At the end of the summer of 1709, in the small village of Varnitsa near Bendery, the former hetman of Ukraine Ivan Mazepa (Koledinsky) was dying in terrible agony. He was constantly losing his mind from unbearable, hellish pains resulting from dozens of incurable diseases. And, regaining consciousness, after a long ridiculous muttering, he whined heart-rendingly: "Otruty meni - ootruty!" ("Poison to me - poison!") …
But since it was always considered an unforgivable sin to poison an Orthodox even before a grievous death, the foremen and servants decided to act according to the old custom - to hammer a hole in the ceiling of a peasant hut. In order, therefore, to make it easier for the sinful soul of a dying person to part with a mortal body. How can one fail to recall the old belief: the more a person sins during his lifetime, the more painful death awaits him. Indeed, in the foreseeable past and present of the then Little Russia it was difficult to find a more insidious, evil and vengeful person than Mazepa. He was an example of a classic and complete villain for all time and for all peoples. Even though the general customs of Little Russian politicians of that time did not suffer from special gentry (nobility). This is understandable: people living surrounded by stronger and more powerful neighbors were forced to constantly solve a painful but inevitable dilemma - under whom it would be more profitable to "lie down". Mazepa has unprecedentedly succeeded in solving such problems.
By the hour of death, he managed to commit a dozen large betrayals and an unmeasurable number of minor atrocities.
“In the moral rules of Ivan Stepanovich,” writes the historian N. I. Kostomarov, who cannot be suspected of Russophilia, - from a young age, the trait took root that, noticing the decline of the force on which he had previously relied, he was not hampered by any sensations and impulses in order not to contribute to the harm of the previously beneficial force that was falling for him. Treason to his benefactors has already been shown more than once in his life. So he betrayed Poland, going over to her sworn enemy Doroshenka; so he left Doroshenka as soon as he saw that his power was wavering; so, and even more shamelessly, he did to Samoilovich, who warmed him up and raised him to the height of the rank of sergeant. He did the same now with his greatest benefactor (Peter I. - MZ) ", before whom he flattered and humiliated until recently … Hetman Mazepa, as a historical person, was not represented by any national idea. He was an egoist in the full sense of the word. A Pole in education and ways of life, he moved to Little Russia and there made a career for himself, counterfeiting the Moscow authorities and by no means stopping at any immoral paths."
"He lied to everyone, deceived everyone - the Poles, and Little Russians, and the Tsar, and Karl, he was ready to do evil to everyone, as soon as he presented himself with the opportunity to gain an advantage for himself."
The historian Bantysh-Kamensky describes Mazepa as follows: “He had the gift of speech and the art of persuading. But with the cunning and caution of Vyhovsky, he combined in himself the anger, vengefulness and covetousness of Bryukhovetsky, surpassed Doroshenka in popularity; all of them are in ingratitude."
As always exhaustively accurately defined the essence of Mazepa A. S. Pushkin: “Some writers wanted to make him a hero of freedom, the new Bohdan Khmelnitsky. History presents him as an ambitious person, deeply rooted in treachery and atrocities, a slanderer of Samoilovich, his benefactor, the destroyer of the father of his unfortunate mistress, a traitor to Peter before his victory,a traitor to Charles after his defeat: his memory, anathematized by the church, cannot escape the curse of humanity. " And in “Poltava” he continued: “That he does not know the holy thing, / That he does not remember benevolence, / That he loves nothing, / That he’s ready to pour blood like water, / That he despises freedom, / That there is no homeland for him ".
Finally, an extremely accurate assessment of the villain belongs to the Ukrainian people themselves.
Expression "Cursed Mazepa!" for centuries has referred not only to a bad person, but in general to any evil. (In Ukraine and Belarus, mazepa is a slob, a rude man, an evil boor is outdated.)
