One of the deputies of the Crimean Parliament told how, when the peninsula was part of Ukraine, he traveled around the Lviv region. His attention was attracted by a well-groomed mound with a cross on top. The escort explained that this was "the grave of a Cossack." When asked how in Galicia, whose inhabitants were always on the Polish side during the wars of the Cossacks with the Poles, a Cossack burial appeared, obviously revered, the “guide” explained that this was an “installation”, that in the barrow, which was poured a year ago, no one not buried.
According to the deputy, such an “art object” is a kind of symbol of Ukrainian historiography, “piled up”, like a false mound, from scratch.
It should be noted that it is based on the unrestrained exploitation of the "Cossack past" of Ukraine. On which, in turn, political constructions are erected.
So, for example, recently the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a bill on renaming the Dnipropetrovsk region into Secheslavskaya (Sicheslavskaya). This innovation is expected within the framework of the law on decommunization, "restoration of historical justice" and the designation of "the role of our ancestors - the Cossacks in the construction of Ukrainian statehood."
However, for the sake of "historical justice" we note that the Cossacks were not engaged in the construction of "Ukrainian statehood", and modern Ukrainians are not their descendants.
Note that the dispute still does not subside who the Cossacks are: an estate, a sub-ethnos or an ethnic group. Without going into the specifics of this difficult dispute, we note that the Cossacks and, in general, all the Dnieper Cossacks at the time when they lived on the territory of modern Ukraine, did not consider the rest of the inhabitants of Little Russia to be their equals or their blood brethren. The Cossacks called themselves "Cherkasy", and not "Ukrainians" or "Little Russians".
Nikolai Gogol in his immortal "Taras Bulba" described in some detail the procedure for receiving new arrivals in the Zaporizhzhya Sich: "You believe in God, you believe in the Holy Trinity, well, cross yourself and go to what you know hut."
However, in this way, the Dnieper or Don Cossacks were accepted into the Sich. Everyone else was treated differently. So, a Catholic or Protestant foreigner (and such people came) could only be accepted after the adoption of Orthodoxy. And then only if he was a “military man” of interest to the Sich: an artilleryman, engineer, gunsmith or seasoned warrior.
The peasant who escaped from the pan was offered to become a "serf of the army." He was allowed to settle on the lands of the Sich, enjoy its protection and rent farmland. For which he had to pay dues to the treasury of the Sich. There was no talk of any admission to the Cossack "partnership".
The situation changed after the start of wars with Poland, which were waged by the Cossacks not for the sake of building "Ukrainian statehood", but in defense of Orthodoxy and their "knightly rights", constantly violated by royal officials and magnates.
Due to the heavy losses of personnel and the general confusion, some Little Russian peasants had a chance to climb to a higher rung of the social ladder, join the community of privileged warriors and “turn out”.
However, this “infusion” did not change either the way of life, or the traditions, or the sense of self of the Cossacks.
The abolition of Catherine the Great Sich began the process of resettlement of the Cossacks and Dnieper Cossacks to the Kuban, Terek, on the territory of other Cossack troops in Russia, which continued until the middle of the 19th century.
The Cossacks, who did not agree with the liquidation of the Sich and went to Turkish territory, also returned from emigration and settled mainly in the Kuban.
That is, the vast majority of the Cossacks and the Dnieper Cossacks moved to the Kuban, transferring here the regalia and traditions of the Sich, and partly its structure. Until now, a significant part of the Kuban villages bears the names of Zaporizhzhya kurens.
Those who remained in Ukraine ceased to be Cossacks both legally and professionally and, ultimately, ethnically.
It is also noteworthy that the Kuban balachka, which is spoken in the Black Sea villages of the Kuban, is not at all a “dialect of the Ukrainian language”, which, in fact, did not exist at the end of the 18th century (it began to be created from different tribal dialects only at the end next nineteenth century), but a dialect of the Russian language.
The tsarist government, interested in the fastest economic development of the Kuban region, which was seriously hampered due to the fact that all the forces of the Cossacks were shackled by the war with the highlanders and participation in foreign campaigns of the Russian army, began to settle peasants in the Kuban. Including from Little Russia. But the peasants from the Chernigov and Poltava provinces were not at all considered by the Cossacks, who had moved from there earlier, as "countrymen". They were called "out-of-towners" and "Khokhls", and their status was similar to that of the "serfs of the army" in the Sich. It was a disgrace for a Cossack to intermarry with "out-of-town" people.
It is no coincidence that during the civil war, it was the “out-of-towners” who became the main support of the Bolsheviks and the worst enemies of the Cossacks. They became one of the most active participants in decossackization.
Added to this was the campaign of forced Ukrainization, which was carried out in the Kuban in the 20-30s of the twentieth century, when all office work and school education in the region was translated into the "Ukrainian" language. And the Cossacks resisted this Ukrainization with all their might.
