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OP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY ANDOP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY ANDOP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY ANDOP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY ANDOP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY ANDUKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLUKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLUKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLUKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLUKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLY MODERN UKRAINIANY MODERN UKRAINIANY MODERN UKRAINIANY MODERN UKRAINIANY MODERN UKRAINIAN

THOUGHT AND CULTHOUGHT AND CULTHOUGHT AND CULTHOUGHT AND CULTHOUGHT AND CULTURE by: Zenon E. KohutTURE by: Zenon E. KohutTURE by: Zenon E. KohutTURE by: Zenon E. KohutTURE by: Zenon E. Kohut

IntroductionIntroductionIntroductionIntroductionIntroduction

Many present-day Russians stillconsider Ukraine to be part of Russia,historically, culturally, and even spiri-tually. So pervasive has been the mythof Russo-Ukrainian unity that anyattempt at asserting a Ukrainianidentity has been viewed by manyRussians as betrayal or as foreignintrigue. Despite the persecution ofUkrainian culture in both ImperialRussia and the Soviet Union, Ukraini-ans have developed the idea of adistinct Ukrainian nationhood. Manyof the current misunderstandingsbetween Russia and Ukraine have astheir base a fundamental clash over thehistorical role of Ukraine. Are Ukraini-ans and Russians the same people? AreUkrainians somewhat distinct onlybecause their “Russianness” has beencorrupted by Polish practices? AreUkrainians really a distinct nation bothin the past and in the present?1

In this clash, both sides are look-ing at the same historical experiencebut reaching diametrically opposedconclusions. To a large extent, eachside selects examples that corroborateits own interpretation and ignores orexplains away evidence to the contrary.But the problem is deeper than this, forthere is an ambiguity to the Russo-Ukrainian encounter from its veryinception in the seventeenth century.Much of the ambiguity comes fromposturing; from what Kliuchevsky hassaid about the 1654 Pereiaslav agree-ment, in which both sides “did not saywhat they thought and did what theydid not wish to do.”2 In these encoun-ters both sides found it convenient tooverlook differences and concentrateon areas of real or imagined unity. Buthow did Ukrainian elites view therelationship with Russia? In which

areas did they seek links with Russiaand in which ones did they hold on towhat they considered essential differ-ences? In order to get to the root ofthese questions, it is necessary to atleast touch upon the Ukrainian out-look prior to the encounter withRussia.The Polish-Lithuanian ExperienceThe Polish-Lithuanian ExperienceThe Polish-Lithuanian ExperienceThe Polish-Lithuanian ExperienceThe Polish-Lithuanian Experience

When in 1654 Hetman BohdanKhmel’nyts’kyi placed Ukraine underthe protection of the Muscovite tsar,the country had experienced morethan half a century of political, reli-gious, cultural, and social turmoil. Upto the 1654 Pereiaslav agreement, andeven after it, Ukrainian (Ruthenian)elites were trying to find a place withinthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.Only after the failure to reach anaccommodation within Poland-Lithuania did Ukrainian elites beginlooking toward Muscovy and involv-ing it in Ukrainian affairs. In theirencounter with Russia in the seven-teenth century, Ukrainian elites wereprimarily focusing on and reacting topolitical, social, religious, and culturalissues within the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth.

By the sixteenth century, thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealthwas, in theory, a “Republic of theNobles” of two territories, the King-dom of Poland and the Grand Duchyof Lithuania. The nobles, encompass-ing the political nation, could be ofdiverse ethnic origins—Polish,Lithuanian, Ruthenian, or German—and diverse faiths—Roman Catholic,Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox—buthad individual liberties and equalrights. Reality differed greatly fromtheory, particularly in the territories ofthe Commonwealth inhabited byRuthenians (Ukrainians and

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Belarusians). There was no equalityamong the nobles: political leadershipwas exercised by the princely housesof the Rurikids and the Gedyminids,while the nobles, descended from theboyars, acted as subordinates andretainers. Although the Union ofLublin, which transferred Volhyniaand the Kyiv land from the GrandDuchy to Poland, did not create a thirdRus’ entity, it did guarantee the rightsof the Ruthenian language and recog-nized the laws of Rus’ as the officialcode in the annexed territories. TheRus’ faith—Eastern Orthodoxy—provided another link to the ancientKiev. Thus, despite Lithuanian and,after 1569, Polish rule, Ukrainiansociety preserved the social structure,religious faith, language, and law codeof Kievan Rus’.3

Ukrainians conceived of unitywithin the Commonwealth primarily asa political matter. They were part of thePolish political nation because theybelonged to the szlachta. There wereethnic, religious, and cultural differencesbetween the Ruthenian szlachta and thePolish, Lithuanian, and German nobili-ties, but these were not significant for theunity of the state. Thus a Ukrainiannobleman could be designated as genteruthenus, natione polonus. Since religiousand cultural differences were encom-passed within the political nation, thesedifferences were tolerated in other ordersof society.4 Because some members of theszlachta were Orthodox, townsfolk oreven peasants could also be Orthodox.While this is a highly idealized andtheoretical picture, it does reflect to somedegree the tolerance and cultural hetero-geneity of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-monwealth up to the mid-sixteenthcentury.

In the latter half of the sixteenthcentury, Ruthenian Orthodox societywas challenged intellectually by boththe Catholic Counter-Reformation and

the Protestant reforms. In the program-matic vision of the Jesuit ideologue,Peter Skarga, confessional unity wasessential for political unity, and East-ern Orthodoxy was considered notonly erroneous, but also subversive ofthe state.5 Owing to increasing politicalpressure, accompanied by a floweringof Polish culture, Ruthenian noblesbegan converting to Roman Catholi-cism and adopting the Polish languageand culture. As the Ruthenian politicalnation declined because of thesedefections, the remaining Ruthenianelites—both nobles and clergy—beganlooking for ways of defining aRuthenian identity that would findacceptance in the political, social, andcultural structure of the Common-wealth. One attempt was the ChurchUnion at Brest (1596), whereby theRuthenian Orthodox Church recog-nized the pope but retained its easternChristian traditions. Another responsewas a vigorous Orthodox Slavic reformthat attempted to counter the Catholicattacks on theological, intellectual, andeven cultural grounds. In the end,these efforts failed. By the seventeenthcentury, the Commonwealth wasincreasingly becoming an associationof Roman Catholic, culturally Polishnoblemen. Others were consideredpolitically unreliable, heretical, orsimply uncivilized and unsuited to bepart of the political nation. Thus theareas that Ukrainians had defined asdistinct—religion and culture—wereno longer legitimate. Unity in theCommonwealth had to pertain to allspheres. The political szlachta nationhad to be Roman Catholic in religionand Polish in language and culture.6

In attempting to find a place for areformed Eastern Orthodoxy andRuthenian culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, theRuthenian clerical and cultural elitesentered a larger struggle between

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Eastern and Western Churches, be-tween Greek-Slavonic and Latin-Polishculture—in essence, a struggle be-tween West and East. It was hardly aneven struggle, for the Western sidesimply viewed the East as heretical,ignorant, and backward, while theEastern side, using Western learning,attempted to prove its doctrinal cor-rectness and create a revitalized hu-manistic Ruthenian Orthodox Slaviclearning. While the Ruthenian sidecould never bridge the gap of per-ceived inferiority within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it wascertain that it had created the mostenlightened Orthodox Church—onethat could and should play a leadingrole in the renovation of EasternOrthodox Christianity.7

The new learning and polemicsover the church union sparked a keeninterest in history, particularly that ofKievan Rus’. In the early seventeenthcentury, not only were the old Kievanchronicles recopied, but new historicalwriting brought them up to morecontemporary times. The polemicalliterature debating the Union of Brestmade use of the Rus’ past. Moreover,spurred by Polish historical writings,the Ukrainian authors introduced newterminology and concepts into historywriting, such as a Rus’ “fatherland”and a Ruthenian or Rus’ people. Thesewritings went beyond the Polish-Lithuanian concept of a szlachta nationand implied the existence of a Rus’nation that included the OrthodoxRuthenian population from variousestates.8

The religious and social picture inUkraine was further complicated bythe emergence of a new social group—the Cossacks. Recruited primarily fromnon-noble elements of the population,the Cossacks organized themselvesinto a military host that defended thesouthern frontier against the Tatars

and Turks. The Cossacks saw them-selves as frontier knights, a militaryorder that possessed certain “rightsand liberties.” Although, at times, theCommonwealth recognized theserights for some of the Cossacks, theidea of a non-noble brotherhood ofCossack warriors with liberties clashedfundamentally with the concept of aCommonwealth of free nobles. Thelack of recognition of Cossack estaterights led to a series of Cossack revolts,including the fateful one of 1648.9

Up to the end of the sixteenthcentury, the leadership of Rus’ was stillexercised by the princely householdsand executed through a system ofsubordinate noble retainers.10 Forexample, the princes of Ostrih led theOrthodox revival by printing theOrthodox Bible and founding theOstrih academy, which generated thecadres for the revival in the late six-teenth and early seventeenth centuries.However, owing to the extinction ofsome princely households and theconversion to Roman Catholicism andPolish culture of others, princelyleadership began to wane and thesubordinate Ukrainian nobility becamedisoriented. By the time of theKhmel’nyts’kyi uprising, the lesserUkrainian nobles had either becomePolish or joined the Cossacks, but hadceased to act on behalf of a Rutheniannoble estate. A new leadership role wasassumed, rather hesitantly, by theCossacks. In 1620, the entire hierarchyof the then outlawed Orthodox churchwas consecrated in Kiev under Cossackprotection. From that time on, theCossacks fought not only for theirestate rights, but also for the Rus’ faith.11

