8_Downfall of the Hetmanate

This is the eighth #generalhistory note, following 7_Hetmanate.

Vyhovsky's Break with Moscow

• Bohdan Khmelnytsky's death triggered a long series of wars that split Ukraine between the Right and Left Banks of the Dnieper, caught between Muscovy and Poland.
• Though Khmelnytsky had aimed to expand the Hetmanate's territory, the volatile external and internal conditions after his death haunted his successors.
• The first crisis was succession. Khmelnytsky had engineered the election of his son Yurii as Hetman, but Yurii was quickly ousted by an experienced courtier-turned-regent.
• A useful comparison here is Moldavia, where leaders were installed and removed at the whim of the Ottoman Empire. But the Hetmanate faced an even more brutal triangle—Ottomans, Muscovites, and Poles. No matter who prevailed, the Cossacks were bound to lose. Their unstable succession system only made them more vulnerable to manipulation.
• The man who ousted Yurii was Ivan Vyhovsky, a noble by descent.
• His rise to power met resistance. The Zaporizhian Cossacks, in particular, were angry—they had lost their primacy over Cossackdom and now demanded that all future Hetman elections be held in their territory. They even questioned Vyhovsky’s legitimacy.
• Some Cossacks supported the Zaporizhians, but more critically, Moscow encouraged them. Sensing an opportunity, the Muscovites hoped internal conflict would weaken Vyhovsky and bind him tighter than his predecessor.
• In response, Vyhovsky rallied his Tatar allies and met the rebels near Poltava. Though victorious, the battle was costly—around 15,000 dead—and marked a disturbing precedent: Cossacks killing Cossacks, something unseen since 1648.
• Like Khmelnytsky, Vyhovsky believed the Pereieslav Agreement was reciprocal and could be revoked. He called it a "voluntary submission." Once he saw Muscovy violating its side of the deal, he pivoted to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He and his advisors understood the Commonwealth’s system well—and thought they could leverage it to strike a better bargain.
• In 1658, Vyhovsky summoned a Cossack council at Hadiach, which approved terms for returning to Polish jurisdiction.
• The resulting treaty, the Union of Hadiach, was crafted by Yurii Nemyrych. Drawing from an Orthodox noble interpretation of the Union of Lublin, Nemyrych envisioned a reformed Commonwealth—Poland, Lithuania, and Rus as three co-equal partners.
• Khmelnytsky's revolt had forced parts of the Polish elite to seriously consider such a vision. To make it viable, they made major concessions: noble status to 1,000 Cossack families (with 100 more each year), and a guarantee that only Orthodox could hold administrative posts in the region.
• The Cossack negotiators even secured recognition of the Kyivan College as an academy—hinting at a broader cultural ambition beyond the military order of Cossackdom.
• But this vision enraged Moscow. Supported by pro-Moscow Cossacks, the Tsardom invaded. In spring 1659, Vyhovsky issued a declaration accusing Muscovy of violating the Pereieslav treaty by infringing on Cossack freedoms.
• In June, the two forces met at Konotop. Vyhovsky won a stunning victory—thanks in part to Tatar support.
• Yet he never marched on Moscow. The internal situation kept deteriorating—especially after the Polish Diet ratified the Hadiach treaty with changes. The promised Rus principality was gutted: only Bratslav, Chernihiv, and Kyiv were included, and the Cossack register was slashed to 40,000. Despite Nemyrych’s protests, the Diet refused to restore the original terms.
• When Vyhovsky received the revised treaty, he told the Polish envoy: "You have brought me death."
• The Cossack elite now viewed him as a traitor. Vyhovsky fled the country. Nemyrych died in battle, and other Cossack delegates to the Diet were executed by anti-Vyhovsky factions.
• These events left a brutal legacy for future Hetmans. They now faced a quadruple bind: balancing between three empires while also keeping their own volatile ranks in line. Few would prove equal to the task.

