That was not what I wanted, nor should it be as it is.
Dates divisible by five are customarily marked as special anniversaries. This year’s anniversary of the Treaty of Pereiaslav was no exception. Although contemporaries did not attach considerable importance to this historic event, it would strongly influence the subsequent development of Ukraine and Russia. After Ukraine joined the Russian empire (Muscovy at the time), the alignment of forces in Eastern Europe drastically changed. These changes were felt by many peoples in this part of the continent. As a direct consequence, the Russian empire grew stronger and gained access to Northern Black Sea Region, Poland suffered a partition, and a new structure of international relations emerged. It often happens that an outwardly insignificant event leaves a long trace in history. Ukraine is still experiencing the consequences of the Treaty of Pereiaslav.
REUNIFICATION?
The Ukrainian historian and philosopher Viacheslav Lypynsky wrote that there are two historical facts: the Treaty of Pereiaslav, known as the March Articles, and the legend of Pereiaslav, which has nothing to do with realities of the mid-17th century. After Khmelnytsky’s death this legend completely eclipsed the truth about the treaty, leaving a distorted view of the actual events prior to its signing in the minds of many generations in Ukraine and Russia for centuries to come.
This process of deliberately distorting and rewriting history, concealing some facts and pushing others to the forefront climaxed in the ill-famed Theses of the CC CPSU on the 300th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine and Russia, which served as the basis for an article published by Pravda that was intended to be the only correct historical explanation from the authors’ viewpoint. At that time Moscow propagandists came up with the term “reunification” in regard to what happened in Pereiaslav. Its usage was expected to suppress the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for independence.
The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Braichevsky wrote that “even certain works by Taras Shevchenko expressing a critical attitude to the ‘reunification’ were banned in order to preserve the ‘age-old friendship between the Ukrainian and the Russian people.’ Thus, the Kobzar published in 1954 did not include ‘The Great Mound,’ ‘Across Subotiv-town and perched aloft…’, ‘Chihirin,’ and others…” Ridding people’s minds of this legend has been a slow and complicated process, and it still holds true for many.
The reunification myth is rooted in the notion of a single Old Rus’ people that later divided into several groups due to a complex historical situation in the mid-13th century. Historians are still divided on whether a single people was formed in early feudal Kyivan Rus’. However, this is not crucial for my topic. In fact, before the mid-14th century the three Eastern Slavic peoples never considered themselves fragments of what had supposedly been a single whole. Characteristically, the Belorusians were known as Lytvyns — Lithuanians — or as “people of Lithuania” in Muscovy, and Ukrainians as Cherkasy. Accordingly, Ukrainians called the ancestors of present-day Russians and Belarusians Moskvyny, Muscovites, or “people of Moscow.”
The Soviet Russian historian and academician Militsa Nechkina’s remark that Ukrainians called themselves Ruski, Ruthenians, is absolutely correct, but they did not consider the people who lived in the neighboring state as such. Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Ukrainian starshyna (senior officers) regarded themselves as the inheritors of Kyivan Rus’. That is why he signed documents as Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host and all Rus’. That was how he signed the documents addressed to Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, and this caused no protest from Moscow’s protocol-sensitive Posolskii prikaz [an equivalent of the foreign affairs ministry]. By way of comparison, a mistake made in the title of the Muscovite tsar triggered the Russo-Polish War of 1654.
Relations between Moscow and the Ukrainian Cossacks can serve as an illustrative example. They were marked by two opposite trends: constant confrontation and attempts to collaborate in order to repel aggression from the Crimea. From the mid-16th century until the beginning of the liberation war led by Khmelnytsky, the Ukrainian Cossacks willingly took part in all wars of the Polish Crown against Muscovy. A vivid example is a raid led by Hetman Petro Sahaidachny that ended in the seizure of the Kremlin in 1618. Owing to a concatenation of circumstances, this final episode of the Time of Trouble in Muscovy did not cause Moscow’s collapse and the destruction of what was left of the Russian army. Even after the Truce of Deulino (also known as Peace or Treaty of Dywilino) between Muscovy and Poland in December 1618, Cossack detachments fought around Moscow, sometimes reaching as far as Vologda and causing “considerable damage to servicemen, common folk, and boyar children.“
Common religion is often used as proof of Ukrainians’ desire to be under the Muscovite tsar’s rule. However, its effect should not be overestimated, even at a time when the religious factor played a more important role than now. During the wars between Lithuania and Muscovy in the 15th–16th centuries the Eastern Orthodox part of the Lithuanian population unanimously supported the Lithuanian state and regarded Muscovy’s claims as a threat to themselves. Despite mounting religious discrimination in Poland, the Kyiv Orthodox clergy and church leaders proved to be the most resolute opponents of a treaty with Muscovy.