Despite the increasing intoler-ance, the Ruthenian elites, includingthe remaining szlachta, the Orthodoxclergy, and the Cossack officers, ex-pressed loyalty to and identity withthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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The revival of the Rus’ faith, therenewed interest in Rus’ history andculture, and the recognition of a dis-tinct Ruthenian or Rus’ people calledfor some political recognition andacceptance for Rus’ within the Com-monwealth. But finding a place forUkraine or Rus’ within Poland-Lithuania would require a fundamen-tal restructuring of the Common-wealth. Such an attempt was made in1658, after Ukraine’s break with theCommonwealth and the 1654Pereiaslav agreement with Muscovy.The Treaty of Hadiach (1658) trans-formed the dual Commonwealth into aconfederation of three states: the PolishCrown, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,and the Grand Duchy of Rus’. Rus’had its own administration, treasury,army, and judiciary, while the rights ofthe Orthodox Church were to beguaranteed throughout the Common-wealth.12 But the arrangement couldnot succeed, because it required thatUkraine, in the form of the GrandDuchy of Rus’, return to szlachta rule,while Ukraine was governed de factoby the Cossacks. The attempted en-noblement of Cossack officers wasaccepted neither by the Polish orLithuanian szlachta nor by the Cossackrank and file. Thus, the most funda-mental definition of the Common-wealth, as a composite of the szlachtanation, could not be maintained.Muscovy, moreover, now deeplyinvolved in Ukrainian affairs, wouldnot permit the existence of a Rus’ stateas part of the Commonwealth. Never-theless, the idea of Rus’ as part of theCommonwealth continued to linger. Inthe early eighteenth century, a popularpoem viewed Poland as the mother ofthree children: Liakh, Rus’, and Lytva.Liakh and Lytva killed their brotherRus’ against the will of Poland, themother. The poem tries to make thepoint that Poland or the Common-

wealth is the true mother of Rus’, whogrieves over the injustice done to Rus’by his brothers.13

The fundamental outlook of theUkrainian elites had been shaped bythe Polish-Lithuanian experience. TheOrthodox clerical elite strongly identi-fied itself with an enlightened Ortho-doxy in competition with Catholicismand the West. Both secular and clericalelites had a concept of a Common-wealth or state composed of severalpolitical entities—Poland, Lithuania,and possibly Rus’. Historical writingshad spread the idea of a Rus’ peopleand of ancient Rus’ as a direct historicalpredecessor. And parts of Ukrainiansociety believed in the political “rightsand liberties” of estates and lands,particularly of the Cossack estate. Thesebeliefs and perceptions would color thebehavior of Ukrainians as they encoun-tered Muscovy and the Russians.The Search for Links with Muscovy/The Search for Links with Muscovy/The Search for Links with Muscovy/The Search for Links with Muscovy/The Search for Links with Muscovy/RussiaRussiaRussiaRussiaRussia

The Ukrainian elites, striving tobe included in the szlachta nation of theCommonwealth, generally avoidedmaintaining any overt links withMuscovy. If in Polish eyes Rus’ wasbackward and schismatic, then Mus-covy was nothing less than barbaric.Moreover, Muscovy was frequently anenemy of the Commonwealth, andlinks with it could be viewed as trea-sonous. Nevertheless, the Ukrainianelites were aware that Muscovy wasthe only independent and powerfulOrthodox polity. Some elements of theUkrainian clergy began looking toMuscovy for religious, political, andfinancial support.14

As the Ukrainians began comingto Muscovy, seeking alms for monas-teries or subsidies for publications,they were treated with considerablehostility. The Muscovites suspected theUkrainians’ Orthodoxy and viewed

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the “Lithuanians” or “Cherkasy,” asthey called them, as foreign and dan-gerous. The Ukrainians persisted anddeveloped the terminology and con-cepts that would bring Rus’ andMuscovy closer together.

Given their renewed interest inthe Rus’ past, the Ukrainian clerics ofthe 1620s and 1640s turned not only totheir own historical tradition, but alsoto Polish and Muscovite sources. Fromthe Polish historians, particularlyStryjkowski, they learned about Slavicunity and that ancient Rus’ was com-mon to both Muscovites andRuthenians. More importantly, intrying to define and differentiate Rus’from Lithuania and Poland within theCommonwealth, these writers beganlooking more closely at Muscovitechronicle writing. From such sources,the Ukrainian writers created an imageof the Rus’ past that transcendedcurrent political boundaries. In fact,the seventeenth-century Ukrainianwriters incorporated, somewhatmechanically, a number of contradic-tory views of Rus’—Polish, Ukrainian,and Russian—into their writings. Byassembling these varied traditions,some of these writers were able to linkUkraine and Muscovy through faith,dynasty, land, and even people.15

The work that went farthest inestablishing such links was the Sinopsis,frequently described as the first historyof the Eastern Slavs. Attributed toInnokentij Gizel’, the archimandrite ofthe Kiev Caves Monastery, the Sinopsisfirst appeared in Kiev between 1670and 1674.16 While attempting to enlistthe help of the tsar, the author fiercelymaintained the autonomy of the CavesMonastery vis-à-vis the Kievmetropolitanate and the Moscowpatriarch. For Gizel’, it was vital thatthe monastery retain its stauropigialstatus, subordinated directly to thePatriarch of Constantinople.

The main thesis of the work isencapsulated in its title, The Sinopsis, orshort compilation from various chronicles,about the beginning of the Slavic-Rus’nation and the first princes of the God-saved city of Kiev and the life of the holy,devout prince of Kiev and all “Rossiia,”the first autocrat Volodimer and about thepious sovereign, tsar, and grand princeAleksei Mikhailovich, autocrat of all Great,Little and White Rossiia. The authorintertwines concepts of a people,dynasty, and state. He begins in pre-Kievan times with the “slaveno-rossiiskii narod,” which is subse-quently ruled by the “Varangianprinces,” beginning with IhorRurykovych. For subsequent periodsof history, the author uses the terms“rossy,” “rusy,” and “rossiiane” inorder to describe a people inhabiting ahistorical territory north of the BlackSea, between the Volga-Don andDanube-Dniester-Dnieper river sys-tems. Although no northern boundaryis given, Novgorod Velikii is included.17

The author of the Sinopsis states thatthe Rurikide princely family estab-lished the Russian state. Thisgosudarstvo Rossiiskoie emerges fullywith Volodimer’s conversion to Chris-tianity and encompasses Muscovy aswell as the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.18 Thestory of the Russian state is, in fact, thestory of the Rurikide family, whichallows the author to include in thechronicle various fragments of Russianand Ukrainian history (including anextensive episode on Dmitrii Donskoi)and link various territories, timeframes, and centers of power. Forexample, when the princely seat ofRus’ is moved from Kiev to Vladimiron the Kliaz’ma, and from there toMoscow, this occurs because it suitsprincely desires.19 The creation of twometropolitanates (Kiev and Moscow) isdue to the fact that one part of Rus’

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(Kiev) comes under the rule of aforeign prince, the LithuanianVytautas.20 And, most importantly,when Kiev comes under Muscoviterule, this is lauded because “the first-born of all the cities of Rossiia, thetsarstvennyi city of Kiev,” has comeunder the rule of the pravoslavnyisamoderzhets.21 Orthodoxy is alsoidentified with the tsar, land, andpeople. Thus the wars that theZaporozhian Cossacks fight against theTurks are waged in the interests of thepravoslavnyi rossiiskii narod. Rus’ iscalled pravoslavnyi krai and the tsar isreferred to as the pravoslavnyisamoderzhets.22

Despite considerable confusion inits account of history and ethnography,the Sinopsis brought together a numberof ideas that had been reverberating inUkraine during the second half of theseventeenth century: (1) Rus’, or, as itwas beginning to be referred to in the1670s–80s, “Little Russia,” on accountof its historical ties to the house ofRurik and its Orthodox faith, belongedwithin a larger, all-Russian context; (2)although there was ethnic multiplicity,there was also a larger pravoslavnyirosiiskii narod that inhabited the terri-tory of the house of Rurik; (3) Rossiia,which included Muscovy and LittleRussia, and the entire rossiiskii narodwere to be ruled by the Orthodoxautocrat, whose ancestry derived fromthe house of Rurik; (4) the Muscovitetsar represented the continuation ofthe house of Rurik (the fact that thetsars were no longer Rurikides wasnever mentioned).

The Sinopsis’ somewhat extremeRussocentrism was one view amongseveral held by members of the Ukrai-nian clerical elite. In the 1670s,Feodosii Sofonovych, the archimandriteof the Monastery of St. Michael of theGolden Domes, wrote another majorhistorical work, Kronika. Sofonovych

traces the history of Rus’ during theKievan period, then describes howLithuania absorbed Rus’, and finallyfocuses on Poland’s entry into Rus’history. He shows little concern for theRussian territories of Rus’. Like Gizel’in the Sinopsis, Sofonovych concen-trates on rulers, but the RussianRurikides are of no interest to him.Instead, he lavishes his attention onPrince Danylo of Galicia-Volhynia. Hesees the Muscovites and Ruthenians asseparate peoples. In describing hetmanKhmel’nyts’ky’s placement of Ukraineunder the suzerainty of Muscovite tsar,Sofonovych simply reports the eventwithout expressing any opinion aboutit.23

It must be remembered that thesearch for Rus’, whether within thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth orunder the Muscovite tsar, occurredagainst the background of continuouscrises and turmoil in Ukraine: therenewal of the Orthodox hierarchy(1620), the Khmel’nyts’kyi revolt (1648),the Pereiaslav agreement with Muscovy(1654), and a period of continuouswarfare over Ukraine known as theRuin (1660s–80s). After three decades ofconflict, the Ukrainian elite was slaugh-tered, and Right-Bank Ukraine (west ofthe Dnieper river) devastated anddepopulated. For some members of theelite, gaining the protection of theMuscovite tsar and the powerfulMuscovite state seemed the only meansof attaining a measure of stability.

