Turning the pages back... February 11, 1670 (02/11/96)

Turning the pages back...

February 11, 1670

Samiylo Velychko's chronicle is one of the more unabashedly patriotic Kozak histories. Most sources are uncertain about his date of birth, but the Zorepad association's Ukrainian historical calendar fixes it at February 11, 1670.

Velychko was born on an estate near Zhuky, in the Poltava region, and studied at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, mastering Latin, German and Polish. First employed as a general secretary to Volodymyr Kochubei, in 1705 he was transferred to Hetman Ivan Mazepa's General Military Chancellery.

In 1708, after Kochubei tried to warn Tsar Peter I of Mazepa's burgeoning anti-Russian alliance with the Swedes and was executed for his pains, Velychko was removed from his post and retired to Zhuky, where he taught and wrote.

According to historian Orest Subtelny, Velychko was part of a new breed of writers. "Neither clerics nor professors, they were students who went on to become Kozak officers or chancellorists. In contrast to the theological issues, flowery panegyrics and learned disputations that absorbed their teachers, these writers were primarily interested in the history of their homeland," Prof. Subtelny wrote.

Velychko's magnum opus was a four-volume history covering the events of 1620-1700. Written in 18th century bookish Ukrainian, it includes a compendium of documents, personal observations, anecdotes, stories and even (in case of the early period) plagiarism and distortions. Nevertheless, he paints the Kozaks as righteous defenders of Ukraine and casts Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the role of a second Moses.

Velychko died on his estate in 1728.

Sources: "Velychko, Samiilo," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Orest Subtelny, "Ukraine: A History" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

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