Moscow recently hosted the international roundtable “The Battle of Poltava: Its Perception Centuries Later,” involving scholars from Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. The roundtable was supported by Russia’s president and the Russian historical journal Rodina. The participants discussed issues relating to the Great Northern War (1700–21) in general and the Battle of Poltava in particular. This author represented the Institute of Ukrainian History, the National Academy of Sci-ences of Ukraine, and what follows is the unabridged text of his presentation.
We believe that the reasons behind the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s refusal to accept Russia’s protection, as offered by Peter I shortly before the Battle of Poltava, should be assessed in terms of international political and legal relations that had taken shape in Europe by then. At that time the relations between the sovereign and vassal countries were based on a social contract that consisted of the rights and obligations to be honored on a mutual basis. The vassals promised “obedience, service, and loyalty” in return for the ruling nation’s “protection and respect.”
Such accords were then based on mutual voluntary obligations, so that the rulers of the sovereign states—kings, tsars, and emperors—had to observe the core principles of recognition and safeguarding of their subjects’ “age-old rights and privileges”, provide military protection to them, etc. If the protecting state failed to fulfill its obligations, any such subject—a prince, duke, baron, elector, boyar, or hetman—had the right to rise against the ruler or seek another, more trustworthy one.
The 1710 Pacts and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Host mentioned the main reasons behind Ukraine’s rejection of Muscovy’s protection: when Ukraine was governed by Hetman Mazepa, “Muscovy wanted to carry out its ill-wishing schemes and repaying good with evil, instead of rewarding [Ukraine] for countless good services, pursuit thereof until complete destruction, expenditures and losses, countless displays of courage and military campaigning. Muscovy wanted to transform the Cossacks into the regular army, subordinate Ukrainian cities, cancel the rights and liberties, uproot the Zaporozhian Host, etc.
Peter I’s manifesto, dated Nov. 1, 1708, reads that Hetman Mazepa “has betrayed … me as the Tsar of Muscovy, for no obvious reason, siding with Charles XII of Sweden…” In other words, the Russian tsar did not see the obvious reasons behind what he regarded as a treacherous act on the part of his long-term vassal and simply declared that Mazepa was Russia’s number-one enemy. However, a scholarly analysis of Ukraine-Muscovy relations in the early 18th century shows that Peter I of Russia was the first to have acted contrary to the bilateral accords between Russia and Ukraine—the Kolomak Articles of 1687 and the Moscow Articles of 1689—that guaranteed the Cossack autonomy, with its rights and liberties, under Muscovy’s rule. There were tangible reasons for Ukraine to side with Sweden, most of which were deeply rooted in history and were systemic by nature.
1. Muscovy had no intention of resolving the issue of Ukraine’s union by way of placing its Right-Bank territory back under the hetman’s rule.
Mazepa inherited the problem of re-uniting Cossack Ukraine from Hetman Ivan Samoilovych (1672–87). The idea of uniting Left-Bank and Right-Bank Ukraine was conceived by the Mazepa administration practically after its inception, despite the 1686 Eternal Peace Treaty between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, Mazepa first tried to implement it together with the Right-Bank Colonel Semen Palii when they negotiated military operations with Moscow against the Rzeczpospolita in the second half of 1692. After the Great Northern War broke out in 1700, Hetman Mazepa believed he could extend his authority over Right-Bank Ukraine, given proper military aid, so he exerted diplomatic pressure on the Kremlin.
As it was, a special clause was added to the Narva agreement between the Rzeczpospolita and Muscovy on Sept. 30, 1704, whereby Palii was to return (“in a voluntary or forced way”) to Poland all of the fortresses captured by the Cossack troops on the Right Bank. In view of events on the battlefield, the Hetman of Ukraine received a letter from Peter I of Russia only on Oct. 7, 1707, suggesting that “Bila Tserkva and Right-Bank Ukraine” should return to the Rzeczpospolita as its “possession.”