In turning to the Muscovite tsar,the author of the Sinopsis and numer-ous other Ukrainian petitioners wereseeking the help of Muscovy in pro-moting and protecting SlaviaOrthodoxa. This Slavic Orthodox world,based on the Orthodox faith, theSlavonic language, Byzantine andpost-Byzantine culture, the literary andartistic styles of Rus’, and the SouthSlavic influence included Ukraine,

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Belarus, Muscovy, Bulgaria, and non-Slavic Moldova. It was this culture ofSlavia Orthodoxa that was threatened bythe Catholic Counterreformation in thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.24

In countering the Polish, Catholic,and Western challenge, the Ukrainianprelates, to some extent, transformed theculture of Slavia Orthodoxa. They com-bined post-Byzantine and Westerncultural models, introducing the “Greek-Latin-Slavonic” school (the Ostrihacademy and the Kiev Mohyla col-legium). They attempted to provideOrthodox answers to theological ques-tions never before posed in the Ortho-dox world. Perhaps the most lastingUkrainian contribution to the revitalizedSlavia Orthodoxa was the recodification ofChurch Slavonic so that it would equalLatin as a sacred language. The“Meletian” (named after MeletiiSmotryts’kyi, compiler of the grammar)norm of Church Slavonic became thestandard not only in Ukraine, butthroughout Slavia Orthodoxa.25

In fact, a spiritual and culturalrevitalization of Slavia Orthodoxathrough Ukrainian learning was thevision of such Ukrainian clerics asSmotryts’kyi. As he contemplated theOrthodox world, he saw it in chains,except in Muscovy, where it was freebut ignorant, and in Ukraine, whereOrthodoxy was both free and learned.26

It was this learning that the Ukrainianclerics wanted to bring to Muscovy. Ingoing to Muscovy they were not onlyobtaining protection, alms, or a goodoffice, but also attempting to create aunited revitalized Orthodoxy capable ofmeeting the Roman Catholic andProtestant challenges.The Insistence on DistinctivenessThe Insistence on DistinctivenessThe Insistence on DistinctivenessThe Insistence on DistinctivenessThe Insistence on Distinctivenessfrom Muscovy/Russiafrom Muscovy/Russiafrom Muscovy/Russiafrom Muscovy/Russiafrom Muscovy/Russia

At the same time that someUkrainians were attempting to findaffinity with Muscovy/Russia in

religion, dynasty, high culture, andeven ethnos, they insisted on theirown distinctiveness within the existingpolitical, ecclesiastical, and socialstructures. For the most part, theproponents of Ukrainian political andsocial distinctiveness were the secularpolitical elite. However, the clergywere also adamant defenders of Ukrai-nian privileges, particularly their own.

The secular political elite wasrepresented by the Cossack officersand the Cossack administration that defacto ruled Ukraine. This elite per-formed two political roles, acting asrepresentatives of their own estatesand, in some fashion, as representa-tives of Ukraine. This dual role of theCossack elite was in effect a continua-tion of the role it had assumed after the1648 Khmel’nyts’kyi revolt. Twoimportant documents defined thepolitical status that the Cossacks wereaccorded in seventeenth-centuryUkraine, the Zboriv Treaty and thePereiaslav Agreement.27 The ZborivTreaty, concluded with Poland in 1649,affirmed that the relationship of theKing of Poland with the Cossack elitewas that of a contractual bond betweenthe sovereign and the Zaporozhianarmy. That army, in turn, had virtualcontrol over a good part of Ukraine.The Pereiaslav Agreement concludedwith Muscovy in 1654 was modeled onthe Zboriv Treaty.28 From the Cossackpoint of view, the Pereiaslav Agree-ment maintained the same contractualrelationship between the Zaporozhianarmy and the monarch: in this case, theMuscovite tsar was substituted for thePolish king. The idea of a contractualrelationship between tsar and subjectwas, however, incompatible with theMuscovites’ sense of authority. TheMuscovite interpretation of thePereiaslav Agreement was that ofunilateral submission of the Cossacksand Ukraine to the tsar.29

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Whatever the legal interpretation,the tsar did confirm certain “LittleRussian rights and liberties” atPereiaslav and reconfirmed them—sometimes in radically altered form—each time a new leader of Ukraine, orhetman, assumed office (1657, 1659,1663, 1665, 1669, 1672, 1674, 1687).Thus there was a formal recognition bythe tsar and Muscovy that Ukraine wasa distinct political entity and thatUkrainians were privileged subjects.Moreover, there was hardly any ques-tion about Ukraine’s political distinc-tiveness, since it acted as a semi-inde-pendent Cossack polity. Despite thePereiaslav Agreement with the Musco-vite tsar, the Ukrainian Cossack elitepursued alliances with various statesthat were in fact Moscow’s enemies:Poland-Lithuania (i.e., the politics of theHadiach Union and the Right-BankUkrainian hetmans), the OttomanEmpire (i.e., Hetman Doroshenko), andSweden (i.e., Hetman Ivan Mazepa).

It was only after the Battle ofPoltava (1709) that Russian controlover the Ukrainian Cossack polity,referred to as the Hetmanate, wassealed. In the post-Poltava period thesecular political elite, the Cossackofficers, gradually transformed them-selves into a szlachta or gentry. Theydeveloped a more consistent politicaloutlook that attempted to blend thepresumed unity of the emergingOrthodox Slaveno-Russian empirewith the political and social distinc-tiveness of Ukraine.

The Little Russian conceptemerged gradually throughout theeighteenth century.30 Its basic elementswere the acceptance of the term “LittleRussia” for Ukraine or part of Ukraine,the emergence of a specific Ukrainianhistorical consciousness, theconceptualization of a distinct “LittleRussia” that was nevertheless part of alarger Russian imperial scheme, and

the further refinement of the idea of“Little Russian rights and liberties.”

The term “Little Russia” wonacceptance because of its historicalprecedence in ecclesiastical usage,official status in Russia, and termino-logical linkage with Russia. This termfirst appears in fourteenth-centuryecclesiastical usage: the Constantino-politan Patriarchate used the termmikra Rosia to identify Ukraine, whilethe term makra Rosia identified theterritory of Muscovy. Prior to thePereiaslav Agreement, the Muscovitetsar titled himself tsar vseia Rusi (tsar ofall Rus’); after the Agreement, AlekseiMikhailovich adopted the title tsarvseia Velikiia i Malyia Rossii (tsar of allof Great and Little Russia). BohdanKhmel’nyts’kyi identified Ukraine as“Little Russia” in his dealings with theMuscovites. Nevertheless, a number ofterms—”Ukraine,” “Little Russia,”“Rus’”—continued to be utilized indesignating Ukraine.31

The gradual acceptance of theterm “Little Russia,” the emergence ofa historical consciousness, and the ideaof loyalty to a Ukrainian politicalentity and its relationship to Russiawas elaborated in a new historical/literary genre, the Cossack chronicle.In fact, this genre was partiallysparked by the indignation felt by theUkrainian Cossack elite over theclergy’s inattention to the Cossackpolity. In 1718, Stefan Savyts’kyi, aclerk in the Lubny regiment, lamentedthat none of his countrymen hadwritten a history, “particularly fromthe spiritual rank, who since the timeof emancipation from Poland lackedneither people capable of the task northe necessary typographical means.”32

In response, the Cossack elite pro-duced its own history. Two of the mostinfluential Cossack chronicles werethose of Hryhorii Hrabianka (1710)and Samuil Velychko (1720).33

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The two works are not reallychronicles but histories that attempt todocument and explain how the newUkrainian Cossack polity came intoexistence. For both works, the centralevent was the great uprising under theleadership of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi,who is presented as the hero andfounder of the Cossack state. At thesame time, both chronicles connect theCossack polity with an ancient lineage.In Hrabianka’s case, the UkrainianCossacks are linked to the Khazars andto Rus’. Velychko asserts that theSarmatian Cossack Rus’ provinces hadbeen “the Ukrainian Little Russianfatherland” since the time ofVolodimer, who baptized Rus’.34 Bothchronicles attempt to show by thislineage the historical continuity andlegitimacy of the current political andsocial order.

Both chronicles exhibit a greatdeal of terminological fluidity inreferring to Ukraine.35 In Hrabianka,“Rus’,” Ros,’ “Rossiia,” “MalaRossiia,” “Malaia Rossiia,”“Malorussiia,” “Ruthenia,”“Malorossiiskaia Ukraina,” and“Ukraina” are all used to indicateUkraine or Ukrainian territory.Velychko uses the terms “Rus’,” “LittleRus’,” “Cossack-Rus,” “Ukraina,” and“Little Russia” when referring toCossack Ukraine. Both chroniclesdistinguish Ukraine from Muscovyand Ukrainians from Russians.Hrabianka presents the PereiaslavAgreement as a pact necessitated bypolitical and military circumstances.36

Because of the common Orthodoxfaith, Khmel’nyts’kyi was able toobtain the tsar’s protection overUkraine and a guarantee of Cossackrights. Velychko develops further thanHrabianka the idea of a contractualrelationship between Little Russia andits people on the one hand and the tsaron the other hand. In Velychko’s

version, the tsarist envoys at Pereiaslavswore in the name of the tsar that allUkrainian rights would be respected inperpetuity.37

Unlike the Sinopsis, the Cossackchronicles developed no generalscheme of East European history, nordid they present justifications fortsarist protection based on dynasticclaims, or even link Ukraine withRussia on the basis of religion orethnicity. They strove to present thestory of Ukraine from the UkrainianCossack point of view. For them, theKievan Rus’ period is the murky past:their primary interest is in CossackUkraine under Poland, the greatliberator hetman BohdanKhmel’nyts’kyi, and Cossack andszlachta rights and liberties. At the sametime, these post-Poltava authorswanted to show their loyalty to the tsar.

The Cossack chronicles demon-strate and infer a number of crucialcomponents of the emerging LittleRussian concept: (1) that Little Russiaand Great Russia were separate landsand peoples; (2) that the two landswere linked by a common tsar; (3) thatthe Zaporozhian army, the LittleRussian people, and Little Russia itselfentered into voluntary agreements firstwith the Polish king and later with theMuscovite tsar; and (4) that LittleRussia and its people always retainedtheir “rights and liberties.”

