Armed struggle in the history of humanity — especially in the past few centuries — has often been accompanied by a struggle of ideas, views, and doctrines, along with information warfare suited to the specifics of the given epoch. People tested the strength of their enemies’ convictions with bayonets and gunfire, while dissenters were simply killed. Above all else, facts were the deadliest weapon in such a war, for which reason even three centuries ago a propaganda victory often meant no less than a victory in the battlefield.
The participants of the historical drama, which unfolded under extremely adverse circumstances for our homeland and decided Ukraine’s fate, understood this only too well. Aside from military action, Swedish King Charles XII, Ukraine’s Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and Moscow Tsar Peter I each pursued their own ends in staging extensive information campaigns designed to snatch as many supporters and sympathizers from the enemy as possible and thus sap his strength. Yet, while the course of the military action and the political struggle that preceded the Battle of Poltava won by Peter I are well known, the propaganda struggle has been given less attention. Thus, let us consider it in more detail.
But first the following must be mentioned. In those cruel times verbal propaganda alone could do little without the propaganda through fire, torture, gallows, and pales (Peter I used the two latter methods to terrorize and intimidate the millions of Ukrainians who refused to blindly yield to him), while word of the scorched Baturyn and its massacred inhabitants added to the effectiveness of Peter’s propaganda machine in the best possible way. While the means of information warfare might seem archaic to us — revocations, manifestos on behalf of the monarch, spreading propaganda appeals on the enemy’s territory, and, finally, a very specific type of information warfare, being the church excommunications introduced by Peter I — these shrewd political maneuvers, along with unexpected and unconventional approaches make the documents of this epoch highly relevant.
Let us first review the arguments put forward by Tsar Peter such as his deadly heavy artillery (compare the timing of the capture and massacre of Baturyn in early November 1708 and the almost simultaneous November 10 excommunication of Mazepa in Hlukhiv. Incidentally, the damnation of Mazepa was repeated in all churches of the Romanov Empire every year on the first Sunday of the Great Lent until 1917), demagoguery and publicity stunts, and subtle rhetoric supported by brutal force. Peter I used a combination of forceful, punitive, and propaganda measures. The tsar, who was utterly stunned on learning on October 28, 1708 about Mazepa’s deflection to the Swedish king (to quote him, “greatly surprised was I to learn about the act of the new Judas, Mazepa, who after twenty-one years of being loyal to me and with his one foot in the grave betrayed his people”) quickly recovered and ordered his favorite Menshikov to capture Baturyn at any cost, realizing that he had to show the monarch’s cruel punishment for recalcitrance. Then many of Mazepa’s followers would think twice before following the hetman. The massacre in Baturyn is a ghastly example of propaganda by means of terror. Incidentally, a Ukrainian traitor by the name of Ivan Nis opened the gates to Baturyn for the Russians. While this odious personage is little mentioned in our history books, he is worth knowing something about.
Simultaneously, the tsar’s documents had been distributed all across the hetmanate, which contained the following accusations against Mazepa. First, the hetman “intended to again return Ukraine to Polish serfdom.” Accordingly, Sweden and Poland wanted to “tear away from Russia the Little Russian peoples and create a separate principality ruled by Mazepa.”
Targeted by the propaganda had been both Mazepa’s generally good intentions (consider for example Peter’s manifestos and their wording: “Hetman Mazepa, having lost the fear of God and his allegiance sworn on the cross to Us the Great Tsar, has turned traitor and defected to Our enemy, the Swedish king, to jointly bring the Little Russian land under Polish rule”) and in particular his Orthodox faith, because, according to the tsar, the aim of the traitor had been to “give God’s churches and holy monasteries to the Union.” Simultaneously, Peter I categorically stated in his manifestos that “We can say without any shame that no people under the sun can boast such freedoms and privileges as the ones granted through the kindness of Our Royal Highness to the Little Russian people, since We do not order that a single kopeck be paid into Our treasury by the people in the whole of the Little Russian land, while We mercifully care for them, providing Our own troops and funds. We defend the Little Russian land, the holy Orthodox churches and monasteries, towns and homes in them from the onslaught of the unfaithful and the heretics.” This was written at a time when tens of thousands of Mazepa’s followers were being tortured and executed in Left-Bank Ukraine (“rebels” and “traitors” were impaled or hanged; after the massacre of Zaporozhzhian Cossacks who had followed the hetman, in the spring of 1709 hundreds of Cossacks were nailed to boards and sent adrift down the Dnipro as an admonition to their comrades.
But it was not animal cruelty and cynicism alone that characterized Peter’s policy. In those days he discovered what would be called today a brilliant public relations move: the tsar announced his decision to revoke the excessive and unbearable taxes allegedly imposed by Mazepa so as to incite the Ukrainian people against Moscow (of course, he did not mention a word about whose orders the hetman had followed in imposing them).
What counterarguments did Mazepa use in response? He was fighting for Ukraine’s rights guaranteed it when it was taken under the tsar’s protectorate, which had been always brutally violated by Moscow’s rulers; Peter’s refusal to honor his obligation as a sovereign with respect to Ukraine, that is, to defend its land from enemies (compare the high-flown words in the tsar’s manifesto about the “protection” of Little Russia with what Peter actually told Mazepa: “I cannot give you even ten men, let alone 10,000 troops; defend yourselves as best you can”), which meant that Mazepa had been in fact relieved of his duty to serve the tsar faithfully; and even the words said in response to accusations of a conspiracy with the Swedish “heretics” with reference to the actions of a “brave hetman of holy memory Bohdan Khmelnytsky,” who, “assisted by Swedish King Charles X, liberated from the Polish yoke the Zaporozhzhian Host and the enthralled and oppressed people.”
Before deflecting to the Swedes, the hetman found the Cossacks and explained to them the reasons behind such a responsible decision. This is what he said: “Brothers! Our time has come. Let us use the opportunity and avenge the Moskals [the old name for Russians —Ed.] for their long-time abuse of us, for all the cruelty and wrongs they have done onto us. Let us preserve for the future our freedom and save Cossack rights from their encroachments.” Mazepa noted further that he had not “found another way to save us other than to count on the mercy of the Swedish king. He undertakes to respect our rights and freedoms and protect them from all those who encroach on them and will continue to do so.”
Sincere and true words. Yet, perhaps it has proven tragic for Ukraine’s further destiny that these words belonged to the same politician who had for twenty years served the tsar faithfully, founding his career on the principle: “Where his royal highness wants to keep me, there will I be.”
In 1705, Sontnyk [Captain] Mandryk of the Kyiv regiment said, expressing the opinion of all Ukrainians: “There will never be order in Ukraine as long as this hetman lives, because this hetman is of like mind with the tsar; the tsar murders his people in Moscow and sends them into exile, while the hetman uses all means to bring humiliation on Ukraine. And now, as you have heard yourself, see how many good youths have been lost without hope. This is why he travels to Moscow so often — to learn there how to destroy this people.” These words of Captain Mandryk illustrate clearly why the people did not follow the hetman before the Battle of Poltava (although the punitive measures no doubt played its role also), why the Battle of Poltava ended as it did, and why Peter I, after using all of his terrorist means, already in late 1709 could write in his letter with cynical smugness: “This land is just like it had been.”