To this Mazepa replied that Right-Bank Ukraine could not be handed over to the Polish Kingdom as its possession, except if the Russian tsar issued a special ukase to this effect. In a letter to Count Golovkin, dated Dec. 10, 1707, Mazepa wrote that the occupation of Right-Bank Ukraine by Polish troops was not possible, considering that the Cossacks lived “practically everywhere” in Wroc aw and Kyiv voivodeships. Without waiting for instructions from Peter I, Mazepa simultaneously ordered the colonels in Right-Bank Ukraine to ban Polish troops entry to the winter camps.
Contemporary sources quote Mazepa as making the following important statement in the fall of 1707: “I shall remain loyal to His Royal Majesty until I can see the forces brought to the Ukrainian frontier by Stanis aw [I Leszczynski of Poland], what progress the Swedish troops have made in Muscovy, and if I see that I cannot defend Ukraine and myself [against the enemy], then why should I allow myself and my Fatherland to die? God will be my witness as I will act as the circumstances will dictate, in order to preserve my free, unconquered people and the integrity of my country…” In other words, one of the main reasons behind Hetman Mazepa’s decision to start considering the possibility of withdrawal from Muscovy, back in 1707, was the inability of the Muscovite government to solve the problem of Ukraine’s unity at the time.
2. Peter I and his subordinates started taking active measures to curb the Ukrainian hetman’s political rights.
According to Mazepa’s General Military Chancellor Pylyp Orlyk, Countess Anna Dolska described a conversation with two Russian generals, Sheremetyev and Renne in Lviv (1706), in a letter to Mazepa. General Renne had said: “O Lord, have pity on that good and clever man. The poor man does not know that the Count Alexander Danilovich (Menshikov) digs a grave for him, and after he is rid of him (Mazepa), then he himself will become the Hetman of the Ukraine.”
After Pylyp Orlyk finished reading the letter Mazepa said, “I know well what they want to do with me and all of you. They want to satisfy me with the title of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. They want the officer corps annihilated, our cities turned over to their administration, and their own governors appointed. If our people should oppose them, they would send them beyond the Volga, and the Ukraine will be settled by their own people.” Other contemporary sources have it that Mazepa harbored a grudge against Peter I after he had visited Kyiv in 1706 and ordered the Russian and Ukrainian troops to advance in the direction of Volhynia, and appointed Menshikov as commander of the allied forces, thus subordinating the Hetman of Ukraine to a Russian nobleman.
In 1707 the hetman’s chancellery happened to get its hands on Menshikov’s letter addressed to the Ukrainian Colonel Tansky. The latter was ordered, bypassing the hetman, to move his regiment to join the Russian forces. Mazepa read it and was outraged by Count Menshikov ordering his (Mazepa’s) people around. He said that if Colonel Tansky had carried out Menshikov’s order, he would have shot him like a rabid dog. He wrote in a letter to Ivan Skoropadsky (Oct. 30, 1708): “They want to get all of us under their tyrannical control, the Hetman, the Cossack general officers, colonels, the entire Zaporozhian Host with our legitimate rights and liberties…”
3. Moscow launched a radical transformation of the administrative system in the Ukrainian Hetman State.
On Dec. 18, 1707, Peter I issued a ukase setting up Kyiv gubernia, an area around Kyiv with the radius of “a hundred versts“ (around 107 kilometers). Kyiv gubernia thus became one of the eight new administrative territorial units added to the Russian empire, along with those of Moscow, Ingermanland, Smolensk, Arkhangelsk, Kazan, Azov, and Siberia.
Kyiv gubernia was to comprise such cities as Pereiaslav (the headquarters of the Pereiaslav Regiment of the Ukrainian Hetmanate), Chernihiv (Chernihiv Regiment), Nizhyn (Nizhyn Regiment), etc. The governor of Kyiv gubernia was vested with the following powers: “Those placed in charge of the gubernias are hereby instructed to take care of all taxes and duties, also to attend to other matters and be prepared to report to His Royal Majesty.” Before long, Russian Count Golitsyn was appointed governor of Kyiv gubernia. In the aforecited letter to Skoropadsky, Hetman Mazepa had this to say with regard to changes to the Ukrainian Hetmanate that benefited Muscovy: “Moscow started turning over Little Russian cities to its own administration without our consent.”