The Kuban Cossacks consider their compatriots not Ukrainians at all, but Don, Terek and other Cossacks.
It is noteworthy that the descendants of "non-residents" in the Kuban today most often position themselves as descendants of the Cossacks (fortunately, Little Russian and Cossack surnames often coincide) and participate in the revival of the Cossacks.
The attitude of the Kubans, the only heirs of the Zaporizhzhya army and the Dnieper Cossacks, to “Ukrainian statehood” is evidenced by the fact that during the Civil War they smashed the Petliurist gangs, and today they played one of the main roles in the “Crimean spring”. Many Kubans fought and are fighting with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Battalions together with the Don brothers for the freedom of Donbass. And a lot of fighters laid down their heads in this fight.
In other words, they are the only heirs of the Zaporozhian Sich and the Dnieper Cossacks, their glory and traditions. And all the claims of the Kyiv ideologists to the Cossack roots and heritage are untenable. Moreover, the “Svidomo” Ukrainians renounced the main achievements of the Dnieper Cossacks, the preservation of Orthodoxy in the southwestern Russian lands and their reunification with the rest of Russia.
How to steal a big piece of history?
To steal something unnoticed - it's best to do it in front of everyone.
This is how a huge layer of its history has been successfully and successfully stolen from Russia for quite a long time, which now, moreover, they are trying to use with might and main against it.
One of the most famous symbols of the Euromaidan was the "Cossack Gavrilyuk" - a native of the Chernivtsi hinterland, who became famous thanks to an amateur video in which a naked Gavrilyuk stands next to several fighters of the internal troops on Hrushevsky Street, one of whom gives him a slap on the back of the head, after which the "activist" goes to car. This video caused a storm of indignation, both among the Maidanites and in the West. What happened to Gavrilyuk, who was released fairly quickly, was called terrible torture. He landed in a pre-trial detention center, and then received a term, albeit a suspended one, but a contract soldier of the internal troops, who gave him a cuff on the head, who has a small child and a pregnant wife. No one wanted to hear the voices of the security forces, who told that Gavrilyuk's clothes were soaked with a mixture for Molotov cocktails, and he himself fell into the hands of the VVs after setting fire to and injuring several policemen with an ice pick. Nobody cares. Gavrilyuk is now a national hero of the Maidan and, it seems, even the commander of a new punitive battalion operating in the Southeast. The personality of Gavrilyuk is a topic for a separate discussion.
I was interested in something else. Namely, his Cossack status. Gavrilyuk was born and spent his whole life in Bukovina, the region that first became part of Ukraine thanks to the efforts of Joseph Stalin in 1940. At the same time, its inhabitants learned that they, it turns out, were Ukrainians ... After the weakening of the ties of this region with the Old Russian state, Bukovina was part of the Golden Horde, Hungary, Moldova, Austria and Romania. There has never been any Cossacks on these lands and could not be! But in recent decades, the myth of the organic connection between "Ukrainian" and "Cossacks" has taken root in the public mind. Moreover, it is so strong that even Ukrainians in the first or second generation (as I said, the grandparents of Bukovinian Gavrilyuk, most likely did not even know that they were Ukrainians) arrogate to themselves the right to be Cossacks. This is at least shocking for real Cossacks ...
The Cossacks generally turned into a saving wand for Ukrainian nationalists and national fascists. As perhaps the only way to find independent origins in the "Ukrainian nation" and "Ukrainian state" before the twentieth century. The Cossacks, as a phenomenon, are generally presented as a stage in the formation of "Ukrainian statehood" in the textbooks of the history of Ukraine. But, if we look into this issue seriously, then we stumble upon blatant lies and banal theft.
Let's try to list the famous in the history of the Cossacks. Well, Zaporozhye. Well, for example, the short-lived Bugskoe. What next? Don. Kuban. Terskoe. Ural. Amur. Ussuri. Volga. Siberian. There was the Yakut city Cossack unit and the Kamchastka city Cossack equestrian team! The list can go on. But we already got a general idea of the geographical aspect of the Cossack phenomenon. As part of the territories on which the Cossacks lived and acted, the lands of modern Ukraine did not occupy even five percent! The vast majority of the Cossacks are Russian phenomena!
But where does such a symbolic link to Ukraine come from? Did the Zaporozhye Cossacks have any fundamental significance when the Cossack phenomenon appeared? And what did it have to do with Ukraine?
Let's take a look at the history of the issue. Historians cannot make an unambiguous conclusion about the origin of the Cossacks, as such. But practically all researchers agree that this phenomenon is rooted either in the times of the Old Russian state, or even more ancient. Some see them as the descendants of the Khazars, mixed with the Russians, and settled in the North Caucasus and the Don after the defeat of Khazaria. Others are the heirs of the black hoods. Still others are the descendants of the "Slavicized" Iranian-speaking nomads - the Scythians and Sarmatians (this is also evidenced by linguistic data). Still others see them as the "grandchildren" of ancient Russian border guards who remained to live on the southern border even after the collapse of the state...
