Treaty of Pereyaslav
When the Treaty of Pereiaslav is allegiance designated by the Zaporozhye Cossacks on the Kosakenrada (Assembly) in Pereiaslav 1654 the Russian Tsar Alexis I took off. This event is considered to be one of the most important events in the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations.
The way to Pereyaslav
Since the Union of Lublin in 1569, Ukraine has been under the rule of the Polish crown within the newly founded Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic republic . Compared to the earlier Lithuanian rule, this resulted in an intensification of discrimination against the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population, who were now at a disadvantage in terms of their rights vis-à-vis the Catholics. The Ruthenian nobility allowed themselves to be Polonized more and more in their pursuit of equal rights. The Union of Brest (1596) attempted to subordinate the Orthodox Church within the republic to the rule of the Pope and resulted in decades of sectarian battles. At the same time the feudal pressure and the arbitrariness against the rural population increased. The only free social class of the Ruthenians, the Cossacks , initiated more and more uprisings in this context (e.g. under the leadership of Kryschtof Kosynskyj (1591–1593), Severyn Nalywajko (1594–1596), Marko Schmailo ( Марко Жмайло , 1625) , Taras Fedorowytsch (1630), Iwan Sulyma (1635), Pawlo Pawljuk ( Павло Михнович Павлюк , 1637) or Yakiw Ostrjanyn ( Яків Острянин , 1638)). Despite the extensive support from the rural population, they were all ultimately brutally suppressed by the better-equipped troops of the Polish crown.
Only Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj succeeded in another uprising from 1648 onwards, through sustained military victories, to bring the Polish side to the brink of defeat. In the meantime, Chmelnyzkyj founded the quasi-state hetmanate of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Already in 1648 Khmelnyzkyj sent a letter to the Russian tsar with a request for protectorate for the "Little Russians" or Orthodox fellow believers. Fifteen years after the unsuccessful Smolensk War , the Russian side initially had concerns about a new war against Poland.
From 1648 onwards, Khmelnyzkyj had to rely on a shaky alliance with the Crimean Khan . However, when the Tatars saw their goal, the weakening of Poland-Lithuania, sufficiently realized in the course of the fighting, they repeatedly withdrew their troops from the battlefield (for example in the Battle of Berestechko , the Battle of Sboriw and the Battle of Schwanez ), forcing the Cossacks to start peace negotiations with the Poles. When the uprising finally threatened to stifle, the Russian National Assembly ( Zemskij sobor ) agreed to take the Cossacks under the Russian protectorate and to declare a new war on the Poles .
On January 18, 1654, a council of the Cossack leadership met in Perejaslav , at which the overwhelming majority of the Cossacks swore an oath of allegiance to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the presence of the Russian boyar and ambassador Vasily Buturlin . Later 17 Cossack regiments in 177 places in the Dnepr region took this oath. The Cossacks were assured the right of free choice of their hetmans, and the standing army of the Cossacks was increased to 60,000 men, while the Cossack starosts were given ownership rights over their lands.
In the Treaty of Perejaslav, the tsar undertook to declare war on the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic republic in order to protect Ukraine. With this the Russo-Polish War began ; it ended in January 1667 with the Treaty of Andrussowo .
Pereyaslav in historiography
The quality of Perejaslav's oath is highly controversial today. The national Ukrainian historiography emphasizes the supposedly temporary character of the alliance, which it regards as an international agreement between two independent states. They complain that the Cossacks were betrayed by the tsar who, contrary to the treaty, turned Ukraine into a Russian colony.
