Relations with Ukraine today cannot be called not only good, but even neutral. The official course of the Ukrainian leadership is to present Russia as a historical enemy that has almost “ruined the whole life” of the Ukrainian people. Meanwhile, this year marks 370 years since the moment when in the city of Cherkassy in 1648 a petition was filed in the name of the Moscow sovereign, in which it was emphasized:
We want such an autocrat, a master in our land, like your royal grace, an Orthodox Christian king … We humbly surrender to the merciful feet of your royal majesty.
These words were signed not by anyone, but by the hetman of the Zaporozhye army Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his loyal Cossacks. However, the entry of Little Russia into the Russian state dragged on for several years. Only on January 8, 1654, the Pereyaslavl Rada still supported Khmelnitsky, who finally called on to choose the sovereign. The choice, in fact, was quite unambiguous - between the Crimean khan, the Ottoman sultan, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moscow sovereign. The Orthodox Zaporozhians then made a choice in favor of a co-religionist - the Tsar of Moscow.
For three and a half centuries, Bohdan Khmelnytsky went down in national history as a person who united Ukraine with Russia. Even in the Soviet period, the attitude towards Khmelnitsky remained very positive - there were many streets of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, including in cities in other regions of the country, whole settlements and educational institutions were named after the hetman. Of course, the hetman was an ambiguous figure and in some ways not even the best in Russian history. But the fact that he made the decision to become a citizen of the Russian state became the main and main merit of Khmelnitsky.
Little Russians have been going for a long time to enter Russian citizenship. As a matter of fact, it was one of the most widespread slogans during the numerous anti-Polish uprisings that periodically flared up on the territory of modern Ukraine. When it was necessary to oppose the Commonwealth, Little Russians and Cossacks raised pro-Russian slogans, counting on the help of the Moscow Tsar. But the Russian state then did not particularly want to quarrel with the Commonwealth. After all, not so long ago the Poles conquered Moscow, not to mention the more western Russian cities, then, in 1634, they took Smolensk and again reached Moscow. The tsar and his boyars did not doubt that the war with the Commonwealth would be difficult and bloody, and they did not want to go to an open conflict because of the Little Russians. At least until a more significant strengthening of the country's forces.
Meanwhile, in Little Russia, anti-Polish uprisings broke out more and more often. In 1625, the Polish-Lithuanian government, irritated by the increasing frequency of peasants fleeing to the Cossacks, sent numerous troops to the Kiev region under the command of Hetman Stanislav Konetspolsky. When the Polish army approached Kanev, the local Cossacks retreated to Cherkassy. In the area of the Tsibulnik River, quite numerous Cossack detachments gathered, which were soon led by Hetman Marko Zhmaylo.
On October 15, the Cossacks in a major battle inflicted quite serious damage on the Polish troops, but were still forced to retreat - the forces were too unequal. However, on November 5, the conspirators, who were among the Cossack foreman, overthrew Marko Zhmaylo from the post of hetman. The further fate of the leader of the uprising remained unclear.
The subsequent anti-Polish uprisings had no less dramatic consequences for the Cossacks. When, in 1635, the Seim issued a decree that reduced the number of the registered Cossacks and allowed the construction of the Kodak fortress in a strategically important place, allowing control of communication between Zaporozhye and the southern Russian lands belonging to the Commonwealth, another anti-Polish uprising began. On the night of August 3-4, 1635, unregistered Cossacks, led by Hetman Ivan Sulima, attacked the Polish garrison in the unfinished Kodak fortress and exterminated the Poles, led by the commandant of the fortress, Jean Marion. Kodak was destroyed. Then Rzeczpospolita again directed the troops of Stanislav Kanetspolsky against the rebels, consisting of Polish gentry and registered Cossacks. Like Marko Zhmaylo, Ivan Sulima was betrayed by the Cossack elite - he was seized and handed over to the Poles by foremen. The captive leader of the uprising was brought to Warsaw, where he was brutally executed - according to some sources, he was impaled, and according to others, he was quartered.
But this brutal massacre could not frighten the Cossacks - two years later, in 1637, an even more numerous and organized uprising of Pavlyuk broke out. Pavlyuk, elected hetman, did not hide his intentions to become a Russian citizen. Numerous regiments of registered Cossacks went over to Pavlyuk's side, which contributed to the success of the rebels, who began to occupy city after city. Against the rebels, a Polish army was sent under the command of Nikolai Potocki, a former governor of Bratslav, who was appointed crown hetman. And in this case, as before, the Cossack foreman again played a treacherous role - she persuaded Pavlyuk to decide to negotiate with Potocki, who guaranteed him immunity. Pavlyuk, of course, was deceived, brought to Warsaw and executed in a brutal manner.
In the process of suppressing the uprising, Nikolai Pototsky dealt with the rebels in the most severe way. Cossacks and Little Russian peasants were put on stakes. Those who were lucky to survive fled to where the Poles could no longer reach them - for example, to the Don. However, already in 1638, a new hetman of unregistered Cossacks Yakov Ostryanin raised an uprising against the Poles. And his life ended in exactly the same way as the life of his predecessors - the Poles concluded "eternal peace" with Ostryanin, and then treacherously seized him, brought him to Warsaw and rode the wheel there.
Naturally, the question arises - why did Moscow at that time let Warsaw get away with the brutal suppression of the Cossack uprisings? After all, the Cossacks and Little Russian peasants were Orthodox and they repeatedly asked the Moscow Tsar to transfer to his citizenship. But the events, firstly, unfolded very rapidly, and secondly, in Moscow there were opponents of the aggravation of the already difficult relations with the Commonwealth. Moreover, to be honest, the Cossack hetmans were not particularly consistent. Today they could ask for Moscow citizenship, and tomorrow they could make peace with Warsaw or go to the Crimean Khan. Therefore, Bogdan Khmelnitsky did not evoke much sympathy in Moscow either.