A very remarkable detail. More than a dozen portraits of this historical figure and even several art canvases with his image have come down to us. Surprisingly, however, there is no elementary similarity among them! It seems that this man had many mutually exclusive faces. And birthdays, he has at least five - from 1629 to 1644 (this is the freedom for the political fans of the hetman - to celebrate his "round" anniversaries!). However, Mazepa has three dates of death. So slippery. Everything with him was not like people …
I deliberately omit Mazepa's childhood, adolescence and youth. For the devil himself will break his leg in that segment of his flawed biography. Although I will quote the following excerpt solely out of respect for the authority of the authors: “The one who then held this post was a Polish nobleman named Mazepa, who was born in the Podolsk Palatinate; he was a page of Jan Casimir and at his court acquired a certain European polish. In his youth, he had an affair with the wife of a Polish nobleman, and the husband of his beloved, having learned about this, ordered Mazepa to be tied naked to a wild horse and set free. The horse was from Ukraine and fled there, bringing Mazepa with it, half-dead from fatigue and hunger. He was sheltered by local peasants; he lived among them for a long time and distinguished himself in several raids on the Tatars. Thanks to the superiority of his mind and education, he enjoyed great respect among the Cossacks, his fame grew more and more, so that the tsar was forced to declare him the Ukrainian hetman. This is a quote from Byron, quoted in French, from Voltaire.
True, at the same time it is difficult not to marvel at how two outstanding European creators were led to an elementary notion. For this in reality could not be by definition. And involuntarily, you still think: it is not in vain that such outstanding Europeans have begun to poeticize the "hohlack Judas" for so long. They even claimed that "the king was forced." That is, they put the upstart nobleman and the greatest monarch in the history of mankind on equal terms.
All contemporaries of Mazepa unanimously claim that he was a "sorcerer". Probably, this is why it was believed that in another way it was difficult for them to explain the incredible ability of this talented crook to impress people and inspire them with confidence in themselves.
Meanwhile, it was precisely such insidious abilities (he was an elementary possessor of hypnosis!) That elevated Mazepa to the pinnacle of power.
When Pavlo Teterya was the hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine, Mazepa entered his service. Hetmans at that time changed, like the gloves of a capricious lady. And Teterya was replaced by Petro Doroshenko. He is naturally "enchanted" by the young nobleman and appoints him as clerk general - personal secretary and head of his chancellery. At the same time, Hetman Doroshenko was playing a difficult, triple game. Remaining a subject of the Polish king, he sent his secretary to Ivan Samoilovich, hetman of the Left-Bank Ukraine, with assurances that he wanted to serve the Russian tsar. But a few months later he sent the same Mazepa to the Turkish Sultan - to ask for help from the eternal enemy of the Orthodox. And as a gift to the Turks he presented "yasyk" - fifteen slaves from the Cossacks, captured on the left side of the Dnieper. On the way, Mazepa with "goodies" was captured by the Zaporozhye Cossacks, led by the koshev ataman Ivan Sirko. Thus, he wrote with his Cossacks the famous letter to the Turkish Sultan Mohammed IV: “You are a pig's muzzle, an asshole filly, a biting dog, an unbaptized forehead, your mother…. Nor will you feed Christian pigs. Now it’s over, because we don’t know the date, the calendar is not May, but the day is the same as yours, why kiss us in the ass!"
And now I am asking myself a question that no one will ever be able to answer. Why didn't Ataman Sirko, loyal to Samoilovich (and therefore to the Russian Tsar!), This fierce defender of the Orthodox, the sworn enemy of the Tatars and Turks, did not cut off Mazepa's head on the spot because he, the bastard, was taking fifteen Russian souls into slavery? After all, Ivan Dmitrievich always mercilessly exterminated the busurman's accomplices. And then he took and sent the "vile foe" to the hetman Samoilovich. Not otherwise, as Providence set out to make sure: how low and meanly Mazepa's soul is still capable of falling.
Here, on the Left Bank, another thing is happening, almost incredible, in any case, difficult to explain - it is Mazepa, as already his confidant, that Samoilovich sends to Moscow for negotiations. There, his wicked assistant meets with … Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich himself! And then many more times he travels to the Russian capital, now strengthening his own authority. Omitting the countless tactical and strategic moves of Mazepa, between which he successfully "merged" Samoilovich and his entire family, where he was almost a native person, we will only note that on July 25, 1687, the cunning courtier receives, with the help of bribing the Russian bureaucratic elite, "kleinot" (symbols) hetman power - a mace and a bunchuk.
During the reign of Mazepa, enslavement of the pospolite (the so-called then peasants) took on an especially wide scope.
And the hetman became the largest serf owner on both sides of the Dnieper. In the Ukraine (at that time the Hetmanate), he took control of about 20 thousand households. In Russia - many more than 5 thousand. In total, Mazepa had over 100 thousand serf souls. No hetman before and after him could boast of such fabulous wealth.