What do reliable sources tell us?
There are no direct indications of the Cossacks in the annals of the Kievan Rus period, although there are many indirect ones.
In 1303, the word "Cossack" in the meaning of "guardian" appears in the dictionary of the Polovtsian language.
The text from Sugdeya (Crimea) dates back to 1308: "On the same day, the servant of God Almalchu, the son of Samak, died, alas, a young man stabbed to death by the Cossacks."
In the Pskov chronicles of 1406, nicknames and surnames are mentioned - derivatives of the word "Cossack".
Since the first half of the 15th century, the Cossacks have been regularly mentioned in various chronicles. There are references to "Ryazan Cossacks" who helped Ryazan and Muscovites against the Tatars.
With all the desire - there is no link either to Ukraine, which was not even in the project, or even to the territory that today is part of it ...
Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, according to the most daring estimates, began to form at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century.
The beginning of active activity of the Cossacks dates back approximately to the middle of the 16th century.
And from the end of the 16th century, they began to take an active part in the national liberation (or rather, religious liberation) war of the Orthodox Slavic population of the Dnieper region against the Catholic Commonwealth.
And here the most curious thing begins - and the most inconvenient for modern Ukrainophiles-European integrators. In the 16th century, as a result of the Unions of Brest and Lublin, most of the territory of modern Ukraine was declared Polish, and the Orthodox Church in this territory was resubordinated to the Pope of Rome, becoming "Uniate" - part of the Catholic Church. The ordinary population - the "buckwheat farmers" - had a hard time under the "European integrators". From torture, executions and forced Catholicization, it fled to the Cossacks, who considered themselves a fundamentally different class, but they accepted the fugitives. Thanks to the common faith. And also - thanks to the fact that they considered them ... the same Russians (Russians) as they themselves!
For 70-80 years, the Poles got the local Orthodox so that a global uprising led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky began in the Sich and the Dnieper region.
After a year of successful battles, at the beginning of 1649, Khmelnitsky told the Poles literally the following:
"I am a small, inconspicuous person, but God has given me, and from now on I am the sole owner of the Russian autocrat ... I will free the entire Russian people from Polish captivity, if I fought before for myself, then from now on I am fighting for our Orthodox faith ... ... I am free to dispose of it there , my Kyiv, I am the owner and governor of Kyiv, God gave it to me ... with the help of my saber."
That's it! Neither more nor less! Hetman Khmelnitsky - considered himself Russian! However, as, apparently, and all the other Cossacks. And he also called the lands of modern Ukraine Russian ... In the textbooks of the history of Ukraine, this is not mentioned today ...
Moreover, since 1648, Khmelnitsky, on behalf of the Cossacks, wrote letters to the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with a request to take them "under his hand." In 1653, a "positive answer" was given to these petitions. And in 1654, the Zaporizhzhya Army (together with the "land of Rus"), according to the results of the Pereyaslav Rada, went under the arm of the Russian tsar.
One of the most brilliant creations about the struggle of the Cossacks against the Polish oppression is "Taras Bulba" by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, a brilliant Russian writer, born in the Poltava province - and descended from the old Cossack family of hetman Ostap Gogol.
I don't think it's necessary to recall the plot of the story. So. It never (!) mentions the word "Ukrainian", as well as "Ukraine". The spelling is used - "Ukraine" (the difference is eloquent). But the territory of modern Ukraine, the Cossacks in it is repeatedly called the "Russian land". There is a wonderful phrase:
"...as they already did with the hetman and the best Russian knights in Ukraine."
And also:
"Let the Orthodox Russian land stand for eternity and be honored forever!"
“Do you think there is anything in the world that the Cossack would be afraid of? Wait, the time will come, the time will come, you will know what the Russian Orthodox faith is! there will be no power in the world that would not submit to him!
Taras Bulba, the brightest literary symbol of the Zaporozhye Cossacks, sincerely considered himself Russian!
But no one stubbornly wants to see and notice this ...
Today, under the pretext of "Ukrainianism" of the Cossacks, hotheads from the "Right Sector" and other similar organizations are making claims to the Don and Kuban. Like, since the Cossacks, it means the Ukrainians.
But how would the local Cossacks themselves react to such claims? We now open Sholokhov:
He sat on a horse with an awkward seat inherent in non-Cossacks, dangled at a trot with torn elbows, and, accompanied by the annoying cries of the Cossacks playing in the lane, rode at a hectic trot.
Little crest!
Crest!.. Crest!..
You will fall!..
A dog on a wattle fence! .. - the children shouted after him. "
What is unity??? The Ukrainian spirit is immediately felt...
