Aristocratic and venerable families began their systematic appearance. One of Mazepa’s crucial articles dating from 1687 reads: “As earlier, on respected people were bestowed aristocratic honors, so they could continue to bear them and enjoy the respect they deserve; the Hetman and senior officers ask His Majesty the Tsar to please bestow on them with such honors...”
Ivan Mazepa composed the Ukrainian Table of Ranks allocating the latter according to aristocratic class and social standing. The Hetman instituted a knightly order within the Zaporozhzhian Host called The Noble Military Society. Even after the Hetmanate was destroyed gossip about that Zaporozhzhian Order crossed the most prestigious European salons. In their universals [decrees] and other documents Ukrainian hetmans refer to the Ukrainian szlachta (gentry) as a military camp of sorts. For example, Hetman Rozumovsky, convening a small sejm [assembly] of the szlachta at Pryluky and in a universal of November 19, 1763 ordered the colonel to “inform the officers and szlachta of that regiment” for the election of aristocratic functionaries.
Of the regional corporate documents available, a universal signed by Hetman Demyan Ihnatovych (Mnohohrishny) and dated March 21, 1670, is perhaps the most interesting. It reaffirms the privileges vested in the Liubech gentry. Very interesting documents about exemplary aristocrats date from the Mazepa period. Following certain procedures, such aristocrats were entitled to occupy vacant lands. In strict accordance with the law, they took title to such lands and were from then on referred to as “exemplary.” Lands allocated senior officers according to their rank were leveled out with those held in aristocratic tenure by transfer to private ownership in accordance with a statute of limitations. We can see this from a decree signed by Assigned [Provisional] Hetman Lyzohub.
At the turn of the twentieth century there were numerous scholarly disputes and public lectures on the essence, rights, and privileges of the Ukrainian aristocracy. Below are several most interesting examples. M. Maksymovych, an expert on the Cossack registers, correctly points out that “one half, even more of the Ukrainian (Little Russian) aristocracy of the eighteenth century came from the Cossacks and only a minority originated from old Ukrainian (Little Russian) noble families.”
The Russian tsar was always determined to humiliate the Ukrainian aristocratic private owner. An example is provided by historian V. Avsiyenko. This example makes it perfectly clear that Moscow did its utmost to prevent the concentration of Ukrainian capital. “As for Cossack lands and right to freely purchase them,” he writes, “this issue has long given rise to disputes between the Russian government and the Ukrainian (Little Russian) aristocracy. Pursuant to the Lithuanian Statute, confirmed for Ukraine (Little Russia), such an acquisition of Cossack lands was recognized as free. This ill served Russia’s interests, because the government was empowered to demand gratuitous service only from persons in possession of at least some land. In 1739, Empress Anna Ivanovna dared to repeal the statute’s clause allowing the Ukrainian nobility to purchase Cossack lands, explaining her move by military difficulties facing the empire. Empress Elizabeth, when appointing Count Rozumovsky Hetman of Ukraine, reinstated the principle of the seniority of noble birth, but the right of the Ukrainian (Little Russian) noblemen to buy Cossack soils was still regarded as dubious. However, they did buy Cossack lands, even though not sure that they would be [officially] allowed to do so. Old-timers in Ukraine (Little Russia) still remembered how Cossacks wishing to avoid service in the Russian Army would sell their plots to landlords for a jug of water.”
Ukrainian political thinker and historian Mykhailo Drahomanov more than once returned to the subject of the szlachta and zemstvo [elective district council in Russia, 1864-1917) movements. In his article, “ Kievlianin (a reactionary Kyiv newspaper founded to fight Ukrainian separatism and promulgate anti-Semitism — Ed.) and Polish Newspaper Fantasies about Little Russian Patriotism,” he was among the first to study the genesis of Ukrainian aristocratic thought. Despite the humorous tone of the discussion, this is precisely why we mention it. Drahomanov wrote, “On the Left Bank of the Dnipro were circles that could, back in the forties, sire gentlemen like Mr. Livoberezhny and even give him material about the idealization of the Hetmanate and Polish sympathies among the people living on the Right Bank. The nucleus of those circles was formed by descendants of Mazepa’s comrades-in-arms serving the cause of organizing Left Bank Ukraine after the Polish standard... Throughout the eighteenth century they wept for the restoration of the Hetmanate, while campaigning for serfdom, demanding privileges like the Great Russian nobility, referring to their noble birth rooted in the Polish szlachta, often issuing forged certificates... With time the romantic posterity of those old-world and newly recognized Left Bank noblemen were no longer content with their varenyky [piroshki] and halushky [dough balls]; having read from Koniski’s history, they began daydreaming and saying how good it would be to have the old Cossack standards and maces installed in that “Italy beyond the Dnipro” with its serfs. Despite varying views, Ukrainian researchers have always agreed on the main point; the Ukrainian nobility was European by nature, as evidenced primarily by the equality of all noblemen regardless of rank/position, date of ennoblement, or ancestry.