Partition

• Yurii Khmelnytsky regained the Hetmancy with the help of Cossacks who believed they could return to their previous deal with the Tsar. They were dead wrong.
• During initial negotiations, a new Cossack council found itself surrounded by a Muscovite army. Though they approved of Khmelnytsky, it was under harsh new terms: Hetmans now needed confirmation from the Tsar, had no control over foreign policy, and Muscovite garrisons would be stationed in all major towns.
• Vyhovsky’s gamble hadn’t softened the Muscovites, as his detractors had hoped—it had hardened them. The Tsar wanted everyone to know that disloyalty would not be tolerated.
• But their methods backfired. In January 1660, they delivered Khmelnytsky the mutilated corpse of his brother—captured and tortured during a failed assault on a Muscovite garrison. The message was intimidation, but the impact was fury.
• That fall, in a battle against the Poles, the Cossacks switched sides mid-fight and routed the Muscovites.
• Yet their reward was bitter. The new deal with the Commonwealth was even worse than the Union of Hadiach—it erased the name "Rus" from their envisioned principality.
• A grim pattern emerged: every time the Cossacks changed sides, they lost more sovereignty.
• Eventually, the pressure from both Muscovy and the Commonwealth shattered the Hetmanate, dividing it along the Dnipro River.
• Yurii tried to reverse the loss. He launched repeated campaigns to retake the Left Bank, but it was too close to Muscovy’s core and heavily fortified.
• In 1663, Yurii resigned. This led to the election of a pro-Muscovite Hetman in the Left Bank, and a pro-Commonwealth one in the Right. The split was made formal in 1667 by the Truce of Andrusovo.
• But the old elite didn’t give up. In 1665, Petro Doroshenko was elected Hetman and began planning reunification.
• In 1667, he launched a revolt against the Poles with Crimean Tatar support, forcing recognition of Right Bank sovereignty. Then, he crossed the Dnipro to support the rebelling Left Bank—and was elected Hetman there too.
• This fragile unity was short-lived. Doroshenko had to return west to fend off a Polish offensive, and Muscovy reclaimed the Left Bank.
• Anticipating this, Doroshenko had already begun negotiations with the Ottomans. In July 1669, the Sultan placed the Cossacks under his protection in return for loyalty.
• This time, the Ottomans meant business: in 1672 they sent a 100,000-strong army against the Poles, aiming to reunite the Hetmanate and expand further.
• The military campaign was wildly successful. The Poles surrendered claims to Podolia and the Middle Dnieper—Khmelnytsky’s dream seemed within reach.
• But that dream soured quickly. The Ottomans imposed direct rule over key territories, denied Cossack autonomy, ignored Muscovy, converted churches into mosques, and escalated Tatar slave raids.
• Conditions deteriorated. Masses fled to the Left Bank, where Muscovy had suppressed dissent and triggered an economic revival.
• In 1676, facing a Muscovite offensive, Doroshenko resigned. His dream of unity under a benevolent protector had only invited another imperial predator—one even more brutal than the last.
• Ottoman rule quickly faded; the region held little value to them. By 1698, the Poles had recaptured Podolia.