Or this:
“That’s why we went to the station several carts together, and then, meeting in the steppe, we weren’t afraid to get into a squabble.
Hey crest! Come on road! You live on Cossack land, you bastard, but don't you want to give way?
It was also hard for the Ukrainians, who brought wheat to the Don to the Paramonovskaya sack. Here the fights started for no reason, simply because the "crest"; and since "crest" - it is necessary to beat.
The difference, of course, is rather not national - but class. This was how they treated "non-Cossacks", peasants who came from the West, but the fact itself is very characteristic.
The Cossacks, the large Cossacks, including the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks - whether someone likes it or not - is a Russian phenomenon. And it has nothing to do with the "Euro-Ukrainianism" now preached in Kyiv and Lvov. And to dress up as Cossacks to Maidan Gavrilyuk from Bukovina is the same as dressing up as pirates or cowboys. The latter, by the way, taking into account the values preached and the origin of sponsorship, would be much more appropriate.
Our history is part of us. And it's hardly the most important. By allowing it to be stolen, we put the enemy into the hands of a weapon against ourselves. And, speaking the truth, we win.
Attempts to compare the Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks have been made for a long time and at the same time were rarely correct.
In recent years, when everything Russian in Ukraine has been declared “hostile,” “wrong,” or, conversely, “stolen from Ukrainians,” there can be no question of any objective comparison.
However, we will still try to find the main differences between those people who in different centuries in two neighboring lands called themselves Cossacks.
Naturally, it will not be about who wore bloomers - but who wore breeches with red stripes, and not about the presence or absence of “settlers” on the Cossack heads (with whom, according to the chronicles, the soldiers of Prince Svyatoslav of Kyiv were the first to show off - common ancestors both nations). Let's talk about things, so to speak, fundamental and most important.
loyalty to the oath
The Russian Cossacks were not in vain called in the Empire the support of the throne and order. In the suppression of all sorts of riots and troubles in Russia, they took an active part until the fall of the monarchy, and even after that, tens of thousands fought and died for the White movement.
At the same time, one cannot fail to recall that two uprisings of the Cossacks themselves at one time shook Russia more than all the “peasant wars” taken together. This, of course, is about the events associated with the names of Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. The Cossacks knew how to rebel, and how! But…
After the Don Cossacks took the oath of allegiance to the Sovereign with the kiss of the cross, there could be no talk of any conspiracies and riots in it! Word - E.P. Savelyev, author of the book "The Ancient History of the Cossacks":
“The Don army ... as a direct, direct and honest people, and, moreover, sincerely religious, tried to the best of its ability to fulfill its obligations. Any slightest violation of this oath, even in individual cases, was considered a great crime, a shame for the entire army ... ".
The Ukrainian Cossacks were in this respect the exact opposite of their Russian counterparts. Antipodes, one might say! With whom only they did not conclude agreements “on eternal friendship”, to whom they did not swear allegiance, and to what rulers they did not swear allegiance ... So that later they would break all their own oaths at the first opportunity that turned up.
"Patriotic" historians of Ukraine can repeat as much as they want that Hetman Mazepa was anathema by the Orthodox Church for "wanting to make Ukrainians free" (which in itself is nonsense, because Mazepa simply sold her to the King of Sweden!).
But the truth is that the hetman was cursed by the church for betraying not the tsar, but just the oath given to him, which was considered absolutely inviolable in those centuries - the kiss of the cross. This oath, in fact, was given not to the Sovereign, but to God - hence the punishment.
However, Ukrainian Cossacks showed such a “free attitude” to their obligations (eternal and inviolable, but how!) Not only with the sovereigns of Russia, but also with the Commonwealth, as well as other European monarchs. There is nothing to say about all sorts of khans and sultans. These guys were real "masters of their word": they gave themselves - they themselves took them back ...
Collaboration with foreign invaders
From the previous point, the following smoothly follows - aiding various foreign hordes and, speaking in modern terms, "military cooperation" with those. Mazepa, already mentioned above, with his sale to the Swedish king Charles, is a well-known example.
Much less historians liked to remember (especially in Soviet times, so as not to destroy the "friendship of peoples") about the terrible and bloody role that the Ukrainian Cossacks played in the Time of Troubles, together with the Poles, robbing, killing, raping and burning everything that was possible on Russia.
Their horde, led by Sagaidachny and Doroshenko, rampaged from Putivl (now the territory of Ukraine) to Moscow, leaving behind a terrible and shameful memory.
Even less is said about the fact that the descendants of the Cossacks, considered the "standard" of the Ukrainian Cossacks, for many years, more precisely, centuries, diligently and diligently served the Ottoman Empire.
And by no means engaged in arable farming. The Cossacks of the so-called Second and Third Sich, founded on the territory of Turkey by renegades, participated in the Russian-Turkish wars on the side of the Ottoman port, and under its banner suppressed the uprising in Greece in 1821, shedding rivers of Orthodox blood.
