It is, of course, quite difficult to find out today whether or not Peter I liked the taste of Ukrainian fatback and allowed it to be served to his dinner table. Conversely, it is not difficult at all to reconstruct the attitude of the Russian Empire’s architect to Ukrainian fatback in the political sense of the word, for archives keep some quite interesting documents that shed light on this “delicate” page of Ukrainian- Russian relations.
As is known, hetman-ruled Ukraine had remained an autonomous entity within the Russian state limits until the early eighteenth century, with a political setup of its own both in terms of legislation and in terms of socioeconomic relations and the politico-administrative system. Ukrainian trade was also developing in a rather particular way. The trade routes to Wroclaw, Gdansk, and Krolewc of Prussia, blazed during the rule of Polish kings, again became the main channels for Ukrainian export and import after the troubled times of the Ruin.
Peter I made the first attempt to reorient them in the late seventeenth century. After conquering Azov, he issued an ukase sternly ordering Ukrainian merchants to take their goods to the newly captured town, leaving aside other places. However, this ukase was not a hindrance to Ukrainian exporters, for the Russian monarch very soon lost interest in the southern direction and cast his glance westward. It took Peter I quite a long time to wait for success in the western direction. At the same time, the national economy took a sharp downward turn under the load of extravagant military spending. To mobilize as many resources as possible, the monarch launched a trade war of a kind against his own merchants, introducing a long list of the so-called prohibited goods to be sold only under state monopoly.
After the ill-fated anti-Moscow mutiny of Hetman Ivan Mazepa in 1708, Peter I’s government took a still tougher stand in Ukrainian affairs so as, to quote Count P. Tolstoy, a tsar’s lieutenant, “...to lay hands on Little Russia...” A number of political innovations were followed in 1714 by economic transformations. From this time on, hetman-ruled Ukraine has become a theater for trade wars which in fact created the “fatback problem.”
As is evident from Peter I’s ukase to Senate dated January 30, 1714, Russian authorities were somewhat wary of crudely interfering into the affairs of Ukrainian merchants, for they still kept poignant memories of Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s rebellion of 1708. A great deal less wary of this was Peter I, who pointed out the futility of the senators’ “...doubts about forbidding the local free people...” to export their customary goods to Western markets. Also interesting was the monarch’s explanation of the “legitimacy” of this step. In particular, he quoted the precedent he had himself set a few years before, “...for when Riga was under the Swedes, it was prohibited carrying hemp and other goods from Cherkasy region towns, namely Starodub (part of hetman-ruled Ukraine at the time - Ed.) and other well-known places, to Riga, and it was orderedto carry them insteadto the city of Arkhangelsk. This prohibition must be restored now...” Such “prohibited goods,” according to Peter I, included, first of all, tanned oxen hide, hemp, and Ukrainian fatback or, to be more exact, lard, which “...you must not carry to any places but ours (as it follows from our ukase to the hetman); we also wrote the hetman about this in a private letter.”
On the basis of this ironclad reasoning of the tsar, Senate issued a decree on April 6, 1714, slapping a legal ban on carrying potash, tallow, wax, hemp oil, flax seeds, bristles, glue, rhubarb, coal tar, and caviar, in addition to the above- mentioned lard, hemp, and tanned hide, from Ukraine. In a letter to the hetman, Kyiv Governor General Prince D. Golitsyn thus explained how to implement the new law, “...I was ordered, with Your Excellency’s due consent, to establish security posts at certain places to prevent the aforesaid goods from being carried to any places but His Tsarist Majesty’s wharves on the Baltic Sea coast.” The breach of this law entailed a punishment as severe as seizure of a merchant’s whole property in favor of the tsarist treasury.
The subsequent years saw a never ending growth of the black list. At the same time, official Petersburg banned importing hosiery, golden and silver threading, silken fabrics, German brocade, woolen and linen cloth, tobacco, playing cards, etc. And while Ukrainian merchants still could fancy living without imported textiles and luxury items, they could not imagine even in the wildest dream a wagon without a single bit of fatback. What is more, the tsarist administration entrusted with implementing the law on the prohibited goods put the question precisely as follows: not a single piece of this “strategic” product should slip out of the state’s bounds.