Identity

• While the Cossack state didn't entirely disappear, its territory and autonomy had been almost eradicated, surviving only in left-bank Ukraine.
• The Hetmanate had been powerful enough to challenge the major powers in the region, but insufficient to defend their gains in the Khmelnytsky uprising. They had attempted every possible alliance, but it had been in vain.
• Ukrainian territory would remain split between Poland and Muscovy until the eighteenth century, which would profoundly impact identity and culture.
• On the Muscovite side, multiple competing nation-building projects emerged.
  • One of them was closely associated with the name "Ukraine" and saw the Hetmanate as an independent polity. This one is part of the bedrock forming Ukrainian national identity.
  • Another one was called "Little Russia", advocating for the territory being part of a larger Russian nation. It was also the basis for treating Ukrainian territory as "lesser Russia" and its inhabitants as "Little Russians" inhabiting a dominantly Russian nation.
• Both of these co-existed before the revolt of Ivan Mazepa in 1708, after which the Ukrainian idea shifted out of the mainstream discourse for a century.
• The last decades of the century showed that Muscovy knew when to compromise in order to keep control of left-bank Ukraine and sway Cossackdom at large. During the Doroshenko revolt, they offered conditions close to those that had swayed Khmelnytsky.
• In stark contrast to this, the Poles were dismantling Cossack privileges on their side of the Dnipro, leading to migration towards the left bank, consequently triggering an economic boom.
• That economic growth positively impacted Kyivan cultural life in education, poetry, and literature, which had ripple effects on Moscow. The migration of Kyivan Orthodox figures to Moscow caused a split in the native religious scene between reformists and conservatives.
• However, the cultural exchange was moving in both directions, as Ukrainian clerics were introduced to the idea of an all-powerful autocrat in perfect symphony with the Church, which they embraced after centuries of having a Catholic king.
• According to the Truce of Andrusovo, Kyiv was supposed to return to Polish hands after a two-year grace period.
• However, the Kyivan clergy was utterly terrified of that and started a persuasion campaign to convince the Tsar to keep the city.
• A large part of the campaign was a handbook of "history" (called Synopsis) published by the Cave Monastery in 1674. It argued that Kyiv was the original capital of the Muscovite Tsars as well as the birthplace of their Orthodoxy and therefore too significant to be given up to the Poles or Ottomans. It also alluded to the Slavo-Rossian Nation which united the Hetmanate and Muscovy into one entity.
• That was the birth of the myth that Muscovy originated in Kyiv, which would be used extensively by empire builders in the nineteenth century. In the short term, it succeeded in convincing the Tsar to keep the city and in transferring the Kyiv Metropolitanate under the jurisdiction of Muscovy.
• The Cossacks were followers of the other nation-building project, referencing the fatherland as the object of their supreme loyalty after the Truce of Andrusovo. By fatherland, they meant the Hetmanate on both sides of the Dnieper, which they started referring to as Ukraine after 1667.

Mazepa’s Rise

• The last Cossack Hetman to unite both banks of the Dnipro was Ivan Mazepa. His leadership would come to redefine the meaning of “fatherland,” “Ukraine,” and “Little Russia”.
• Mazepa came to power following the untimely deaths of two predecessors who had fallen out of favor with Muscovy. He belonged to the wave of Cossacks who had migrated to the Left Bank in the final decades of the seventeenth century.
• Once in office, he worked to deepen the cultural and economic revival of the region—an upswing enabled by the relative autonomy and political stability granted by Muscovy.
• Mazepa commissioned the construction and restoration of churches in a distinctive baroque style that came to bear his name.
• Unlike most of his predecessors, Mazepa succeeded in fusing political clout with vast economic resources. This was largely due to his close relationship with Peter the Great, whose succession he had supported. That alliance shielded him from accusations of treason and allowed him to sideline his rivals.

The Failure at Poltava

• The alliance between Mazepa and Peter the Great began to fall apart during the height of the Great Northern War, in the autumn of 1708.
• At that point, the Swedish king Charles XII had the advantage. After defeating Peter’s Polish allies, Charles launched a campaign toward Moscow. Peter responded with scorched-earth tactics, retreating and slowing his enemy’s advance.
• The campaign aggravated existing frustrations within the Hetmanate—particularly over forced labor, increased taxation, and the erosion of autonomy. Cossack leaders saw this as a direct violation of the 1654 Pereieslav Agreement.
• At first, Mazepa hesitated to act, even after initiating contact with the Swedes’ Polish allies. But Charles’s decision to march into Ukraine—and Peter’s refusal to dispatch aid—forced his hand. The Tsar ordered Mazepa to resist the Swedes and burn the villages in their path.
• That order convinced Mazepa that the Pereieslav treaty had been decisively broken. In November 1708, he defected to the Swedish side, bringing a diplomatic delegation with him. He did this in secret to avoid Muscovite retaliation.
• But secrecy came at a cost. When Peter discovered the defection, he acted swiftly. A Muscovite force captured the Cossack capital of Baturyn and massacred its population—meeting no resistance.
• A propaganda war followed. Both Peter and Mazepa issued manifestos accusing each other of betrayal. Peter branded Mazepa a Judas and created a mock “Order of St. Judas” to be awarded to whoever captured him. Mazepa countered that it was the Tsar who had broken the oath, and declared the Hetmanate—not Muscovy—as his true “fatherland.”

