Probably there is no other so controversial figure in history of both Poland and Ukraine as Prince Jeremi Wisniowiecki.
He was a descendant of Dmytro Vyshnevetsky (Baida), a Cossack leader and founder of the Zaporozhian Sich. It appears that not long before the Cossack rebellion led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky Jeremi Wisniowiecki developed good relationships with the Ukrainian Cossacks. In the 1640s they together fought against the Tatars. At the same time, he was “the terror of the Cossacks,” a designation his son Polish King Micha Korybut Wisniowiecki chose for the epitaph on his father’s tombstone. In most cases this is the received image of Jeremi Wisniowiecki as a historical figure.
Jeremi Wisniowiecki came from a family with strong Orthodox traditions. His mother, Raina Mohylianka, was the founder of Orthodox churches and donated money to print religious literature. Her brother, Petro Mohyla, became an eminent clergyman, the archimandrite of the Kyivan Cave Monastery, and later the metropolitan of Kyiv.
In his turn, Jeremi Wisniowiecki was the patron of Orthodox monasteries and churches. Even today, at Mhar Monastery, which belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, they speak about Jeremi Wisniowiecki in positive terms as one of the donators to this Orthodox shrine. At the same time, he appears to be an apostate from the Orthodox faith, an advocate of Catholicism, and a person who purposefully imposed the Catholic religion in Ukrainian lands.
Jeremi Wisniowiecki made a great contribution to the Rzecz Pospolita. He can be considered a savior of this state because of what he did at the time of the 1648–1651 Cossack rebellion. He enjoyed great popularity among the Polish nobility, and his merits brought his son Micha , a mediocre person, to the king’s throne in the Rzecz Pospolita. However, Jeremi Wisniowiecki did not enjoy due recognition from the ruling elite in the country he served. He was also mistreated by the highest ranking officials, including Chancellor Jerzy Ossoli ski.
We tend to think of Jeremi Wisniowiecki as a wealthy person. True, he was one of the biggest magnates in the Rzecz Pospolita. On the other hand, he was a poor man at the end of his life. His condition was so miserable that he did not even get a proper burial service. According to Jeremi Wisniowiecki’s will, his body had to be interred in the village of Vyshnivka. However, it was moved from place to place until it presumably found its last repose in the Benedictine Holy Christ Monastery on Mount Lysa. One can go on listing the paradoxes in the life of Jeremi Wisniowiecki.
Jeremi Wisniowiecki’s life has been studied by many Polish and Ukrainian historians, and yet there are still unclear pages in his biography. We have very little knowledge of his economic activities, and we do not know, or simply do not want to know, about his support of Orthodox Church. Instead, a great deal of attention is being paid to his apostasy from Orthodoxy and conversion to Catholicism.
Not much is known about the relationships between Jeremi Wisniowiecki and King W adys aw IV Vasa of Poland in 1646–1648, in particular a “strange” raid on the Crimean Khanate in 1647. Another obscure episode is the personal relationship between Jeremi Wisniowiecki and Bohdan Khmelnytsky. There is no doubt that they knew each other, and it is possible that at some point, specifically in 1648, they were playing a weird game. Finally, Jeremi Wisniowiecki’s death is somewhat strange. He never complained about his health and was only 39 when he died. There exists a version that he was poisoned, but it is impossible to prove it now.
Paradoxes and gray areas in his biography make Jeremi Wisniowiecki an ambiguous figure in the eyes of both historians and the public at large. For Poles he is a national hero (however, even here not everything is clear-cut and straightforward), while for Ukrainian he is an antihero and the enemy of the Ukrainian people.
There are a few obstacles in the objective assessment of Wisniowiecki. First, the events of the 17th century are being consciously or unconsciously interpreted from the perspective of today’s ideas. These ideas force us to look at those events from the standpoint of nationalism and interpret certain historical figures as either heroes or antiheroes.
Second, assessments of Wisniowiecki’s activities typically bring two episodes to the fore: his conversion from Christianity to Catholicism and his struggle against the Cossacks and Khmelnytsky. Ukrainians consider these events to be negative, whereas Poles regard them as positive, and other sufficiently important events in Wi niowiecki’s biography are mostly ignored. Finally, some lines of Wisniowiecki’s activities have not yet been studied to a significant degree. For example, we know little about his political activity. He seems to be a champion of regionalism and headed the party of kniazhata starozhytni (descendants of old-time princes). He had to pay a great price for his political activity. Great Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoli ski, King W adys aw, and King Jan II Kazimierz Vasa obviously ignored Wisniowiecki and tried to keep him away from high politics.