There is only one shameful stain on the conscience of the Russian Cossacks - cooperation with the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. There's nothing you can do about it - no matter how some historians try to put a “base” under this infamy in the form of revenge for “decossackization” and other cruelties committed by the Bolsheviks in the same Don and Kuban, there can be no justification for cooperation with the Nazis and never.
However, I emphasize again - the Russian Cossacks (and even then - far from the majority of them) found themselves under enemy banners once. For Ukrainians, this was a completely normal practice.
Mercenary
It is not surprising that with such an attitude to morality, mercenarism was the most common thing for the Ukrainian Cossacks. The Russian Cossacks fought for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland. They could even fight among themselves...
But, exclusively for money - never! Russian Cossacks were not mercenaries. Ukrainian "knights" were noted throughout Europe and beyond. And even in this field, they managed to gain, to put it mildly, not the best fame.
The wars in Saxony, Luxembourg, France, Austria, the Balkans and Moldova are far from a complete list of places where Ukrainian Cossacks acted as "soldiers of fortune".
At the same time, their motto was - "Cossacks do not fight on credit!" As soon as one of the employers delayed payments, or gave out too little, in the opinion of the Cossacks, the amount, they calmly abandoned the war and went home. But this is the best! They could easily go over to the side of the enemy.
This is exactly what half of the Cossacks, hired in Ukraine by the French Cardinal Mazarin, did for the war against the Huguenots settled in La Rochelle and their allies - the Spaniards.
After the capture of Dunkirk, offended by the employer (seemingly "thrown" them with money), half of the "knights" returned home, and the second ... went over to the Spaniards. Those, apparently, paid well, and according to some historians, the Ukrainian Cossacks fought on their side against the French for another ten years.
With all this, the fighting qualities of the Cossack mercenaries, extolled by some, were more than doubtful. Being, in essence, nothing more than irregular light cavalry, they had discipline and training, speaking in the present, "below the plinth", but they were unusually prone to looting and robbery.
native blood
No matter how the Russian Cossacks, who were by no means distinguished by meekness of temper and softness of character, fought with whips, there were no cases of mass shedding of blood by them before the Civil War, in general, there were.
Well, perhaps, with the exception of all the same riots of Razin and Pugachev. However, this, too, can be said to have been civil wars in miniature ... The Russian Cossacks are reproached for particular cruelty, except perhaps in relation to “foreigners” and “gentiles”.
Not at all the Ukrainian Cossacks. At one time, they especially liked to “frolic” on the territory of present-day Belarus, which then, by the way, like Ukraine, was part of the Commonwealth. The Cossack chieftains Koshka and Kutskovich, who were actually sent by the Polish king on a campaign against Sweden, plundered Vitebsk and Polotsk by storm.
At the suggestion of modern Ukrainian historians, the phrase "Ukrainian Cossacks" has firmly entered our lexicon and began to acquire various enthusiastic epithets: "original national phenomenon", "exclusively Ukrainian phenomenon", etc.
"Svidomi" do not even notice the fact that the Cossacks on the Don are mentioned in the sources a few years earlier than in Zaporozhye, and even if it is determined: the Don people are Russians, the Cossacks are Ukrainians, then the Cossack priority will go to our northern neighbor. One overexposure is followed by another: already all the Cossacks, without exception, are declared Ukrainians and on this basis maps of the "Ethnographic Borders of Ukraine" appear, including the Kuban, Don, Stavropol, Voronezh. Well, if you try to take a closer look at the "Ukrainian Cossacks" - how Ukrainian was it?
In the Cossack register of the times of the Khotyn War of 1621, Moses Pisarok and Tsetsyura Semrok are listed among the colonels. A few years later, in 1625, a major Cossack uprising took place in Ukraine, led by hetman Mark Izmail. In later historical literature, he was slightly Ukrainized and now he is in all textbooks as Marko Zhmailo. But in early sources he is listed precisely as Ishmael. A few more years later, returning from the Crimean campaign of 1628, the Cossacks elected Moizernitsa as hetman instead of the deceased Doroshenko. In the 1630s, Ilya Karaimovich (hetman in 1633 and 1637) was known among the registered Cossack officers. The author has serious doubts about the Ukrainian nationality of these Cossack leaders. In my subjective opinion, they rather belonged to the Jewish nation.
Professional historians are well aware that the famous associate of Khmelnytsky, Colonel Morozenko, who was famous in the national Duma, was in fact a Polish gentry named Stanislav Mrozovetsky. Many historians, for example, Kostomarov, whose simple listing of names leads to certain thoughts: Jan Orishovsky, Vojtech Chanovitsky, Samuil Zborovsky, Kirik Ruzhinsky, Kryshtof Kosinsky, Kryshtof Nechkovsky, Nikolay Zatsvilihovsky, Arkovsky, Krempsky, Pyrsky, etc. Their nationality is not in doubt - they are Poles.
