EDITORIAL COMMITTEE DM ITRY ČIŽEVSKY Harvard University OLEKSANDER GRANOVSKY University of Minnesota ROMAN SMAL STOCKI Marquette University VOLODYMYR P. TIM OSHENKO Stanford University EDITOR MICHAEL VETUKHIV Columbia University TECHNICAL EDITOR HENRY M. NEBEL, J r. The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U. S. are published quarterly by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., Inc. A Special issue will take place of 2 issues. All correspondence, orders, and remittances should be sent to The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U. S. IIV2 West 26th Street, New York 10, N. Y. SINGLE COPY: $1.50 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: $6.00 A special rate is offered to libraries and graduate and undergraduate students in the fields of Slavic studies. Copyright 1955, by the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in thd U.S., Inc. THE ANNALS OF THE UKRAINIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES IN THE U. S., INC. W inter—Spring, 1955 CONTENTS page Essays in Russian State L aw ...........................Boris Nol’de 873 Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky’s Treaty with the Tsar of Muscovy in 1654 ...............................................Andriy Yakovliv 904 The Problem of the Juridical Nature of the Ukraine’s Union with Muscovy . Vyacheslav Prokopových 917 The Significance of the Soviet Tercentenary of the Pereya- slav T re a ty .............................John S. Reshetar, Jr. 981 The Role of Insects in the Process of Pollination of the Flowers of Sugar Beet . Alexander Archimowitsch 995 REVIEW ARTICLE The Reunion of the Ukraine with Russia Andriy Yakovliv 1002 BOOK REVIEWS Istoriya ukrayins’koyi literatury [A History of Ukrainian L i te r a t u r e ] .....................................Dmitry Čiževsky 1035 William Harkins, Anthology of Czech Literature John Fizer 1040 OBITUARIES Leonid Biletsky . ........................... 1042 Andriy Yakovliv...........................................................................1043 Luke Myshuha. .... 1045 Antin Bilous. 1045 CHRONICLE......................................................... 1047 A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION. 1053 CONTRIBUTORS. .... 1054 This issue is dedicated to the memory of the late Andriy Yakovliv, a full member of the Ukrainian Academy. He devoted all his life to Ukrainian scholarship and culture and was an outstanding special­ ist in the field of Ukrainian law. Andriy Yakovliv was the author of “Bohdan Khmelnyts'ky’s Treaty with the Tsar of Muscovy in 1654,” and the review article “The Reunion of the Ukraine with Russia.” Both were written for this specific number. In addition to this, he edited the articles by Nol’de and Prokopových. This issue contains articles dealing with the subject of the Pereya- slav Treaty and is published in connection with the recent Tercent­ enary of this treaty. Andriy Ivanových Yakovliv 1872-1955 ESSAYS IN RUSSIAN STATE LAW* B. E. N O L’DE The rise of the system of Russian regional autonomies goes back to the time of the Muscovite state. It functioned for the first time in the Ukraine. T he Ukraine was united with Moscow in 1654. The external factors of the unification are well known. The Zemski sobor, sum­ moned by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1653, resolved: “The great sovereign tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of all Russia should grant Hetman Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky’s peti­ tion, for the sake of the Orthodox Christian faith and God's own churches and in order to accept him under his illustrious sover­ eign protection.”1 On January 8, 1654 the tsar's envoys, Vasily Buturlin, a blizhny boyar, and his companions,upon arriving in the capital of the Ukraine, Pereyaslav, appeared before the people of the Zaporozhian Host and, in a long speech addressed to Hetman Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky and the entire Host, announc­ ed the decision which had been taken in Moscow. On the same day in the Pereyaslav Cathedral, where the hetman and the Host had gone with the Moscow diplomats, they touched upon the conditions of the unification. Before taking the oath of allegiance, the Cossacks declared to the boyar that he should “swear an oath” (uchinit veru) for the tsar that the latter would not sur­ render the army to the king of Poland, that he would not destroy “the liberties” of the Cossacks, and that he would not only pre­ serve the former property rights of the nobility, Cossacks, and townspeople, but a sovereign charter would be issued covering those rights. In spite of the persistance of these demands the envoys refused: “It is not a proper thing for us,” they said, “to • This is a reprint from Ocherki russkago gosudarstvennago prava (St. Petersburg, 1911) and is printed as the eighth in the series of translations of Ukrainian source material (v. The Annals, No. 1). This is an excerpt from the third essay, “The Unity and Indivisibility of Russia/* i PSZ, 104. 