, terribly irritated both the military men and the authorities in St. Petersburg. So the "autonomy", which brought constant problems due to the lack of a sense of proportion, was gradually reduced one way or another. In general, the position of hetman, alien to Peter's Table of Ranks, was already presented to Count Kirill Razumovsky as a favor, and was not a real elective position. The Empress was in a love relationship with his older brother Alexei, and Kirill Grigorievich himself took an active part in preparing the coup d'etat that brought Catherine to the throne. In connection with this, he was promoted to senator and adjutant general. Louis Tocquet. Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky with the hetman's mace. 1758 The real reduction of the hetman's power actually began under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, continued under his son Peter, and continued, primarily concerning financial issues. The first was the cost of maintaining the army and the Russian military administration, which the central government wanted to at least partially shift to the Ukrainian elite. The second was the collection of taxes locally and the movement of "excisable goods" across the customs border, which existed, imagine, even under Elizabeth Petrovna, the youngest daughter of Peter I. The Hetmanate made good money from trading salt, Crimean tobacco and vodka. "Cherkasy wine" of poor purification was popular in the Moscow state due to its cheapness, and from the middle of the 18th century it began to be progressively made from potatoes (or with the addition of potato alcohol), which became a distinctive feature of Ukrainian "gorilka". "In 1754, the empress asked about the abolition of Ukraine's customs immunity. Salt and tobacco were transported through Ukraine in unlimited quantities. Russian customs at other borders controlled these flows, but there was no such control at the border with Ukraine. Tobacco and salt were two items that took away significant revenue items from the empire," notes Kiev historian and researcher of the Cossacks Vladislav Gribovsky. So those who sat on the streams perceived “oppression by Moscow” as a personal insult and a blow to the pocket, and not an attack on statehood. When Catherine II confirmed all the rights and liberties of the Zaporozhian Host, all affairs began to be conducted by the Council of Elders under the actual leadership of the General of the Bagration Semyon Kochubey. Managing, as stated in the universal of Razumovsky, "all military and civil affairs on the basis of Military Laws, former customs and established points in... Little Russian Laws, confirmed by decrees to the Little Russian people." This status provided incredible earnings, interesting information about the property owned by the Kochubey family in the house in Dikanka in 1753 has been preserved. The list of things recorded a huge amount of men's, women's and children's clothing, some of which was decorated with gold, jewelry (rings, beads, earrings), shoes, dishes, weapons, money and other things. The general baggage collector collected all the income from the taverns, and, having barely taken office, submitted a report to the hetman, where he asked to transfer all the income of the regimental artillery to his subordination and to order the artillery servants "to be in my full disposition and to obey my orders in everything." The young hetman sat in St. Petersburg, distributing Ukrainian lands from there "into eternal and hereditary possession," which suited the businessmen completely. Their plan fell apart only after an attempt to implement a project of a constitutional monarchy with the capital in Baturin, where the hereditary dynasty of Razumovskys would reign, limited by a strong parliament. The openly insolent Ukrainian activists who decided to implement the Polish model inside Russia were dispersed, but not offended. In exchange for the lost title of hetman, Razumovsky became a field marshal general, Kochubey received the rank of major general and joined the Collegium, retaining control over artillery and huge land holdings. According to his rank, he was entitled to 400 households, but there were fewer. Therefore, the "infringed Ukrainian" appealed to the empress for justice, and it was restored - soon he owned 477 households in different places. If we talk about the Ukrainian people, then for them all this "destruction of statehood" was perceived rather as a plus - since the time of Bohdan, the gentry thought only about themselves and their incomes, and not about the rights of the rabble and the townspeople. But Catherine, along with the Little Russian Collegium, came up with a Commission in which ordinary Little Russians themselves, without the oligarchs, would express their wishes and needs, how they should live in the new conditions. The Empress's manifesto was brought to the chanceries of all regiments, and was also published in cities, villages and farmsteads. And it must be said that it caused a positive reaction from the population, in contrast to the elite. In a legal sense, the Hetmanate ceased to exist after the decree of 1764, but in fact everything dragged on for several years. The final act was the abolition of the Little Russian Collegium in 1786, during which time Little Russia merged with Great Russia administratively and politically, the Ukrainian gentry became the Russian nobility. By and large, nothing changed for it. But at the national level, the cultural identity that developed during the Polish-Lithuanian period remained. And, by the way, it is very interesting that the liquidation of Malorossiya as an autonomous state in the Cossack-Hetman form also put an end to the name: it was increasingly replaced by "Ukraine". |
| Posted by:badanov |