The USSR lived in misery for some 70 years. One of the most characteristic features of a “soviet” person is one-dimensional categorical thinking stamped by the communists. Our zombied view of the world through foreign-made spectacles is the equivalent of the French giving Alsace and Lorraine free of charge to Germany, or for the Russians to call the Ukrainians “elder brothers.”
Nearly 15 years have passed, but not everyone has managed to re-civilize themselves. Marxist- Leninist retrogrades are doing their best to prevent this. They seem to have changed their hair color from scarlet to blue-and-yellow, but haven’t changed their mentality. The latter procedure is the first thing that I would recommend for the CPSU dithyrambists and historians, who nowadays interpret our distant past with a jingoistic patriotism. They have a very simple method of re-evaluating the past: that which was called white in Candidate of Science research papers in the times of Gorbachev is called black in doctoral papers in the times of Kuchma and Yushchenko.
However, one can occasionally find adequate analyses of history, although the “crimes” of the Ukrainian nobility of the 16th and early 17th centuries still have not been adequately evaluated.
Who said there was no Ukrainian state in the period between the Galician-Volhynian Principality and the Cossack state of Bohdan Khmelnytsky? There was. Actually, there was more than one. The town of Lubni (in Left-Bank Ukraine) was the capital of a rather powerful quasi-state. The Vyshnevetsky dynasty ruled there under the nominal protectorate of Warsaw. Genealogically, the family had roots in Ukraine and Lithuania, and belonged to the most powerful magnates of the Rzecz Pospolita (Poland). The most famous representatives of the family were Dmytro Baida-Vyshnevetsky, the legendary founder of the Sich, and Yarema Vyshnevetsky, the heir of the first one, the son of the Orthodox patroness of art Raina Vyshnevetska and Petro Mohyla’s nephew. In our national historiography Dmytro Baida-Vyshnevetsky is idolized, while Yarema Vyshnevetsky is depicted as the embodiment of absolute evil.
Yarema’s personality is traditionally associated with the part of the Ukrainian public elite that failed to define its national identity. Although the Ukrainian aristocracy integrated politically and culturally (by becoming Catholics) into Polish society, it did not completely break its ties with Ukrainian people. The famous 16th-century writer Stanislav Orikhovsky called those aristocrats gente ruthenus natione polonus (Ruthenian by birth, Polish by nationality).
Jeremiah Vyshnevetsky was born in 1612 and grew up in a Catholic environment. He was educated in the Jesuit Collegium in Lviv and the Catholic universities of Rome, Padua, and Bologna, although he was also acquainted with the “Orthodox school.” On his mother’s instructions, he had been taught for some time by a student of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. After returning from abroad, Yarema became actively involved in the political life of Poland. He took part in the Smolensk War and suppressed Ostrianytsa’s uprising. During the Liberation War of 1648-1654 he defended Zbarazh and commanding Polish troops, led punitive expeditions against the insurgents to the Kyiv and Bratslav regions. He impaled rebels, cut their arms off, gouged out their eyes, and beheaded them. He fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Poles at Berestechko and died of dysentery in August 1651.
From the point of view of generally accepted moral values, raising the question of justifying the prince and others like him is incorrect. Their everyday tactics are an overt betrayal of national interests, which is a priori worthy of condemnation. Trying to justify him is indeed pointless, but on the other hand it is possible, and even necessary, to explain his actions and understand his motives. Then, maybe, they will cease to seem so demonized.
The defining circumstance that led the Ukrainian aristocracy to betray the Ukrainian people was probably the lack of Ukrainian statehood in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th. The elite could realize their potential only among the invaders. Despite all its negativism, this option was not altogether bad. Jaroslaw Pelenski, an American scholar, provides the following argument: “Poland was a country with quite a progressive constitutional structure, guaranteed political liberties and estate privileges, relative religious tolerance, a unique Renaissance culture, which could not help attract the public elite. Judging this choice from today’s point of view, it should be recognized as reasonable, realistic, and even wise.”