Another little-researched aspect is the prince’s policy on religion: he is sometimes portrayed as an adherent of Catholicism, while, in fact, he exhibited sufficient pragmatism by providing protection to both Catholics and Orthodox believers. He was even willing to cooperate with Protestants.
Researchers also need to take up Wisniowiecki’s administrative activities, a field where he, according to some sources, attained his greatest success, and his relationships with the Cossacks before 1648.
So let us return to both well-known and little-know facts in the life of Prince Wisniowiecki and attempt a comprehensive evaluation of his activities.
The character of a person’s actions is largely determined by his or her self-identification, which sets up the paradigm for this person’s conduct. Who did Wisniowiecki think he was? His princely descent was the foremost part of his self-image. In the eyes of society at the time it was something sacral, God-given. The title of prince put him on an equal footing with the szlachta (nobility) but only formally, because it actually gave him real advantages in obtaining government positions and opened up opportunities for participation in the political life of the Rzech Pospolita. Finally, princely descent gave a person the right to ascent to the throne. The Vyshnevetskys had blood relations among Polish kings, Lithuanian dukes, and Muscovite tsars.
Wisniowiecki’s active role in defending the rights of Rus’ princes in 1638 spoke of his high regard for his descent. At the age of 26 he headed the party of kniazhata starozhytni, which brought together a number of respected older Ukrainian aristocrats. Their goal was to keep the titles they received before the Union of Lublin. This campaign, which was spearheaded by the prince, can be interpreted as a manifestation of Rus’ regionalism, which was, however, quite legal. Generally, Wisniowiecki was a legist, i.e., a representative of the school that highly esteemed the law. It should be noted that for a while he lived and studied in Western Europe with its relatively high level of respect for the law.
Another aspect of Wisniowiecki’s self-identification was the fact that he was a law-abiding citizen of his state, the Rzech Pospolita. The prince was included in the system of power and seemed unable to imagine being outside it. Even when he was mistreated by the highest ranking officials, he did not resort to a rebellion or unlawful actions.
An important factor for Wi niowiecki’s self-identification was his religious affiliation. He was raised in a family with strong Orthodox traditions. His parents were ardent Orthodox believers and protected the Orthodox Church in various ways. Wisniowiecki was christened in the Orthodox Church and remained there until the age of 20. However, in 1632, after he returned from Western Europe, he converted to Catholicism. Despite a widespread notion that at the time Ukrainian Orthodox nobility adopted the Catholic religion en masse, such conversions were not common. Therefore, Wisniowiecki’s step caused repercussions: for example, he received a condemning letter from Isaiah Kosynsky.
Why did Wisniowiecki venture to do this, realizing that many in his milieu would react negatively? A number of researchers link his conversion to the fact that his teachers were Lviv-based Jesuits and he studied in Italian universities. After he had exposure to Western European Catholic culture, it grew on him. Such considerations might have played a part, but we should not think that these were the only factors contributing to his conversion.
Wisniowiecki could not fail to understand that Catholicism opened far better opportunities for making a political career and joining the state elite. In my opinion, this pragmatic motive proved to be decisive.
Naturally, a religious conversion did not do credit to Wisniowiecki. In the circumstances of an acute denominational confrontation in Ukraine this move was perceived as apostasy and betrayal of the ancestral traditions, which were treasured by society at the time. Young and ambitious Wisniowiecki had just returned from abroad and wanted to make a career in politics; it is quite possible that he did not perceive the gravity of his step. Eventually, his conversion did not yield much in terms of political advancement. However, without this he would not have been so popular among the Polish szlachta and his son would not have ascended the Polish throne. In principle, this can be seen as the prince’s sagacity.
We should not accuse Wisniowiecki of religious intolerance, which is often a distinctive feature of neophytes. True, he funded Catholic cathedrals in Ukrainian lands, but, on the other hand, it is a clear exaggeration to attribute to him the forceful imposition of Catholicism. At the same time, the prince helped Orthodox shrines: there are testimonies that during the Khmelnytsky-led war the Cossacks looted some Orthodox monasteries, while Wisniowiecki defended them. Isn’t this paradoxical: an adherent of Catholicism defended Orthodox monks from the Cossacks, who claimed to be protectors of Orthodoxy? Also telling is Wisniowiecki’s 1648 move when the throne was vacant and he supported George I R k czi, a Protestant. In other words, when socially important things were at stake, religious affiliation was not a factor for the prince. In principle, this kind of “denominational pragmatism” was common among the magnates in the Rzech Pospolita at the time.