4. Moscow cut the Ukrainian hetman’s powers in such areas as economy, finance, and allocation of parcels of land for the Cossack starshyna (officers).
On Jan. 13, 1700, Peter I issued a decree authorizing H. Zarudny, the judge advocate of the Myrhorod Regiment, to take possession of the village of Tukh. This document has a very special meaning in comprehending Russia’s economic policy with regard to Ukraine. It reads that, contrary to the ukase issued by “His Royal Majesty, Hetman Ivan Mazepa of the Zaporozhian Host on both sides of the Dnipro, gave him [Zarudny] in possession the village of Tukh with its populace, which is in Yareskiv Company of the Myrhorod Regiment, as attested by a decree issued by the said Hetman who is a subject of His Royal Majesty, whereas there was no decree issued to this effect by His Royal Majesty … therefore His Royal Majesty hereby decrees to grant possession of the said village and its residents [to Zarudny].”
In other words, with the start of the Great Northern War, Peter I tried to deprive Hetman Mazepa of his rather important right to grant parcels of land to senior Cossack officers. Thus, at the beginning of 1701, Kyiv Colonel K. Mokievsky informed Mazepa that, during his visit to Moscow with a delegation, they had tried to talk him into accepting Peter I’s deed that gave him ownerships rights to land in Ukraine and that he had replied to the Russian tsar’s official, “I have no right and will not accept any land ownership without my hetman’s knowledge and consent.”
On Dec. 20, 1704, Peter I issued a decree addressing “all of the Zaporozhian Host” and enforcing the Muscovite currency on Ukraine, although previously this country used various European currencies.
5. Moscow made every effort to limit in all possible ways the Ukrainian starshyna’s political and administrative powers.
During Peter I’s visit to Kyiv in 1706, Count Menshikov demanded that Hetman Mazepa restrict the authority of the general and regiment-level starshyna. “Mr. Mazepa, it’s high time you started dealing with those enemies,” he kept telling the hetman, and by “those enemies” he meant Cossack colonels. After the Russian tsar and his entourage left Kyiv, Mazepa informed his starshyna about Menshikov’s insistent requests, which were obviously done with his sovereign’s knowledge and consent. The Ukrainian elite’s response was: “As ordered by His Royal Majesty, the obedient and faithful Cossacks are serving without any resistance in long-term military campaigns, sparing not their cattle and shedding their blood, be it in Livonia, Poland, Lithuania, the Kazan State, cities by the Don River. They get killed in action and their numbers are dropping, but in return for their past and present faithful service, in particular during the war with Turkey (1686–1700), they receive no recognition. Instead, they are being shown disrespect and branded as idlers. Our faithful service is not appreciated. Rather, they are planning on our destruction.”
Mazepa’s nephew Andrii Voinarovsky later said the general starshyna first learned about Mazepa’s disillusionment with Muscovy, at a council held in Kyiv in the winter of 1707: “It happened on Christmas Eve; as usual, my uncle played host to colonels. It was then that I heard him say to them, ‘If I had not stood up for you, you would’ve long been demoted to privates.’”
6. Peter I started “reforming” the Cossack Host and members of his government began giving orders to Ukrainian ranking officers.
In 1705 I. Chernysh, a member of the Cossack starshyna at Hrodno, forwarded to Baturyn a copy of Peter I’s decree ordering every fifth Cossack of the Kyiv and Pryluky regiments to be sent to Prussia “for drilling and becoming a member of a regular dragoon regiment.” Pylyp Orlyk later testified that Mazepa received “His Royal Majesty’s ukase on Cossacks to be drafted, like the Sloboda regiments, and that [this ukase] scared and angered all of the colonels and starshyna so much that they could discuss nothing else but that this ukase was aimed at conscripting every fifth Cossack as dragoons and privates.”
In 1706 Peter I ordered the formation of a special military unit, the Ukrainian Division, by way of merging city-quartered and cavalry regiments in Left-Bank and Sloboda Ukraine. The division’s commanding officer was to be appointed by the Russian tsar. For the duration of a military campaign he took command of all Cossack and Russian units stationed in Ukraine.
