An Act of the Unifying Sejm of All Lands of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, establishing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzecz pospolita), took place in Lublin, July 1, 1569, as a federal body politic in which “two peoples” were supposed to merge into a “single indivisible whole.” The Union of Lublin testified to the need to create a multiethnic general-purpose Baltic- Slavic state formation, a Pax Baltica.
Traditionally, it has been held that the Ukrainian-Ruthenian side somehow found itself aloof from the Union of Lublin, that once again, at they said, nobody reckoned with us. Indeed, Dukes Constantine of Ostroh and Constantine Wyszniewecki, representatives of the Zaslawski, Sangusz, Zbaraszski, Korecki, and other noble families did not press for a Ruthenian duchy as a third component of the Rzeczpospolita, perhaps because the time was not ripe for such a political initiative. They were not descendants of Rurik but Lithuanian Duke Gediminas. Therefore, the Ruthenianized princes first had to become aware of themselves as Ruthenian princes, distinct from their Lithuanian counterparts.
Two visions of the Union clashed at the Unifying Sejm in Lublin; actually, two projects of the future body politic. The Lithuanian one focused on federation and the Polish one on a unitary state to be incorporated into the Grand Duchy. Eventually, the participants in the Sejm arrived at a compromise.
The new political “indivisible whole,” the Rzeczpospolita, had to have an elected king, and a foreigner at that, along with a joint Sejm [parliament], uniform monetary and tax systems, and conduct joint foreign policy. Most importantly, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish Crown retained their own government machines, with separate administrations, treasuries, armed forces, and even judicial systems.
After the signing of the Union of Lublin, one of the Commonwealth’s development alternatives was to be transformed from a dualistic into a tripartite polity consisting of Poland, Lithuania, and Ruthenia. Considering that every state was at the time identified with its ruler, all that was needed was an equal representative of the third member of that united body politic, a person who could come up with this initiative and provide sufficient argumentation. In other words, there had to be someone embodying the archetype of a single ruler of Rus’-Ukraine.
Some historians insist that Duke Algirdas was the first to bring up the matter. Duke Constantine of Ostroh could be considered another serious contender for the post of the ducal ruler of the Eastern lands of Ruthenia.
Duke Wyszniewecki, a major political figure of the Khmelnytsky period, emerges as an interesting phenomenon within the context of the Ruthenian Duchy option. Jarema Korybut (Wyszniewecki) was descended from the Ruthenian branch of the Gedimin dynasty, specifically from Korybut, son of Lithuanian Grand Duke Olgerd (Algirdas) Gediminovich and his second wife Princess Uliana Aleksandrovna of Tver. Jarema’s father, Mikhail Mikhailovich, married Rajina, daughter of the Moldavian ruler Jarema Mohyla and cousin of Petro Mohyla. In other words, the blood of two dynasties ran in Jarema’s veins and he was named for his grandfather.
Duke Jarema became an orphan at an early age, yet he graduated from the Lviv Jesuit College with honors and traveled to Italy and Spain to learn military skills. He returned to Ukraine in 1632 and proceeded to expand the family estate, according to family tradition. By the mid 1640s, his property was the largest in the Commonwealth and perhaps all Europe. His lands were inhabited by almost 250,000.
Duke Jarema was a thrifty landlord and an able administrator. His own troops numbered six to eight thousand Registered Ukrainian Cossacks and his population was reliably protected from the Tartars. The latter were frightened even at the mention of his name and called him Kuchuk Shaitan. The young nobleman cultivated a simple and healthy lifestyle, a rare phenomenon among the Polish and Lithuanian aristocracy and Ruthenian- Cossack leadership. His troop was subject to strict discipline and the Cossacks respected him as a gifted and just leader.
All this is evidence that Jarema Wyszniewecki had quite far-reaching ambitions and the Polish military elite must have suspected as much; the magnates did not like his expressly independent character, and Polish kings Wladyslaw [IV Vasa] and later Jan II Kazimierz [also called Kazimierz V (1609-1672)] treated him with caution.
Without doubt, being an experienced politician, Duke Jarema Wyszniewecki understood the situation in the Rzeczpospolita better than anyone else. Of course, he worked out models for its evolution. Considering this and his family ties with Petro Mohyla, whose experience and ambitions matched his and who cherished the idea of an independent Kyiv Patriarchate, it stands to reason to assume that Jarema Wyszniewecki was preparing himself for the role of Grand Duke of Ruthenia Duchy as the third full member of the Commonwealth.. Another possibility is that he planned to become ruler of an independent Ruthenian state, being aware of the instability of the existing federation. After all, a similar thing had been done by Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky of Suzdal, an established separatist of Old Rus’. This hypothesis has not been seriously considered perhaps because Jarema Wyszniewecki was Catholic. But does it mean that a Catholic duke could not harbor separatist ideas?
Who knows what course events would have taken if the struggle for Ukrainian national independence received ducal leadership? Ukraine, having an experienced and noble political elite, would not have been easy to separate from the Western world and made part of Orthodox Third Rome.
And that the Rzeczpospolita needed change was apparent to all capable of analyzing the political situation at the time. Moreover, the Cossacks, as a new creative social group, had made their appearance in the political arena. At first they wanted their rights secured as a class, and later claimed the leading political role in the Ukrainian sector of the Commonwealth, meaning that they wanted to change the social hierarchy in their own way.
To make a tangible impact on the ongoing political debate, the Cossacks needed a leader of the right archetype. History chose Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Under his leadership the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks left their camp and moved into the province in the spring of 1648, after ten golden years of peace.
There is a very sensitive question which seems not to have been clearly formulated to date: Precisely who did Khmelnytsky campaign against as Cossack military leader? The traditional answer — against the Poles, who else? — appears dubious when taking a closer look at further events and the way the Cossack Hetman behaved. One ought to remember that uppermost on the mind at the time was the idea of building the best possible structure for the Rzeczpospolita. Now the debate was joined by Khmelnytsky at the head of a thoroughly belligerent Ukrainian society.
Duke Jarema Wyszniewecki was the first to respond to the Cossack attempt to revise the hierarchical structure of Ukrainian society. A battle-hardened politician armed with excellent Jesuit training and a subtle politician, he immediately realized that what was afoot was not just another plebeian revolt, that it was a powerful social outburst capable of ruining all his undertakings and far- reaching plans. And so his wrath knew no bounds.
(To be continued)