It was precisely pragmatism and sober calculations that helped Wisniowiecki gain control over lands in Left-Bank Ukraine and become extremely wealthy. His success in this sphere is almost unreal. It should be noted that the Vyshnevetskys were not rich, so some representatives of this dynasty sought a military career, as was the case with his great grandfather, Dmytro Vyshnevetsky (Baida).
Paradoxical as it may seem, with his administrative and economic activities the prince created a foundation for the creation of the modern Ukrainian nation. The territories that were settled and populated in the time of his rule became the launching pad for Ukraine’s cultural formation. Contemporary standard Ukrainian developed from the Poltava–Kyiv dialects.
Hryhorii Skovoroda, Ivan Kotliarevsky, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Yevhen Hrebinka, Taras Shevchenko, and numerous prominent figures in Ukrainian culture came from Wisniowiecki’s Left-Bank estates (known as Vyshnevechchyna) and the neighboring territories. It may sound somewhat far-fetched, but we would not have the Ukrainian nation in its modern cultural form without Wisniowiecki who was called “an enemy of the Ukrainian people.”
Gaining control over Left-Bank Ukraine would have been possible without fighting the Tatars, who constantly plundered Ukrainian lands and took people prisoners. In the 1640s Wisniowiecki made quite a few raids against them and managed to secure the safety of these territories. The fact that Wisniowiecki provided protection for the lands and granted privileges to the newcomers was an important factor that facilitated his efforts to bring this territory under control.
Those who accuse Wisniowiecki of having an anti-Ukrainian stance rely in their assessment on the fact that he was against Khmelnytsky’s actions when he managed to organize the Zaporozhian Cossacks for a rebellion. Today Khmelnytsky is an unquestionable Ukrainian national hero and a symbol of Ukrianianness. On the other hand, in Ukrainian folklore this figure is described in somewhat restrained manner and some activists of the Ukrainian national revival, Shevchenko for one, were very critical of Khmelnytsky. I will not dwell now about how the myth about Khmelnytsky took shape, but will just mention that it appeared later, in the 19th century. Any myth does not always correspond to historic events and often replaces true facts with the desired ones. Subjectively, Khmelnytsky was not and, in fact, at the time, could not possibly be a national leader. He was guided by his own interests and sometimes his own ambitions. At the same time, he became a tool of a tough geopolitical game on the territory of Eastern Europe that was played by the imperial states—the Rzecz Pospolita, Turkey, Russia, and even Sweden.
That is why there is no point in interpreting Wisniowiecki or Khmelnytsky through the lens of national vision. As a loyal citizen of the Rzech Pospolita, Wisniowiecki saw in Khmelnytsky and the Cossacks rebels, law-breakers, and traitors of the state. Khmelnytsky had brought along the Tatars, something other Cossack leaders did not dare do.
Both Wisniowiecki and Khmelnytsky knew that since 1646 King W adys aw had been nurturing a plan to destroy the Crimean Khanate, and both of them had been involved in the realization of this plan. Now with Khmelnytsky’s help the khanate dealt a blow to the Rzech Pospolita. What could Wisniowiecki’s reaction be under the circumstances?
Furthermore, Khmelnytsky’s rebellion sowed the seeds of anarchy and disorganization in social life and posed a direct threat to the prince’s estates in Left-Bank Ukraine. The city of Lubny, Vyshnevechchyna’s seat of sorts, was razed to the ground. The same fate befell other prosperous settlements of craftsmen and merchants. This rebellion brought the Tatar hordes to Ukrainian lands, and they engaged in merciless looting. In fact, the Cossack army was largely comprised of the Tatars, and without their help the Cossacks would have been unable to succeed in their fight against the Rzech Pospolita. In contrast to this, the Vyshnevetsky princes were famed anti-Tatar crusaders. In this context Wi niowiecki’s struggle against Khmelnytsky appears to be quite logical.
The intricacies of this struggle have been described in detail and are well-known. Here I would like to say that in this struggle Wisniowiecki was not without his faults; he often resorted to cruel terror, deservedly earning his nickname—“the terror of the Cossacks.” His characteristic pragmatism seems to have often betrayed him in this struggle, giving place to emotions.
In my opinion, it is high time we abandoned an assessment of Wisniowiecki as a hero or an antihero and departed from the narrowly nationalistic view of the past. Wisniowiecki belongs to a handful of people who were able to make an impact on the course of historical events. Without him the history of Ukraine and Poland would have been different. Therefore, his activities, with all their pluses and minuses, deserve to be thoroughly studied rather than assessed in a superficial manner.