873 874 ^"ЛїНЕ; ANŃ;ALŚ:ÓF THE ÚŘRÁMIAN ACADEMY swear an oath for the tsar; it has never been the custom that subJects swear oaths for tsars; oaths are sworn to the tsar by his subJects.” Finally, the oath was not sworn. However, the boyars not only did not dispute the Wishes of the Host to be granted their laws and to have their liberties acknowledged, but they promised to carry out their wishes. They Justified their refusal to swëar an oath by saying that even without án oath “the tsar’s word is not subJect to any change”; the Host agreed to postpone the definition of their laws and liberties with this reservation that “they, the hetman, and the whole Zaporozhian Host will petition the great tsar in regard tö their affair.” Having accept­ ed the oath of allegiance of the hetman and the Host,2 Buturlin left Pereyaslav with his companions. In this manner the treaty of the unification of Little Russia with Moscow was concluded; however, the conditions under which Little Russia became part of Russia were not conclusively established. Hetman Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky commissioned the special mis­ sion, which had gone to Moscow in February 1654, to complete the matter begun in Pereyaslav. In the letter addressed to the tsar, which he gave to the mission, the hetman reminded him that the Cossacks accepted Buturlin’s promises at the Pereyaslav Council on trust. “Believing the sovereign word of your imperial maJesty,” the letter read, “and since the blizhny boyar of your imperial maJesty with his companions gave promises and assur­ ances to us, so did we take these promises in uncompromising trust.” In spite of the humble form of the petition, it conveyed the awareness of the fact that the tsar’s refusal to comply with the request would destroy the sense of the Pereyaslav Treaty. “Deign... to bestow your grace upon me, Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky, Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, and upon the whole Zaporozh­ ian army, and all the Russian Christian world, clergymen as well as laymen, whatever their rank, who are seeking your mercy, 2 The boyars presented the hetman with gifts from the tsar. PSZ, 115, calls the presentation of gifts, “the ceremony of the confirmation of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky in his title." Although the presentation of gifts had some symbolic meaning, as was pointed out in the speeches of Buturlin, still this interpretation of PSZ cannot be justified. ESSAYS IN RUSSIAN LAW 875 our great tsar, your imperial maJesty; we ask that you generously grant and bestow the laws, statutes, prerogatives,· and all liberties and the right of property for the clergymen and laymen, whatever ranks and prerogatives they have, whether they possessed them for ages, from princes, pious gentlemen or Polish kings, which were issued in the state of Russia, and for which we shed our blood and which we have preserved from our grandfathers and from our great-grandfathers and which I have not allowed myself to destroy. We do beg you, beg you, kneeling and bowing to the ground, we implore your imperial maJesty, deign to confirm them by your sovereign charters and secure them for ever---- ”3 After rather lengthy negotiations, during which the hetman’s envoys insisted on the proposed terms, which they had brought from Bohdan Khmelnyts’ky, and while the Moscow government obJected to many points, the conditions of the Ukraine’s unifica­ tion were agreed upon and the mutual preliminary obligations, which were accepted at the Pereyaslav Council, were executed. The agreement appeared in the form of two basic acts: one, a writ of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich given to the hetman and the Host; the other, the so-called “articles” of Bohdan Khmelnyts’­ ky.4 To these, several other writs of lesser importance were added. A historian of Little Russia says that those acts “constituted the fundamental law in accordance with which the region of Little Russia became part of the Russian state.”5 Actually, their signifi­ cance was not exhausted by the fact that they completed the unification of Little Russia with Great Russia. For an entire 3 Bantysh-Kamenski, Istochniki, I, 50. 4 Several versions of these articles have come down to us. In literature, the question as to which of them is a final version is controversial. Karpov, “Pere- govory ob usloviyakh soyedineniya Malorossii s Velikoyu Rossiyeyu,” Zh.M.N.Pr., CLVIII (1871), pp. 1-39, 232-69 and Butsinki, 152 ff., consider the definitive edition to be the one of fourteen articles published, among other things, in Bantysh-Kamenski, op. cit., pp. I ff. Shafronov, “O Statyakh Bogdana Khmelnits- kago, “Kiyevskaya starina, XXVII (1889), pp. 369-91, proved very convincingly, as it seems to us, that the last edition of March 21 consisted of eleven articles. It is published in PSZ, 119. 5 Kostomarov, Mazepa і M azepintsy, 1885, II, 10. 876 THE ANNALS OF THE UKRAINIAN ACADEMY century they defined the special legal status of the Ukraine on her incorporation into the Russian state.