In the second half of the eigh-teenth century, the Little Russianconcept appears as a fully developedviewpoint in two important sources,the Razgovor Velikorossii s Malorossieiand the works of Hryhorii Poletyka.However, there are two significantchanges from the views of the Cossackchronicles. Although the chronicleshad shown little precision as to theterritorial extent of Little Russia, theypresumed that at the very least LittleRussia encompassed Ukraine on both

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sides of the Dnieper. Later authors stilluse the term in this larger sense whenspeaking of historical Little Russia, butto late eighteenth-century contempo-raries, “Little Russia” meant only theHetmanate, the truncated Left-Bankpolity ruled by the tsar on the basis ofthe Pereiaslav Agreement. For themthis Little Russia, and not the muchlarger seventeenth-century entity, wastheir “Fatherland.”

The second major transformationwas the emergence of a Ukrainiangentry or szlachta as Little Russia’sleading social class. The differentiationbetween the Cossack rank and file andthe officers was clearly evident in thechronicles. However, the early eigh-teenth-century chronicles still empha-sized the Zaporozhian Army and theCossacks as the major contractingpartners with the tsar. Without exclud-ing the Zaporozhian Army or theCossacks, the late eighteenth-centuryauthors presented the gentry orszlachta as the corporate representativeof Little Russia and the main contract-ing partner with the tsar.

The Razgovor Velikorossii sMalorossiei reflects the thinking of thisnewly developed Ukrainian gentry.Dedicated to the “honor, glory anddefense of all Little Russia,” it includeda panegyric to Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi.38

The poem ascribes the paramount rolein liberating Little Russia from thePolish yoke to the Ukrainian gentryand laments the fact that the Ukrainiannoble and military ranks have not beenrecognized by the imperial authorities.Most important, the poem flatly rejectsthe concept of Little Russia as part of auniform Russian Empire. The personi-fied Little Russia bluntly tells GreatRussia that it swore allegiance to thetsar, not to Russia. It goes on to statethat, in fact, Little Russia and GreatRussia are separate lands bound only bya common monarch, and that Little

Russia has its own rights guaranteed byall the tsars.

In his writings, Hryhorii Poletykainsisted that Little Russia had alwayspossessed certain rights guaranteed bythe Muscovite tsar. He wrote a treatiseentitled “Historical Information onWhat Basis Little Russia Was under thePolish Republic and by What TreatiesIt Came under Russian Rulers and aPatriotic Opinion as to How It CouldBe Ordered so that It Would be Usefulto the Russian State without Violationsof Its Rights and Freedoms.”39 Poletykaidentified the rights of Little Russiangentry with the Polish nobility’s“golden liberties” and wanted toresurrect the administrative, judicialand social systems of Ukraine underthe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthprior to the Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising.40

At that time, according to Poletyka,regular diets of the szlachta acted aslegislative bodies, consulting withother estates on important matters,while courts of the nobility and townmagistrates adjudicated civilian cases.According to Poletyka, Ukraine’smisfortunes were the consequence ofthe Cossacks’ usurpation of thesepowers from the nobility following theKhmel’nyts’kyi uprising.

While Poletyka’s gentry democ-racy may have been somewhat ex-treme, the views expressed on Ukrai-nian autonomy and Ukraine’s relation-ship with Russia did reflect the think-ing of the Ukrainian gentry. Similarviews were presented at a 1763 Offic-ers’ Council attended by 100 delegatesfrom all parts of Little Russia. More-over, the petitions to the 1767 Legisla-tive Commission, with more than 950gentry signing the various petitions,do indicate a widespread acceptance ofthe Little Russian concept on the partof the Ukrainian gentry.41

By the end of the eighteenthcentury, the Little Russian concept

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encompassed historical consciousnessand political loyalty to Little Russiaand its peculiar constitutional andadministrative prerogatives. At thesame time, the Ukrainian gentryviewed Little Russia as linked toRussia through the tsar and, therefore,to an even larger Russian state orempire. Such a formulation of thedifferences between Ukraine andRussia permitted the Ukrainian gentryto maintain their political and socialsystem in Little Russia, affirm loyaltyto the tsar and even the Empire, andpartake in the political and social lifeof that Empire, if they so desired.Ukraine and the Evolution ofUkraine and the Evolution ofUkraine and the Evolution ofUkraine and the Evolution ofUkraine and the Evolution ofImperial RussiaImperial RussiaImperial RussiaImperial RussiaImperial Russia

When Ukrainians first encoun-tered Muscovy, in the seventeenthcentury, it was an increasingly power-ful yet remote country on the fringe ofEurope. By the late eighteenth century,Russia was a huge multi-nationalempire and a major European power.The change from Muscovy to ImperialRussia involved not only territorialexpansion, but also a fundamentaladministrative, military, and culturaltransformation. Ukrainians played animportant role in this transformationand, at the same time, were profoundlyaffected by it.

Ukrainian clerics began coming toMuscovy seeking alms and support forpublication well before the 1654Pereiaslav Agreement. These contactsproved very difficult because of theinsularity of Muscovite Orthodoxy. Inessence, the Muscovite Church did notaccept the Orthodox population of thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth asOrthodox. It placed the UkrainianOrthodox in the same category asRoman Catholics, Protestants, andUniates, requiring that UkrainianOrthodox be rebaptized before beingaccepted into the Muscovite Orthodox

Church. This attitude intensified afterKievan Metropolitan Petro Mohyla’sliturgical reforms in the 1630s dis-tanced the Ukrainian Church furtherfrom Muscovite practices.

Official Muscovite attitudeschanged at the time of the PereiaslavAgreement. Since the main justificationfor bringing Ukraine under the suzer-ainty of the tsar was the protection ofOrthodoxy (as expressed by the 1653Zemskii sobor), one could hardly main-tain that Ukrainians were not trulyOrthodox. Muscovite expansion intoUkraine had also whetted the appetiteof Patriarch Nikon for establishing auniversal Eastern Orthodox Churchsubordinated to him. Moreover, theMuscovite Church could not avoid theWestern challenge. The Polish RomanCatholic king had been a seriouscontender for the Muscovite throne,and coalition politics made Muscovyan ally of Protestant states. If theMuscovite Church were to provide aleadership role for Eastern Orthodoxy,then it also needed to assume, at leastpartially, the mission of the UkrainianOrthodox clergy, i.e., to create anOrthodoxy that could withstand theCatholic and Protestant challenge. ForPatriarch Nikon, a reformation of theMuscovite Church was necessary notin order to bring it closer to the West,but rather to consolidate Orthodoxforces against the West. This could bedone only by unifying the Greek,Kievan, and Muscovite traditions, andthe Ukrainian Orthodox clergy wereparticularly well placed to accomplishsuch a task.42

Patriarch Nikon’s political ambi-tions notwithstanding, the MuscoviteChurch was hardly ready for a blend-ing of various Orthodox traditions.Muscovite Orthodoxy was groundedin the belief that it possessed the onetrue faith, in its fullness, in the onlyOrthodox—i.e., truly Christian—realm.

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It emphasized simplicity as the mainavenue of pleasing God and wasfundamentally opposed to the Ukraini-ans, Latin, and the “study of philoso-phy.” Thus, Muscovy had a function-ing well-developed autarkic culturaltradition which could only view theUkrainian presence as alien.

The Ukrainian clerics were able topenetrate and have an impact onRussian religious and cultural lifebecause they received the support oftsar and court. As Muscovy began itswestern expansion, the Ukrainianclerics provided an important vehiclefor Muscovy’s acquisition of Westernideas and intellectual techniques.Although the Kiev Mohyla Academyand its Russian copy, the Greco-Slavonic-Latin Academy, were hardlyat the cutting edge of Western learning,they were, nevertheless, firmly plantedwithin the Western intellectual tradition.The rhetoric, logic, neoscholasticism,and the Latin and Greek languagestaught by the Kievan clerics estab-lished the intellectual foundations fornatural philosophy and politicaltheories drawn from other sources.Most importantly, the Ukrainian elitesprovided a large number of educatedcadres without whom the early drivetoward empire could hardly have beensustained.

Thus, from the mid-seventeenthcentury, several waves of Ukrainianclerics moved or were summoned toMuscovy and, in effect, assumedprominent roles in Muscovite religious,educational, cultural, and intellectuallife. Among the Ukrainians whodominated Muscovite high cultureduring this period were ArseniiSatanovs’kyi, Epifanii Slavynets’kyi,Dymytrii Tuptalo, Stefan Iavors’kyi,Lazar Baranovych, TeofanProkopovych and the BelarusianSymeon Polacki.43 Considering thedifferent world views of the Muscovite

and Ukrainian clergy, it is hardlysurprising that they clashed over thedoctrines of the transubstantiation andthe immaculate conception of theVirgin Mary.44 Kievan theology, intheory, yielded to the authority ofMuscovite tradition on these ques-tions, but in practice, Western andKievan iconography, literature, music,and intellectual currents poured intoMuscovy via the Ukrainians.

This attempted Ukrainization ofMuscovite Orthodoxy helped triggerthe Old Believer schism in Russia.Patriarch Nikon’s attempt to reformMuscovite Orthodoxy according toUkrainian and Greek models, which,during the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, had also been Westernizedby Greek scholars educated at Italianuniversities, resulted in the raskol thatdivides the Russian church to this day.

Despite the raskol (against whichthe Muscovite Church engaged theefforts of Ukrainian scholars andpreachers), the Ukrainian presence inMuscovy brought Ukrainian and someRussian clerics (the younger genera-tion of whom were being educated byémigré Ukrainians) closer togetherintellectually. The Ukrainian clericswere attempting to bring the twotraditions together, to create a fairlyunified Slavia Orthodoxa. Their visionlinked “enlightened” Orthodoxy withthe tsar, ancient Rus’, and the Slavoniclanguage and culture. In essence, theywere the proponents of a unified“Slaveno-Rossian” (Slaveno-rossiiska)high culture based partly on the post-Mohyla, Jesuit school version ofUkrainian Orthodoxy and Ukrainianversion of Church Slavonic.

