Zelensky Honoring Ivan Mazepa, a 17th-Century Cossack Leader, who Died as a Traitor in Exile.
Ivan Mazepa’s record of switching allegiances does not make him a traitor, the Ukrainian leader says
A monument will be erected in Kiev honoring Ivan Mazepa, a 17th-century Cossack military commander who was infamous for switching sides between major powers seeking regional dominance in Eastern Europe, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said.
Zelensky announced the project on Sunday at a ceremony to unveil a bust of Mazepa at the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. He claimed that Russia has “smeared” Mazepa as a traitor and insisted that he was an outstanding statesman.
In the 1500s and 1600s, the people south of Poland were largely the Ruthenians (East Slavs and the fierce, semi-independent Cossacks, especially the Zaporizhian Cossacks. Poland acquired these southern lands from Lithuania in 1569, as part of forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, PLC.
The Cossacks lived in small settlements and small towns, rode on horseback, engaged in agriculture, fishing and hunting. They were fierce defenders of their territories. Cossacks often served as mercenaries for Polish military needs (border defense, such as against Crimean Tartars). They were known for protecting the Orthodox-Christian faith and fiercely resisting the imposition of Roman-Catholic Polish rule. They resisted the attempts by Polish/Lithuanian nobilities to subordinate them, i.e., impose serfdom, control, and taxation, which led to significant uprisings against Poland and Lithuania in 1591, 1630, 1637, 1638 and 1648
Decisive Uprising in 1648: Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a charismatic leader of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, led a major uprising against the Polish nobility and pro-Polish Lithuanian/Ruthenian nobility living on their large estates in the southern lands in 1648. Many of that hated nobility and their estate managers, etc., fled to Poland or were killed.
After the 1648 uprising, Poland enacted the Compact of Zborów in 1649, by which the Cossack-dominated ZH became a semi-independent state, with defined territories. Still, much of the Cossack population remained subject to, and was taxed by, the hated nobility landowners, and 18 months later turmoil restarted.
Population: 1) mainly Orthodox-Christian Cossacks, who were mostly peasants and townspeople; 2) orthodox Christian clergy with land-owning monasteries; 3) some pro-Cossack Lithuanian/Ruthenian nobility with large estates; 4) some Russians and Belarusians, 5) some runaway serfs from Polish and Lithuanian estates, and 6) some Jews and Tartars. All desired freedom from Polish, Lithuanian and Crimean Tartar rule.
The ZH and Czarist Russia, both Orthodox Christian, had maintained diplomatic relations throughout this time. However, the Russian Czar did not support the Cossack revolts, which could have led to a war with Poland.
The ZH having been a semi-independent state from 1649 to 1654, five years, but still under threat from the Ottoman Empire and Poland, the ZH requested Czarist Russia for protection. Czarist Russia signed a history-changing treaty with the ZH in 1654.
Pereyaslav Treaty of 1654: As a part of the treaty, the ZH agreed: 1) to become a protectorate of Czarist Russia (the main danger was Poland), and 2) not to participate in talks with Poland or the Ottoman Empire without the Czar’s permission.
The 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav was a history-altering pact where the ZH became a Russian protectorate, ending years of semi-independence from Poland. Seeking protection from the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, the ZH aligned with Czarist Russia, inadvertently drawing Moscow into direct conflict with Poland.
The Pereyaslav Treaty marked a big turning point in favor of Russia, and much to the disadvantage of the PLC.
Poland did not want the ZH to become a protectorate of Russia. The result was the Russia-Poland war, 1654 to 1667, 13 years, with Russia occupying the entire ZH.
Treaty of Hadiach (September 16, 1658). During the Russia-Poland war, the ZH provisionally became part of the PLC, but this union was short-lived and never fully implemented. By October 1659, 13 months later, the attempt was ended.
The Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, who instigated the attempt, was viewed as a traitor by most ZH Cossacks and fled to Poland. This meant, the ZH remained under Russian protection, with a new hetman, Yurii Khmelnytsky.
NOTE: The PLC had aimed to make the ZH a semi-autonomous part of the Commonwealth, like a troika. The treaty envisioned a ZH with its own military, courts, and treasury. The existing pro-Cossack Polish and pro-Cossack Ruthenian/Lithuanian nobilities, with their large estates, employing Cossacks, many as serfs, would remain in place
The treaty was ultimately rejected. because it faced resistance, especially from the Eastern Cossacks, who were fervent Orthodox Christian and did not want to support the nobilities. They preferred to continue being a protectorate of the Czarist Russia.