In contrast, Russian historiography understood the event before 1917 as the “reunification of Ukraine with Russia”, which would undo the “unnatural state” of the separation that had existed since the Mongol invasion of the Rus . Both the temporary character of the protectorate and the equivalent status of the hetmanate and the Russian tsarist empire are disputed. For example, the renowned British historian and political scientist Andrew Wilson in his publication on Ukrainian history The Ukrainians: unexpected nation refers to a letter of appeal written by Khmelnytskyi to the Russian tsar in May 1649 with the following content:
"We petition Your Tsarist Majesty: Do not banish us from your favor; and we pray to God that Your Tsarist Majesty, as a faithful Orthodox sovereign, may rule over us as tsar and autocrat. In such a unification of all the Orthodox lies our hope under God that any enemy will utterly perish "
Translated into German:
"We request you Tsarist Majesty: do not cast your favor with us; and we pray to God that Your Tsarist Majesty, as devout Orthodox sovereignty, may rule over us as Tsar and autocrat. Our hope lies in the divine union of the Orthodox faith from which each our enemy perishes "
On January 12, 1954, Moscow's Pravda published the theses of the CPSU Central Committee on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia (see literature list). Thus, for the socialist camp, Perejaslav's interpretation was given - it was essentially based on pre-revolutionary bourgeois Russian historiography. In contrast to this, however, the class character of the peasant and Cossack revolts was emphasized. The class position of the nobleman Khmelnytskyi was obviously not perceived as a contradiction, he was considered a hero of progress.
The 300th anniversary was celebrated in the USSR with months of celebrations, during which the Ukrainian SSR received the Crimean peninsula from Khrushchev - a gift that continues to cause tension to this day. The "unbreakable friendship" of the two "fraternal peoples" who were "forever" bound to Pereyaslav, the progressiveness of the event and the alleged striving not only of Khmelnytskyi but of the whole Ukrainian people for reunification with Russia were emphasized. Actually, the uprising was aimed at this goal from the start.
consequences
Already after Bohdan Chmelnyzkyj's death in 1657, his successor Ivan Wyhowskyj, who had been elected under contradicting circumstances, concluded the Hadjach Treaty with Poland, which provided for the return of the hetmanate to Polish rule. This split the Cossack ranks and plunged Ukraine into a civil war that went down in history as The Ruin . While the Cossack elite were attracted by the promised higher privileges within the aristocratic republic, the common people mostly stayed on the side of Russia. In the course of the civil war, with its interim second (Wyhowski) and third ( Jurij Chmelnyzkyj ) Rada von Perejaslavl (1658 and 1659), whose oaths of allegiance were subsequently also violated, there was ultimately a split along the Dnepr into a propolian right-wing Ukraine and a right-wing Ukraine pro-Russian-oriented left-bankers Ukraine . Each side chose its own hetman. This situation was recorded in the Russian-Polish Treaty of Andrussowo in 1667. The left bank Ukraine and Kiev officially came under Russian rule. Right bank Ukraine followed in the 18th century when Poland was partitioned .
literature
- Andrzej Gil: Decree prezydenta Leonida Kuczmy o obchodach 350. rocznicy Kozackiej Rady Perejasławskiej 1654 r. i jego znaczenie dla wenętrznej i zewnętrznej sytuacji Ukrainy (= Analizy Instytutu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. Vol. 1). Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, Lublin 2003, ISBN 83-917615-0-9 .
- Carsten Kumke: Between the Polish Aristocratic Republic and the Russian Empire (1569–1657). In: Frank Golczewski (Ed.): History of Ukraine. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-36232-3 , pp. 58-91.
- Anna Reid: Borderland. A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. 2nd imprint. Phoenix, London 2001, ISBN 0-7538-0160-4 .
- Frank E. Sysyn: The Jewish Factor in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In: Howard Aster, Peter J. Potichnyj (Ed.): Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perstepctive. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton 1988, ISBN 0-920862-53-5 , pp. 43-54.
The theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia are printed in the Russian original and in a German translation in:
- Christian Ganzer: Soviet Heritage and Ukrainian Nation. The Museum of the History of Zaporozhian Cossacks on the island of Khortycja (= Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society. Vol. 19). With a foreword by Frank Golczewski. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-89821-504-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andre Wilson: The Ukrainians: unexpected nation . Ed .: Yale Univ. Press. 5th edition. New Haven 2015, ISBN 978-0-300-21725-4 , pp. 64 .