Turning the pages back... August 4, 1687 (08/01/99)

Turning the pages back...

August 4, 1687

After the revolutionary spasm that produced Ukraine's Hetman State at the midpoint of the 17th century came the Great Ruin: seemingly total oblivion under Polish control in Right Bank Ukraine, and a progressive slide under Muscovy's thumb in the Left Bank The Treaty of Pereiaslav, signed in 1654 by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky with Tsar Aleksei of Muscovy was the major step along that slippery slope. This was followed by the more explicitly abject capitulations of the Moscow Articles (1665), the Hlukhiv Articles (1669) and the Konotop Articles (1672).

Ironically, the signing of the Konotop Articles also ushered in the rule of Hetman Ivan Samoilovych, a man whose iron rule did much to counteract the damage caused by the Great Ruin, and yet which also caused disaffection among his starshyna (senior officers).

In 1686, Moscow and Krakow (then the Polish capital) had formally agreed to an Eternal Peace, after a devastating Turkish campaign that ravaged Right Bank Ukraine. Samoilovych, who bitterly opposed any rapprochement with Poland, was about to pay the price for his obduracy.

On August 4, 1687, the Kozak general council was convened at a site on the Kolomak River, a tribuary on the Vorskla River that flows through what is today the Kharkiv and Poltava oblasts. In the 17th century the Kolomak formed the eastern boundary of the Hetman State.

The council was attended by a relatively small number of Kozaks, and the site was surrounded by Muscovite troops under the command of Prince Vasili Golitsyn.

Under duress, the Kozaks agreed to sign a document Muscovy's diplomats had prepared. The treaty they signed that day became known as the Kolomak Articles (Kolomatski Statti). Its net effect was to entrench Muscovy's military and political supremacy over Ukraine. Its framers showed a firm grasp of the principle of divide and conquer.

In agreeing to sign the Treaty of Pereiaslav, Khmelnytsky had sought support from Tsar Aleksei as an "Orthodox brother" in his struggle against Poland. Thus it was quite ironic that 30 years later Prince Golitsyn decided to make the Kozaks swallow a bitter pill of realpolitik. The treaty mandated that the new hetman was to maintain the "eternal peace and alliance" with Poland, effectively recognizing Poland's control over Right Bank Ukraine.

Furthermore, the Muscovite tsar was made out to be the defender of the Kozak starshyna: prior approval of any changes in high office a hetman might consider was required. Muscovy ably profited from the discontent generated by the despotism of Hetman Samoilovych and ensured the Kozak starshyna's anarchic aristocrats would undermine any future hetman's authority.

This authority was further limited in that he was barred from establishing diplomatic relations with other countries; he was forced to provide troops for campaigns against the Crimean Tatars and Turkey; and Muscovite troops were to be stationed in Baturyn, the capital of the Hetman State.

Imperialist historians of various stripes would later celebrate Khmelnytsky's purported desire to form an indivisible union with the brother to the north. And yet it was not until the Kolomak Articles that the terms of this "imposed love" were made explicit. Perhaps the treaty's most odious provision was that which compelled the Hetman State "to unite by every method and means the Little Russian people with the Great Russian people and to lead them by intermarriage and other measures to an indestructible and firm harmony."

That day's final irony was that although Golitsyn contrived to depose the independent-minded Samoilovych, he paved the way for the election of Ivan Mazepa as Samoilovych's successor - arguably the most able, intelligent and resourceful Kozak leader in the Hetman State's history.

Sources: "Kolomak Articles," "Samoilovych, Ivan," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 2, 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, 1993).

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