Hetman

Their decades-long strategy of shifting alliances between Poland and Moscow has led to the partitioning of their lands.

In a desperate bid to reclaim independence and reunite the fractured Cossack state, their most recent leader, Hetman Petro Doroshenko, allied with the Ottoman Empire.

This alliance successfully freed the Zaporozhian Cossacks in the west from Polish dominion, but their victory was a bitter one.

Doroshenko's Ottoman allies ravaged the countryside, carrying off peasants into slavery, and outrage at allying with Muslims against fellow Christians cost him any remaining local support.

The enemy did not sleep, they constantly attacked, the sound of the scourge of the Cossacks called.

They stood up for Ukraine, saved the brothers, thanked the Hetman and shouted.

We will carry the flag for Ukraine We will carry the flag for our native land We will carry the flag for our motherland We will carry the flag for our native land The hundred years have already passed, the second one has already passed, and the Cossacks are still alive.

Our Zaporozhians have a banner in our hearts, they are going and singing in the steppe.

When I wrote my book, that's pretty much the idea of it.

We'll talk about the great Hetman here in a little bit.

But this is what, you know, any opposition to their dominance was called an anti-Semitic pogrom.

So in their minds, pogroms are happening constantly and everywhere.

So it has to impose itself by the barrel of a gun, like all leftist entities do.

Yet soon after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which the Soviets ceded Ukraine to the Central Powers, as the government of independent Ukraine returned to Kiev under the aegis of Austrian and German bayonets in the beginning of February of 1918, the Hadamakas, spontaneous popular uprisings against Polish rule that took place in Ukraine in the 18th century, and free Cossacks began snatching and shooting any former Jewish commissars they could find.

Yet those were not actual Jewish pogroms, and very soon Petliura's government was replaced by the Hetman government of Cossack leader Skoropadsky for the next seven months.

The command of the units of the German army that had occupied Kiev in the spring treated the needs of Jewish population with understanding, and that population was not insubstantial.

Moscow held that the rights conferred by her on Khmelnytsky were only provisionary and that they were to be restricted little by little till the moment came when the Ukraine would become merely a province of the Muscovite Empire.

On the other hand, the men at the head of the Ukrainian government made every effort to maintain in its entirety the independence given to the administration of the Hetmans, as it was in the time of Khmelnytsky.

They endeavored to fortify and protect it against any attack on the part of the Muscovite government.

The right which the Moscow government assumed of controlling the choice of and unseating of the Hetmans, of naming Muscovite voivods as military commandants even of Ukrainian towns, of levying taxes and of interfering with the autonomy of the church were the chief points of disagreement.

Moscow took advantage of all Ukrainian troubles and difficulties arising under the administration of the directors, the starshina, that is to say the elders, in order to restrict the liberties of the country.

At the same time, each of these attempts awakened in the Ukrainian government an ardent desire to safeguard the autonomy of the country against such movements.

Moreover, there was a central idea to their policy which was to extend this autonomy to all the ethnographical regions of the Ukraine or, in other words, to place the entire nation under the suzerainty of the Hetmans, whose rule in the time of Khmelnytsky extended to the Dnieper district.

At the outset, the Ukraine hoped to gain the help of Sweden for this enterprise.

So today's deep dive is a biographical journey into his life.

We're gonna explore how a young diplomat navigated these incredibly treacherous political waters to become Hetman.

And the agonizing choice that forced him to defy a czar.

Right, transforming him from a loyal ally into a heavily cursed traitor in one empire and a revered founding father in another.

Yeah.

So who captured him?

He was brought before the famous Cossack military leader, Ivan Sirko, and then handed over to Ivan Samoilovych, who was the Hetman of Left-Bank Ukraine.

Let me pause you there just to make sure we have the geography straight for you guys listening.

Moscow held that the rights conferred by her and Khmelnytsky were only provisionary and that they were to be restricted little by little till the moment came when the Ukraine would become merely a province of the Muscovite empire.

On the other hand, the men at the head of the Ukrainian government made every effort to maintain in its entirety the independence given to the administration of the Hetmans as it was in the time of Khmelnytsky.

They endeavored to fortify and protect it against any attack on the part of the Muscovite government.

The right which the Moscow government assumed of controlling the choice of and unseating of the Hetmans, of naming Muscovite voivods as military commandants even of Ukrainian towns, of levying taxes and of interfering with the autonomy of the church were the chief points of disagreement.

Moscow took advantage of all Ukrainian troubles and difficulties arising under the administration of the directors, the starshina, that is to say the elders, in order to restrict the liberties of the country.

At the same time, each of these attempts awakened in the Ukrainian government an ardent desire to safeguard the autonomy of the country against such movements.

Moreover, there was a central idea to their policy, which was to extend this autonomy to all the ethnographical regions of the Ukraine, or in other words, to place the entire nation under the suzerainty of the Hetmans, whose rule in the time of Khmelnitsky extended to the Dnieper district.

At the outset, the Ukraine hoped to gain the help of Sweden for this enterprise.

The assembly was the only authority they recognized.

The Hetman, headman, was elected by and was accountable to the assembly for his actions.

If he offended, he was incontinently deprived of his office.

Thus we find that while the Muscovites lived under an absolute monarchy, while the Poles were ruled by a haughty and exclusive aristocracy, in the Ukraine all were free under the Lithuanian kings, and republican institutions were gradually taking root.

Then began constant warfare between the Poles and the Ukraine Cossacks.

King Stefan Batory, a Polish king, but a Hungarian by birth, who reigned from 1576 to 1586, had practically recognized the complete autonomy of the Ukraine, but his successors did not follow his policy.

In 1592, the Cossacks under Kozinski were defeated, but in 1612, under Hetman Konashevich-Sahaidichny, the Cossacks became again very powerful.

They destroyed Sinope, pillaged Trebizond, and burnt the Turkish fleet, sailing across the Black Sea in small boats that would cause the southern mariner to shudder.