And at this time in Russia there were very serious tectonic shifts of the empire, as a result of which Peter I ascended the throne. You will laugh, but Mazepa almost immediately rubbed into the incredible trust, as he was imprinted. Even now it is hard to believe in it, but in 1700 Mazepa received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called - the highest Russian award for No. 2! (Prince Ivan Golovin was awarded the first). Apparently, the Russian tsar liked the cunning hetman, although the age difference that separated them was 33 years.
And it is no coincidence that Mazepa wrote to Peter: “Our people are stupid and fickle. Let the great sovereign not give too much faith to the Little Russian people, let him please, without delay, send a good army of soldiers to Ukraine in order to keep the Little Russian people in obedience and loyal citizenship."
This, incidentally, is about the enthusiasm of some historians about the longest hetman's rule of Mazepa - twenty-one years - and about his supposedly passionate desire for the independence of Ukraine at any cost. Not to mention the so-called Kolomatsky articles, signed personally by the hetman when he took office. There it is indicated in black and white that Ukraine is prohibited from any foreign policy relations. It was forbidden for the hetman and foremen to appoint without the consent of the king. But they all received the Russian nobility and the inviolability of estates. And, excuse me, where is the "struggle for the independence of Ukraine"? Yes, for two decades Mazepa faithfully fulfilled the will of Peter I. And he did the right thing. Only he did it exclusively for his own benefit. It doesn't even smell like "nezalezhnost" here. It smelled later, when the hetman, flawed in all moral parameters, for some reason believed that the invincible Swedish army would defeat the troops of the nascent Russian Empire. It was then for the first time that Mazepa's animal, wolfish instinct let him down. Apparently, how much rope does not twist … But before recalling the final fall of the hetman as a politician, let us dwell on his most ugly human meanness …
The first song of Pushkin's "Poltava", who has not forgotten, begins like this: "Kochubey is rich and glorious." And further: "But Kochubey is rich and proud / Not long-maned horses, / Not gold, a tribute to the Crimean hordes, / Not ancestral farms, / His beautiful daughter / Old Kochubey is proud." For many years, they were almost the same age (Mazepa was a year older than Kochubei), they were friends - they were inseparable. And they even became related: the hetman's nephew, Obidovsky, married the eldest daughter of Kochubei, Anna, and the youngest Kochubeevna, Matryona, Mazepa became the godfather. For me, in Ukraine, nepotism has long been revered as a spiritual kinship. The godparents take care of the godchildren until they get to their feet, and then the godchildren must take care of the godparents as if they were their own. In 1702 Mazepa buried his wife and was widowed for two years. At that time he was well over sixty, and Matryona Kochubei was sixteen (in Poltava she is Maria). The difference, according to the most conservative estimates, is half a century. And the old man decided to marry the young goddaughter, although before that he had seduced her mother. The "sorcerer" put into play all the methods of his seduction: "My heart," "my heart," "I kiss all the chunks of your little white calf," chambers ". "With great heartfelt anguish, I await news from Your Grace, but in what matter, you yourself know very well." From Mazepa's letters it is clear that Matryona, who responded to his feelings, is angry that the hetman sent her home, that her parents scold her. Mazepa is indignant and calls her mother "Katuvka" - the executioner, advises, as a last resort, to go to a monastery. Naturally, the parents strongly opposed a possible marriage. The official reason for the refusal was the church ban on marriages between godfather and goddaughter. However, the quirky Mazepa would not have sent matchmakers if he did not expect that the church authorities, perfectly fed by him, would lift the ban for him. Most likely, the Kochubes were well aware of which "halepa" (attack) the insidious and evil groom could lead their entire family into. Yes, over time, Matryona got rid of delusions:
“I see that Your Grace has completely changed with her former love for me. As you know, your will, do what you want! You will regret it later. And Mazepa fulfilled his threats in full.
By direct (and this is established for sure!) Libel of Mazepa, Kochubei and Colonel Zakhar Iskra, the tsar's subjects were sentenced to death and handed over to the hetman for a demonstrative execution. Before the execution, Mazepa ordered to torture Kochubei again fiercely, so that he would betray where his money and valuable property were hidden. Kochubei was burned with a hot iron all night before the execution, and he told everything. This "blood money" entered the hetman's treasury. On July 14, 1708, the heads of the innocent sufferers were cut off. The decapitated bodies of Kochubei and Iskra were handed over to their relatives and buried in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. An inscription was carved on the tombstone: "Since death has commanded us to be silent, / This stone should tell people about us: / For loyalty to the Monarch and our devotion / Suffering and death we drank the cup."
