Zaporozhian Cossacks
The Zaporozhian Cossacks ( Ukrainian Запорожці Zaporozhzi ; Russian Запорожцы Zaporozhzy , also: Zaporozhe Cossacks , from Ukrainian Запоріжжя for Zaporischschja and Russian Запорожье for Zaporozhye - German: the Ukrainian establishment of a state spelling for Zaporozhye in the Ukrainian country " 17" Century, attributed to the Zaporozhian Sitsch or Power . This “Cossack state” could not hold its ground between the then great powers of Eastern Europe , the Republic of Poland-Lithuania , the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire . In 1775, with the destruction of the Sitsch by the Russian prince Potjomkin, the free Ukrainian Cossack was finally destroyed, the last Zaporozhian Cossack, Ataman Petro Kalnyschewskyj, was ousted and imprisoned on the Solovetsky Islands .
Zaporozhye
At the turn of the 15th to the 16th century, serf peasants from East Central Europe and Eastern Europe fled the yoke of their feudal lords as well as the forced Catholicization in the Polish-ruled parts of today's Ukraine and Belarus and settled on the lower reaches of the Dnieper , in the disputed and therefore ownerless border area of European and Asian countries. In reference to nomadic Turkic peoples , they called themselves Cossacks , which means something like "Free People". On the island of Khortytsia , beyond the rapids of the Dnieper, the center of the Zaporozhian Cossack, the famous Zaporozhian Sitsch ( Ukrainian Запоріжська Січ Zaporischska Sitsch ) arose . Their settlement area extended over the interior of the present-day Ukrainian region of Zaporizhia , far from the coast , but also included the present-day eastern Ukrainian regions of Kirovohrad , Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk (excluding the coastal area).
In the 17th century the Cossacks became a privileged military class in the Russian tsarist empire, who received land at the national borders, but had to protect these borders militarily. Under pressure to submit to the state order of the Tsarist Empire, however, they submitted to the rule of the Sublime Porte and the Crimean Tatars from 1711 to 1739 .
history
The Zaporozhian Cossacks (i.e. the Cossacks who live behind the rapids of the Dnieper) are the oldest Cossack tribe. As early as 1304, her ataman Critique is mentioned in a document. The Zaporozhian Cossacks were very similar in their furnishings to the German Knights in Prussia, although their constitution was democratic. All Zaporozhians were equal to one another, and so that no household would keep the Cossacks from their duties, celibacy was the law. As immigration increased over time and families settled within the borders of the Zaporozhian country, the situation changed only insofar as the unmarried formed the ruling caste and only from among them were the members of the government elected.
The central seat (sitsch) was mostly in an inaccessible place, later on the island of Khortyzja. In addition, each individual cooperative had its own special seat (Polanke) for its own internal affairs. The positions were filled every New Year by the People's Assembly. The chief (Ataman koschewoi) ruled unconditionally during his reign, in war as a commander in chief, in peacetime as chief judge. He was supported by the elders (Starschinen) who were the executors of his will. There was no written law; Disputes were settled according to custom. The Zaporozhian land was divided into districts, which were under colonels (polkowniki) . The sich was divided into Kurens, over whom a Kurenoi Ataman was placed. Usually 40–60 Cossacks lived in one house and ran a communal farm; only the weapons, at first the bow and arrow, later the shotgun and pistol, lance and saber, and horses were each one of them. In the sitsch were the treasury, the arsenal and the jewels: flag, command staff (bulawa) , horse tail and seal. Outside the Sitsch and the Polanken were the Simovniki, a kind of magazine. The villages were inhabited only by married Cossacks and their families, while the peasants, mostly consisting of prisoners, stayed on farmsteads and roamed the vast steppes in summer as shepherds.
The Cossacks waged campaigns against the Turks and Tartars to weaken their rule and free slaves. Their sea attacks became so important in the 16th and 17th centuries that the Turks were forced to guard the mouths of the Dnieper through two fortresses, Ochakiv and Kinburn , and to block the river with a chain. But even this caution soon thwarted the Cossacks' cunning, and their audacity grew so great that they not only attacked Trabzon , Sinop and other cities in Asia Minor more than once, but even threatened Constantinople . Since 1589 they have been in perpetual war with Poland, which has robbed them of their freedoms, they submitted to Russia in 1654.
After the uprising of Ivan Masepa , Peter I destroyed their Sitsch, and the Zaporozhians fled to the Turks, to the Crimea and the Dnepr estuary, and placed themselves under the protection of the Tatar Khan . Their old hatred of the Tatars soon awoke again, however, and finally led to a rupture that determined the Cossacks to submit their submission to Tsarina Anna . After showing their loyalty in the fight against the Turks, in 1742 and 1750 they received back the jewels that Peter had conquered. But times had changed for them too. Robberies on Russian soil were severely punished; they were no longer needed against the impotent Tatars and Poles, and so the only thought was to weaken their power. The Empress sent emissaries to the Danube countries to order Serbs to leave Turkey and to settle on the Bug , that is, on Zaporozhian land. Within a short space of time, around 50 towns with 60,000 inhabitants were created there. The whole district was given the name " New Serbia ". Between the new, industriously farming settlers and the free-Tatar inclinations of individual Zaporogers, friction soon arose, which in the long term led to untenable conditions. So in 1775 Catherine the Great had the Sitsch surrounded and lifted by Russian regular troops.
Some of the Zaporozhians fled to the Ottoman Empire, others scattered all over Russia. Tired of Turkish rule, the former returned to Russia in 1828 and formed the Azov and New Russian Cossacks; But those who fled to the Crimea did not find peace there either, because two years later the Crimea also became a Russian province. Some of the refugees made themselves available to the tsarina. They were given their residences on the Kuban, but from then on no longer bore the name Zaporoger, but were called Black Sea Cossacks (Chernomorzy) .
The history of this group of Cossacks is clearly presented in the Museum of the Zaporozhian Cossack. The exposition emerged from an initial local museum that was extensively redesigned in 2000.
See also
- Ataman
- Bohdan Khmelnytskyi
- Dmytro Wyschneweckyj
- Harakternik
- Hetmanate
- Kost Hordiyenko
- Pylyp Orlyk
- Zaporozhian Cossack Army
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Meyer's large universal dictionary , vol. 8 (of 17). 1983, ISBN 3-411-01878-X
- ↑ "It was not until Catherine II that the Zaporozhiani were smashed and dispersed in 1775 and disappeared from the scene at the time when the Russians finally established themselves on the Black Sea coast ( Treaty of Kütschük Kainardschi )." - Roger Portal: The Slavs. From peoples to nations , Kindler's cultural history of Europe, Vol. 19, 1983, p. 400