On January 6, 1596, Bogdan Khmelnitsky was born - the leader of the Zaporozhye and Little Russian Cossacks of the middle of the 17th century.
He raised a revolt against Polish rule and achieved the annexation of the lands liberated from the Poles to Russia.
Response to insult
Bogdan Khmelnitsky was born into the family of a Chigirin centurion.
According to the widespread version, the Khmelnytsky family had a gentry (noble) status, but Bogdan's father Mikhail lost it due to some kind of misconduct.
Khmelnytsky received his education at the Kiev fraternal school and at the Jesuit college in Lvov, while retaining the Orthodox faith.
He spoke Polish, Latin, Turkish and French.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky took part in the Polish-Turkish War of 1620-1621 on the side of Poland.
In the battle of Tsetsora, Bogdan's father died, and he himself was taken prisoner by Turkey.
According to one version, Khmelnitsky was a galley oarsman for about two years.
After his relatives ransomed Bogdan from the Turks, he returned home and joined the Zaporozhye Cossacks in raiding the Ottoman Empire.
In 1629, Khmelnytsky's detachment attacked the outskirts of Constantinople and captured rich booty there.
Leaving the Zaporozhye Sich, Khmelnitsky became the Chigirin centurion.
He repeatedly acted as a representative from the Cossacks in negotiations with the authorities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, conveying complaints to the king and the Diet about oppression by the Polish aristocracy.
According to some historians, in the 1640s Khmelnitsky visited France and participated in negotiations, as a result of which 2.4 thousand Cossacks were sent to help the French troops besieging Dunkirk.
During Khmelnitsky's absence, the Polish nobleman Daniel Chaplinsky attacked the suburb farm belonging to the centurion, plundered it, beat his youngest son to death, and took away his mistress Gelena, whom he later married.
Khmelnitsky tried to complain about the arbitrariness of the Pole, first to the court, and then to the king, but he was met with ridicule everywhere.
When it became known that Khmelnitsky was complaining about what had happened to him to other Cossacks, they decided to arrest him, but the centurion managed to escape and get to the Zaporizhzhya Sich.
Battle of Tsetsora
© Wikimedia Commons
Having enlisted the support of the Cossacks, Khmelnitsky left for the Crimean Khanate to negotiate joint actions against the Poles.
The Khan received the Cossack leader benevolently, but did not want to officially declare war on the Rzecz Pospolita, limiting himself to transferring the Perekop Murza Tugan-bey detachment to help Khmelnitsky.
Returning to Zaporozhye, Khmelnitsky reported to the Cossacks on the results of the negotiations and urged them to revolt.
His calls, according to historians, fell on fertile soil.
On the territory of the former western principalities of the Old Russian state, captured in the XIII-XIV centuries by Lithuania, and then became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state Rzeczpospolita, the rights of the Russian Orthodox population were severely infringed.
“Serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was much tougher than in the Russian state.
In addition, there was constant ethnic bullying.
The Poles perceived themselves as the masters of the situation and looked down on everyone else, "said RT Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor at Moscow State University.
Lomonosov Fedor Gaida.
As historians note, the Orthodox were deprived of any rights in the Commonwealth - they were tortured, robbed and killed with impunity.
“The reasons for the uprising were the radical ethnocidal policy of the Rzeczpospolita authorities to prohibit Orthodoxy and infringement of the rights of the Orthodox population.
A very tough cultural pressure, combined with socio-economic problems, formed a hostile attitude towards the Poles, "said Oleg Nemensky, a leading researcher at RISS, in an interview with RT.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
© Wikimedia Commons
According to him, Khmelnitsky's personal story, "as often happens in history, accidentally became a trigger in a situation of a conflict that had deep roots."
War of liberation
The Cossacks elected Khmelnitsky as the senior of the Zaporozhye Troops.
Over time, they began to call him the hetman.
The Cossack-Tatar army moved towards the forces of the Commonwealth, thrown to suppress the uprising.
In May 1648, Khmelnytsky won the first major victory, defeating a Polish detachment under the command of the Nezhinsky head Stefan Potocki in the battle at Yellow Waters.
According to historians, by this the hetman demonstrated strength and pushed the Orthodox population to massive support for the uprising.
In the second half of May 1648, Khmelnitsky, with the help of a scout sent to the enemies, ambushed and defeated the Polish troops stationed in the Korsun area.
The organized forces of the Rzecz Pospolita on the southern borders of the state ceased to exist.
“The uprising began extremely successfully.
Already in 1648, the first messages of the Cossacks were sent to Moscow, proposing to annex the modern Left-Bank Ukraine to Russia.