… And a couple of months after this execution, Mazepa betrayed Peter I.
From the first steps of the Swedish troops on Ukrainian soil, the population offered them strong resistance. It was not easy for Mazepa to make excuses to Karl for the "unreasonableness of his people." They both realized that they were wrong - both in each other and in strategic calculations - each. However, the insidiousness, meanness and transcendental lowland of Mazepa was not yet fully exhausted. He sent Colonel Apostle to the tsar with a proposal, neither more nor less, to betray the Swedish king with generals into the hands of Peter! In return, boorishly asked for even more: complete forgiveness and the return of the former hetman's dignity. The offer was more than extraordinary. After consulting with the ministers, the king agreed. For blaziru. He understood perfectly well: Mazepa was bluffing to death. He did not have the strength to capture Karl. Colonel Apostle and many of his comrades joined the ranks of the army of Peter I.
As you know, after the historic Battle of Poltava, Mazepa fled with Karl and the remnants of his army. The tsar really wanted to get the hetman and offered the Turks a lot of money for his extradition. But Mazepa paid three times more and thus paid off. Then the angry Pyotr Alekseevich ordered to make a special order "to commemorate the betrayal of the hetman." The outlandish "award" was a 5 kg circle made of silver. The circle depicted Judas Iscariot hanging from an aspen. Below is a pile of 30 pieces of silver. The inscription read: "Do they curse the son of the ruinous Judas if he chokes for the love of money." The church gave the name of Mazepa anathema. And again from Pushkin's "Poltava": "Mazepa has been forgotten for a long time; / Only in a triumphant shrine / Once a year anathema to this day, / Thundering, the cathedral thunders about him."
For several centuries, the name of the despicable traitor was considered even indecent to mention in serious writings.
Only a few Ukrainian Russophobes, such as A. Ogloblin, tried to whitewash the "damned dog" (the expression of Taras Grigorievich Shevchenko). This, if I may say so, a historian during the period of fascist occupation, became the burgomaster of Kiev. His reign was marked by mass executions at Babi Yar. After the war, Ogloblin fled to the United States. The fascist burgomaster wrote his main book, the monograph "Hetman Ivan Mazepa and his reign," on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the traitor's death (how, however, all vile people tenaciously hold on to each other!) daring. Just in case: "He wanted to restore a powerful autocratic hetman power and build a European-type power, while preserving the system of the Cossack system." I only wonder who would have allowed him to do it in those days?
And yet another Judas, first the main ideologist of Leninism-communism in Ukraine, and then the first confidante of market lawlessness, President Leonid Kravchuk, reanimated the memory of the “hohlack Judas” on a truly statewide scale, so to speak.
The nickname, by the way, is taken from his personal youthful poetry exercises: “I am Judas. Iscariot!"
… I will never forget the summer of 1991. Then the largest part of the Soviet army came under the jurisdiction of Ukraine: 14 motorized rifle, 4 tank, 3 artillery divisions and 8 artillery brigades, 4 special forces brigades, 2 airborne brigades, 9 air defense brigades, 7 combat helicopter regiments, three air armies (about 1100 combat aircraft) and a separate air defense army. The general centrifugal euphoric force of the collapse of everything and everyone captured me, the then Soviet colonel. Sinful, sporadic thoughts flashed in the inflamed brain, and not go to me, a Ukrainian, to serve in Ukraine?
I thank God that I did not succumb to a spontaneous feeling.
But the philosophizing of the director of the Center for Ukrainian Studies of the Kiev National University named after T. G. Shevchenko, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Sergiychuk. In Soviet times, this learned husband modestly and quietly engaged in agriculture. And in nezalezhnoy he became one of the first researchers of the activities of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the exploits of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA): “Yes, Mazepa cheated on the Russian tsar, but he did it in the name of the Ukrainian people, in the name of Ukraine. The condition that Karl XII would be the protector of our country, that is, he would take Ukraine under his tutelage, was quite beneficial for Ukraine at that time. Mazepa was the real father of the Ukrainian nation! And nothing will help those downtrodden people who do not want to be interested in their own history."
