It was the sad lot of Kyrylo, Oleksiy Razumovsky’s younger brother, to be the last hetman of Ukraine. When Kyrylo moved to Saint Petersburg in 1742, Empress Elizabeth sent the youth to study abroad. From 1743 to 1745 Kyrylo (now Kirill) was educated in the universities of Germany, France, and Italy. K. G. Razumovsky married the czarina’s sister-in-law coming from the Naryshkin boyar family: the lucky marriage became a steppingstone for the modest Cossack from the village of Lemeshi to virtually burst into high society. In 1746 he was appointed president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Holding this office until 1765 and taking no active part in the academy’s affairs, he nevertheless was a fervent supporter of Mikhail Lomonosov.
For some reason many Ukrainian historians keep maintain an awkward silence about the very fact of Kyrylo Razumovsky’s tenure as hetman as if it had never happened and brand him a traitor. But it is difficult to understand this attitude toward the Razumovsky brothers if we recall how Aleksei defended the rights of Ukrainian Cossacks under Empress Elizabeth and finally persuaded her to restore the office of hetman in Ukraine or how Kyrylo himself fell into disgrace and was stripped of the right to visit his homeland for eleven years in return for his persistent requests that Catherine II keep intact the freedom of the Cossacks and autonomy of Ukraine.
Like Oleksiy Razumovsky, who took part in the palace revolution that placed Empress Elizabeth on the throne, Kyrylo also participated in a palace revolution where the future Empress Catherine II was the main actor. She later thanked him for this by promoting him to the offices of senator and adjutant general. In February 1750, the Cossack rada (council) in Hlukhiv elected K. G. Razumovsky hetman of Ukraine. However, Kyrylo Razumovsky’s ideas and wishes ran counter to Saint Petersburg’s official policy of centralization. Ukraine’s destiny was in fact a foregone conclusion. The Razumovsky brothers, although wielding much clout at the imperial court, were still unable to reverse the course of history. Yet, what good they managed to do for Ukraine should not be forgotten.
The tsarist ukase passed on January 13, 1752, under Kyrylo Razumovsky’s pressure exempted the Ukrainians from kholopstvo or serfdom. Russian officials were forbidden, without the hetman’s authorization, to arrest Ukrainians except those suspected of committing criminal offenses. To this end, the hetman established a special commission to receive requests and letters from representatives of all strata of Ukraine’s population.
Hetman Razumovsky’s activity, excessive in the tsarist government’s view, did not remain unnoticed. The imperial court did not wish Kyrylo Razumovsky to further appoint Cossack colonels by his own decree without Saint Petersburg’s consent. In 1745 Empress Elizabeth issued a special ukase forbidding the hetman to independently appoint colonels and only allowing him to select candidates for this office. He was also banned from conducting on his own correspondence with foreign states. The financial affairs of the hetman’s government were also placed under control. A 1754 ukase obliged Kyrylo Razumovsky to send reports on all revenues and expenditures to Saint Petersburg and abolished all internal and external customs duties. In early 1756, Ukrainian affairs were diverted from the Collegium of Foreign Affairs to Senate. Kyiv was torn away from the hetman, which dealt a mortal blow to Ukraine’s autonomy.
In spite of official Saint Petersburg’s pressure, the hetman persistently reinforced central and local bodies of public administration. Judicial reform was the first step in this direction. Under decrees of 1760 and 1763, the General Military Chancery was stripped of judicial functions, while the General Court became the highest appellate body and the most prestigious judicial body. The hetman managed to restore the noblemen’s courts, which had functioned subordinated to the General Court in Ukraine well before the revolution of 1648-1658.
K. G. Razumovsky disliked drunkenness, smoking, and the excessive spread of wineries in Ukraine. In 1761 he issued a special decree to curtail this activity, with licenses to be given only to senior commanders and Cossacks who owned cultivated land and forests. The clergy, Russian landlords, and visitors from other regions and countries were also forbidden to own taverns and wineries. Yet, a large feudal landlord, Kyrylo Razumovsky carried out economic and administrative reforms that served the interests of the nobility and merchants rather than the peasants: for example, he restricted the free movement of peasants and conducted a census.
