Ukrainian Cossacks as a unique phenomenon, place and role in the national history

The name ‘Cossack’ means anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority. By the end of the 15th century the name ‘Cossack’ was applied to those Ukrainians who went into the steppes to practice various trades and engage in hunting, fishing, beekeeping, the collection of salt and saltpeter, and so on.

The history of the Ukrainian Cossacks has three distinct aspects: their struggle against the Tatars and the Turks in the steppe and on the Black Sea; their participation in the struggle of the Ukrainian people against socioeconomic and national-religious oppression by the Polish magnates; their role in the building of an autonomous Ukrainian state.

First period (1550 – 1648) In the mid-16th century the Cossack structure in the Zaporizhia was created in the process of the steppe settlers' struggle against Tatar raids. The Tatar raids forced the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to build fortresses in the southern region of Ukraine (in Kaniv, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Khmilnyk, Bratslav, Bar). A second category of Cossacks, known as town Cossacks (horodovi kozaky), was formed for the defense of the towns. They were organized by the local officials

In time the Cossacks acquired military strength and experience as well as prestige in their own society and fame throughout Europe, which at that time was resisting the Turkish onslaught. The nobility and the Polish government attempted to impose Catholicism and Polonization on the Ukrainian population. The basic form of opposition by the peasants, and to some extent by the burghers, was flight. The fugitive peasants and townspeople fled to the sparsely populated steppe, established settlements, received, for a specified period (up to 30 years), the right to a tax-exempt settlement (sloboda), and called themselves free men — Cossacks.

By the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century this pressure of the magnates and nobility led to bloody conflicts in which the Cossacks fought against the Polish landowners and the Polish but all of them brutally suppressed by the Poles. The growth of Cossackdom posed a dilemma for the Polish government: on the one hand the Cossacks were necessary for the defense of the steppe frontier; on the other hand they presented a threat to the magnates and the nobles, who governed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The government tried to regulate and control ‘ the Cossack problem ’ by the establishment of a register, at first small, for up to 300 persons; later, under the pressure of events, this was increased to 6,000 and then 8,000 persons. Instead of allowing elected leaders, it appointed a government ‘ elder ’ and colonels.

But the war of the Polish Commonwealth against Muscovy, Sweden, and Turkey forced the government to make concessions to the Cossacks. In 1578 King Stephen B á thory granted them certain rights and freedoms. The Cossacks became particularly strong in the first quarter of the 17th century, when Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny tied Cossack interests to the Ukrainian struggle against Poland, reviving the traditions of the Kyivan Rus ’ state.

Second period (1648 – 1775) The suppression of the Cossack uprisings of the 1630s curtailed the development of the Cossack movement. The Cossack register was significantly decreased; the registered Cossacks (reiestrovi kozaky) were isolated from the ones who were excluded from the register and from the Zaporozhian Host. Resulted the Ukrainian National Revolution of 1648 – 1676 years (the Cossack - Polish War by the Western Historiography) led by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the consequent establishment of the Hetman state, the Zaporozhian Host existed autonomously on the territory of the Zaporozhian Sich.

From 1654, when Ukraine recognized the authority of the Muscovite tsar, the principal political problem of the Cossacks, and particularly their leaders, became the defense of the autonomous rights of Ukraine from the encroachment of Russian centralism. The hetmans Ivan Vyhovsky, Petro Doroshenko, and Ivan Mazepa tried to solve this problem by trying to separate Ukraine from Russia. After their failures later hetmans, such as Danylo Apostol, Ivan Skoropadsky and Pavlo Polubotok, although they did not advocate an open break with Russia, stubbornly defended the autonomy of Ukraine.

In Slobidska Ukraine the Cossacks enjoyed some autonomy within the Russian state. In Right-Bank Ukraine, which until the end of the 18th century remained under Polish rule, Cossack mercenary units existed. Their center was in Dymer (Kyiv region) until the 1680s and then in Nemyriv (Bratslav region). The hetmans and colonels were appointed by the Polish government. The need to secure its border from Turkish-Tatar invasions forced the government to organize on a territorial basis.

Cossack bands came from Left-Bank Ukraine and the Zaporozhian Sich and settled in the Kyiv region and Bratslav region beginning in the 1680s. Cossack traditions lasted in Right-Bank Ukraine throughout most of the 18th century. In 1790 the Polish Sejm decided to establish two Cossack regiments, but this resolution was never implemented.

Third period (1775 – 1917 Third period (1775 – 1917) began with the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich (1775) and the abolition of the Hetmanate (1764). The abolition of the Cossack system evoked discontent among the Ukrainian populace, who, after the decree of 3 May 1783 on the enserfment of commoners, faced the threat of losing their privileges as an estate and even the possibility of enserfment. As a result there were numerous starshyna protests and a number of Cossack-peasant disturbances, which sometimes took on dimensions that threatened the existing order (eg, the Turbai uprising in 1789 –17 93). Against this background various petitions and projects in support of the restitution of the Cossacks appeared (eg, Kapnist's project of 1788).

Although these projects were only partially realized and short-lived, they nevertheless had an influence on the preservation of the Cossacks as a distinct social class in the Chernihiv region and Poltava region. The Cossack estate survived there until the Revolution of 1917 and retained its lawful rights and privileges, excluding those connected with military service. There were, however, some Cossack units, formed on the basis of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, that had a military character.

In 1812, during the war with Napoleon Bonaparte, Senator Mykhailo P. Myklashevsky put together a project to restore Cossack regiments in Left-Bank Ukraine. This project was supported by Vasyl Kapnist and Dmytro Troshchynsky and was partially realized (with the formation of Cossack regiments, local militia, etc). Although these projects were only partially realized and short-lived, they nevertheless had an influence on the preservation of the Cossacks as a distinct social class in the Chernihiv region and Poltava region. The Cossack estate survived there until the Revolution of 1917 and retained its lawful rights and privileges, excluding those connected with military service. There were, however, some Cossack units, formed on the basis of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, that had a military character.

Certain Ukrainian noble families retained their national Cossack traditions, and many of their members took part in the Ukrainian independence movement and rebirth in the 20th century. Many members of the new Ukrainian intelligentsia were descendants of the Cossacks. The influence of Cossack traditions was evident in the Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917 – 20), particularly in the formation of the Free Cossacks and regular army units, and in the establishment of the Hetman government in 1918.