When Tsar Peter I died in 1725, the government of Catherine I decided to “grace Ukraine with some care and affection.” But the tsarina’s sudden death in 1727 changed the situation. Peter II, who ascended the imperial throne, was a son of tsarevitch Aleksei, who was executed by order of his father Peter I. As Peter II was a minor (twelve years old), the state was initially governed by Aleksandr Menshikov and then, after he was deposed, by the Supreme Privy Council consisting of Russia’s select nobles. Aware of Ukrainian discontent over the system established by Peter I, especially of the impious deeds of his brainchild, the Little Russian Collegium, and unwilling to exacerbate the domestic situation in Ukraine on the eve of an imminent war with Turkey, the government of Peter II decided to disband the Little Russian Collegium and permitted the election of a hetman in Left Bank Ukraine. For this purpose, Russia sent privy councilor Viktor Petrovich Naumov to Hlukhiv in 1727 to supervise the election of the hetman and regimental commanders in Ukraine. A conference of senior Cossack officers and clerics nominated as candidate for hetman the colonel of Myrhorod Danylo Apostol, who was elected Hetman of Ukraine at a Grand Council on October 1, 1727. Naumov stayed behind with the hetman, first as resident minister and then as secret advisor, i.e., he served as the time-tested “eyes and ears of the tsar.”
The new hetman, Danylo Apostol (1658-1734), who had been the Myrhorod colonel under Mazepa, was a close associate of the late hetman. In 1689 he participated in Hetman Mazepa’s expedition on Perekop against the Crimean Tatars, the 40,000-strong Cossack force forming part of Golitsyn’s Muscovite army. In 1693 and 1696 he also took part in the Cossacks’ forays into the Crimean Khanate. Colonel Apostol also distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish war of 1697, and from 1700 through 1706 he fought against the Swedes on Russia’s side. At the beginning of the Swedish campaign the Cossack corps led by Apostol routed the army of the Swedish General Schlippenbach near Oerestfar in 1701. The Cossack troops led by Danylo Apostol and Ivan Myrovych embarked on an expedition in 1704 to help Russia’s ally, Polish King Augustus II, on the territory of Poznan province, and liberated Warsaw from the Swedes.
From 1706 onwards Apostol, like many other senior Cossack officers, began to entertain the idea of forging a Ukrainian-Swedish alliance, and suggested to Mazepa that they put an end to Ukraine’s dependency on Moscow. Realizing that this kind of alliance was impossible, Apostol switched allegiances and began to collaborate loyally with the Muscovite authorities. For example, during the Russian-Persian war of 1722 he commanded a 10,000-strong Cossack corps near Derbent.
Although Apostol was elected Hetman of Ukraine at the venerable age of seventy, he immediately set about clearing the spiritual and political logjams that the Little Russian Collegium had left behind. And although the Muscovite Naumov remained in Ukraine as an “advisor” and the hetman’s son Petro was taken hostage in St. Petersburg (to keep the hetman from betraying Moscow), Apostol went to Petersburg in 1728 for the coronation of Peter II. There he pleaded with the tsar to restore the ancient rights and liberties to Ukraine in accordance with the treaty that Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the tsar had signed in 1654. The tsar answered by issuing the so-called Points of Resolution. These forbade the hetman to conduct diplomatic negotiations and confirm Cossack generals and colonels in office — this was the prerogative of Russia’s ruler alone; they also instituted the office of two treasurers — one Russian and one Ukrainian — to control the hetman’s finances. Taxes levied on goods imported by Ukraine were also to go to the imperial treasury. There were also a number of other restrictions. So the partial restoration of Ukraine’s rights and freedoms (the right to elect a hetman, placing the hetman’s state under the jurisdiction of the foreign ministry rather than the imperial Senate, reducing the number of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, writing off the debts assessed by the Little Russian Collegium, etc.) was nothing but a tactical retreat, a peculiar reaction to the new political climate, while the strategic attack on Ukraine never ceased.
