THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION
Adam Kysil shouldered the incredibly heavy burden of fulfilling the Treaty of Zboriv, especially the Cossacks’ demand to abolish the Uniate church. Of course, the latter clause could not be realized. The idealistic and romantically minded Cossack leadership hoped for significant concessions from the king and Senate, but these were futile hopes. In November 1649 Bohdan Khmelnytsky warned Adam Kysil: “There will be much trouble if the clause on religion is not fulfilled.” Kysil managed to convince Khmelnytsky that it was impossible to force the Uniates into Orthodoxy. Heeding Kysil’s advice, the hetman issued an important declaration, which is rarely mentioned even today: “It is improper and criminal to forcefully convert people to your own faith and enslave people in a free kingdom. Let them choose any faith they want. We do not want any more obstacles for the Uniates: let them worship [God] as they please, because the king also has people of many faiths in his kingdom; but let them return all our church property that has been taken from us by force.”
In the fall of 1650, seeing that they were unable to engage Khmelnytsky in a war against either Moscow or Turkey, the Polish government began to contemplate a preventive war against the Cossacks. The death of Chancellor Jerzy Ossolinski, who had lobbied the interests of the Orthodox Cossacks in the government, further aggravated the situation. Only Adam Kysil could rein in the hawkish Polish politicians. The air was filled with anticipations of a large-scale war, and the warring sides waited for the spring of 1651. Kysil found himself between a rock and a hard place, but did his utmost to preserve peace. Pro-Polish circles did not trust Kysil, suspecting him of pursuing a pro-Ukrainian and pro-Orthodox policy under the protection of the Rzeczpospolita. Without Ossolinski’s support, Adam Kysil was in fact helpless, his warnings unheeded by the ruling elite. This prompted the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky to write: “This was a fatal mistake of the then Polish diplomats, who proved unable to appreciate the service done by such Ukrainian negotiators as Kysil.” Another major mistake was the provocations of Potocki’s army on the so-called Cossack front.
A DANGEROUS DIPLOMATIC MISSION
For a long period of time Adam Kysil was the barometer of peace in Ukraine. As soon as he moved to Hoshcha in late 1650, all the Polish nobles followed him from Kyiv, fearing that war was imminent. The king even had to issue a special decree to calm down his Polish subjects.
During the Battle of Berestechko, Adam Kysil defended the Cossacks’ rights at a royal council, from which future meetings he was subsequently barred. Meanwhile, the Polish senators made all kinds of proposals to King Jan Kazimierz and went so far as to propose that the Orthodox faith and the Zaporozhian Sich be abolished.
After the disaster of Berestechko, Adam Kysil restrained the hot-tempered Polish Hetman Mikolaj Potocki near Trilistsi and especially outside Bila Tserkva. When the Polish army came under threat and Potocki sank into depression, only Adam Kysil could negotiate effectively with Bohdan Khmelnytsky. On September 2, 1651, the Polish camp received Cossack envoys carrying a letter from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who sought to resolve the Ukrainian-Polish conflict. But the envoys came to Kysil, who prepared the ground for negotiations, and not to Potocki.
After lengthy negotiations the Polish side dispatched to Bila Tserkva a delegation of four commissioners headed by Adam Kysil to forge a truce. On September 16, 1651, the envoys were expected at Bila Tserkva, which was under siege by rebels. The Poles’ demands were too onerous for the Cossacks, and led to an uprising among the rebels and the troops of the Horde, who felt they had been betrayed by the Cossack leadership. Adam Kysil was nearly killed by a Tatar archer who barely missed him. Bohdan Khmelnytsky dispatched Ivan Vyhovsky to the rescue of Adam Kysil, who was for some time considered missing. Robbed clean, Kysil and his envoys returned to Hetman Potocki. Kysil had lost eighteen thousand zlotys worth of valuables and property. When it came time to sign the peace treaty, the Cossack leadership accepted only three of the proposed clauses. Instead of a registered army of 12,000 troops, the Cossacks insisted on an army of at least 20,000. The Cossacks also insisted that Polish troops not be allowed in regimental towns, and did not undertake to go to war against the Horde, contrary to the Polish king’s demand. In accepting these three clauses of the Treaty of Bila Tserkva, Adam Kysil made many enemies among the Polish nobles, who for some reason refused to recognize the important compromise that Kysil had achieved on the question of religion. Signed on September 28, 1651, the Treaty of Bila Tserkva did not contain any categorical clauses on religion in Ukraine; the abolition of the Uniate church was no longer an immediate priority for the Cossack leadership at that time. Paragraph 6 reads: “The Greek faith, as practiced by the Zaporozhian Host, must be taken into account along with the old freedoms and must be in line with the old rules: cathedrals, churches, and monasteries, and the Kyiv Collegium. If in today’s turmoil somebody claimed ownership to some of the church property, such ownership shall not be considered legitimate.”
