9_Empire and Enlightenment

This is the ninth #generalhistory note, following 8_Downfall of the Hetmanate.

Assimilation

• The eighteenth century—often framed as the Age of Enlightenment—is typically associated with rising individualism, rationalism, and skepticism. But the Enlightenment wasn’t just a vehicle for liberty and rights; it also laid intellectual groundwork for absolutist governance.
• That contradiction defined the three leading autocrats of Enlightenment-era Europe: Joseph II of Austria, Frederick II of Prussia, and Catherine II (Catherine the Great) of Russia. All were self-declared “enlightened monarchs”—and all participated in the partition of Poland, crushing the Commonwealth’s reformist ambitions.
• Voltaire himself endorsed the partition, believing it would spread Enlightenment values—specifically rational governance—into what he saw as a backward region.
• For Catherine, Enlightenment meant centralized authority, imperial rationality, and enforced uniformity—not liberty. Her goal was clear: universal norms across the empire. That vision clashed directly with the Hetmanate’s autonomy and privileges.

“Little Russia, Livonia and Finland are provinces governed by confirmed privileges. These provinces, as well as Smolensk, should be Russified in the easiest way possible so that they cease looking like wolves to the forest… When the Hetmans are gone from Little Russia, every effort should be made to eradicate from memory the period and the Hetmans…”
—Catherine the Great, 1764, The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 134–135

• The Hetmanate had already been abolished by Peter I in 1722, revived in 1725, and subordinated to the Little Russian College by the mid-1730s.
• In the 1750s, Empress Elizabeth reinstated the hetmancy, pressured by her favorite Aleksei Razumovsky—who secured the post for his brother, Kyrylo Rozumovsky.
• Kyrylo later backed Catherine’s coup. She owed him politically, and in return he demanded a hereditary hetmancy, legislative autonomy, and wider self-rule.
• Cossack elites viewed the Hetmanate (or "Little Russia") not as a province, but as an equal to Great Russia. This sentiment was explicitly expressed in Semen Diovych’s poem A Conversation between Great and Little Russia:

"I did not submit to you but to your sovereign"
"Do not think that you yourself are my master, / But your sovereign and mine is our common ruler"
—The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine, p. 136

• This idea mirrored the old Union of Hadiach: not subordination, but dynastic partnership.
• Catherine rejected that logic entirely. She aimed to turn the empire into a centralized machine—organized, efficient, and stripped of medieval privileges.
• In 1764, she abolished the Hetmancy. In its place, she created the post of "Governor of Little Russia"—installing General Petr Rumiantsev to lead a long-term integration campaign.
• Over two decades, Rumiantsev dismantled the Hetmanate’s autonomy. He imposed serfdom, unified taxation, postal infrastructure, and dissolved the Cossack-based administrative system.
• The process was gradual—and often supported by local elites. Enlightenment norms framed reform as progress, and centralization came with perks:
  • Cossack detachments became regularized, disciplined military units.
  • A state school system was introduced.
  • Mail delivery became standardized.
• Serfdom was introduced too—but Cossack officers, now landholders, benefited. The cost was borne by the peasants.
• In territories dominated by Cossack and Church elites, peasants lost their core achievement from the Khmelnytsky uprising: freedom. By the late 1700s, 90% of Hetmanate inhabitants and over half of those in Sloboda Ukraine lived on elite-controlled estates.
• In May 1783, Catherine formalized the change: 300,000 peasants were legally bound to their location and forced into labor.
• Resistance existed. Vasyl Kapnist denounced serfdom and imperial policy in his Ode on Slavery (1783), mourning the liquidation of the Hetmanate’s institutions.
• Kapnist represented a broader cohort of Ukrainian elites who moved to St. Petersburg to pursue careers—many secular, unlike the religious wave during Peter’s reign.
• Trained at the Kyivan Academy, these elites filled imperial bureaucracies. In the final decades of the century, Ukrainians outnumbered Russians 2:1 among doctors and made up a third of teacher trainees in the imperial capital.
• This intellectual migration continued—even as Catherine banned the recruitment of Ukrainian clergy into the Russian church.