In 1729 Moscow replaced the “advisor” Naumov with Prince Shakhovsky, a conference minister and senator renowned for his honesty and good faith. In late 1729, when Hetman Apostol again went to Moscow, the young fifteen-year-old Emperor Peter II suddenly died of smallpox. This death greatly distressed the elderly hetman because no one knew who would be the new ruler of Russia, for the Romanov house did not have a male heir apparent. In February 1730 the Supreme Privy Council resolved to invite the widow Anna Ioannovna, Peter I’s niece, to the imperial throne. She was soon crowned in Moscow.
The new empress allowed the hetman’s son Petro to return to Ukraine and even promoted him colonel of the Lubensky Regiment, reduced the number of Russian troops stationed in Ukraine to six cavalry regiments, and conferred the Order of Alexander Nevsky on Hetman Apostol.
Aware of the futility of all attempts to restore the erstwhile privileges of the hetman’s state, Apostol concentrated his efforts on improving socioeconomic conditions in Ukraine. Continuing the judicial reform, the hetman raised the cardinal question of re-instituting the “old law,” so that Ukrainians could be tried “under their own laws, in their own courts, and by popularly elected judges.” To this end, he issued the “Instruction to the Courts” in 1731, which stipulated that six people — three Ukrainians and three Russians — should sit in the General Court presided over by the hetman himself. In compliance with the Magdeburg Laws, these courts were separated from Cossack regimental and company courts martial. As the reserve of communal and rank lands was depleted in 1729-1731, Apostol carefully checked the situation and restored most of the lands unaccounted for. Although, like a thrifty master, the hetman did his best to breathe new life into Ukraine’s economy, he failed to achieve any notable successes. Industry was already in the empire’s hands: all tanneries, sheep-breeding farms, as well as woolen and large cotton textile mills were run by the Russians. The same situation prevailed in other industries: tobacco, silk-making, etc.
Apostol set about solving the budgetary problem of Ukraine, approving an annual budget of 144,000 rubles. The hetman made export duty on raw materials the main source of Ukraine’s revenues, while expenditures were to be shared by the administration, freelance troops, and the regular army. In general, all the efforts of Hetman Apostol clearly testified to his far-sightedness coupled with a rich life experience. A legendary warrior, the hetman was also an excellent economic manager and organizer, entrepreneur, industrialist, and, finally, a merchant who knew his way around money.
The last years of Apostol’s rule were marked by a number of very unhappy events in Ukraine. For instance, in 1731 the Russian government began to build military fortifications between the Donets and Dnipro rivers (the so-called Ukrainian Line) and demanded that Ukrainian Cossacks be sent to do this work. Thirty thousand men were sent in 1731, 30,000 relief workers were dispatched in 1732, and another 10,000 in 1733. An 11,000-strong Ukrainian Cossack corps was dispatched to Poland in 1732 to show support for the son of King Augustus II, who was vying for the Polish throne in opposition to Stanislaw Leszczinski. This was a gross violation of the Ukraine-Moscow treaty on the non-use of Cossacks outside Ukraine.
Shortly before he died, Apostol managed to persuade Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna to allow the Cossacks who had formerly served Mazepa and had been living in Turkey at the Aleshkovska Sich since 1716 to return to Ukraine. One of the factors that made this possible was the Cossacks’ refusal to help Stanislaw Leszczinski, who laid claim to the Polish throne in defiance of Moscow. The Zaporozhians had their ancestral Katerynoslav lands returned and were awarded a 20,000-ruble annual stipend. They swore an oath of allegiance to the empress and soon took an active part in the recently launched Russian- Turkish war.
Unfortunately, Hetman Danylo Apostol of Ukraine did not live to see a positive response to the plea he had made to the Russian empress because he unexpectedly died of an apoplectic stroke on January 17, 1734, whereas the Zaporozhians were resettled on their lands only in April 1734.
Dmytro Doroshenko provided a succinct but apt assessment of Hetman Danylo Apostol’s role in the history of Ukraine: “His six-year-long hetmanate was a bright ray against the dark backdrop of Ukrainian life after the fall of Mazepa. He managed to strengthen the hetman’s power in defiance of the Russian and local Ukrainian authorities.” The historian Umanets called Apostol “the last Cossack on the hetman’s throne,” while Hrushevsky noted that the hetman was a personality “who never stained his hands with people’s lies.”