The impact of the Ukrainianclerics on Russian intellectual andcultural life has been the subject ofconsiderable debate. Traditionalhistoriography has represented theUkrainian influence as a major trans-

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formation of Muscovite culture. Somescholars, George Florovsky, saw thistransformation as a tragedy, a corrup-tion of orthodoxy and Russian cultureby Latin, Catholic, and Protestantelements.45 Others, Prince NikolaiTrubetskoi and Dmitrii Likhachev,welcomed the Ukrainian influx asbeneficial “Ukrainization” of Musco-vite culture which greatly enrichedRussia.46 Most scholars credit Ukrai-nian humanism in preparing thePetrine “revolution” and in aiding inthe transformation of Muscovy intomodern Russia.47

Recently, Max Okenfuss advanceda revisionist view that the large influxof Ukrainians had a minimal impact onRussian culture. By carefully studyingboth book and manuscript libraries inRussia, Okenfuss concluded thatOrthodoxy combined with humanismwas limited to Ukrainians and otherforeigners. Okenfuss argues for afundamental cultural autarky of boththe Muscovite nobility and most of theclergy. He claims that the “Ukrainian-Lithuanian-Belorussian communitywas small, isolated, and alien” andthat “the growth of humane secularlearning was not an organic develop-ment within Muscovite society, but thestruggle of Kievans—the struggle ofUkrainian humanists to make them-selves head above the din raised by anavalanche of psalters and liturgicalbooks.”48 At most, Ukrainian human-ism created “Russian Levites,” a castewith education alien to those of thenobles, most of the middle estates, andthe peasantry.49

Inrespective of the resistance tohumanistic Slaveno-Rossian culture inMuscovy, this culture produced by theUkrainian clerics was subsequentlyviewed as a point of unity betweenRussia and Ukraine and as an impor-tant step in the evolution of modernRussian culture. Moreover, these

Ukrainian clerics did help to “jump-start” Muscovy’s transformation intoImperial Russia. Soon other ideas anddevelopments made that process moreEuropean and, paradoxically, alsomore Russian. Cameralism and theconcept of the well-ordered policestate, imported from the Germanies,formed the intellectual underpinningsof the new state activism. Thecameralists had the political goal ofmaximizing society’s productivepotential through the agency of thestate, which assumed the role ofpolicing and developing society. Fromthe time of Peter I, the Russian Empirepursued the goals of increasing thepower and wealth of the state not onlythrough annexation and conquest, butalso by attempting to rationalizegovernment, extract greater staterevenues, and increase productivity.50

In its activism, Westernization,and pursuit of reforms, ImperialRussia began developing a moresecular, cosmopolitan, and, at the sametime, more Russian imperial culturethat initially supplemented and thenbegan to displace Slaveno-Rossianculture. Primary in this process wasthe development of a modern literaryRussian language and secular Russianliterature. The Russian Imperial stateintroduced the civil alphabet, whichsharpened distinctions between eccle-siastical and civil linguistic forms;published grammars and dictionaries;and produced works dealing with allaspects of the secular world, frompractical manuals to translations offoreign literature.51 The linguisticmedium that began to emerge was amiddle style that incorporated ele-ments of the “high” style of Slaveno-Rossian and the “low” style of collo-quial Russian. By the nineteenthcentury, the new literary Russian hadbecome the linguistic medium of theempire. At the same time, the imperial

14

elites had an increasing knowledge ofGerman and, by the end of the eigh-teenth century, French. Althoughelements of Slaveno-Rossian culturesurvived well into the nineteenthcentury, it was gradually being rel-egated to Orthodox Church servicesand spiritual literature.

For the Ukrainian elites, theevolving Russian Empire presentedboth opportunities and dangers. Astrong Orthodox state, based largelyon Slaveno-Rossian culture, andchallenging both Poland-Lithuaniaand the Tatar-Ottoman world, certainlyfulfilled the aspirations of at least apart of the Ukrainian clerical elite. Theevolution of the Little Russian conceptallowed the clerical and non-clericalelites to express political loyalty to thetsar and a greater Russia while, at thesame time, insisting on specific “LittleRussian rights and liberties.” Thecameralist police-state concepts werenot hostile to such regional autonomyand corporate traditions. In fact, thecameralist practice was to subordinatethe corporate bodies to the new statepurpose rather than to curtail orabolish them. Nor was the evolvingRussian imperial culture considered athreat by the Ukrainian elite, since itcontinued to share high culture,whether Slaveno-Rossian or a mixtureof imperial Russian and Slaveno-Rossian. The Ukrainian elite of the lateeighteenth century readily accepted thefact that it shared a monarch, someaspects of history, and high culture withRussia. At the same time, this elitecontinued to insist on the special juridi-cal and social arrangements and distincthistorical development of Ukraine (i.e.,the Hetmanate of the Left Bank).

While the Little Russian conceptprovided sufficient intellectual spacefor the Ukrainian elite to participate inImperial Russia and, at the same time,to remain distinct within it, it had a

number of basic flaws. First, it couldnot accommodate the prevailingconcept of tsarist authority and power.From the time at Pereiaslav whentsarist envoys refused to take an oathon behalf of the tsar because such anact was an unthinkable encroachmenton autocratic rule, Ukrainian “rightsand liberties” were at the mercy oftsarist wishes and even whims. It istrue that in the seventeenth centurythe tsar had issued charters upon eachelection of a Ukrainian hetman,thereby de facto confirming traditional“rights and liberties.” Moreover, everybreak with Muscovy/Russia byHetmans Vyhovs’kyi, Doroshenko, andMazepa was justified by the Ukraini-ans with the argument that the tsarhad violated his solemn obligationstoward Ukraine.52 But obligations tosubjects were antithetical both totraditional autocracy and to the moremodern absolutism of the eighteenthcentury. In the final analysis, theUkrainian elite had no legal or moralrecourse when its “rights” were vio-lated; it could only appeal to traditionand the tsar’s sense of justice.

The Little Russian concept alsoclashed with Enlightenment ideas thatbecame dominant in mid-eighteenth-century Russia. While cameralismrecognized regional, historic, andcultural differences, the Enlightenmentinsisted that there was a basic unifor-mity in nature and society. What wasimportant to “enlightened thought”was the discovery of these basic rules orlaws, and not concentration on superfi-cial differences. For good government,it was crucial to discover the laws ofgovernance and apply them. It wasvery difficult for the Ukrainian elite todefend the historical and legal tradi-tions of their “homeland” against theargument that the introduction of the“best of all possible laws” would bringgreater development and progress.

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Catherine II’s introduction ofwhat she conceived to be the “best ofall orders”53 resulted in administrativeuniformity for the Empire, includingUkraine. The Hetmanate was dividedinto three provinces; the Ukrainianadministrative, military, and fiscalinstitutions were dismantled; and anew Russian imperial provincial anddistrict administration was installed.Similarly, the Orthodox Church inUkraine was reorganized along impe-rial lines. By the beginning of thenineteenth century, little remained ofthe legal institutions, historical legacy,and corporate “rights and liberties”which, in Ukrainian eyes, distin-guished them from Russians.The Remnants of Distinctiveness: TheThe Remnants of Distinctiveness: TheThe Remnants of Distinctiveness: TheThe Remnants of Distinctiveness: TheThe Remnants of Distinctiveness: TheLittle Russian Concept in the EarlyLittle Russian Concept in the EarlyLittle Russian Concept in the EarlyLittle Russian Concept in the EarlyLittle Russian Concept in the EarlyNineteenth CenturyNineteenth CenturyNineteenth CenturyNineteenth CenturyNineteenth Century

The abolition of the Hetmanate’sinstitutions and the introduction of animperial administration effected thegradual fusion of the Ukrainian andRussian social structures. Yet alongsidethis absorption of the Ukrainian eliteinto the Russian Imperial system, theLittle Russian identity continued toexist. It existed as a subset either of anall-Russian identity or of one centeredon the notion of Empire. The LittleRussian identity continued to existbecause of a number of factors: (1) theUkrainian gentry’s dominant role inthe Imperial administration of LittleRussia; (2) the survival of Ukrainiancustomary law; (3) the occasionalrestitution of certain legal and militaryformations traditional to Little Russia;and (4) an interest in the history andfolklore of Ukraine that helped nurturethe idea of a Little Russian fatherland.

The first factor, the gentry’s role inthe administration of this territory, wasdue to the Little Russian gentry’sacceptance into the Imperial rulingclass. In 1785, Catherine II permitted

the Little Russian gentry to be recog-nized as part of the Imperialdvorianstvo.54 Previously, the LittleRussian gentry had attempted to claimthe same rights as those enjoyed by theszlachta under Polish-Lithuanian rule.55

This, of course, was unacceptable toCatherine, as the Polish szlachta en-joyed much greater privileges than didthe Russian dvoriane. The abolition ofall Ukrainian institutions and theintroduction of the 1775 provincialregulations, however, finally forced theImperial Russian authorities to recog-nize the Little Russian gentry.56 Sincenobles were to play an essential role inthe new provincial administration, theformer claim that there were “nonobles in Little Russia” had to bedropped, and a Little Russiandvorianstvo had to be created out of theold Ukrainian gentry. The Ukrainianelite’s integration into the Russiannobility, along with the completeenserfment of the Ukrainian peasantryin 1783, provided the Ukrainian gentrywith unprecedented opportunities topursue imperial careers and to acquireimmense wealth.57 As a result, as anoble class they absolutely dominatedthe local administration of LittleRussia.

The second factor that ensuredthe continuation of the Little Russianconcept was the survival of Ukrainiancommon law. In 1801, Ukrainian courtson the territory of Little Russia wereabolished and replaced with ImperialRussian courts.58 Ukrainian commonlaw, however, was appended to theRussian law code in these courts, thusensuring that the legal system in LittleRussia would continue to operatesomewhat differently from that of therest of the Russian Empire.59 Theselegal peculiarities survived until the1917 Revolution as the only remainingvestige of the Hetmanate’s formerautonomous status.