Despite the scale of the personality, not much is known about the early years of Bogdan Khmelnitsky's life. He was of gentry origin. His father, Mikhail Khmelnitsky, served as Chigirin's assistant under the crown hetman Stanislav Zholkevsky. In 1620, the father of Bohdan Khmelnitsky died in a battle with the Crimean Tatars, being part of the Polish army that went on a campaign to Moldova.
Bogdan Khmelnitsky himself, who by that time had the experience of studying at a Jesuit college, was captured in the same battle and was sold into slavery to the Turks. Only two years later, his relatives bought him back and he returned to the life of a Cossack. It is interesting that in the most turbulent years of the anti-Polish uprisings, no information about any participation or non-participation of Khmelnitsky in them has been preserved. Only the surrender of the insurgent troops of Pavlyuk was written by his hand - he was the general clerk of the Cossacks. According to some reports, in 1634 Khmelnitsky participated in the siege of Smolensk by the Polish army, for which King Vladislav IV awarded him with a golden saber for his courage.
Such facts from the biography of Bohdan Khmelnitsky could not speak in his favor. In Moscow, they could justly not trust the hetman, considering him an adventurer constantly hesitating between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia. But for the anti-Polish turn, Khmelnitsky had his own reasons - the Polish old man Chaplinsky attacked Bogdan's farm and took away his woman Gelena, and also, according to some reports, beat one of his sons to death. Khmelnitsky turned to King Vladislav for help, who personally awarded him with a golden saber, and not for anything, but for his own salvation from Moscow captivity. But the king could not do anything in defense of Khmelnitsky and then the latter arrived in Zaporozhye, where he was elected hetman and at the beginning of 1648 organized another anti-Polish uprising. Only it was fundamentally different from all previous uprisings - Khmelnitsky managed to enlist the support of the Crimean Khan and the latter sent the army of the Perekop Murza Tugai-bey to help the Cossacks.
The Polish troops suffered one defeat after another, until in the Korsun battle they suffered such a crushing fiasco that both Polish hetmans - crown Nikolai Pototsky and complete Martin Kalinovsky - were captured by the Tatar. In the battle of Korsun, the entire 20-thousandth crown (regular) army of Poland was destroyed. However, the Commonwealth was able to gather new forces. The next three years were a constant war between the Poles and Khmelnytsky and the Tatars. The whole Little Russia was covered with blood - the Cossacks dealt with the Poles and Jews, the Poles - with the Cossacks, and they both mercilessly robbed the peaceful peasant population.
What was Moscow doing in this situation? First of all, it is worth noting that in 1649 the special envoy of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the clerk of the Duma Grigory Unkovsky, arrived at Khmelnitsky. He directly told the hetman that the tsar did not object to the acceptance of the Cossacks into Moscow citizenship, but now Moscow does not have the ability to directly oppose the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Accordingly, the troops in support of the hetman Aleksey Mikhailovich cannot, but he allows duty-free import of bread, salt and other products and supplies from Russia to Zaporozhye. In modern parlance, this would mean providing humanitarian assistance.
In addition, the tsarist envoy also noted that the Don Cossacks came to the aid of Khmelnitsky. Thus, military support to the hetman was also provided in a veiled form. By the way, this was soon realized in Warsaw - Polish officials complained that the Muscovy, in violation of all peace agreements, was supplying food, gunpowder and weapons to the "rebels" of Bohdan Khmelnitsky.
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich could not decide in any way whether to accept Khmelnitsky and his Cossacks into Russian citizenship or not. Ultimately, the boyar Boris Aleksandrovich Repnin, who had the characteristic nickname "Echidna", went to the Rzeczpospolita on a diplomatic mission. They were awarded to Repnin by numerous envious people, angered by his rapid rise at the court of Alexei Mikhailovich. Repnin asked Rzeczpospolita to make peace with Bohdan Khmelnitsky, but his mission did not end with success. In 1653, a new Polish detachment invaded Podolia, which began to suffer defeat from the Khmelnitsky Cossacks and Tatars. Ultimately, the Poles went for a trick and made a separate peace with the Tatars, after which they allowed the latter to devastate Little Russia.
Khmelnitsky, in the changed situation, had no choice but to turn to Moscow with another request to accept the Cossacks into the Tsar's citizenship. Ultimately, on October 1 (11), 1653, the Zemsky Sobor was convened, which supported Khmelnitsky's petition. On January 8 (18), 1654, the Pereyaslavskaya Rada was assembled, at which the hetman's proposal to transfer to Moscow citizenship was accepted unconditionally. Then the royal envoy Vasily Vasilyevich Buturlin, a boyar and governor of Tver, who was present at the meeting, presented the royal flag, a mace and luxurious clothes to Khmelnitsky. Buturlin made a special speech in which he emphasized the origin of the power of the sovereign of Moscow from St. Vladimir, said that Moscow is the successor of Kiev. The formal procedure for becoming a Russian citizen was completed.
Thus, already in the middle of the 17th century, the Russian government successfully used methods of indirect support of potential allies, providing them with economic and military assistance and sending Don Cossacks, who were not formally part of the Russian regular army. As a result of these actions, the Zaporizhzhya Sich was accepted into Russian citizenship, and then Russia began a war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is clear that without an alliance with Moscow, the Hetmanate alone would not have withstood the confrontation with such a powerful and insidious enemy, which at that time was the Rzeczpospolita, one of the largest states in Eastern Europe.