In 1763 he submitted to Empress Catherine II a project to establish two universities, several high schools and other educational institutions in Ukraine. The Kiev-Mohyla Academy was to be placed under the hetman’s charge, with only the theology department still being under the metropolitan’s jurisdiction. This project was not carried out.
Hetman Razumovsky’s aspiration for independence greatly irritated the tsarist bureaucrats. They prodded Empress Catherine II into making the final decision to abolish Ukrainian statehood, starting with the hetman’s office as its main factor. The formal pretext was a petition to the tsarina, signed by most senior Cossack commanders at the Hlukhiv session in late 1763, with a request to return “the legitimate rights, freedoms, and privileges” to the hetmanate as well as to make the office hereditary in the Razumovsky family. By an ukase of November 10, 1764, K. G. Razumovsky was stripped of hetman’s office, which was abolished. To govern Ukraine, the same ukase established the Little Russian Collegium (second) presided over by Count P. A. Rumiantsev. Simultaneously, the empress promoted the former hetman to the office of general field marshal and later member of the State Council (1768-1771).
After Catherine lifted the ban on his visiting Ukraine in 1776, Razumovsky could at last move to his native land. As early as 1794 he finally settled in Baturyn, the former capital of the hetman state. Kyrylo Razumovsky devoted the last years of his life to building stone structures on his estates in Baturyn, Baklaniv, Pochep, Yahotyn, etc., and to household problems. He had a palace designed and built by architect Charles Cameron in Baturyn, the remnants of which still stand. Ukraine’s last hetman was buried in Baturyn’s Refectory Church of the Resurrection built on the ruins of one from Mazepa’s time.
Prince Razumovsky had two sons, Oleksiy and Andriy. Oleksiy Razumovsky, after retiring from court service in 1795, settled in the village of Gorenka near Moscow, where he founded a botanical garden and collected Russia’s largest natural sciences library. It should be noted that A. K. Razumovsky belonged to the most mystical wing of Russian Freemasonry and advocated quite reactionary views.
But all these activities were, rather, a prelude to his main endeavors in the field of public education. Appointed minister of education in 1810, A. K. Razumovsky successfully promoted the expansion of the network of primary (denominational and nondenominational) and secondary schools, supervised the improvement of teaching methods, and banned corporal punishment. At the same time, he pursued the policy of Russification, introduced theology as the main subject in all educational institutions, and supported Jesuit academies and school, while remaining vice president of the Biblical Society.
Andriy Razumovsky, a well- known diplomat, served in the Navy under the command of Admiral Spiridov and took part in the famous Battle of Chesmen. A courtier since 1772, he exerted great influence over heir to the throne Pavel, which greatly irritated Catherine II. She decided to distance Andriy Razumovsky from the court, appointing him ambassador to Naples. In 1784 he was transferred to Copenhagen and two years later to Stockholm. In 1790 Catherine II, very much pleased with his actions and especially dispatches which described in detail the situation in European countries, appointed him “minister to the Hungarian-Bohemian king” in Vienna. His efforts made it possible to restore in 1792 the treaty between Russia and Austria, and in 1801-1807 he, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, made a great effort to draw Austria into the anti- Napoleonic coalition. He retired in 1807 after the Peace of Tilsit was signed, remaining to live in Vienna. He held home concerts and collected art for his gallery, but in 1813-1814 he was in Alexander I’s retinue as a foreign-policy advisor. Andriy Razumovsky was also one of the leaders of the Russian delegation at the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna, for which he was awarded the title of prince.
It is difficult to imagine what kind of turn the Rozum line originating from Chernihiv would have taken if, by a lucky chance, Colonel Vishnevsky had not dropped in at the village of Chemery and found there in the local church talented Ukrainian Cossack Oleksiy Rozum. But for courtiers Razumovsky, who rose from rags to riches, the history of the Russian Empire and, after all, Ukraine would have been short of several interesting and brilliant pages.