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The third factor that sustained asense of Little Russian identity was theoccasional restitution of certain legaland military institutions that hadpreviously been abolished. For ex-ample, Ukrainian traditionalists wereable to convince the imperial authori-ties to partially restore one of the mostimportant elements of CossackUkraine—the Cossack army. During theNapoleonic invasion, fifteen Cossackregiments were reestablished and thendisbanded after the Russian victory.60

During the 1830 Polish uprising, TsarNicholas authorized the reactivation ofeight Cossack regiments consisting of1,200 men each.61 Again, once theuprising was crushed, the Cossack unitswere no longer needed and weresubsequently disbanded. Any attemptto revitalize the Cossacks as free war-riors of old Ukraine, however, wasforestalled by Imperial opposition andby the Cossacks’ own economic decline.By 1837 the Cossacks were placedunder the jurisdiction of the Ministry ofState Properties (Ministerstvogosudarstvennykh imushchestv), anagency intended primarily for statepeasants.62 However, the Cossacksretained certain privileges that hadbeen granted to them concerning landownership, taxes, and military service.

The fourth development thatencouraged the survival of the LittleRussian concept was literary—theunprecedented writing concerning thehistory of and nostalgia for the LittleRussian fatherland. The most influen-tial work of this type was the anony-mous Istoriia Rusov.63 This early nine-teenth-century work presents a long,elaborate, and to a great extent ficti-tious history extending from Kievantimes to the 1760 Turkish war. Perhapsits most interesting claim is that theKievan Rus’ period properly belongedto the Ukrainians and had been inap-propriately included in Russian his-

tory. The Istoriia Rusov was enormouslypopular among the nobility of theformer Hetmanate and circulatedwidely in manuscript form. Whilerecognizing Ukrainian history as aspecial branch of a greater “all-Rus-sian” entity, the work at the same timestresses Ukrainian separateness and isan eloquent apology for the Hetmanateand Cossack rights and privileges. Itstone, at times, is quite anti-Russian,and it insists that Ukraine has certaininalienable and guaranteed rights thatmust be upheld. However, the IstoriiaRusov never questions the tsar’s claimto sovereignty over Little Russia—indeed, it looks to the tsar in the hopethat he will maintain the last remnantsof Ukrainian autonomy, and evenrestore the traditional rights of theUkrainian elite.

But no restoration was possible.On the contrary, the imperial authori-ties continued to pursue a policy ofadministrative uniformity. The loss ofany semblance of political distinctive-ness convinced some of the morereflective members of the Ukrainiangentry that they were epigones of acountry and a nation that had ceasedto exist. Oleksa Martos captured thismood in a diary entry written at thegrave of Hetman Mazepa in 1812:

”Mazepa died far away from hiscountry, whose independence hedefended. He was a friend ofliberty and therefore deserves to behonored by posterity. After hisexpulsion from Little Russia, itsinhabitants lost their sacred rights,which Mazepa had defended forso long with great enthusiasm andpatriotic ardor. He is no more, andthe name of Little Russia and itsbrave Cossacks have disappearedfrom the list of nations who,although small in numbers, are yetfamous for their way of life andtheir constitution. Now rich Little

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Russia is reduced to two or threeprovinces. That this is the commondestiny of states and republics, wecan see from the history of othernations.”64

After a century and half, thebalancing by the Ukrainian elitebetween assertions of Russo-Ukrainianunity and insistence on Ukrainianpolitical distinctiveness seemed over.Russians and Ukrainians shared theidea of an all-Russian tsar, an all-Russian Orthodox faith and church, anempire, and an imperial Russian highculture. Russians and Ukrainians wereadministered in a similar manner andwere part of a similar imperial socialstructure. The only differentiation on thepart of the Ukrainian elite lay inUkraine’s distinct past. The Ukrainianelite was certainly aware that Ukrainiansspoke a different “vulgar” language thanRussians and had different songs andfolk customs, but in the pre-Romanticera such differences among the commonpeople were of little significance. Tothem, Little Russia was long dead. Whatlingered for some was a nostalgia for thedistinctiveness of the past.Concepts of Russo-Ukrainian UnityConcepts of Russo-Ukrainian UnityConcepts of Russo-Ukrainian UnityConcepts of Russo-Ukrainian UnityConcepts of Russo-Ukrainian Unityand Ukrainian Distinctiveness:and Ukrainian Distinctiveness:and Ukrainian Distinctiveness:and Ukrainian Distinctiveness:and Ukrainian Distinctiveness:Epilogue and ConclusionsEpilogue and ConclusionsEpilogue and ConclusionsEpilogue and ConclusionsEpilogue and Conclusions

For most of the early modernperiod, Ukrainians were part of twolarge states: Poland-Lithuania andMuscovy/Russia. In both instances,Ukrainians accepted some form ofunity while at the same time insistingon maintaining essential differences. Inthe case of Poland-Lithuania, Ukraini-ans subscribed to political unity as partof the szlachta nation, yet insisted onreligious and cultural differences. Asthese and other attempted arrange-ments within Poland-Lithuania provedunworkable, some Ukrainians beganlooking for succor to Muscovy. In theirpro-Muscovite orientation, Ukrainians

claimed affinity with Muscovy inreligion, dynasty, high culture, andeven ethnos. However, they insisted onmaintaining their distinctiveness inpolitical, social, and, on occasion,ecclesiastical structures. The claim todistinctiveness proved so strong that iteven survived the abolition of separateUkrainian political and juridicalinstitutions.

That Ukrainians could claim unitywith Russia and at the same time insiston their own distinctiveness was notsurprising. Before the advent of nation-alism, multiple identities and loyaltieswere the norm, particularly in largemultinational states. Therefore, it waspossible to be a political Pole, a devoutOrthodox Christian, and an advocateof Rus’ culture. It was normal to beloyal to the tsar, Orthodoxy, ImperialRussia, and, at the same time, to be afervent defender of Little Russia. Infact, the whole Little Russian conceptwas nothing more than an intellectualjustification for such multiple loyaltiesand identities.

From the first quarter of thenineteenth century, Ukrainians begandiscovering other areas of distinctive-ness from Russians. Under the influ-ence of Herder and Romanticism, anew generation discovered the Ukrai-nian folk and their vernacular lan-guage. Until its banning in the 1860sand 1870s, literature written in ver-nacular Ukrainian evolved slowlyunder the cover of a mere local variantof a larger all-Russian literature. In thisrespect, Ukrainians were still employ-ing the old Little Russian concept, butapplying it to the areas of vernacularlanguage and literature. In the latenineteenth century, Ukrainian intellec-tuals emancipated themselves from theRussian connection, positing thatUkraine was different from Russia inall respects: language, literature,culture, history, and politics. This

18

marked the birth of modern Ukrainiannationalism, which no longer permit-ted multiple identities. By identifyingthemselves as Ukrainian, the national-ists excluded the possibility of beingRussian.

Concomitantly, Russians beganidentifying the Imperial Russian stateprimarily with the Great Russianpeople and culture. This was a rejec-tion of a meta-Russian nationalitywhich would contain separate andlegitimate Little Russian and GreatRussian components. The imperial andeven the Slaveno-Rossian culturebegan to be treated as narrowly Rus-sian. Thus what had been shared in thepast by Ukrainians, Belorusians,Moldovans, and Russians was appro-priated to a Russian or Great Russiannationality. The identification by someof the entire Slavia Orthodoxa withRussia and Russians made theMoldovan-Ukrainian prelate PetroMohyla, who had never been to Russiaand remained a patriot of the Polish-

Lithuanian Commonwealth until hisdeath, a defender of “Russian” reli-gion, culture, and values. Such a viewalso sanctioned the banning of theUkrainian language on the groundsthat there “never was, is, or could be aUkrainian language.”

By the late nineteenth century,Ukrainians and Russians were inter-preting their history on the basis oftwo completely opposed paradigms. Indiscussing the early modern period,Ukrainians emphasized those areasthat were distinct from Russia and sawin them evidence of Ukraine’s autoch-thonous development. Russiansemphasized those aspects that Ukrai-nians held in common with Russia andsaw in them proof that Ukraine hadbeen and always would be Russian.These two fundamentally opposedviews still cast their shadow on currentdebates concerning the question ofRusso-Ukrainian unity and Ukrainiandistinctiveness in the early modernperiod.

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Notes

1. For a discussion of the current Russo-Ukrainian disputes on history and relevantliterature, see my article, “History as a Battleground: Russian-Ukrainian Relationsand Historical Consciousness in Contemporary Ukraine,” in S. Frederick Starr, ed.,The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, 1994), 123–46.

2. V.O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, 3: 118, in his Sochineniia, 8 vols. (Moscow,1956–59).

3. The literature on the history of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is voluminous. The works most relevant for ouranalysis include M.K. Liubavskii, Ocherk istorii Litovsko-russkogo gosudarstva doLiublinskoi unii vkliuchitel’no (Moscow, 1910) and F.M. Shabul’do, Zemli Iugo-Zapadnoi Rusi v sostave Velikogo kniazhestva Litovskogo (Kiev, 1987). For a discussion ofthe nobility in the Ukrainian lands after 1569, with extensive bibliographic notes, seeFrank E. Sysyn, “The Problem of Nobilities in the Ukrainian Past: The Polish Period,1569–1648,” in Ivan L. Rudnytsky, ed., Rethinking Ukrainian History (Edmonton,1987), 29–102. The most recent, and extremely valuable, addition to the literature ofthe subject is N.M. Iakovenko, Ukrains’ka shliakhta z kintsia XIV do seredyny XVII st.:(Volyn’ i Tsentral’na Ukraina) (Kiev, 1993).

4. Natalia Iakovenko has noted the significant presence of a nobility of Tatarbackground in the Ukrainian lands of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state in thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries and an influx of nobles from Muscovy in thesixteenth. See N.M. Iakovenko, Ukrains’ka shliakhta, 170–74, 242.