In May 1708 Major Dolgorukov of the Leib Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment received command of “all Muscovites, stolniks [members of the royal court responsible for serving the royal table], clerks, noblemen, members of the royal court, local police, and officers and men, including the dragoons, infantrymen, Sloboda Cherkasy regiments and the hetman’s many regiments in Ukraine.” Moscow-appointed Russian Voivode Golitsyn of Kyiv gave orders to Dolgorukov and all Ukrainian troops. In November 1707 Mazepa handed over to his command the “newly organized” Fortress of Pechersk and its Cossack garrison.
In the early 18th century, the Ukrainian elite had reasons to see a threat to Ukraine’s traditional political and military order in the loss of control over the military, its transformation into a part of the Russian army, and changes to the existing traditional power and social model.
7. Muscovy failed to adequately protect Ukraine against the Swedish offensive.
During a military council in Zhovkva (1707) Hetman Mazepa asked Peter I for 10,000 Russian troops to cover Ukraine’s frontiers to which his sovereign replied that he couldn’t give him ten men, let alone 10,000, and that he would have to rely on his own resources. The Russian tsar also stressed that Mazepa had to exhaust Charles XII’s army by avoiding a major battle and by retreating to Muscovy, as far as possible. Also, the scorched-earth strategy had to be used against the advancing Swedes. Anticipating a possible Swedish-Polish attack on Kyiv in the second half of 1707 and in 1708, Peter I ordered in the fourth clause: “during the enemy’s advance, if and when the Caves Monastery is besieged and taken, you shall retreat from Kyiv, leaving the city empty, and proceed beyond the Dnieper.”
It is an established historical fact that Hetman Mazepa sent his aide-de-camp D. Maksymovych to inform Peter I that he disagreed with his decision to have “all our troops [deployed] so far away from Ukraine, so that if the enemy invaded Ukraine, there would be no one to defend it.” The Russian army’s constant retreat, meant to exhaust the enemy with local skirmishes, irked the Cossack starshyna and the Ukrainian populace. Mazepa took advantage of this situation when he stated in a Nov. 15, 1708 decree that “Moscow… cannot drive back the enemy, what with its troops retreating from the Swedish army to Russia’s borders, leaving us and Little Russia defenseless and helpless.”
8. Russian military officers and privates exercised arbitrary rule with regard to the Ukrainian populace.
In one of his earliest letters to Peter I (dated April 16, 1703), Hetman Mazepa complained that Russian military units stationed in Left-Bank Ukraine treated the populace rudely: “I have received repeated complaints from my ranking army officers, people of noble birth, also from residents of Nizhyn, that servicemen under the command of Your Royal Majesty assault them physically and otherwise mistreat and offend them on a large scale.”
In 1705 the Kyiv and Pryluky regiments deployed to Western Belarus under the command of Acting Hetman Dmytro Horlenko where they performed combat operations jointly with the Russian army. Horlenko wrote to Mazepa complaining of “numerous instances of mistreatment, abuse, physical assault, theft of horses, and Cossacks being murdered by men of Great Russian officers and their subordinates.” It came to the point that the acting hetman was insidiously “pushed off his horse and then the horses and the carts were taken away from him and his subordinates.”
In 1706 they started energetically building the Pechersk Fortress in Kyiv and the local Cossack officers repeatedly complained to Baturyn that “Moscow-appointed officials who were directing the construction works hit the Cossacks with sticks on the head, cut off ears with swords, and otherwise mistreated them. The Cossacks had to abandon the harvesting season to carry the burden of their work in their service to His Royal Majesty, while people from Great Russia were looting their homes, raping their wives and daughters, taking away their horses and cattle, and beating local Cossack officials to death.”
Contemporary eyewitness accounts have it that in response to such violence on the part of Moscow-appointed officials, Horlenko told Mazepa: “Just as we keep praying for our Lord to rest the soul of Khmelnytsky, holding his memory sacred, being grateful for what he did to rid Ukraine of the Polish yoke, so we and our posterity will condemn you as our Hetman, and your posterity if you leave us in this (Russian) bondage.”