As is evidenced from the early eighteenth century historical materials, the struggle for keeping up the “fatback spirit” unfolded in two directions: trying to illegally bypass the tsarist bans and to legally achieve the cancellation of at least the most mindless prohibitions (e.g., the ban on carrying a small quantity of hog fat or meat to eat on the way).
One can gage the scale of the illegal “fatback potential of the state” by the active correspondence on this matter between the Russian Chancellor Count G. Golovkin or the Kyiv Governor General Count D. Golitsyn and the Ukrainian hetman. In particular, as early as May 1714 G. Golovkin expressed his dissatisfaction in his letter to Ivan Skoropadsky that Ukrainian merchants were still finding loopholes to export the prohibited goods to West European markets, so, in his opinion, “...security posts should be set up in proper places on the border.”
Tsar Peter I decreed to hold Kyiv Governor General D. Golitsyn personally responsible for enforcing the prohibited goods law. The latter was also plagued with this problem because he received information that “...many goods are being carried abroad... ,” which could “...be blamed on me...” On his part, the governor general persistently advised the hetman “...to send a good person who will go, together with an envoy of mine, down the Dnipro and Desna to other respectable places to announce my decrees and dissuade merchants from smuggling, like thieves, the prohibited goods abroad, bypassing the big roads.”
The implementation of the prohibited goods law raised new problems which were not typical of Russian practice but resulted from the rather vague nature of the above-mentioned ukases and from differences between the then Ukrainian and Russian languages. Particularly, we read the following in Hetman Skoropadsky’s l718 letter to the tsar, in which he lists various urgent requirements of the Ukrainian populace:
“...I am also bringing to Your Majesty’s attention the troubles suffered by Ukrainian merchants... when some of them carry hog meat to eat on the way abroad. As this kind of meat is called fatback in Ukraine, while the same term applies to lard – a prohibited product – in the Great Russian tongue, border guards rob tradesmen of their goods due to the misleading word...” Taking into account such draconian measures of the tsarist administration, the hetman pleaded that the central government solve this problem on the legislative level, so that “...outward- bound merchants could carry and consume the aforesaid fatback...”
No one knows how long the Ukrainian hog fat story would have dragged on had the big-politics interests not intervened – much to the satisfaction of the Ukrainian side. Before 1714, trade with Ukraine had yielded considerable profits to the merchants residing in Wroclaw ruled at the time by Austrian Habsburg emperors.
The artificial obstacles put up by the Russian government on the way of Ukrainian merchants to Western markets dealt a painful blow to the financial interests of Wroclaw tradesmen who decided to turn to the Kaiser for help. As Peter I was deeply interested in improving relations with the Habsburgs, the tsarist government could not afford to ignore the diplomatic interventions of Austrian officials. It must be on this wave, beneficial for the Ukrainian interests, that the Senate passed an ukase allowing Ukrainian merchants to carry 100 silver thalers “for each wagon” (earlier, the hard Austrian currency was usually taken away, while it was impossible to buy anything abroad for the virtually valueless Russian copper coins) as well as “...hog bacon fat ad libitum...” The Collegium of Foreign Affairs sent a relevant message to Hetman Skoropadsky.
Thus the story happily ended for the Ukrainian side, but only with respect to “non-commercial” bacon fat. Soon after, in 1723, under the pressure of Vienna, the Russian government also agreed to lift the ban on Ukraine exporting the commercial fat, tanned hides, wax, and bristles. Yet, the goods having the largest share in Ukrainian exports before 1714 – hemp, flax, and saltpeter – still remained prohibited. Lifting the ban on their export would be the main concern of the last Cossack ruler of Ukraine, the economy-minded Hetman Danylo Apostol, in the late 1720s – early 1730s.
However, even after the complete abrogation of the 1714-1718 laws, Ukraine would keep a long memory of them. For instance, even 50 years later, the Ukrainian gentry would mention them in the well-known “Petition of the Little Russian Nobility and Senior Officers, together with the Hetman, on the Restoration of Various Old Rights of Little Russia” filed to Empress Catherine II. Therefore, the Ukrainian bacon fat affair should be viewed as a tendency, rather than a funny incident, in the history of Ukrainian-Russian relations.