In 1641, the Cossack ataman Stenka Voloshenin was mentioned (at that time the Moldavians were called Volochs). Known in the 1640s Colonel Filon Jalaliy is a Tatar by origin. Special mention must be made of the Russians. In the described period (XVI-XVII centuries) it is generally impossible to draw a firm dividing line between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, because they simply have not yet formed. And in general, then, nationality was no longer determined by blood, but by views, ideology (religion), so that all Orthodox were "Russians" (the word "Ukrainian" appeared 200 years later). In addition, here we are faced with the problem of sources. From Grushevsky, a version went for a walk that the Russian chroniclers, writing down the names of Ukrainian figures, Russified them and in order to restore justice, they must be back Ukrainized. This is how it turned out from the chronicle hetman Kolenik Ondreev - Kalenik Andrievich, and from the first printer Ivan Fedorov - Ivan Fedorovich. We will not deny the possibility of such a distortion, but within the framework of a pluralism of opinions, the author has the right to assume that there were Great Russians among the Cossack leaders. Ivanovs and Petrovs with Great Russian names, which were also recorded by the chroniclers. And now there is no need to turn them into Ivanovichs and Petrenoks. Moreover, there are examples when in one document they go in a row: Stepan Khomenko, Moisey Avdeev, Vasily Grigoriev, Ivan Vasiliev (Zaporozhye registered Cossacks) or "Yakushko Yakimov and Philip Parashilenko". Sources have preserved the names of the Cossacks quite cleanly for us: Zhdan Konshin, Vlas Ivankiev, Ondros Telesov, Pavel Belyaev.
Let's note that there was never any "iron curtain" or stone wall between Zaporozhye and Don, there was a constant exchange of population between them; as Colonel Shafran (and many others) testified in 1626, several hundred Cossacks lived permanently on the Don, and "in the zaporizhia" - Don people. One of the first Don atamans was Mishka Cherkashin (at that time Ukrainians were called Cherkasy). The Cossacks went on campaigns against the Turks together, together they rebelled against the Polish or Russian government (this is also confirmed by many documents).
One may ask why all this is being written, because among the Cossacks there were still plenty of Doroshenok, Tomilyonok and Orandarenok? We do not deny that there were indeed many of them, perhaps even the majority. But this is not a reason to enroll ALL Cossacks in the Ukrainians. The Cossacks are not a nation, but a special military service class. And, like any class, it was absolutely international in composition.
Anyone could become a Cossack - Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tatar, Jew. Nothing prevented the Ukrainians from becoming Cossacks and even, as we see, from occupying command posts (there are even more foreigners among ordinary Cossacks). Therefore, dividing the Cossacks into "Ukrainian" and "Russian" is stupid and pointless. The Cossacks were either the only one as an estate, or an incredible mixture - in terms of national composition. And if anyone was impatient to divide them, then only on a geographical basis: there were Zaporizhzhya, Kuban, Don, Yaik Cossacks, there were even Ryazan and Tatar (XV century), who fought among themselves. And for those who like to equate the Cossacks and Ukrainians, we recommend re-reading A. Rigelman's Chronicle of Little Russia, which lists in detail the differences between the Little Russians (Ukrainians) and the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks: "The Sechev Cossacks made a notch on the Dnieper and put huts in it the great ones, calling them kurens, began to live... each one, according to the inclination of his craft in fish, beast and honey, abounded... in many of his arbitrariness, outrages. the incessant themselves made embarrassment into internecine strife and often killed themselves, from which the koshevoi and the foreman, in great fear, always had, for all that, the two charters that Zaporozhye had: a life without a woman and cruel punishment by domestic thieves ... They were Cossacks everywhere rude. On the contrary, Ukrainian Cherkasy or the Little Russian people, such as the nobility, the Cossacks and the Commonwealth, lead their lives very differently. in echkas, villages and farms, they produce arable farming, garden sowing, orchards and bagchi, do all kinds of arts, crafts and auctions. In bypass are pleasant and affectionate. This people is of a cheerful disposition, loves music and other gaiety. Almost all of them dance in Polish, and even more so in their Cherkasy know how ... ".