5. See Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenthand Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1973) and Wiktor Weintraub, “Tolerance andIntolerance in Old Poland,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 13, no. 1 (1971): 21–44.

6. See David A. Frick, Meletij Smotryc’kyj (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 232–34.

7. For definitive works on the Ukrainian church elite of the time, see G. Golubev,Kievskii mitropolit Petr Mogila i ego spodvizhniki, 2 vols. (Kiev, 1883–98); V. Eingorn, Osnosheniiakh malorosiiskogo dukhovenstva s moskovskim pravitel’stvom v tsarstvovanieAlekseia Mikhailovicha (Moscow, 1894); The Kiev Mohyla Academy, special issue ofHarvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 8, no. 1–2 (June 1984); Frank Sysyn, “The Formation ofModern Ukrainian Religious Culture: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” inGeoffrey A. Hoskins, ed., Church, Nation, and State in Russia and Ukraine (Edmonton,1990), 1–22.

8. See Frank E. Sysyn, “The Cultural, Social, and Political Context of UkrainianHistory Writing 1620–1690,” Europa Orientalis 5 (1986), 285–310, and “Concepts ofNationhood in Ukrainian History Writing, 1620–1690,” Concepts of Nationhood inEarly Modern Eastern Europe (Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10, no. 3/4 [December 1986]),393–423.

9. The history of the Cossacks from the fifteenth to seventeenth century is wellsummarized in V.A. Golobutskii, Zaporozhskoe kazachestvo (Kiev, 1957) and GunterStökl, Die Entstehung des Kosakentums (Munich, 1953). The topic is treated in muchgreater detail in volumes 6–10 of Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi’s Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusy, 10vols. (Lviv and Kiev, 1898–1937).

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10. This notion is developed in Iakovenko, Ukrains’ka shliakhta, 268–69.

11. The Cossack intervention in the religious strife is best treated in volume 6 ofHrushevs’kyi’s Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusy. See also Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel, “TheNational Consciousness of Ukrainian Nobles and Cossacks from the End of theSixteenth to the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” Concepts of Nationhood in Early ModernEastern Europe, 377–92.

12. Andrzej Kami½ski, “The Cossack Experiment in Szlachta Democracy in thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: The Hadiach (Hadziacz) Union,” HarvardUkrainian Studies, Vol.1, no.2, June 1977: 178–97.

13. See Serhii Plokhii, “The Symbol of Little Russia: The Pokrova Icon and EarlyModern Ukrainian Political Ideology,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 17, nos. 1–2(Summer-Winter 1992): 173. The poem, “Hlaholet Pol’shcha...,” is reprinted inUkrains’ka literatura XVII stolittia. Synkretychna pysemnist’. Poeziia. Dramaturhiia.Beletrystyka (Kiev, 1987), 284–85, 564–65.

14. The state of Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century is describedin V. �ingorn, O snosheniiakh malorossiiskogo dukhovenstva s moskovskim pravitel’stvomv tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha (Moscow, 1894); Metropolitan Makarii(Bulgakov), Istoriia russkoi tserkvi, 12 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1889–1903), vol. 12; IvanVlasovs’kyi, Narys istorii Ukrains’koi pravoslavnoi tserkvy, 4 vols. (Bound Brook, N.J.,1956–66), vol. 2. The subordination of the Kiev metropolitan to the Moscow patriarchhas been exhaustively treated in S.A. Ternovskii, Issledovanie o podchinenii Kievskoimetropolii Moskovskomu patriarkhatu (Kiev, 1912). The church in the eighteenthcentury is treated in I. Chistovich, Ocherki istorii zapadno-russkoi tserkvi, 2 vols. (St.Petersburg, 1882–84), vol. 2; K. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie navelikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn’ (Kazan’, 1914); Vlasovs’kyi, Narys, vol. 3, 5–30.

15. See O.P. Tolochko, “Mizh Russiu i Pol’shcheiu: Ukrains’ka istoriohrafiia XVII st.v katehoriiakh pohranychnosti.” Paper presented at the conference “Peoples,Nations, Identities: Ukrainian-Russian Encounter,” Köln University, 23–25 June1994.

16. The scholarly literature on the Sinopsis is examined in the introduction to HansRothe, ed., Sinopsis, Kiev 1681: Facsimile mit einer Einleitung (Cologne, 1983). Ofparticular note are S.I. Maslov, “K istorii izdanii kievskogo Sinopsisa,” in Stat’i poslavianskoi filologii i russkoi slovesnosti: Sobranie statei v chest’ akademika A.I.Sobolevskogo (Leningrad, 1928), 341–48; I.P. Eremin, “K istorii obshchestvennoi myslina Ukraine vtoroi poloviny XVII v.,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury (hereafterTODRL), vol. X (1954), 212–22; and S.L. Peshtich, “Sinopsis kak istoricheskoeproizvedenie,” TODRL, vol. XV (1958), 284–98. An interesting recent addition to theliterature is Gianfranco Giraudo, “‘Russkoe’ nastoiashchee i proshedshee vtvorchestve Innokentiia Gizelia,” Medievalia Ucrainica: Mental’nist’ ta istoriia idei(Kiev, 1992), 1: 92–103.

17. Hans Rothe, ed., Synopsis, Kiev 1681, 149–51. The author continues to use terms“russkie” and “Rossiia” to describe both Vladimir-Moscow and Ukrainian landsfrom the thirteenth to the fifteenth century (pp. 328, 335, 349, 351, 354), and his“pravoslavnorossiiskii narod” designates both Ukrainians and Muscovites underAleksei Mikhailovich (pp. 278, 364–5).

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18. For the first use of the term “gosudarstvo Ruskoe,” see ibid., 167. Vladimir iscalled “Velikii Samoderzhets Rossiiskii” (p. 216).

19. Ibid., 208.

20. Ibid., 353.

21. Ibid., 360.

22. Ibid., 364.

23. See Feodosii Sofonovych, Khronika z litopystsiv starodavnikh, ed. by Iu.A. Mytsykand V.M. Kravchenko (Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1992), 231, 255 and Frank E. Sysyn,“The Cultural, Social, and Political Context of Ukrainian History Writing, 1620–1690,” 306.

24. See Harvey Goldblatt, “Orthodox Slavic Heritage and National Consciousness:Aspects of the East Slavic and South Slavic National Revivals,” Concepts ofNationhood in Early Modern Eastern Europe (Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 10, no. 3/4 [December 1986]): 337–38.

25. Harvey Goldblatt, “Orthodox Slavic Heritage and National Consciousness,” 342;Bohdan Strumins’kyj, “The Language Question in the Ukrainian Lands before theNineteenth Century,” in Aspects of the Slavic Language Question, vol. II, ed. RiccardoPicchio and Harvey Goldblatt (New Haven, 1984), 13–14.

26. David A. Frick, Meletij Smotryc’kyj, 238.

27. The ever-expanding contractual relationship between the Cossacks and the kingof Poland is very well traced in volumes 7 and 8 of Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi’s IstoriiaUkrainy-Rusy; the Treaty of Zboriv is discussed in vol. 8, pt. 3, 193–288.

28. For information on the Pereiaslav Agreement, see Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiei:dokumenty i materialy v 3-kh tomakh, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1954); Akty otnosiashchiesia k istoriiIugo-Zapadnoi Rossii, 15 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1861–1892), vol. 10; and John Basarab’sPereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton, 1982). The articles of theagreement are analyzed in A. Iakovliv, Ukrains’ko-moskovs’ki dohovory v XVII–XVIIIvikakh, Pratsi Ukrains’koho naukovoho instytutu, vol. 19 (Warsaw, 1934).

29. The conflicting Ukrainian and Muscovite interpretations of the PereiaslavAgreement are dealt with in B.E. Nol’de, Ocherki russkogo gosudarstvennogo prava (St.Petersburg, 1911). The section dealing with Ukraine has been translated intoEnglish: “Essays in Russian State Law,” Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts andSciences in the United States, 1988, no. 3 (Winter–Spring): 873–903.

30. For a more detailed discussion of the Little Russian concept, see Zenon E. Kohut,“The Development of a Little Russian Identity and Ukrainian Nationbuilding,”Concepts of Nationhood in Early Modern Eastern Europe (Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10,no. 3/4 [December 1986]): 559–76.

31. The transformation of the term “Rus’” into “Rossiia” and then “Malorossiia” isbest summarized in M.A. Maksimovich, “Ob upotreblenii nazvanii Rossiia iMalorossiia v Zapadnoi Rusi,” in Sobranie sochinenii, 2 vols. (Kiev, 1877), vol. 2: 307–11. See also the discussion of the terms “Rus’” and “Little Russia” by MykhailoHrushevs’kyi, “Velyka, Mala i Bila Rus’,” Ukrains’kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, 1991, no. 2:77–85 (originally published in Ukraina, 1917, no. 1-2: 7–19); and A. Solov’ev,

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“Velikaiia, Malaia i Belaia Rus’,” Voprosy istorii, 1947, no. 7: 24–38.

32. M. Hrushevs’kyi, “Some Reflections on Ukrainian Historiography of the XVIIICentury,” in The Eyewitness Chronicle, Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, vol. 7, pt.1 (Munich, 1972), 12.

33. Hrabianka was published under the title Deistviia prezel’noi i ot nachala poliakovkrvavshoi nebuvaloi brani Bogdana Khmelnitskogo...Roku 1710 (Kiev, 1854); andVelychko under the title Letopis’ sobytii v Iugo-Zapadnoi Rossii v XVII veke. SostavilSamoil Velichko byvshii kantseliarist Voiska Zaporozhskogo, 1720 (Kiev), vol. 1 (1848),vol. 2 (1851), vol. 3 (1885), vol. 4 (1864). My references are to the facsimile edition ofHryhorii Hrabianka, The Great War of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (The Harvard Library ofEarly Ukrainian Literature, Texts, vol. 9) (Cambridge, MA, 1990) and ValeriiShevchuk’s translation of Velychko in Samiilo Velychko, Litopys, 2 vols. (Kiev, 1991).