“Moscow, that is, the Great Russian nation, has always been hateful to our Little Russian nation; in its malicious intentions it has long resolved to drive our nation to perdition.” —Ivan Mazepa, December 1708, The Gates of Europe, p. 126

• This battle of manifestos split the Cossack ranks. Fear of Muscovite vengeance and preference for an Orthodox ruler over a Protestant one tilted the balance in Peter’s favor. Most Cossacks sided with Muscovy.
• In July 1709, the decisive Battle of Poltava took place. A Swedish force of 25,000 met a Muscovite army twice that size. Cossacks fought on both sides, underscoring both their fragmentation and diminished strength compared to European armies.
• Numerical inferiority alone hadn’t stopped Charles XII before. But by this point, attrition had weakened his army and poor delegation further undermined the Swedish position. Muscovy won a decisive victory.
• Charles and Mazepa fled to Moldavia, where Mazepa died later that year.

Consequences

• Mazepa’s downfall marked the beginning of a new era of cooperation between the Kyivan clergy and the Tsarist regime. As early as the fall of 1708, the clergy had already submitted to Peter, reversing course from their earlier praise of Mazepa—some had compared him to Volodymyr the Great—and now vilifying him as a traitor.
• In exchange for prestigious careers, many of these churchmen aided Peter the Great’s efforts to reshape Muscovite ecclesiastical culture and society. These reforms were designed to bolster autocracy while weakening regional power centers like the Cossacks.
• A Russian official was placed to supervise the new Hetman, the capital was relocated closer to Muscovy’s core, and a permanent Muscovite military presence was established in the region.
• After the conclusion of the Great Northern War in 1721, Peter implemented even more centralizing measures. He declared the Russian Empire, abolished the office of Hetman, and replaced it with the Little Russian College—an institution led by an imperial appointee.
• The Cossacks resisted these developments, but to no avail. Their most prominent opponent, Pavlo Polubotok, was arrested and died in prison.

What If the Swedes Had Won

• While the alternative outcome remains speculative, one valuable document survives: the Pacta et Conditiones, drafted by Cossack exiles in Moldavia. It was modeled after the Polish-Lithuanian tradition of electing monarchs with pre-negotiated constraints and was presented to the exiled Hetman, Pylyp Orlyk.
• This constitution aimed to limit Hetman power by safeguarding the rights of the Cossack officer class.
• It also put forward an ambitious historical vision. Instead of tracing Ukrainian origins to Kyivan Rus, the document argued for descent from the Khazars—based on a linguistic similarity between “Cossack” and “Khazar.”
• Ultimately, it was a bold attempt to assert the existence of a Cossack nation wholly distinct from Moscow. Still, the language in the document blurred distinctions between “Cossack,” “Ruthenian,” and “Little Russian.”

Revival

• After Peter the Great died in February 1725, Cossack leaders renewed efforts to restore their traditional institutions.
• By 1727, they succeeded in electing Danylo Apostol as Hetman.
• The restoration was marked by a revival of the cult of Bohdan Khmelnytsky—now reimagined as a symbol of Little Russian identity that emphasized Cossack rights within the imperial system.
• This identity remained specific to the Left Bank and bore clear signs of earlier nation-building efforts. Terms like Rus’, Ruthenia, Little Russia, and Ukraine appeared interchangeably in Cossack historical narratives.
• To explain the layering of these identities, Serhii Plokhy offers a helpful metaphor:

“The best analogy is a nesting doll. The biggest doll would be the Little Russian identity of the post-Poltava era; within it would be the doll of the Cossack Ukrainian fatherland on both banks of the Dnieper; and inside that would be the doll of the Rus’ or Ruthenian identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At its core, Little Russian identity preserved the memory of the old commonwealth Rus’ and the more recent Cossack Ukraine. No one could know, in the aftermath of the Battle of Poltava that it was only a matter of time before the Ukrainian core emerged from the shell of the Little Russian doll and reclaimed the territories once owned or coveted by the Cossacks of the past.” —Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 130

Continuation

Continues in 9_Empire and Enlightenment.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 109-130).