Yuri Khmelnytskyi

Yuri Khmelnytskyi

Jurij Bohdanowytsch Khmelnyzkyj ( Ukrainian Ю́рій Богданович Хмельни́цький ; * 1641 in Tschyhyryn , Poland-Lithuania ; † around 1685 in Kamjanez-Podilskyj ) was a hetman of the Ukraine in 1657 and from 1659 to 1663 from 1659 to 1677 hetman of the Ukraine .

Life

Jurij Khmelnyzkyj was born in 1641 in Tschyhyryn, the youngest son of Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj and his first wife Hanna Somkiwna. He received a good education, including at the Kiev Mohyla Academy . His father Bohdan, who wanted to establish a hereditary hetmanate , named him after the death of his first-born son Tymofij (Tymisch) as his successor. Jurij was elected a hetman while his father was still alive, but when his father died and it became clear that at the age of 16 he could not fulfill the duties of a regent, Ivan Wyhowskyj was elected a hetman by the Cossacks. After his abdication in 1659, he was again elected hetman, mainly with the support of the pro-Russian Cossacks.

As a reaction to the propolian political maneuvers of his predecessor Vyhovsky, Khmelnytskyi was forced on October 27, 1659 to renew the Treaty of Pereyaslav signed by his father in 1654 with the tsarist empire, this time more restricting the autonomy of the hetmanate within Russia. Instead of the previous three cities, Moscow was allowed to station garrisons in six Ukrainian cities, including voivodes . In addition, elected hetmans were only allowed to take office with the consent of the Tsar. This increased the population's dissatisfaction with Khmelnytsky’s policies.

In 1660, the Russian army stationed in Kiev , led by Prince Vasily Sheremetew , planned an offensive towards Warsaw , with Khmelnyzkyi to merge the Cossack army with the Russians near Chudniw . However, the Poles were able to surround the Cossacks at Slobodyschtsche . In this situation Khmelnyzkyj took an oath of allegiance to the Polish-Lithuanian King John II Casimir and signed the Treaty of Slobodyschtsche with the Poles, through which the hetmanate officially switched to the Polish side in the Russo-Polish War 1654-1667 . Sheremetev's Russian army, which suddenly faced the overwhelming power of Poland, its allies Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, capitulated at Chudniv.

In the Hetmanat, however, Chmelnyzkyj's change of sides was interpreted by large parts of the population as a betrayal of his father's life's work and triggered a civil war. As before under Wyhowskyj, many refused to return under Polish rule. The hetmanate fell into two camps when a pro-Russian opposition formed in the Cossack regiments of left-bank Ukraine , led by Khmelnytsky’s brother-in-law Jakym Somko . In autumn 1661 and summer 1662 Khmelnyzkyi besieged Somko and the Russian garrison in Pereyaslav with the help of the Crimean Tatars , but remained unsuccessful, while the Crimean Tatars allied with him sacked large parts of the Ukraine. When the army of the Russian prince Grigori Romodanowski came to the aid of the opposing side , Khmelnytskyi was defeated in the Battle of Kaniw in July 1662.

When Chmelnyzkyj realized that he was no longer able to control the situation, he abdicated at the beginning of 1663 and became a monk under the name Gedeon in the Transfiguration Monastery of Mhar near Lubny . The division of the hetmanate into the left bank, oriented towards Russia, and the right bank oriented towards Poland, Ukraine manifested itself. In 1664 Khmelnyzkyj was accused of treason by the Polish government, captured by the hetman of right-bank Ukraine Pavlo Teterja and held in Lviv until 1667 . After his release he entered a monastery near Uman , where he was captured by the Crimean Tatars in 1670 (according to other sources 1673) and deported to Constantinople . After he was released from prison there, he became the archimandrite of a Greek Orthodox monastery. In 1677 he was able to return to the Ukraine because the Turks wanted to use him in the Russo-Turkish War from 1676 to 1681 to consolidate their claims over the right-wing Ukraine. In 1677 he declared himself the hetman of the right bank of the Ukraine and tried in 1678/79 to conquer the left bank of Ukraine with the support of Tatar and Ottoman troops. After he failed to do this, despite the great brutality, he was deposed as a hetman in early June 1681 and, as a result of his unsuccessful government, recalled by the Sultan to Turkey.

There are different reports about his death: He may have died on the way to Constantinople or he was strangled in Kamyanets-Podilskyj or in Constantinople. The fact that he returned to the Ukraine and in 1685 again briefly became the Hetman of the Right-Wing Ukraine cannot be proven on the basis of documentary sources.

Aftermath

Overall, Yuri Khmelnytskyi is seen as an unbalanced person and a weak ruler, whose life's work turned out to be detrimental to the attempt to establish a Ukrainian state.

Web links

Commons : Jurij Khmelnyzkyj  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Article on Khmelnytsky, Yurii in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine , accessed on March 29, 2016 (English).
2. ↑ ^{a b c} section: Юрій-Гедеон Венжик Хмельницький (1641–1685) ; Retrieved March 29, 2016 (Ukrainian).