9. Peter I overburdened the Cossack host with military campaigns.
Starting in 1700, the Cossack troops were annually engaged in long-rangen military campaigns against the Baltic countries, Saxony, Northern Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Kazan, and the Don region, although the contemporary Moscow-based historian V. Artamonov claims that Russia’s war in the Baltic countries was beyond Ukraine’s national interests. There is documented evidence that, in June 1706, Hetman Mazepa received a letter from a group of wives of Cossacks who were serving in the Starodub Regiment. They asked the hetman to bring back their husbands, considering that these men had been away from home for more than five years as they had been engaged in the military campaigns against the Swedes. In view of this Mazepa asked Peter I to issue an ukase ordering this regiment’s return to Ukraine.
Russian forces stationed in Ukraine dramatically depleted its resources. Peter I wrote to Mazepa (June 27, 1707): “Our Zaporozhian Host, as well as residents of Little Russia, are suffering under the heavy burden of losses and expenditures involved in the continuous military campaigns, movements of troops under the command of His Royal Majesty, and the transportation of military, financial, and other supplies to Kyiv…”
10. The Russian army’s punitive operations wreaked havoc with Ukraine, causing heavy material losses and numerous deaths.
The Russian Historian V. Ye. Vozgrin insisted that in 1708–09 Ukraine sustained an act of genocide: “As the Russian troops were retreating to the south, they left scorched earth behind, mostly in Right-Bank Ukraine. Populated areas were destroyed, along with the populace’s food reserves, and forests—not only along the anticipated way of Swedish advance, but also in the 40–45-kilometer-wide swaths on both sides of the anticipated Swedish route. In addition, cities suspected of supporting Mazepa-sided Cossacks were burned down and all their residents liquidated. These punitive measures causes a great deal of losses to the Ukrainian people.” Another prominent researcher, Yevgeny Tarle, later confirmed that Mazepa feared “Ukraine’s complete devastation caused by the advancing forces of Charles XII and/or by the Russian troops that were retreating or moving alongside.”
In other words, since the outbreak of the Great Northern War (1700–21), Muscovy no longer treated the autonomy of the Ukrainian Hetmanate in accordance with the previous bilateral protectorate accords. Peter I regarded Ukraine only as long and as much as he needed it for his political purposes. The ruler of Russia and Ukraine did not consider it necessary to carry out his imperial duties in protecting the rights and liberties of his Ukrainian subjects. However, there is documented evidence that Peter I was aware of the accords between Moscow and Baturyn. After he learned about Mazepa’s siding with Charles XII of Sweden, he immediately ordered his bureaucrats to dig up all previous Russia-Ukraine agreements. They obliged and placed “two folders on his desk one of which contained a list of articles made with Hetmans Yurii Khmelnytsky (1659) and Ivan Briukhovetsky (1663), while the other folder contained a list of articles made with Ivan Mazepa (1687), including the rights and liberties given to Mazepa.”
Peter I delivered an emotional speech addressing his officers and men hours before the Battle of Poltava (June 27, 1709), and let it slip that “King Charles [XII of Sweden] and the impostor Leszczynski [I of Poland] have succeeded in winning Hetman Mazepa over to their side, all of whom have pledged… to establish a special duchy under his rule, where he [i.e. Mazepa] would be the grand duke…”
Charles XII had convincing victories in the initial phase of the Great Northern War; Augustus II of Poland stepped down to be succeeded by the Swedish king’s prot g Stanis aw Leszczynski; Ukraine sustained heavy material and human losses on the “Baltic” and “Eastern” fronts of the war. Furthermore, there was a growing discontent among Ukraine’s political elites regarding their long-term Russian protector Peter I. All of the above forced Ivan Mazepa to reject “treacherous and tyrannical Moscow” in favor of an independent Ukrainian duchy. He and his government believed that this kind of polity would stand a better chance of survival, given the protection from the more reliable European monarchs. The Battle of Poltava, however, wrecked all hopes of this rebellious Cossack leader.
Taras Chukhklib holds a Ph.D. in History. Photos by Kostiantyn HRYSHYN, The Day