In early 1652, when relations between the Cossacks and the Polish army had once again soured, Adam Kysil convinced Bohdan Khmelnytsky to deploy part of the Zaporozhian Host against the Turks so as to avoid any more bloody skirmishes with the Polish royal army. Khmelnytsky agreed, and the Cossacks embarked on a voyage in their chaika boats, burning down several towns along the Turkish coastline.
GREAT PREDICTIONS
Tymofiy Khmelnytsky’s marriage to Rozanda, daughter of the Moldavian prince Vasile Lupu, spurred speculation and numerous rumors in the Rzeczpospolita. During his stay in the village of Sukhodoly (today: Volodymyr- Volynsk district, Volyn oblast) voivode and senator Adam Kysil analyzed the situation and concluded that Yassy and Chyhyryn were hatching future plans, and that either civil or international war might be imminent, because “it is unlikely that after marrying the daughter of the Moldavian hospodar the young Khmelnytsky will content himself with partying and drinking in Subotiv.” Kysil proposed that the king take the new dynastic union under his protectorate, because Lupu was a past ally of Poland. According to Adam Kysil, “If the Cossacks get to rule beyond the Dniester and along the Dnipro, it will be hard to advise anything other than to begin an all-out war: win or lose.” Lupu’s son-in-law Janusz Radziwill was of the same opinion, as he saw in his new Ukrainian relatives a potential for a Ukrainian- Polish conflict. Vasile Lupu’s land of Moldavia had two dynasties: the Radziwills and the Potockis. Kysil’s prediction proved true. After Tymofiy Khmelnytsky’s marriage the question arose whether Bohdan Khmelnytsky would tip Lupu over to the side of the Crimean Khan, or whether Lupu would tip Khmelnytsky over to the Polish side.
Adam Kysil spent the final months of his life in Brest (Berestia), where the legendary council to resolve the Ukrainian-Polish conflict took place. Along with the Lithuanian magnates Janusz and Albrecht Radziwill, Adam Kysil tried to negotiate a compromise. The complex situation in which the Rzeczpospolita found itself in the spring of 1653 forced King Jan Kazimierz to request support from the German emperor on the pretext that Poland’s defeat would pose a grave threat to the German lands. Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s ties with Moscow, Moldavia, Wallachia, Constantinople, and the Crimea threatened the Rzeczpospolita as never before. In June 1653 the Polish king prepared for war, which he had little hopes of winning. On May 3, 1653, Adam Kysil, the voivode and senator, died in Brest during the debates that followed the Brest council. Because of the complex political situation at the time, little tribute was paid to his accomplishments. His body was transported to his family estate in the village of Nyzkynychi, Volyn, where he was buried in the crypt of Holy Assumption Church that had been built with his money.
According to the diary of Albrecht Radziwill, until the very end Adam Kysil remained the champion of compromise. His death went unnoticed, because at the time, in 1653, the Polish king had not intentions of forging a compromise, while the Polish nobles were not vociferous enough.
In the history of the seventeenth century Adam Kysil symbolized the way in which the Ukrainian and Belarusian nobles tried to resolve the issue of national identity. Unfortunately, the times of parliamentary struggle had passed. The nobles, whose interests Kysil upheld, had blended with the masses, which made the daring senator feel he was no longer needed. Physical ailments further undermined his morale. Exhausted by his struggle with gout, the outstanding diplomat of the seventeenth century died. The role of Adam Kysil has not been given due attention. Both the Ukrainians and Poles, who wanted to resolve international conflicts through force and uprisings, viewed Adam Kysil as an extremely cunning person and treated him with a great deal of caution and even deceitfulness. Two weeks after Kysil’s death, the papal nuncio told the Polish king: “He lived in such a way that it was impossible to prove his guilt — he was always under suspicion, and even with all his justifications he could not make people believe in his sincerity. He practiced the Greek-Rus’ faith, praised the Roman- Catholic faith, and rejected the Uniate church. His funeral service was celebrated at Orthodox and Catholic churches.”
Today, as never before, attention should be focused on the celebrated figure of Adam Kysil. A quest for understanding between the two powerful nations of the Rzeczpospolita — the Poles and Ukrainians — was at the core of Adam Kysil’s philosophy. In his speeches at sessions of the Polish Sejm and Cossack councils he repeatedly stressed that interethnic strife would lead to the collapse of the single country (which happened one year after his death) and subsequently to the demise of the Rzeczpospolita as a state (which happened a century later).
