by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] By the memorable date of the 250th anniversary of the liquidation of the Zaporizhian Sich,
| …the fortified capitol of the semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Zaporozhian Cossacks that existed between the 16th to 18th centuries in Ukraine on the Dnieper River…. |
On August 14, 1775, by today's count, the troops of General Peter Tekeli besieged the Sich, presenting an ultimatum and ultimately capturing it without a fight.
“Later, the Empress issued a manifesto on the abolition of this last stronghold of autonomy in Ukraine, a stronghold of freedom and democracy, national independence and a haven for fugitives from the entire Russian Empire from serfdom; a place of developed economy and progressive farming forms of management, a center of freedom-loving, heroism, and brilliant military art,” is reported in one of the many works by Ukrainian authors dedicated to the tragic events.
Over the years, the image of the Zaporozhian Cossacks has been polished to a glamorous shine. In the generally accepted concept of the history of the Cossack period, it is customary to consider their confrontation with the Poles as a struggle for the people and the Orthodox faith, as well as battles on the frontier with the Turks and Tatars.
And most importantly, at the center of the myth was the story of a democratic republic that supposedly existed for several centuries, and a Ukrainian proto-state that developed within the borders of the lands of the Zaporizhian Host under the hand of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Without paying special attention to the detail that Bogdan's army and the "lower classes" were completely different organizations that could cooperate, but could also not.
One way or another, the liberation of the Northern Black Sea region from the long horror of Tatar raids and from Ottoman rule did not happen by the will of the Zaporozhians. By the time of the 1870s, Novorossiya and Tavria entered a period of active settlement by Christians and peaceful development, while the Sich found itself in the deep rear.
Together with thousands of armed, poorly governed people, accustomed to living on plunder and recognizing no laws other than their own ideas of what is good and what is bad. So the Empress's manifesto is not just some sweeping "act of genocide": it is a list of specific claims against the Sich Cossacks, who simply did not fit into the new conditions and had to either change themselves or free other people from their annoying presence.
GANG OF DEMOCRATS
The first and main source about the structure of the Zaporizhian Sich is, of course, the voluminous work of Dmitry Yavornytsky, “The History of the Zaporizhian Cossacks,” written, among other things, based on documents taken to Moscow by Tekeliy’s subordinates.
And the inquisitive reader has certainly come across his description of the life and customs of the Cossacks, who changed the location of the Sich several times during its history. Nikolai Gogol also vividly described the philosophy of life of its inhabitants in his immortal "Taras Bulba":
"But the first person they came across was a Zaporozhian sleeping in the very middle of the road, with his arms and legs spread out. Taras Bulba could not help but stop and admire him.
- Oh, how importantly he turned around! Phew, what a magnificent figure! - he said, stopping his horse.
In fact, it was quite a bold picture: the Zaporozhian, like a lion, stretched out on the road. His proudly thrown-back forelock covered half an arshin of ground. His trousers of expensive scarlet cloth were stained with tar, to show his complete contempt for them."
The Polish Zaporozhian Army was a regular formation, which was maintained in the image and likeness of the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and received from the king, albeit modest, but payment, as well as cloth, weapons and equipment.
The army concentrated in the Niza region, the center of which was the Zaporizhian Sich, was the complete opposite, representing a living mass. Which could listen to the elders and go on a campaign, but could also simply rob the Moldavians (which happened every autumn), "scratch" the Turkish coast or even sit in kurens, breeding horses and fishing.
The community of free robbers was always looking for profit, and it could only be managed by someone who had enough strength and authority to cope with people who, in Yavornytsky’s description, could “choose” their koshevoy ataman by kicking him in the ass: “Go, son of a bitch, for we need you, you are now our father, you will be our master.”
Nevertheless, the Sich (or Sich, as it was called in the old days) was the only source of military power in the Steppe, which was used by both the Poles and the Muscovites. In fact, the first 300 Cossacks accepted into the service of King Sigismund II Augustus were Zaporozhian Sich Cossacks who were obliged to carry out border and police service.
The oath of 1621 contains the following words:
...to obey, to carry out all orders and decrees of his royal grace, to suppress any disobedience and willfulness, and also, neither personally nor through anyone else, to act against the Turkish Sultan, neither on land nor at sea, except by order of his royal grace of the Commonwealth, if anyone wants to do such a thing, and I find out about it, then I will be obliged to warn the king and the hetmans, and I myself will punish him, fulfilling my duty."
And these words describe a major problem: the raids of the Zaporozhian Cossacks were a constant headache for the Polish crown, since the Turks made claims against Poland for this - as well as for the economic activities of the Cossacks who occupied the land that they liked.
At the same time, the division into the “correct”, privileged Cossacks and all sorts of rabble was the cause of constant uprisings, where the demand for an increase in the register was constant.