Julius FEDOROVSKII - historian, associate professor of the East Ukrainian University named after. V.Dalya, Lugansk
(the ending)
II. The Cossacks on the outskirts of the Lithuanian-Polish state were formed quite a long time ago. With the advent of the Crimean Horde, free communities of Cossacks began to appear on the steppe borders of the Lithuanian-Polish, as if the border police to fight the Tatars. The Cossacks not only fought off the Tatar raids on Lithuania and Poland, but also attacked the Crimea and Turkey themselves. They were considered subjects of Lithuania and Poland, but did not obey their state. Their fight against the Tatars was generally useful for the state, but their robberies on the Black Sea led to major troubles for Poland from Turkey and the Crimea. Both circumstances forced the Polish government in the 16th century. seriously think about how to take the Cossacks under the supervision and control of the state. The Polish authorities tried to form their own government detachments from the Cossacks and with their help gradually restore order on the outskirts of the steppe. At the same time, they encouraged the gentry colonization of Ukraine, thanks to which the free population of Ukraine - "Cossacks" - turned into "claps" or serfs, and the usual social order for Poland was established in Ukraine. Thanks to the activities of the kings of the 16th century, the Cossacks, who were put into service, developed a certain self-government by the end of the 16th century: they elected a hetman, a military foreman (judge, clerk, colonels, etc.) and were divided into regiments (districts), but in the regiments there were only a certain number (600) of full-fledged Cossacks, called registered, that is, listed in the lists (registers). The rest of the population of the Dnieper region was considered, as it were, simple peasants. In 1590, special restrictive measures were taken against him in order to curb his willfulness; non-registered Cossacks were included in the cotton and began to be given, along with the lands, to the Polish gentry, who settled in Cossack Ukraine. Meanwhile, it was on the Dnieper that the peasantry escaped from this very clapping, from the intensified oppression of Poland and the pans, leaving Poland and Lithuania.
Features of the Polish system were established in Ukraine after the Union of Lublin in 1569, when it became a Polish region. But at the same time, these features began to triumph throughout the entire Lithuanian state, and in Poland itself, the aristocratic order of the nobility was marked by more and more sharp features. These circumstances caused an intensified eviction of discontented people from the middle of the state to the southern steppe, and the Polish government tried hard to take possession of this steppe. Thus, Ukraine ceased to be a haven for the discontented just when their number increased, and this caused major public unrest. Non-registered Cossacks from the hands of the pans went south, closer to the Tatars, and formed a kind of stronghold of the Cossacks beyond the thresholds of the Dnieper - Sich Zaporizhzhya. The Cossack tradition grew stronger there, the struggle with the Mohammedan world continued, and all those dissatisfied with the state order in Poland and Ukraine rushed there. When Poland decided to lay hands on Zaporozhye, a number of well-known Cossack uprisings arose. Under the leadership of their hetmans (Kosinsky, Loboda, Nalivaiko, Taras, Pavlyuk, Ostranya), the Cossacks rushed to Poland, acting in the name of the religious and civil independence of the Russian people. These uprisings did not succeed, and the Poles even ruined the Sich, took Ukraine stronger and stronger, crushed the people more and more. After the pacification of the indignation, the influx of the Polish element - pans and priests - into Ukraine usually increased, and the Cossacks turned into serfs of these newcomers. Such an order, of course, could not satisfy the inhabitants of Ukraine, the common misfortune more closely connected the Cossacks with the flakes; the uprisings took on the character not exclusively of the Cossacks, but of the Zemstvo, and were supported by the peasants of all Western Russia.
By the middle of the XVII century. discontent not only beyond the thresholds, but throughout Ukraine has increased to an extreme degree. When in 1648, with the help of the Crimean Tatars, the military clerk Bogdan Khmelnitsky raised a new uprising of the Cossacks, all of Ukraine, both Cossack and peasant, took his side. The entire nation rose up for people's freedom and faith. In a word, the results of the religious and social Polish regime had an effect. With the help of the Tatars, Khmelnitsky defeated the Poles and, near Zborov, forced King Jan Casimir to agree to the return of his former liberties to the Cossacks. The number of registered Cossacks was increased to 40,000. But this could not satisfy Ukraine, because the whole of Ukraine rebelled, and the position of some Cossacks improved, while the rest of the Russians and Orthodox people had to again become under the rule of the Poles. Therefore, the uprising rose again, and Khmelnitsky was again at the head. An ally of the Cossacks, the Crimean Khan, betrayed Khmelnitsky, and under Belaya Tserkov, an agreement unfavorable for the Cossacks was concluded with the Poles, which reduced the number of Cossacks by 20,000. It was clear to Khmelnitsky that the matter would not end there: but it was also clear that Ukraine did not forces alone to fight against Poland. The most natural thing was to seek help in Moscow of the same faith.
In 1651, Khmelnitsky turned to Tsar Alexei with a request to take "Little Russia under his hand." Moscow did not immediately decide to annex this Polish region and, therefore, to go to war with Poland. Tsar Alexei interceded diplomatically for Little Russia, but this did not lead to anything. Khmelnytsky was forced to fight again and again asked Moscow for citizenship. Then the Zemsky Sobor in Moscow decided in 1653 to accept Little Russia, and on January 8, 1654, Ukraine swore allegiance to Tsar Alexei. The number of registered Cossacks was determined at 60,000. Little Russia was left with its social structure and self-government, the hetman - the right of diplomatic relations (except for Polish and Turkish). The combined forces of Ukraine and Moscow inflicted on the Poles in 1654-1656. a series of strong defeats that put Poland on the brink of death, especially since the Swedes were advancing on it at the same time. But Poland was saved by the discord between Russia and Sweden and achieved a truce with Russia, ceding the Little Russian and Belarusian lands.