Expansion

Southward

• Oleksandr Bezborodko offers an example of how these new Cossacks would serve the Empire. After being educated at the Kyivan Academy, he joined the army and attained the rank of colonel by serving Petr Rumiantsev, the governor of Little Russia. He went to war against the Ottomans and gained recognition of the empress herself, being invited to St. Petersburg in 1774.
• The conflict that allowed him to do that was the Russo-Turkish war.
• This war was triggered by an uprising in Poland, which is confusing so let me explain:
  • Catherine forced the Polish-Lithuanian Diet to grant Orthodox Christians the same rights as Catholics by threatening military intervention.
    • Catholic nobles rebelled against this, forming the Confederation of Bar.
    • Confederates attacked the remaining Orthodox in Right-Bank Ukraine.
    • This provoked a second uprising—this time by Orthodox Cossacks, spurred on by Russia—raising fears of a repeat of 1648.
    • Indeed, a massacre followed: Polish nobles, Catholic and Uniate priests, and Jews were targeted, as in the Khmelnytsky uprising.
    • The chaos stemmed from clashing agendas:
      • Catholics wanted a Catholic state without Russian control.
      • Orthodox Cossacks wanted a state under Russian protection.
      • Jews wanted to be left alone.
  • None of these outcomes materialized.
  • In summer 1768, the Russian army crossed the Dnipro to suppress both uprisings, seeing them as threats to regional stability.
  • Meanwhile, a detachment of Ukrainian Cossacks—claiming to be under Russian command—crossed into Ottoman territory pursuing Confederates.
  • The Ottomans, alarmed by rising Russian influence, used this as a pretext to declare war.
• Petr Rumiantsev led imperial armies into Moldavia and Wallachia. Following several victories (in which Bezborodko distinguished himself), Russian forces captured:
  • Ottoman fortresses on the Danube
  • Crimea
  • Most of southern Ukraine
  • And, with British aid, crushed the Ottoman navy in the Mediterranean
• This culminated in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), which, despite appearing unfavorable to Russia due to European diplomatic pressure, achieved key strategic goals:
  • Russia withdrew from Moldavia and Wallachia
  • Troops were removed from Crimea
  • But:
    • Ottomans were expelled from the Black Sea region
    • Russia established naval outposts on the Black and Azov Seas
    • The Crimean Khanate became nominally "independent," opening the door to Russian interference
• These terms paved the way for Russia’s formal annexation of Crimea in 1783, in which Bezborodko played a crucial role.
• He also authored the ambitious “Greek Project,” which envisioned dismantling the Ottoman Empire and restoring a new Byzantium. Though unrealized, it inspired the renaming of Crimean towns with Greek-sounding names like: Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Sevastopol.
• The Ottomans, disturbed by rumors of the Greek Project, declared war again.
• Joint Austrian-Russian forces won.
• The resulting Treaty of Jassy (1792), signed by Bezborodko, gave Russia:
  • All of southern Ukraine
  • Crimea
  • The Kerch Strait
• With these conquests, Russia internalized Ukraine’s steppe frontier, which had long been contested, and opened the region for colonization.
• The imperial authorities no longer tolerated the Zaporizhian Cossacks, whose independence made them a liability (as shown during the Pugachev uprising, 1773–1774).
  • Russian troops surrounded and dispersed the Cossacks.
  • Some were reorganized and relocated; others stayed but lost their military structure.
• Colonization of the southern steppes had already begun under Zaporizhian Cossack oversight—inviting peasant refugees—but was rapidly expanded by Russian authorities:
  • New settlements were built on seized Cossack land.
  • New administrative units were created: New Serbia, Slavo-Serbia, and most importantly New Russia (which covered former Zaporizhian and Ottoman lands, though borders would later shift).
• New Russia became a key migration destination by the late 18th century:
  • The imperial government incentivized settlers—especially farmers and artisans—with benefits.
  • Migrants came from many backgrounds:
    • Mennonites and Germans
    • Greeks, Bulgarians, and Moldavians from Ottoman territories
  • This ethnic diversity was embraced by the elites as proof of imperial greatness.
    • By century’s end, 20% of New Russia’s population were “foreigners”
    • The rest were Eastern Slavs, mostly Ukrainians
• The only region without a Ukrainian majority was Crimea, still dominated by Crimean Tatars.
• Russia was cautious about fully integrating the region:
  • Existing social hierarchies and Islam’s central role were preserved
  • This approach aimed to prevent further mass emigration
• Nonetheless, around 100,000 people left Crimea for the Ottoman Empire:
  • Many wanted to live under a Muslim ruler
  • Others fled economic decline after the abolition of slavery and looting as revenue sources

