Military intellectuals have finally become convinced at the turn of the third millennium that the most effective weapon to fight the enemy is so-called psychological and informational warfare. Yet, as the maxim goes, everything new is something old but forgotten. Various peoples and countries have waged this kind of war since time immemorial. It is none other than the prominent statesman and general, the glorious Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who was the first in modern world history to resort to this in Central and Eastern Europe.
Upholding the traditions of the Cossack military art laid down by Severyn Nalyvaiko, Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, Mykhailo Doroshenko, and Ivan Sulyma, Khmelnytsky attached paramount importance to a strong intelligence service when forming his army. Modern historical research shows that the very first years of the 1648-1654 Ukrainian War of National Liberation saw this department establish its organizational structure, objectives, and targets, as well as constantly improving its techniques.
By spreading disinformation through the intelligence and counterintelligence service, the hetman tried to instill indecision and panic in enemy troops. In his public addresses and instructions to scouts, he insisted that the enemy camp should be engulfed in a sensation of doom, tension, and uncertainty. It is for the first time that the principles of the psychological warfare were applied practically in the nation’s military art. The Ukrainian hetman employed these methods during the crucial battles of Korsun, Pyliava, Zboriv, and Berestechko.
For example, on the eve of the victorious Battle of Korsun in late May 1648, Khmelnytsky managed to withhold information on the true state of affairs in his camp and spread false rumors about his army’s strength. As a result, Polish commander Potocki began to avoid battle, lost the strategic initiative, and suffered a psychological defeat well before the battle itself.
The psychological factor also decided the victorious outcome of the Battle of Pyliava in September of the same year. By successfully maneuvering, Khmel nytsky created unfavorable conditions for the Polish troops to take a defensive position. This in turn caused irresolution in the Polish crown’s command, and this also reflected on the soldiers. A Polish participant in those events wrote in his diary, “...There is no discipline, no authority of commanders in the camp. There were shots and shouts in the night after the lights-out signal, and nobody was penalized for this because all were gripped by the same fear, so there was no order at all.” Moreover, on the second day of the battle, September 22, a Cossack disguised as a priest by order of Khmelnytsky was “taken prisoner” by the Poles. In spite of torture, he said tens of thousands of Tatars had joined Khmelnytsky. In reality, the allied troops were not more than five thousand strong. The hetman welcomed them with an extremely lavish cannon and musket salute. This fact plus the previous disinformation brought about a terrible rumor among the Poles that Khmelnytsky was joined by a Crimean horde of 30,000!
Phony POWs were also repeatedly sent to the enemy at the war’s later stages. This became an important element of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s psychological warfare. For the enemy could not imagine that the courageous Cossack prisoners, subjected to cruel tortures, would tell pre arranged information in favor of the Ukrainians. When, fighting against Danylo Nechai’s regiments during the Zbarazh-Zboriv campaign, Polish general Lanckoronski received information from false prisoners that the Cossack colonel was being rescued by the Cossack army’s main body headed by Khmelnytsky himself, he ordered his troops to retreat from Starokostiantyniv. Clearly, this was a pure hoax, but it enabled Nechai to gain sufficient space for further operations. Consider what the Polish eyewitness S. Oswiencim’s account of what Khmelnytsky’s psychological pressure led to, “Relying on prisoners alone (it took the army quite an effort to capture them), we could never get the real truth. This was quite an important reason why decisions were often changed. For when one prisoner said Khmelnytsky was approaching us, and we became petrified, felt into despair, and started to prepare ourselves for defense — but he did not show one or two days, then another POW told us something opposite to what the first had said...”
Sources reveal that one of Europe’s most grandiose intelligence operations was conducted in the winter of 1651 under the general supervision of the Ukrainian hetman and direct guidance of the Cossack officer Tarasenko (Stasenko). About 2000 Ukrainian spies were sent to the Polish Kingdom to collect all kinds of information, commit acts of sabotage, and provoke an uprising. They were also ordered to spread rumors about the Khmelnytsky army’s extraordinary combat power and thus cause panic among the local population. Most of the Cossack agents (incidentally, there were women among them) on this important mission were disguised as beggars, cripples, traveling circus actors, kobza players, and, in some cases, priests, pilgrims, monks, or nuns.
The father of psychological warfare arranged that the Polish command knew very little about his plans on the eve of the Battle of Berestechko. In June 21, 1651, Polish nobleman A. Miaskowski noted that “nothing was known for sure about Khmelnytsky’s intentions. Some expected him to attack us on the march, when crossing the river, or suddenly at night. Others say he will offer resistance — with all his usual perfidy — to His Majesty the King near Vyshnivets. Still others think he will send several tens of thousands [of Cossacks] to Pidhirtsi to join forces with [Transylvanian Prince] Rakoczi.”
During the war, Khmelnytsky established a three-tier structure to supervise intelligence agents: the hetman, the intelligence service head, and local station chiefs. Local spy rings were also formed. For example, eighty agents operated in a Polish region under the supervision of Ukrainian station chief Hzhybovsky. In addition, the hetman managed to form spy rings in Warsaw and Vilna, capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which timely supplied necessary information of both a political and military nature. After 1654, the Ukrainian intelligence service carried out a brilliant operation, as a result of which the Cossack intelligence agent Lukyan Hryhorovych (Lytvyn), a physician by profession, was employed in what we would now call the foreign ministry in Moscow.
Important politico-military information also came to Chyhyryn from other places like Turkey, the Crimea, Hungary, and Wallachia. Ukrainian spies successfully cooperated with their Swedish and Transylvanian counterparts on the territory of Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Austria. Great success was achieved in recruiting agents who represented diverse social strata and groups, ethnic groups, and faiths. Some agents from other countries were persuaded to switch allegiances.
Direct (tactical) military intelligence was collected by sending out special parties or with the help of individual scouts who had to go up to a hundred kilometers. They would reveal the enemy command’s plans, as well as the strength, location, and marching directions of the troops. Quite often, the necessary information was received from enemy prisoners of war. Contemporaries stressed that the Cossacks were among the best masters at taking prisoners.
The top Ukrainian generals took the required measures to protect their national interests from the encroachments of the Polish and other intelligence agencies. As a result of counterintelligence actions, the Cossack leadership managed to keep secret the plans of his most important military campaigns, expose the plots of enemy agents against the hetman and other generals, and thwart Polish and Muscovite attempts to stir up an internecine feud in Ukrainian society. This is how the hetman managed to wage an effective psychological warfare against his foes.
Unfortunately, Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s successors as hetmans failed to make full use of their predecessor’s experience. At the same time, many outstanding generals of later Europe applied in war various elements of the psychological warfare devised by the great Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Let us hope that the armed forces of the Ukrainian state revived in the twenty-first century will also, if necessary, use the great general’s historical experience.
This writer expresses his gratitude to Sidak and Stepankov, authors of the book From the History of Ukrainian Intelligence and Counterintelligence (Kyiv, 1994).