Common religion was not a major factor in the eyes of the Zaporozhian Cossacks when they raided Moscow and cities in Muscovy. Accordingly, the Kremlin was not inclined to feel sentimental about the same religious tradition. The latter by no means was an obstacle for Grand Prince Ivan III when he directed the Tatars to attack, seize, and plunder Kyiv in 1479. later Muscovite diplomats tried to use every opportunity to talk the Crimean beys into raiding and plundering Ukrainian territories. By the start of the Khmelnytsky-led liberation war, both peoples, and even more so both governments, eyed each other with suspicion. This attitude manifested itself during Ukrainian-Polish battles.
Until the mid-17th century there was or could have been no striving for reunification of the two peoples. You cannot reunite something that has never been one. But circumstances forced Khmelnytsky’s government to take this step. The hetman thought it was only for the time being.
PEREIASLAV EPISODE
Relations between Khmelnytsky as head of the Ukrainian state and his northern neighbor, Muscovy, remained complicated throughout the liberation war against Poland. On more than one occasion the Ukrainian hetman threatened the Muscovite tsar with a war in an alliance with the Crimean Tatars, Moldovans, and Wallachians. Aware that the Treaty of Zboriv with Poland would not last long, Khmelnytsky tried to get Muscovy involved in his conflict with Poland as much as possible. In the spring of 1650, he told the Muscovite envoys: “No one has caused me as much concern as the Muscovite tsar… so what will happen if I enter into an alliance with the Turks, Tatars, Wallachians, Romanians, and Hungarians and take the field to plunder his land like Wallachia?” This statement was intended not only to exert diplomatic pressure. Moscow was in possession of reliable information that Turkey and the Crimea had proposed the Ukrainian hetman to join them in a campaign against Muscovy, and that they were even willing to help him resolve the problems with Poland. It is hard to say what the outcome could have been. The campaign never took place because there was an increasing threat of Polish aggression and another round of domestic political problems in Turkey.
By early 1653 Moscow had gradually come to the conclusion that it was necessary to act on Khmelnytsky’s side, for very tangible reasons.
First, the Cossack state had what was then considered to be a big army, hardened in battles against the Polish army, one of Europe’s best. Moscow further had to bear in mind the possibility that Warsaw might recognize the need to achieve a compromise with Khmelnytsky. In that case Moscow would have been faced with a very serious enemy: Poland and Khmelnytsky. An alliance with the Cossacks would reinforce Muscovy’s southern frontiers and serve as an important factor in the event of confrontation with Poland.
Second, an alliance with Ukraine opened an opportunity to change the terms of the disadvantageous Treaty of Polianovka (Polan w) and reclaim Smolensk. The struggle for the heritage of Kyivan Rus’ and the implementation of Moscow’s Messianic program of becoming the Third Rome was impossible without an alliance with the Cossacks.
Third, there were economic reasons: it was necessary for Moscow to establish its control over the trade routes leading to the south and east. This was also impossible without Ukraine.
Fourth, there was a big social problem. Ukraine (Zaporozhian Sich) was a vivid example of how a body politic could actually exist without serfdom; it attracted an increasing number of refugees, mostly runaway serfs. The free lands of Slobozhanshchyna (Sloboda Ukraine) were a major attraction for them. Not coincidentally, Kharkiv and a number of other cities were founded at precisely that time between the Siversky Donets and the Don. The runaways could not be apprehended and returned without assistance of the Ukrainian authorities.
Fifth, a handful of well-informed people in the tsar’s entourage were aware of Ukraine’s cultural value for Muscovy, which was nearly entirely illiterate. The Kyiv Mohyla Collegium could become a training center to produce the required cadre under Moscow’s control. And so, in view of these and other considerations, the Kremlin opted for an alliance with Khmelnytsky in the summer of 1653 and convened Zemsky Sobor (the Assembly of the Land) in October to ratify the resolution.
In early January 1654, in accordance with the resolutions of the Assembly of the Land, a group of high-ranking envoys led by the governor of Tver, Senior Boyar Vasilii Buturlin, and the governor of Murom, Ivan Olferiev, was dispatched to Khmelnytsky to negotiate “a major state issue.” Despite their rank, the envoys were accorded a cool welcome. As is seen from Buturlin’s accounts, all talks were held in a formal, dry atmosphere lacking Khmelnytsky’s well-known hospitality. The Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Ohloblin notes: “it was as though the talks were not between future allies but between former enemies.” Khmelnytsky downgraded the event by receiving the envoys in provincial Pereiaslav rather than in golden-domed Kyiv but.