The nobles did not have any alternative, and it would have been a shame not to exploit this not quite ideal opportunity. The skills of political meekness, flexibility, and self-abnegation were developed after the Golden Horde conquered Rus’. The princes who came to power had to go to a Tatar khan’s capital to ask humbly for official permits (yarlyks) to rule their principalities. Even the most powerful prince, the future king Danylo of Halych had to bow his head.
As one of the characters in a ballad featured in a film about Russian bandits said, “We’re not like that, life is like that.” To become a janissary was an imperative, submission to fate, not an irresponsible caprice of the Ukrainian magnates and lesser nobles. As soon as there was an opportunity to reunite with their people, they did so, although not all of them did so. Khmelnytsky’s uprisings showed that quite a number of nobles took the side of the young Cossack state. Usually this fact is explained by the nobles’ sheer pragmatism, that they joined the Cossacks because the Poles were about to be defeated. Let’s be optimists and not believe in the possibility that the elites had a prostitute’s mentality. The elites were anything if not contradictory.
The magnates created their own microstates, where they were the absolute rulers, and their subjects were primarily peasants, not representatives of one nation or another. The magnates pledged their allegiance to Poland, called themselves Catholics, and traveled to their domains to do whatever they wished. They were uncrowned kings. Jeremiah Vyshnevetsky owned about 7,500 estates in the Kyiv region, and nearly the entire Poltava region with a total population of about 230,000.
The magnates’ income equaled the contemporary equivalents of millions of American dollars. They could afford to maintain their own courts whose pomp was on par with that found in royal palaces. They had their own statesmen, gentlemen of the court, armies, and even diplomats. The immense treasures of the nobility enabled the magnates to turn the Polish king into a marionette, a magic wand that carried out their mercantile wishes: it helped to appoint them to the highest positions in the capital or at the local level (chancellor, hetman, castellan, voivode); granted them more lands from the Crown’s resources. This situation had its analogs in other countries on the European continent. Similar processes took place in France and the German empire.
Neither did the low cultural level, as compared to the West — a controversial issue — help the aristocrats to maintain their ties with their nation. Poland was a place where cultural “shaping” was possible. Many representatives of ancient Ukrainian families had visited European cities and obtained an education there. The University of Padua became the “alma mater” for three princes of the Olelkovych-Slutsky family. The Vyshnevetskys (Ivan-Kostiantyn and Jeremiah-Mykhailo), the Sapihas, the Khodkevyches, the Dorohostaiskys, the Kurtsevychs and others also studied there. Their acquaintance with Western social and judicial institutions and the rules of social conduct contrasted sharply with the achievements of their own nationality. An inferiority complex emerged, which stimulated the need to get rid of it.
Yarema Vyshnevetsky’s case is not so cut-and-dried, as he had received both an Orthodox education and a Catholic one, i.e., the prince lived his life between two “cultural hotbeds,” two nationalities, standing between them, and not knowing which to choose. However, we must admit that in this concrete case greater emphasis was made on Catholicism and Poland.
Warsaw’s policies also influenced the Ukrainian noblemen’s position. The king gave them lands and privileges, and they were willing to identify themselves as Polish and Lithuanian nobles. This international union of aristocrats demanded the expansion of their rights and liberties, the organization of the judicial system, church reform, and the strengthening of the king’s power, with the nobles’ political power prevailing. This movement was the first reason behind the Union of Lublin in 1596.
It is a mistake to exaggerate the nobles’ alienation from their own people. There was also something delicious for Ukrainian society in that political salad — close contacts with the Poles and cultural exchange with them, which contributed much to the Ukrainian spiritual treasury by bringing to it elements of Western European culture, including the Renaissance. In addition, Polish lords were transformed by Ukraine, becoming unique representatives of the culture of the Ukrainian peasantry. That is, the Polish nobles did not stand apart from the intercultural exchange. However, it did not play any significant role at the time, since acculturation was taking place for the most part within the Ukrainians’ milieu and leading to the destruction of the self-awareness of the Ukrainian ethnos that was relentlessly being transformed into a separate and self-sufficient nation.
The elite vacuum, created by the magnates and nobles can be considered a positive factor because it was filled by Cossackdom and the democracy that was germane to it. Our gravitation toward this model (principle) of the organization of public life became a feature of our genetic code, if not the cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
