Military experts believe that the so-called psychological and informational warfare is the most effective weapon in fighting any enemy. Wars of this kind have been waged by and against various peoples and countries since times immemorial. Taras CHUKHLIB, director of the Research Institute of Cossacks at the Institute of the History of Ukraine, is convinced that the glorious Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the first to conduct this kind of wars in Central and Eastern Europe. It is the great Bohdan who set up a powerful intelligence service in the Cossack Army. Disinformation often helped Khmelnytsky spread panic and a sense of no confidence in their own strength among his enemies. The hetman employed methods of psychological warfare in many battles, especially in the formidable year of 1648, at the beginning of the Liberation War.
MAKING THE ENEMY TREMBLE WITH FEAR
Khmelnytsky made brilliant use of psychological warfare tactics in his native Cherkasy region – in the 1648 battles near Zhovti Vody and Korsun. The Cossack hetman managed to win over the registered Cossacks. Six regiments of experienced registered Cossacks “did not shame themselves in the memory of their descendants and took the side of gallant Sich Cossacks,” a well-known historian Valerii Smolii says. Stefan Potocki’s soldiers, under siege near Zhovti Vody, were in a really catastrophic situation.
On the same day, May 2, Stefan’s father Mikolaj Potocki, the Crown Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, received this stunning piece of news. He was unable to rush to his beloved son’s rescue in good time because reinforcements from Prince Jeremiah Wisniowiecki and other Polish magnates had not yet arrived to join the punitive units. Gonfalons were sluggishly gathering near Cherkasy, and only the fast approach of Polish Hetman Martin Kalinowski prompted the old Potocki to take active actions.
Five thousand elite soldiers with the two hetmans at the head marched to Chyhyryn, crossed the river Tiasmyn, and encamped in the field. Another 2,000 soldiers joined them in a short while. According to the noble Bielchacki, the crown hetman “wished to go and help them lift the siege, expecting assistance from the generals who were not exactly in a hurry.”
The terrible news of the registered Cossacks’ mutiny had an oppressive effect on the punitive army’s command. Colonel Korycki frankly admitted in a letter to the Samdormir voivode Dominik Zaslawski: “…ours will not stand up to them and will all die, together with the son of His Grace Governor of Krakow (Mikolaj Potocki) who can sing the requiem right now…”
Meanwhile, the indefatigable Khmelnytsky, who needed to defeat the crown army at any cost (otherwise the uprising that he had put up would have ended up with deaths by impaling) dealt Potocki one more powerful psychological blow. Using his agents, the Cossack hetman literally showered the enemy camp with the rumors that a 40,000-strong Tatar horde was coming to Ukraine. “Apparently, these greatly exaggerated data about the strength of Tatars in Ukraine paralyzed the crown hetman and kept him from sending some of his troops or going himself to bail Stefan out, which, in the long run, had a deleterious effect on the entire punitive operation,” say Valerii Smoliy and Valerii Stepankov, well-known researchers of the Khmelnytsky era.
A paralyzing fear, deep hesitations, and categorical unwillingness of most officers to bail out the besieged near Zhovti Vody forced Mikolaj Potocki to retreat from Cherkasy, where the unnerved crown army was waiting in vain for help from Prince Wisniowiecki.
Having routed Stefan Potocki on May 6, Khmelnytsky did not waste time and rushed to engage the main Polish forces. Almost 2,000 insurgents joined the Cossack army near Kryliv and Chyhyryn. On May 13 the Cossacks crossed the Tiasmyn near what is now Smila and encamped there.
Meanwhile, a confused Mikolaj Potocki, who had lost initiative altogether, began to evade fighting and, according to Chukhlib, had suffered a psychological defeat long before the battle itself took place. In an alarming letter, the crown hetman warned Poland’s monarch about the threat of a “terrible war” and complained that he “lacked wits and reason to imagine how His Royal Grace could offer resistance with such a small number of soldiers.”
Having learned about the arrival of Khmelnytsky and the Tatars, Potocki retreated to Korsun and encamped outside the town. It is here that the advance Cossack companies with Maksym Kryvonis at the head caught up with the Poles.
Incidentally, the Zaporozhian Army owes, to a great extent, its success near Korsun to the exploit of the Cossack Mykyta Galagan (some of the present-day historians think that the hero’s real last name was But). He sacrificed himself by voluntarily surrendering to the Poles in order to deceive the enemy. The Poles could not even imagine that a human could endure such horrible tortures and finally believed the old Zaporozhian who kept stubbornly saying that Khmelnytsky had about 20,000 Cossacks at his disposal and 47,000 Tatars had come to help him.