However, in Moscow, as you know, they did not immediately respond to this proposal, "said Evgeny Spitsyn, advisor to the rector of Moscow State Pedagogical University, in a conversation with RT.
As historians note, Russia was still recovering after the events of the Time of Troubles, so official Moscow was wary of the idea of a new war with Poland.
The Polish authorities at this time were preparing for the continuation of the war and at the same time was wasting time, conducting peace negotiations with the Cossacks.
The leadership of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth put forward deliberately impracticable conditions: the handover of Cossack leaders and the surrender of captured weapons.
Khmelnytsky, in response, made a raid on the territory of modern Western Ukraine, but, against the will of the Cossacks, he did not go to Warsaw, hoping to achieve concessions from the Polish authorities.
In January 1649, he triumphantly entered Kiev.
Subsequently, Khmelnytsky defeated the Polish forces in the Battle of Zborow, but at the same time he stopped the battle.
According to contemporaries, the leader of the Cossacks did not want the Polish king who participated in the battle to be captured by the Crimean Tatars, who continued to act in alliance with the Cossacks.
However, the Poles immediately entered into separate negotiations with the Crimean Khanate, so the Zboriv Treaty was concluded on conditions unfavorable for the Cossacks, which included, in particular, the creation of a 40,000-strong Cossack registered army (although, according to some sources, the number of insurgent units was more than 100 thousand. people) and the introduction of limited autonomy for the lands inhabited by the Orthodox.
This outcome, according to historians, did not suit either side.
The Polish aristocrats, returning to their estates, began to oppress the Orthodox population again, provoking new uprisings.
Letter from Bohdan Khmelnitsky, sent from Cherkassy to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, with a message about the victories over the Polish army and the desire of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to go under the rule of the Russian Tsar
© Wikimedia Commons
In 1651, the war resumed.
The Battle of Berestets took place in the summer.
The Crimean army betrayed the Cossacks, fled from the battlefield right during the battle, and the Crimean Khan detained Khmelnitsky himself.
The Cossack army was defeated.
Many accused the hetman of the defeat.
Cossacks and peasants launched a partisan war against the Poles.
Many of them later fled to Russia, fearing reprisals from the authorities of the Rzeczpospolita.
As historians note, the situation was in limbo for about two years.
Khmelnytsky could not defeat the Poles, and they, in turn, were not able to regain control over the Dnieper.
In 1653, after another defeat, the Poles concluded a separate treaty with the Tatars and allowed them to raid the territory of modern Ukraine.
In these conditions, Khmelnitsky began to ask the Russian tsar even more insistently to annex the lands controlled by the Zaporozhye Army to Russia.
Moscow agreed that the Polish king is not fulfilling his peace obligations.
In October 1653, the Zemsky Sobor decided to satisfy the petition of the co-religionists and accept the Zaporozhian Army into Russian citizenship.
In January 1654, at the Pereyaslavskaya Rada, the Zaporozhian Army swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
This resulted in the Russian-Polish war, as a result of which the Left Bank of the Dnieper and Kiev became part of Russia.
“The choice was quite natural.
The Orthodox people received help from the Orthodox state.
Khmelnitsky expressed the mood and aspirations of the masses, ”Oleg Nemensky noted.
USSR postage stamp issued in honor of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia, 1954
© Wikimedia Commons
According to Fyodor Gaida, it is impossible to call Khmelnitsky an unambiguous ideological supporter of the pro-Russian line.
The Hetman was guided by pragmatic considerations, realizing that he would not be able to become the leader of a separate state under any circumstances.
In 1655, the Rzeczpospolita, weakened by the war with Russia, was attacked by Sweden.
Moscow was not interested in the excessive strengthening of its northern neighbor, so Aleksey Mikhailovich made peace with the Poles in 1656.
Khmelnitsky entered into separate negotiations with Sweden and sent a Cossack detachment against Poland, hoping to expand the lands under his control.
However, the ambassadors who arrived from Moscow forced him to withdraw the troops.
In 1657, the hetman's health deteriorated sharply.
On August 6, he died of a stroke.
Death of Bohdan Khmelnitsky
© Wikimedia Commons
According to the historian and writer Dmitry Volodikhin, Khmelnitsky was a charismatic personality and had a great talent for leadership.
“Khmelnitsky is a personality of enormous scale, his role in history is enormous.
He was able to achieve simply fantastic military victories, and most importantly - tore the left bank of the Dnieper from the Commonwealth, reuniting it with the Russian Orthodox world, ”concluded Volodikhin.