The Russian tsar and the church forbade stories about Hetman Mazepa as the founder of the nation’s szlachta status and champion of strengthening Ukrainian national capital. This was the greatest obstacle for all those dedicated to Ukrainian nobility. Only a handful of patriots dared tell such stories. A series of very interesting articles about the Ukrainian nobility was carried by the newspaper Kievlianin sponsored by Kyiv’s Ukrainian aristocratic community. The following is an excerpt from an 1868 article: “Mazepa did not attribute lack of nobility and hatred of it to the historical destiny of the people. He did not look for the roots of these phenomena in the tribal features of the people. This was the result of his rudeness, ignorance, and lack of civilization. After taking the hetman’s mace, Mazepa decided to do his utmost to correct that shortcoming. All his endeavors were aimed at building a camp of nobility in Ukraine (Little Russia) and make the embassy and poor Cossacks dependent on it, like in Poland... sending out Hetman’s decrees reading ‘we remind you and command you that no common folk are to be entered in the registers as new Cossacks’.”
The unsatisfactory status of genealogical research in Ukraine and absence of a national tradition of private ownership resulted in decay and propagation of national inferiority. Independent Ukraine has sired no theoreticians and leaders of Ukrainian capital like the British economist George Douglas Howard Cole with his theory that the Marxist thesis about capital does not work in the epoch of imperialism, or Adam Smith with his Wealth of Nations, or US economist John Bates Clark with his theory of the distribution of wealth. In today’s Ukraine heraldic studies can barely be described as barely adequate. The vacuum is easily filled with Russian family trees and associations of nobility that have no real importance in Ukraine. The absence of elementary education in this domain leads to striking ignorance among the Ukrainian Cossacks where some or others come up as self-styled direct descendants of Rus’ grand princes and Ukrainian hetmans, albeit without the slightest idea about their second or third generation. Attempts are made to incorporate values of the Russian Empire into Ukrainian society (for example, publications by Kovalinsky or Ukrainian television journalists’ references to the so-called French nobility, something the French themselves are totally unaware of. Moscow names are imposed on the Ukrainian nobility, using the standards of the Russian nobility, although this does not conform to the traditions and rights of the Ukrainian people. The very appellation of the status and traditional Ukrainian institutions has inspired public debate with Mr. Kovalinsky.
It should be noted that under the Hetmanate the right of ennoblement was vested in various small sejms whose resolutions were subject to approval by such assemblies of higher standing and, in their absence, by the Polish king and/or Russian tsar. Ukrainian hetmans always conferred their subjects with szlachta status and the Russian tsar with the dvoryanstvo (nobility) status. The hetmans never issued special scrolls or certificates attesting to this status but kept special registers of the szlachta. Thus, under Hetmans Ihnatovych, Samoilovych, and Mazepa, a List of the Szlachta was kept. All medieval legal instruments likewise attest to szlachta status in Ukraine. The szlachta idea was an all- Ukraine one. Among the documents available, orders issued by Sumy and Kharkiv nobility can serve as an example (RIO Collection). Kyiv szlachta deputies defended the name at their assemblies and, contrary to directives of the Russian crown (e.g., the so-called dvorianskaya gramota, meaning a scroll attesting to the bearer’s noble status) persisted in using the term szlachta in all official documents for over half a century. The term and its derivatives are indicative of not only the orientation of Ukrainian society, but also of the dangerous idea of the inferiority of Ukrainian nobility, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and the so- called special mission of the Russian tsars that made it possible to confirm the noble status of not only separate personalities but also all representatives only after the liquidation of hetmanate.
Moreover, the notion of dvorianstvo traditionally has the opposite meaning in Ukraine: cheap manpower and household help. When first working with Cossack documents, one is confronted by a great deal of misunderstanding impossible to put right. Thus, in any book of inventory one finds an entry referring to “most miserable dvoriane,” meaning hired manpower serving at Cossack estates as janitors, kitchen help, cleaners of stables, etc. In this sense, the Ukrainian national tradition resembles the Polish.
Today, it is necessary to protect traditional Ukrainian forms and titles, including the notion of the Ukrainian szlachta. However, in texts using other languages and being of general, rather than national orientation it is permissible to use general forms. Thus, Russians use dvorianskoe sobranie (assembly of nobility), compared to the English/American Association of the Nobility. Obviously, long accepted forms should not be changed. It is time the prestige of the Ukrainian aristocracy any its rights were raised abroad. Strange as it may seem, Ukraine does not have any representation in such world structures, except a timid attempt made by several enthusiasts in Canada and the United States. We may use the activities of the Association of the Belarusian Szlachta as an example. The Belarusian noblemen publish the magazine Hidnist [Dignity] and the bulletin Kleinot [Attribute of Power]. Of the noted European organizations, the Anglo-German Family History Society and the Cabinet d’Etudes Genealogiques in Geneva deserve separate notice. Let’s get to work, gentlemen, so that we can raise the dignity of the Ukrainian szlachta in the new millennium.
