A next note on the documentary about the history of the Ukrainian Kozaks. After the Andrusiv treaty of 1667, Ukraine east of the Dnipro river formed a state known as Hetmanshchyna, or a state under the rule of Hetman (commander of the Kozaks). Of course, the Hetmanshchyna was under a colossal pressure from Moscow. However, west of the Dnipro, even though those lands now formally belonged to Poland, the Kozaks remained active. One of their leaders, Hetman Petro Doroshenko, organized a huge army that was threatening both Warsaw and Istanbul. Somewhere in the late 1660s or the early 1670s, he made a treaty with the Ottoman Empire, He easily defeated the army of a pro-Moscow leader, Ivan Brukhovetsky, but then, being between the Muscovites and the Turks, surrendered to the Muscovites. Doroshenko was exiled to Siberia, where he lived a rather long life and even married a Muscovite woman; one of his daughters became an ancestor to the wife of the famous Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin (Natalia Goncharova). After a long and painful struggle for Doroshenko succession, Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa became the Hetman of the left-bank Ukraine and, soon, of the entire Ukraine. Mazepa was a giant of a man. He was educated in Western European universities and served as a page of the Polish king. When he was only 12 years old, he wrote poems in the classical Latin. At the age of 21, though, he left the Polish court and enlisted in a regiment of Kozaks. Mazepa never returned to the profession of a courtier, but remained a Kozak, and was, in the late 1600s, elected the Hetman of all Ukraine. Mazepa was a poet, a refined man, a figure fitting, perhaps, into a pattern of the great men of the Renaissance. As such, he attracted, big time, the Tzar of Muscovy, Peter the First, who thought about himself as a Westernizer of the backward, savage Muscovy that was still dominated by the remaining Mongol tradition after hundreds of years of being a Mongolian ulus (district). Mazepa, an aristocrat and a sybarite as he was, did not mind being showered by medals and money from the Muscovite despot. And yet, he never stopped thinking about HIS OWN land and HIS OWN people. Seeing how Moscow gradually destroys all of the liberties and the privileges of the Ukrainian Kozaks, how the Kozaks are being drafted to slave labor, how the Muscovites plunder the Ukrainian villages and towns, and execute, torture, and imprison his fellow Ukrainians, - Mazepa decided to do something to mend the horrible disaster. In 1708, a Swedish king, Charles XII, attacked the northwestern regions of Muscovy and, not meeting much resistance, directed his troops to move to Ukraine, where the Swedes expected a tolerable winter and then a Blitzkrieg on Muscovy. Mazepa wrote to Charles, saying that his country, Ukraine, is not a part of Muscovy; that his people, Ukrainians, suffer a horrible humiliation, oppression, and death from the Muscovites; and that His Majesty Charles XII would do great if he would offer Ukraine a helping hand,forming some kind of a Swedish-Ukrainian military alliance... It did not work out. A number of the Ukrainian Kozaks fought bravely in the battle of Poltava in 1709, side-by-side with the Swedes. But it was, as it always is with Ukraine, too little, too late... https://youtube/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Deds3PmElRg
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 00:42:57 +0000
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