To objectively evaluate complex historical processes, a historian must proceed from solid, reliable facts. Any science, including history, begins with a painstaking analysis of available factual data. Even the ancients had a general idea of this basic truth. Yet history has its own peculiarities. Whereas the exact sciences, especially those of an applied and technical nature, largely depend on experiments without which it would be extremely difficult or downright impossible to make any substantiated generalizations, in the case of history a similar function is reserved for the exploration of historical sources. They represent the groundwork and framework of history, which would be unthinkable without them. Unlike a physicist with his experiments, a historian has no possibility to conduct even an imaginary experiment of reviving, say, Bohdan Khmelnytsky to ask him what really happened in the 17th century.
Nonetheless, historians have access to sources, and if they are analyzed critically, meticulously, and painstakingly, they can show the path to the truth. Ukrainian historians have been blessed with such interesting and exceptional historical sources as chronicles from the Kyivan Rus’ period and Cossack chronicles. This article discusses one of the best known, comprehensive, and respected Cossack chronicles, The Chronicle of Samovydets [old Ukrainian for eyewitness], which ranks on a par with the works by Samiylo Velychko and Hryhoriy Hrabyanka.
The significance of this outstanding document of Ukrainian historical and sociopolitical thought of the latter half of the 17th century is primarily due to the fact that The Chronicle of Samovydets presents messages, stories, and all kinds of information (accompanied by the author’s somewhat subjective judgments or free from any judgments), few of which have lasted to this day in other written sources dating from the Cossack epoch. The narrator’s style and language also deserve special attention. Whether he is describing the beginning of the Khmelnytsky-led national liberation struggle (the chronicle begins with the events of 1648), the tragic period of the Ruin, or the reign of hetmans Ivan Samoilovych and Ivan Mazepa, the anonymous author delivers his narration in clear and lucid language that is almost entirely free of bookishness, embellishments, or the influence of Latin, German, or Polish literature. Perhaps this explains why contemporaries, like the celebrated Ukrainian writers Taras Shevchenko, Mykhailo Maksymovych, Ivan Franko, Dmytro Yavornytsky, Mykola Kostomarov, Orest Levytsky, and others, cherished the chronicle and used it in their research and literary works.
Readers may wonder who authored this outstanding historical source, first published only in 1846 by the noted Ukrainian and Russian cultural figure, writer, publicist, and historian Osyp Bodiansky under the title “The Chronicle of Samovydets about the Wars of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Civil Discord That Ensued in Little Russia after His Death.” Clearly, Samovydets is a penname disguising the real author’s identity. Much like other 17th-century Cossack sources, this chronicle was preserved without the title or author’s name in secretly reproduced and circulated manuscripts. The year 1840 became a watershed of sorts for Samovydets’s work, when one of the manuscripts was accidentally brought to the attention of the future classicist of Ukrainian literature Panteleimon Kulish. The young Kulish quickly realized the historical and literary merits of the chronicle. Captivated by the author’s narrative style and views, the 21-year-old Kulish began popularizing the chronicle among the intelligentsia while trying to track down other copies of this historical monument.
Dedicated efforts of several generations of historians (contributions from the outstanding scholar Academician Orest Levytsky and such prominent scholars as Dmytro Bahaliy and Mykola Petrovsky) produced a comparative study of the existing manuscripts along with an analysis of the possible stages and the timeline when it was written. In brief, their conclusions are as follows. The most accurate reproduction of the original chronicle is the so-called Iskrytsky manuscript; this is the earliest reproduction, which is not infrequent in the practice of historical research. Overall, researchers had access to six separate reproductions of the chronicle, which were made in Left-bank Ukraine in the mid-18th century and early 19th century, i.e., several generations after the author’s death.
Lengthy debates took place about the author’s identity, and there were many conflicting opinions. Mykhailo Hrushevsky, for example, argued that the author was a representative of that segment of the burger class that had become Cossacks and held a rank in the lower regimental hierarchy; Mykola Kostomarov identified the author as the acting hetman and quartermaster Fedir Korobka, whereas Kulish claimed that the author was a priest. However, researchers overwhelmingly agreed about the most likely hypothesis, that the chronicle is the work of Roman Rakushka-Romanovsky (1622-1703), the general vice-treasurer, appointed colonel of Nizhyn under Hetman Ivan Briukhovetsky, archpriest of Bratslav, and priest of Starodub. During his lifetime, which was exceptionally long by 17th-century standards, this man witnessed most of the fateful historical events of the epoch: Khmelnytsky’s rule and the so-called Pereyaslav “reunification” of 1654, the 1663 Black Council in Nizhyn, and the election in 1669 of Demyan Mnohohrishny as hetman. All of these critical events (the chronicle ends with a description of the events of 1702) are described in a lively, vivid manner from the perspective of an active participant of the historical process, not merely a passive observer. This is what makes it such a valuable source.
What were Rakushka-Romanovsky’s views on the political and social problems in Ukraine in those years? Occasionally he appears to favor the Cossack nobility and ruling elite. For several years he occupied the fairly high-ranking post of general vice-treasurer in the hetman’s government and thus shows a certain degree of antipathy toward the common folk. Describing the course and consequences of the Black Council, he justly condemns the anarchical and bloody uprising of the rabble, which, in the author’s view, did nothing but provoked civil discord in Ukraine. Rakushka-Romanovsky’s ideal state is one marked by peace and order and a clear division of society into the class of ruling and rich representatives of the Cossack elite and the class of subordinated rural dwellers and even urban burgers. Samovydets describes the consequences of the Black Council as follows: “Instigated by the colonels, the common people killed many leading Cossacks, and this killing lasted for three days. Whenever an important Cossack or man was killed, this was turned into a joke. Leading Cossack officers hid wherever they could, trading their crimson zhupany [Cossack topcoats] for rags.”
It is worth noting, however, that the author is undoubtedly a genuine Ukrainian patriot. This is how Samovydets understands the causes of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s national liberation revolution: “The beginning and causes of Khmelnytsky’s war lie solely in the Poles’ persecution of Orthodoxy and the aggravations to the Cossacks.” Rakushka-Romanovsky then proceeds to describe in great detail the unbearable, “explosive” situation in Ukraine of the 1630s-1640s. He describes the contempt for the registered Cossack host, many of whose brave and noble representatives had been turned into serfs and forced to perform menial labor, which is insulting to Cossack honor (under a 1638 agreement signed under colossal pressure from the Polish government, the registered Cossack host was restricted to the unprecedented low number of 6,000). He further describes the plight of ordinary Cossacks, who, as Samovydets rightly notes, “live like cattle,” and the oppression of Orthodox priests, which, however, was less rampant in Left-Bank Ukraine, where the author lived. Samovydets concludes his distressing portrayal with the words: “Few at the time had not dipped their hands in blood.” Yet the people no doubt have the right to revolt and protest.
The chronicle of Rakushka-Romanovsky, the assumed Samovydets, is truly unique. Encompassing 54 unbelievably dramatic years in Ukrainian history, 1648-1702, this work of the distant, unforgettable epoch reveals the truth about Khmelnytsky’s rule, the Ruin, and the most complex and puzzling conflicts of the 17th century. Panteleimon Kulish was not exaggerating when he said that this document “is unparalleled among Ukrainian sources.” In a letter to Ahatanhel Krymsky dated May 24, 1912, Lesia Ukrayinka wrote: “It seems to me that if I myself were to read the ‘Volhynian Chronicle’ or Samovydets’s, I would find there something that I find lacking in contemporary historians (including Hrushevsky), and perhaps then I would say something that not a single one of our poets has said.”