Treaty of Andrusovo (1667). As part of peace negotiations between Russia and Poland, the ZH was divided.
The West-ZH (excluding Kiev and its surrounding land) was given back by Russia to the PLC
The East-ZH (plus Kiev and its surrounding land) remained a protectorate of Russia
Treaty of Perpetual Peace (or Eternal Peace), signed on May 6, 1686, in Moscow, between Russia and the PLC, served as the definitive legal settlement of the long-running conflict between them.
Gains by Russia: The treaty permanently ceded to Russia control over the East-ZH (east of the Dnieper River), plus Kiev and its surrounding land. The region of the Zaporizhian Sich, Severian lands, and the cities of Chernihiv, Starodub, and Smolensk were also confirmed as Russian possessions.
Gains by Poland: Poland retained control of the West-ZH (west of the Dnieper River). Russia paid 146,000 rubles in silver to the PLC as compensation for 1) the loss of the East-ZH, and 2) Kiev and its surrounding land.
In 1709, Peter the Great won the battle of Poltava, located on the east side of the Dnieper. The Swedish king Charles XII was defeated, but managed to flee with about 2000 troops, including Ivan Mazepa, the hetman of the ZH, to Bender (in present-day Moldava), then part of the Ottoman Empire. The king returned to Sweden in 1714, after 5 years in exile. He died likely from an assassin’s bullet in the head on November 30, 1718.
Mazepa, born on March 30, 1639, into a Polish aristocratic family that reinvented itself as Cossack nobility. He served Peter the Great for almost two decades until 1708, when he made a secret pact with Sweden, which ultimately led to the Battle of Poltava.
The traitorous hetman had switched sides with the aim of the ZH gaining greater independence, but he died in exile at age 70 in October 1709. Peter knew about his treason, and had appointed Ivan Skoropadskyi as hetman of the ZH, which had been a protectorate of Russia since 1654.
The Poltava victory marked the rise of Russia as a major European power and started the decline of Sweden’s dominance over the Baltic Sea. As part of the Treaty of Nystad, 1721, Russia gained Estonian, Livonia, Ingria and parts of Karelia, which secured trade access to the Baltic Sea for the new city St. Petersburg (founded by Peter the Great in 1703) and navy city Kronstadt.
In 1764, Catherine II of Russia annexed the eastern area of the ZH. It was incorporated as Little Russia Governorate. She appointed Pyotr Rumyantsev as Chief, in 1764
In 1775, Catherine II of Russia, as part of the partitions of Poland, annexed the small western area of the ZH, that had been part of the shrinking PLC.
In 1783, Catherine II of Russia, after winning several wars against the Ottoman Empire, by treaty, gained the Tartar-dominated Crimean Khanate, CK, which stretched west of Odessa and east of Rostov near the Azov Sea, about 1600 km by land (1000 miles, the same as Boston to Chicago), and bordered in the north to Czarist Russia and the ZH.
Mazepa was condemned in Russia as an oath-breaker. Peter the Great issued a mock award intended for Mazepa known as the ‘Order of Judas’ which featured the likeness of Judas Iscariot.
Ukrainian statehood rooted in antagonism against Russia
Modern Ukrainian statehood is based on antagonism toward Russia and historic figures who opposed it in some way. Zelensky said the monument to Mazepa will be erected on a street named after Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, at the site that previously featured a monument to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
The decision is “both sad and funny,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, as Shevchenko denounced Mazepa in his works.
Shevchenko, a Ukrainian nationalist icon himself, “wrote numerous pieces about Mazepa being a ‘dog,’ calling him different names,” political analyst Andrey Telizhenko, a former aide to the Ukrainian prosecutor general, told RT. The Ukrainian government “is trying to undermine any connection to Russia… which present-day Ukraine was part of for hundreds of years.”
Last month, Zelensky caused a major diplomatic row with Poland by naming a commando unit after the ‘heroes’ of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a German Nazi-allied Ukrainian militia responsible for massacres of about 100,000 ethnic Poles, Jews and Ukrainians during World War II.
The Ukrainian leader was stripped of Poland’s highest state honor in response, prompting Ukrainian and Polish public figures to return the state honors they had received from the opposite side.
Kirill Budanov, the former head of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency (HUR), who is now Zelensky’s top aide, declared on Sunday that Ukraine’s conflict with Russia means that “nobody will ever tell Ukrainians which heroes to venerate, which holidays to mark, and what history to learn.”