An even more “progressive” ideologist in this direction was the Kiev political scientist Dmitry Vydrin: “Our country was born out of the totality of thousands of betrayals. We betrayed everything! We took one oath and kissed one banner. Then they betrayed this oath and banner, began to kiss another banner. Almost all of our leaders are former communists who swore to the same ideals, and then cursed the ideals they swore. From all this cumulative action, where there were thousands of small, large and medium betrayals, in fact, this country was born. This is how Ukrainian politics, our worldview and morality were formed. Betrayal is the foundation on which we stand, on which we have built our biographies, careers, destinies and everything else."
And we are still amazed: how are the brothers and sisters of Ukraine putting up with the revelry of openly fascist Bendera; how the blood in their veins does not freeze from the Odessa Katyn; why many Ukrainian mothers, instead of rallying and sacrificially opposing the fratricidal war, complain to the president: our sons do not have bulletproof vests, they have little ammunition and are poorly fed. Yes, this is all a direct consequence of the current "national Ukrainian idea: we, Ukrainians, are traitors, and this is our strength!"
It is time for the decayed bones of Pan Mazepa to start dancing: "she ne vmerla" Ukraine in his mind.
She - not all, of course, but a significant part of her - honors and prays for him, in spite of all his transcendental atrocities. Truly, the plague of mazepia is raging in Ukraine today.
Woe to those people whose national heroes include such flawed personalities as Mazepa, Petlyura, Bandera, Shukhevych, etc. On their examples it is good to grow up maydanut gopniks.
When the "glorious deeds" of the bastard Mazepa are slipped into a fighter as a role model, the fighter will act accordingly. Don't they understand this? But they really don't understand.
… After the release of the film "Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" by the famous film director Y. Ilyenko, I met with my old friend, now late artist Bogdan Stupka, who played the title role. Our long-standing relationship (we have known each other since 1970) allowed a serious degree of mutual frankness. And I, without further ado, asked: "Body, why did you take up Mazepa?" “Well, you're a smart person and you should understand that there are no forbidden roles for an actor. The meaner the hero is, the more interesting it is to play him. " “I agree with you if it's Richard III. He is always outside the ideological framework. But in this case, you perfectly understood that the ardent nationalist Ilyenko used both you and your name to spoil Russia with his movie nightmare. Okay, let's leave out of parentheses that Yura (we were also old acquaintances) is the scriptwriter, director, cameraman, actor, and his son played the young Mazepa. But in the same place there are rivers of blood, heads are chopped off like cabbage, and Kochubei's wife - Lyubov Fedorovna - masturbates with her husband's head cut off. Peter I rapes his soldiers. Didn't that jar you? And this episode: Peter I stands over the grave of Mazepa, the hetman's hand appears from under the ground and grabs the tsar by the throat - has it not touched either?"
Bogdan Silvestrovich was silent for a long time and painfully. Then he said: “As it is sung there: don’t pour salt on my wound. Soon I will play with Bortko, I hope, I will play Taras Bulba. So I'm rehabilitating myself in front of people. " A great, world-class actor, he certainly understood that Yuri Gerasimovich simply "used" him as an old friend. And his role is a catastrophic failure. It could not have been otherwise. As well as the film itself, it turned out to be a devastating failure. He was sent to the Berlin Film Festival. However, there the tape was shown only in the category of films … for people with non-traditional sexual orientation!
Then we continued our conversation about Mazepa. And they came to a common conclusion.
If the criminal Koledinsky had not been attracted by the ears of the current Ukrainian upstart politicians into the current ideology, then we would have remembered him no more often than about other hetmans.
And so his personality is unnecessarily demonized. Meanwhile, he was an elementary, albeit very evil, scoundrel. It's a shame that the current Ukrainian authorities like him so much.
… You can talk, write and broadcast as much as you like about what an outstanding statesman Mazepa was, who left our mortal world 305 years ago. It is enough to go to the Ukrainian Wikipedia and see there the innumerable enumeration of the merits of the glorious patriot of “non-existent Ukraine” Ivan Stepanovich: he is a polyglot, a philanthropist, a temple builder, a poet, a lover, and a “sorcerer”, and … But then you remember Pushkin: “However what a disgusting object! Not a single kind, supportive feeling! Not a single comforting feature! Temptation, enmity, treason, slyness, cowardice, ferocity. And everything falls into place.