Westward (Partitions of Poland)

• In 1793, another long-standing boundary was erased. Russian troops crossed the Dnieper and occupied eastern Podolia, as well as Minsk and Slutsk in the north.
• This followed the second partition of Poland. In the first (1772), Russia, Prussia, and Austria each annexed parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. For Russia, the outcome was a loss in influence—it had previously controlled the Commonwealth via political pressure and now only received eastern Belarus.
• The first partition was essentially a concession. Austria, alarmed by Russia’s recent victories against the Ottomans, had considered allying with the Ottomans. The partition served to appease Austria and avoid a broader war.
• Austria, hoping for Silesia, was instead granted Galicia, which Maria Theresa tried to justify historically through claims of inheritance from Hungarian kings. With this gain and the earlier acquisition of Transcarpathia, Austria now controlled three future Ukrainian provinces.
• Russia’s acquisitions in 1772 included no Ukrainian territories. That changed in the second partition of 1793, which was triggered by Poland’s adoption of a new constitution meant to centralize and reform its weak government.
• To prevent a strong Polish state from reemerging, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agreed to another division.
• This dissolved the Dnieper frontier. The new boundary between empires was moved westward to Volhynia and Podolia. Like her Austrian counterpart, Catherine the Great insisted on the legitimacy of this move, invoking Kyivan Rus and claiming she was restoring it.
• The Polish reacted with outrage. In 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko launched a rebellion from Cracow, which was crushed by the partitioning powers.
• In the final partition, Austria attempted to claim Volhynia but lost it to Russia and took Cracow instead. Prussia gained Warsaw, while Russia took the Baltic provinces, Lithuania, western Belarus, and Volhynia.
• While Soviet historians later framed this as a "reunification" of Ukrainian lands, a more accurate interpretation sees it as a redrawing of imperial boundaries. Ukrainian territory remained divided—just along different lines. Still, Russia now held the majority of Ukrainian lands.
• These newly acquired areas had a complex ethnic makeup. Jews made up about 10% of the population, and Poles about 5%. These groups weren’t particularly loyal to Russia, which was the newcomer among the imperial powers and had to prove itself.
• Unlike with New Russia, Russia didn’t embrace this ethnic diversity. Instead, it confined most of Ukraine to the Pale of Settlement—areas where Jewish residence was restricted or barred entirely.

Recap

• A central figure in this wave of expansion was Oleksandr Bezborodko. He fought in wars against the Ottomans, negotiated the Treaty of Jassy, and participated in diplomatic efforts surrounding the partitions of Poland.
• While his loyalty to the empire is undeniable, he also retained a form of Ukrainian patriotism—often referring to Cossack territories as his "fatherland."
• What remains unclear is how he reconciled this identity with his thoughts about the role of Empire as he aided it in aiding dismantling both the Crimean Khanate and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—two entities whose destruction also meant the erasure of his homeland’s autonomy.

Continuation

Continues in 10_Birth of Nationalism.

Sources

This information was gathered from The Gates of Europe_A History of Ukraine (Pages 133-146).