The frightened command of the crown army decided to retreat immediately, which the cunning Khmelnytsky was after. For he knew only too well that, assisted by the Crimeans, he would quickly bust the Polish camp on the march. This occurred in Horokhova Dibrova, about 10 miles away from Korsun.
Potocki fought like a rank-and-file soldier in the stormy battle and received three blows with a saber on his head, but the strong helmet saved his life. Taken prisoner by the Cossacks, the crown hetman asked Khmelnytsky with taunting irony: “Hey slave, what are you going to give Tatar horde knights in reward?” – for the success was ascribed to the Crimeans. To which he received an exhaustive answer: “You… and others like you.”
In September of the same year, near Pyliavtsi, Khmelnytsky carried out successful maneuvers and created unfavorable conditions for the Poles to set up a defensive camp. This in turn caused the Polish command to doubt about their actions, which also spread to ordinary soldiers. A participant in those events wrote in his diary: “There is no discipline in the camp, and commanders are wielding no authority. There was a shootout and too much shouting at night after somebody said the password, and nobody was reprimanded for this because all were equally panic-stricken, things were totally out of order.”
The hetman was awaiting the arrival of the allied Tatars, so he did not launch any hostilities against the Poles for a long time. Instead, he sent a priest to the Poles, who was thus “captured” and, in spite of tortures, kept saying that a 40,000-strong Tatar army had arrived, which “horrified and caused panic among the Poles.” In reality, only about 5,000 Crimeans arrived.
Yet the sly hetman gave them an extremely hearty welcome: the Cossacks saluted the allies with cannons and muskets. The psychological strike hit the target: the Polish camp was rife with terrible rumors. According to the Galician commander Andrii Miaskovsky, the Polish soldiers “were terribly afraid.” As a result, “the Cossacks were proud and multitudes of the rabble heartened up.”
Magnate Dominik Zaslawski, who was one of the first to flee Pyliavtsi, reminisced later: “The army became so indifferent that many did not want to fight at all: some under the pretext that there were no orders from heir colonels, other under the pretext that there were very few soldiers under the gonfalons, still other did not wish to fight without their captains under the gonfalons.” Yet, when the battle began, the enemy could not stand it and ran away. The Cossacks captured all the artillery and trains in the empty camp.
COSSACK INTELLIGENCE AGENTS WORKED EVEN IN WARSAW AND MOSCOW
There is evidence that, soon after the beginning of the Liberation War, Cossack intelligence agents worked in Galicia and went as far as Krakow. “A historical chronicle says: “People were sent in good time to all the nooks of the enemy positions. They would gather every grain of information about the enemy and promptly report this to their captains and colonels. The latter would rush to Khmelnytsky himself – they kept the best horses for this occasion.”
Fake “prisoners of war” were rather often sent to the enemy, which became an important element of the Cossacks’ psychological war. For the enemy did not expect Cossack “captives” to give pre-arranged and pro-Ukrainian evidence in spite of cruel tortures.
Here is the description of Khmelnytsky’s psychological pressure by the Polish nobleman S. Oswiencim: “We could not learn the truth, relying on captives only. This was a major reason why the approved decisions were often reversed. When one captive said that Khmelnytsky was marching on us, we would get petrified, lose heart, and reflect on how we should defend from him. But he did now show up for a day or two, and a new captive would tell us the opposite to what the first one had said.”
Sources testify that the Cossacks carried out a huge intelligence operation in the winter of 1651 under the overall supervision of the hetman and the direct guidance of the officer Tarasenko. About 2,000 Ukrainian spies were sent to the Polish Crown to gather all kinds of information, carry out sabotage, and foment an uprising. They also spread rumors about the extraordinary fighting power of Khmelnytsky’s army, thus causing panic among the local populace. While accomplishing this important mission, most of the Cossack intelligence agents (including women, incidentally) posed as beggars, cripples, “pilgrims,” traveling circus actors, bandura players, and, in some cases, priests or monks.
The helmsman of the Ukrainian state managed to set up a human intelligence network in Warsaw and Wilno, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which regularly supplied the necessary political and military information. After 1654, the Zaporozhian Army’s intelligence service conducted a brilliant operation, as a result of which the Cossack intelligence agent Lukian Hryhorovych (Lytvyn), a professional doctor, got employed at Moscow’s Ambassadorial Department.
“Khmelnytsky used force only when stratagems were of no avail,” a French chronicler wrote about the Cossack hetman. “He wielded such an authority among the Cossacks that he could easily find people who were ready to die so that their leader might put his project into practice.”