34. See, for example, “A tsia zemlia—predkovichna vitchyzna nasha, iaka siiaiepravdeshnim i neskhytnym blahochestiam vid sviatoho i ravnoapostol’nohokniazia Volodymyra Kyivs’koho, shcho prosvityv Rus’ khreshchenniam.”(Velychko, vol. 1, p. 79. The quotation is from the text of Bohdan Khmelnyts’kyi’suniversal as reproduced in Velychko. According to M. Kostomarov and V.Ikonnikov, Velychko edited the text of the actual document. According to I. Franko,M. Hrushevs’kyi, O. Levyts’kyi, and M. Petrovs’kyi, the entire text is a creation ofVelychko. See Valerii Shevchuk’s footnote on the same page.) For references to thefatherland as “kozats’ko-rus’ka malorosiis’ka Ukraina” see vol. 2, 200–202 andelsewhere.

35. For a discussion of names used in the Cossack histories, see Serhii Shelukhin,Ukraina—nazva nashoi zemli z naidavniishykh chasiv (Prague, 1936), 145–50.

36. Hryhorii Hrabianka, The Great War of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 359–60.

37. Velychko, Litopys, 1: 137. Velychko’s treatment of the Pereiaslav Agreementstands in contradiction to the actual events, for the Russian envoys refused to swearan oath on behalf of the tsar.

38. The poem was published by N. Petrov, “Razgovor Velikorossii s Malorossiei(literaturnyi pamiatnik vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka),” Kievskaia starina, 1882, no. 2,313–365, and “Dopolneniia Razgovora Velikorossii s Malorossiei,” Kievskaia starina,1882, no. 7, p. 137. A slightly abridged version was published by O.I. Bilets’kyi, ed.,Khrestomatiia davn’oi ukrains’koi literatury (Kiev, 1967), 165–83.

39. “Istoricheskoe izvestie na kakom osnovanii Malaia Rossiia byla pod respublikoiuPol’skoiu, i na kakikh dogovorakh otdalas’ Rossiiskim Gdriam, i patrioticheskoerassuzhdenie, kakim obrazom mozhno by onuiu nyne uchredit’ chtob ona poleznamogla byt’ Rossiiskomu Gosudarstvu bez narusheniia prav ee i vol’nostei,”Ukrains’kyi arkheohrafichnyi zbirnyk 1 (1926): 147–161.

40. See “Vozrazhenie Deputata Grigoriia Poletiki na nastavleniia Malorossiiskoikollegii gospodinu zhe deputatu Dimitriiu Natal’inu,” Chteniia v Imperatorskomobshchestve istorii i drevnosti rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete 3 (1858), 72;“Proshenie malorossiiskikh deputatov vo vremia sostavleniia Ulozheniia,” Nakazymalorossiiskim deputatam 1767 g. i akty o vyborakh deputatov v Komissiiu sochineniiaulozheniia (Kiev, 1890), 178: “Istoricheskoe izvestie,” pp. 154–61. Poletyka’s political

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views have been discussed by Zenon Kohut in “A Gentry Democracy within anAutocracy: The Politics of Hryhorii Poletyka (1723/25–1784),” Eucharisterion: EssaysPresented to Omeljan Pritsak by His Students and Colleagues on His Sixtieth Birthday[Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vols. 3–4] (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 507–519.

41. On the 1763 Officers’ Council and the Ukrainian elite’s participation in theLegislative Commission, see Zenon E. Kohut, Russian Centralism and UkrainianAutonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s (Cambridge, MA, 1988),86–95, 125–190.

42. See Tetiana Oparina, “Spryiniattia unii v Rosii XVII stolittia,” in Borys Hudziak,ed., Derzhava, suspil’stvo i Tserkva v Ukraini u XVII stolitti. Materiialy Druhykh“Beresteis’kykh chytan’” (L’viv, 1996), 131–63.

43. The influence of these Ukrainian clerics on Muscovite church life is the subject ofK. Kharlampovich’s Malorossiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn’ (Kazan’,1914).

44. On the conflict between the Kievan and Muscovite clerics concerningtransubstantiation, see Grigorii Mirkovich, O vremeni presushchestvleniia sv. darov,spor, byvshei v Moskve, vo vtoroi polovini XVII-go veka (Vilnius, 1886), 31–82, appendixI–XXVI.

45. Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, 2 vols. (Belmont, MA: Nordland,1979–87), esp. vol. 1: 59–60, 65, 85, 121, 131–2. For a scholarly critique of Florovsky,see Frank E. Sysyn, “Peter Mohyla and the Kiev Academy in Recent Western Works:Divergent Views on Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Culture,” The Kiev MohylaAcademy (Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8, no. 1/2 (June 1984): 160–70; Francis J.Thomson, “Peter Mogila’s Ecclesiastical Reforms and the Ukrainian Contribution toRussian Culture. A Critique of Georges Florovsky’s Theory of the Pseudomorphosis ofOrthodoxy,” Belgian Contributions to the 11th International Congress of Slavists,Bratislava, 30 August–8 September 1993 (Slavica Gandensia 20 (1993)), 67–119.

46. Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetzkoy, The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays onRussia’s Identity, ed. and with a postscript by Anatoly Liberman. Preface byViacheslav V. Ivanov (Ann Arbor, MI: Slavic Publications, 1991), 245–68; Dmitrii S.Likhachev, Reflections on Russia, trans. by Christina Sever, ed. by Nikolai N. Petro(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 74–5 (Likhachev asserts that Russia andUkraine for centuries “have formed not only a political, but also a culturally dualisticunity”).

47. See Marc Raeff, “The Enlightenment in Russia and Russian Thought in theEnlightenment,” in John G. Garrard, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford,1973), 25–47, here 25 and Donald W. Treadgold, The West in Russia and China. Vol.1:Russia 1472–1917 (Cambridge, 1973), 115.

48. Max J. Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia: PaganAuthors, Ukrainians, and the Resilency of Muscovy (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1995), 70, 57.

49. Ibid., 109.

50. See V.I. Syromiatnikov, “Reguliarnoe gosudarstvo” Petra Pervogo i ego ideologiia(Moscow, 1943); Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and InstitutionalChange through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983).

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51. V.V. Vinogradov, Ocherki po istorii russkogo literaturnogo iazyka XVII–XIX vv.(Leiden, 1949), 72–84.

52. A. Iakovliv, Ukrains’ko-moskovs’ki dohovory v XVII–XVIII vikakh (Warsaw, 1934).

53. This expression was used by Catherine in 1765 in her instructions to the newlyappointed Governor-General and President of the Little Russian College, CountPetr Rumiantsev. The instructions were published in Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogoistoricheskogo obshchestva, vol. 7 (1871), 376–91.

54. The provisions of the charter are discussed at length in Robert E. Jones, TheEmancipation of the Russian Nobility, 1762–1785 (Princeton, NJ, 1973), 272–99.

55. The Ukrainian gentry’s claims are outlined in a 1784 preliminary draft of thecharter. For a good summary of these, see D. Miller, “Ocherki iz istorii i iuridicheskogobyta staroi Malorossii. Prevrashchenie kozatskoi starshiny v dvorianstvo,” Kievskaiastarina, no. 2 (1897), 194–96. A detailed listing is to be found in the 1786 law code: N.Vasilenko, ed., Ekstrakt iz ukazov instruktsii i uchrezhdenii s razdeleniem po materialam nadeviatnadtsat’ chastei [Materialy dlia istorii ekonomicheskogo, iuridicheskogo i obshchestvennogobyta Staroi Malorossii, vol. 2] (Chernihiv, 1902), 216–31.

56. For the 1775 Basic Statute for the Administration of the Provinces of the RussianEmpire, see PSZ, no. 14,392 (7 November 1775), 20: 229–304.

57. For Catherine’s decree forbidding the movement of Ukrainian peasants andextending the poll tax to Ukraine, see PSZ, no. 15,724 (3 May 1783), 21: 908.

58. Described in “Dnevnik Akima Semenovicha Sulimy,” Russkii biograficheskiislovar’, vol. 20 (Suvorova-Tkachev), 141–42.

59. Vasylenko enumerates the local legal practices retained with the introduction ofthe imperial code, “Iak skasovano Lytovs’koho statuta,” Zapysky Sotsiial’no-ekonomichnoho viddilu VUAN, vol. 2–3 (1923–25), 288–316.

60. The organization, activities and disbandment of the 1812–16 Cossack formationshave been studied in numerous works. The most important are: I. Pavlovskii,“Malorossiiskoe kozach’e opolchenie v 1812 godu,” Kievskaia starina, 1906, no. 9: 1–20 and no. 10: 137–54; N. Storozhenko, “K istorii malorossiiskikh kozakov v kontseXVIII i v nachale XIX veka,” Kievskaia starina, 1897, no. 6: 460–83; P. Klepats’kyi,“Dvorians’ke zems’ke opolchennia (kozaky),” Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva 31(1930): 6–21; V. I. Strel’skii, Uchastie ukrainskogo naroda v Otechestvennoi voine 1812goda (Kiev, 1953); B. S. Abolikhin, “Ukrainskoe opolchenie 1812 g.,” Istoricheskiezapiski, 72 (Moscow, 1962).

61. For a detailed discussion of the 1830–31 Cossack project, see N. Storozhenko, “Kistorii malorossiiskikh kozakov v kontse XVIII i v nachale XIX veka,” Kievskaiastarina, 1897, no. 10: 115–31.

62. Istoricheskoe obozrenie piatidesiatiletnei deiatel’nosti Ministerstva gosudarstvennykhimushchestv 1837–1887, pt. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1888), 18.

63. See Istoriia Rusov ili Maloi Rossii. Sochinenie Georgiia Koniskago ArkhiepiskopaBeloruskogo (Moscow, 1846).

64. Dmytro Doroshenko, A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography, Annals of theUkrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., vol. 5–6 (New York, 1957), 112.