Pereyaslav Rada 1654 Unification of Ukraine with Russia. Painting by M. Khmelko, 1951
So Moscow acquired Russian lands, long lost by Russia. But keeping these lands was not easy given the difficulties that were created by both Little Russia itself and its neighbors. In Little Russia, the entire second half of the 17th century. was a time of turmoil; in this previously unsettled Cossack Ukraine in the 16th and 17th centuries. under the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian state, a certain social order developed; next to the Cossacks, free, recorded in the registers, the Polish panship appears, enslaving the Cossacks who were not recorded in the registers; the urban population is multiplying, which received special rights from among the Cossacks themselves, a class of more prosperous and influential people stands out - the "foreman", who seeks to identify himself with the nobility. When Ukraine separated from Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian nobility disappeared from Little Russia, the new owners of the noble lands ("foreman") seek to stand out from the Cossacks "either in the form of the Polish gentry, or in the form of the Moscow nobility," in the words of S. M. Solovyov. Their striving for dominance in the country is rebuffed by the rest of the mass of the Cossacks who have freed themselves from panism. Between the democratic Cossacks and the foreman there is a dull struggle. Little Russian cities care only about the approval of their rights by Moscow, and where their interests clash with those of the Cossacks, they do not spare the latter. The clergy act like cities. In Little Russia, everything goes apart and each social group seeks from Moscow the best provision of exclusively its own interests to the detriment of others. In this "war of all against all" Moscow had to play the role of a conciliator and pacifier, satisfying some and arousing the discontent of others. Moscow was slowly coping with its task in Little Russia, having no firm foothold in the country and asserting its influence only on the sympathies of the democratic strata, while the upper strata of the population were mostly drawn to Poland with its aristocratic warehouse. Despite the constant turmoil - the "betrayal" of the Little Russians to Moscow, Moscow clings tightly to Little Russia and binds it more and more tightly to itself (especially the left bank of the Dnieper). Already in 1657, the Cossack foreman began to make himself known to Moscow. Upon the death of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the hetmanship was seized by the clerk Ivan Vyhovsky, a man of Polish sympathies, a representative of the Cossack elders. But the Poltava colonel Martyn Pushkar, ordinary Cossacks and Zaporozhye stood up against him.
Civil strife began, in which Pushkar died and Vygovsky triumphed. In 1658, Vyhovsky was transferred to Poland and in 1659 inflicted a terrible defeat on the Moscow troops near Konotop. But he was overthrown by the Cossacks themselves, and Yuri Khmelnitsky (son of Bogdan) became the hetman, who swore allegiance to Moscow, but when the second war broke out between Moscow and Poland, he was transferred to the Poles. However, the left side of the Dnieper remained loyal to Moscow and elected in 1662 a special hetman, the Cossack Bryukhovetsky. According to the Andrusovo truce in 1667 between Poland and the Muscovite state, the left-bank Ukraine remained forever with Moscow. Bryukhovetsky appeared as a submissive subject and himself worked to reduce Little Russian autonomy. But this caused general discontent in Ukraine, which in 1668 led Bryukhovetsky himself to fall away from Moscow. Lacking a firm policy, Bryukhovetsky soon died in unrest, and the population of the left bank was again drawn to Moscow, not wanting the Polish order. The representative of these democratic sympathies was Hetman Mnohohrishny, whom the foreman managed to overthrow by slandering in Moscow. Only from 1672, with the hetmanate Ivan Samoilovich, internal calm set in on the left bank of the Dnieper. But there was an external danger. The right Polish side of the Dnieper was transferred from Poland to Turkey. The Turkish Sultan Mohammed IV in 1672 undertook a campaign to conquer all of Ukraine, thus began Moscow's war with the Turks, which lasted until 1681; its theater was the right bank of the Dnieper, which Moscow failed to acquire, but it firmly took possession of the left bank. And that was already a huge success. The annexation of Little Russia was the first important offensive step of the Muscovite state in relation to Poland. Until now, Moscow has almost always been on the defensive, and the preponderance of forces was for the most part on the side of Poland; From that moment on, the relations between the neighbors change completely. Moscow, clearly, is stronger than Poland and is advancing on it, taking revenge for past insults and returning its ancient lands. At the same time, until recently exhausted by turmoil, it is now growing every year in the eyes of its other neighbors and gaining more and more diplomatic weight, despite its internal difficulties. The Moscow diplomats who acted at that time could be quite satisfied with their activities.