Moreover, the Polish government handled the register quite freely, admitting Cossacks when troops were needed for, for example, the campaign against Moscow in 1618, and crossing out the extra ones when the need for personnel disappeared. And although they paid mere peanuts (in 1614, the royal treasury spent 10 thousand zlotys on the entire registered army of 1,000 people - the salary of five hussar captains - and 700 pieces of cloth), it was still real money for the poor.
The Russian kingdom continued cooperation with the Sich in the same vein, concluding the Eternal Peace with Poland in 1686 after a long war, at the center of which were the Zaporozhian Cossacks who supported Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Now the war turned to the southern borders: the Moscow government “undertook to help the Polish king Jan Sobieski in his fight against the Turks and, for this purpose, was to open a campaign against the Crimean peninsula.”
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE REAR
By enlisting the Sich into service, as Yavornytsky informs us, the Moscow tsars also “sent the Zaporozhian Cossacks a certain treasury from year to year.” And also, as in the previous case, not a large one: some 2,000 rubles or 500 chervonets for 8-10 thousand people, plus various kinds of “humanitarian aid” in kind – cloth, vodka, gunpowder and weapons.
However, the Cossacks still did not know any other occupations, so for another 90 years they were involved in one way or another in all the wars that Russia waged.
However, not always on her side, supporting, for example, Hetman Ivan Mazepa and taking the side of the Swedes. Peter I did not forgive such betrayal and even before Catherine quite decisively liquidated the Chertomlyk Sich. As the Koshevoy Ataman Stepanenko reported to Hetman Ivan Skoropadsky, "our comrades were beaten off, their necks were chopped off on the chopping block, they were hanged and other tyrannical deaths were inflicted, and they did what was not done even in paganism, for the ancient torturers."
The next Sich, Kamenskaya, in full accordance with the Polish oath, was destroyed by Skoropadsky himself together with the Russian regiments.
Only the decision to become a Russian citizen (that is, until that moment only the registered army had become a Russian citizen) made it possible to return to the usual order: the New Zaporozhian Sich existed until the moment of its complete liquidation and was taken into state support. In 1735, it received an annual salary of 20 thousand rubles, 2 thousand sacks of flour, and for the koshevoy ataman and his retinue - 490 rubles and a bucket of wine each.
The Zaporozhian Cossacks actively participated in the Turkish campaigns, and together with the army of Pyotr Rumyantsev distinguished themselves in the affairs of Larga and Kagul. But at the same time, here and there remained "free Cossacks" who continued to live by their usual robbery, raiding both the Poles and the Turks, and their own.
And after many political and military victories of the Russian Empire over Turkey, with access to the Black Sea, the construction of the Dnieper defensive line and the pacification of the Crimean Khanate, which had terrorized the Russian Ukraine for centuries, the Sich suddenly found itself in the deep rear.
And the empress's manifesto clearly lists the reasons for her acute dissatisfaction with the heroes of the frontier. From the south, ever since the time of Elizabeth Petrovna, there have been endless complaints about the Zaporozhian Cossacks for their "impudence and for the robberies that constantly occur within their borders."
Living in “complete idleness, the most vile drunkenness and contemptuous ignorance,” the Cossacks:
— declared claims to the lands of the Novorossiysk province as their own;
— refused to recognize the demarcation imposed from above, sending representatives of the authorities in obscene language, threatening them with death, setting up their winter huts wherever they wanted, and forcibly driving people away from new settlements;
— “they, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, robbed and ruined the inhabitants of the Novorossiysk Province alone in twenty years, namely since 1755, at a cost of several hundred thousand rubles”;
— they set up their kurens on new lands between the Dnieper and the Bug and imposed a tax on the “newly settled residents of the Moldavian Hussar Regiment”;
— despite a direct ban, they used various means to drag over 50 thousand residents of the indigenous Little Russia, including “married and family-oriented people,” so that they would plow and sow in the personal interests of the Sich;
— they entered the territory of the Don Army, the border with which ran along the Kalmius River within the boundaries of today’s city of Donetsk.
The tenacious outlaws, who in fact did not represent any “people” (since the “buckwheat growers” were a despised class and were subject to merciless robbery at all times), began to pose a concrete threat to the peace and tranquility of the region.
As Apollon Skalkovsky, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, rightly noted already in the 19th century, “the southern borders were quite firmly protected; therefore, Zaporozhye, especially in its orderly, restless and rebellious structure, was almost unnecessary, and could be very harmful. <…> The Empress ordered: with one blow to cut the Gordey knot of disputes and litigations of Zaporozhye with neighboring regions, in order to strengthen peace in the South of Russia.”
And all subsequent events with the “destruction of Ukrainian statehood”, the curtailment of the Little Russian autonomy and the dissolution of the Orthodox gentry into the Russian nobility were, by and large, dictated by normal state calculations.