OP #280: THE QUESTION OF RUSSO-UKRAINIAN UNITY AND UKRAINIAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN EARLY MODERN UKRAINIAN THOUGHT AND CULTURE by: Zenon E. Kohut Introduction areas did they seek links with Russia and in which ones did they hold on to Many present-day Russians still what they considered essential differ- consider Ukraine to be part of Russia, ences? In order to get to the root of historically, culturally, and even spiri- these questions, it is necessary to at tually. So pervasive has been the myth least touch upon the Ukrainian out- of Russo-Ukrainian unity that any look prior to the encounter with attempt at asserting a Ukrainian Russia. identity has been viewed by many Russians as betrayal or as foreign The Polish-Lithuanian Experience intrigue. Despite the persecution of When in 1654 Hetman Bohdan Ukrainian culture in both Imperial Khmel’nyts’kyi placed Ukraine under Russia and the Soviet Union, Ukraini- the protection of the Muscovite tsar, ans have developed the idea of a the country had experienced more distinct Ukrainian nationhood. Many than half a century of political, reli- of the current misunderstandings gious, cultural, and social turmoil. Up between Russia and Ukraine have as to the 1654 Pereiaslav agreement, and their base a fundamental clash over the even after it, Ukrainian (Ruthenian) historical role of Ukraine. Are Ukraini- elites were trying to find a place within ans and Russians the same people? Are the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ukrainians somewhat distinct only Only after the failure to reach an because their “Russianness” has been accommodation within Poland- corrupted by Polish practices? Are Lithuania did Ukrainian elites begin Ukrainians really a distinct nation both looking toward Muscovy and involv- 1 in the past and in the present? ing it in Ukrainian affairs. In their In this clash, both sides are look- encounter with Russia in the seven- ing at the same historical experience teenth century, Ukrainian elites were but reaching diametrically opposed primarily focusing on and reacting to conclusions. To a large extent, each political, social, religious, and cultural side selects examples that corroborate issues within the Polish-Lithuanian its own interpretation and ignores or Commonwealth. explains away evidence to the contrary. By the sixteenth century, the But the problem is deeper than this, for Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth there is an ambiguity to the Russo- was, in theory, a “Republic of the Ukrainian encounter from its very Nobles” of two territories, the King- inception in the seventeenth century. dom of Poland and the Grand Duchy Much of the ambiguity comes from of Lithuania. The nobles, encompass- posturing; from what Kliuchevsky has ing the political nation, could be of said about the 1654 Pereiaslav agree- diverse ethnic origins—Polish, ment, in which both sides “did not say Lithuanian, Ruthenian, or German— what they thought and did what they and diverse faiths—Roman Catholic, 2 did not wish to do.” In these encoun- Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox—but ters both sides found it convenient to had individual liberties and equal overlook differences and concentrate rights. Reality differed greatly from on areas of real or imagined unity. But theory, particularly in the territories of how did Ukrainian elites view the the Commonwealth inhabited by relationship with Russia? In which Ruthenians (Ukrainians and 1 Belarusians). There was no equality the Protestant reforms. In the program- among the nobles: political leadership matic vision of the Jesuit ideologue, was exercised by the princely houses Peter Skarga, confessional unity was of the Rurikids and the Gedyminids, essential for political unity, and East- while the nobles, descended from the ern Orthodoxy was considered not boyars, acted as subordinates and only erroneous, but also subversive of retainers. Although the Union of the state.5 Owing to increasing political Lublin, which transferred Volhynia pressure, accompanied by a flowering and the Kyiv land from the Grand of Polish culture, Ruthenian nobles Duchy to Poland, did not create a third began converting to Roman Catholi- Rus’ entity, it did guarantee the rights cism and adopting the Polish language of the Ruthenian language and recog- and culture. As the Ruthenian political nized the laws of Rus’ as the official nation declined because of these code in the annexed territories. The defections, the remaining Ruthenian Rus’ faith—Eastern Orthodoxy— elites—both nobles and clergy—began provided another link to the ancient looking for ways of defining a Kiev. Thus, despite Lithuanian and, Ruthenian identity that would find after 1569, Polish rule, Ukrainian acceptance in the political, social, and society preserved the social structure, cultural structure of the Common- religious faith, language, and law code wealth. One attempt was the Church of Kievan Rus’.3 Union at Brest (1596), whereby the Ukrainians conceived of unity Ruthenian Orthodox Church recog- within the Commonwealth primarily as nized the pope but retained its eastern a political matter. They were part of the Christian traditions. Another response Polish political nation because they was a vigorous Orthodox Slavic reform belonged to the szlachta. There were that attempted to counter the Catholic ethnic, religious, and cultural differences attacks on theological, intellectual, and between the Ruthenian szlachta and the even cultural grounds. In the end, Polish, Lithuanian, and German nobili- these efforts failed. By the seventeenth ties, but these were not significant for the century, the Commonwealth was unity of the state. Thus a Ukrainian increasingly becoming an association nobleman could be designated as gente of Roman Catholic, culturally Polish ruthenus, natione polonus. Since religious noblemen. Others were considered and cultural differences were encom- politically unreliable, heretical, or passed within the political nation, these simply uncivilized and unsuited to be differences were tolerated in other orders part of the political nation. Thus the of society.4 Because some members of the areas that Ukrainians had defined as szlachta were Orthodox, townsfolk or distinct—religion and culture—were even peasants could also be Orthodox. no longer legitimate. Unity in the While this is a highly idealized and Commonwealth had to pertain to all theoretical picture, it does reflect to some spheres. The political szlachta nation degree the tolerance and cultural hetero- had to be Roman Catholic in religion geneity of the Polish-Lithuanian Com- and Polish in language and culture.6 monwealth up to the mid-sixteenth In attempting to find a place for a century. reformed Eastern Orthodoxy and In the latter half of the sixteenth Ruthenian culture in the Polish- century, Ruthenian Orthodox society Lithuanian Commonwealth, the was challenged intellectually by both Ruthenian clerical and cultural elites the Catholic Counter-Reformation and entered a larger struggle between 2 Eastern and Western Churches, be- and Turks. The Cossacks saw them- tween Greek-Slavonic and Latin-Polish selves as frontier knights, a military culture—in essence, a struggle be- order that possessed certain “rights tween West and East. It was hardly an and liberties.” Although, at times, the even struggle, for the Western side Commonwealth recognized these simply viewed the East as heretical, rights for some of the Cossacks, the ignorant, and backward, while the idea of a non-noble brotherhood of Eastern side, using Western learning, Cossack warriors with liberties clashed attempted to prove its doctrinal cor- fundamentally with the concept of a rectness and create a revitalized hu- Commonwealth of free nobles. The manistic Ruthenian Orthodox Slavic lack of recognition of Cossack estate learning. While the Ruthenian side rights led to a series of Cossack revolts, could never bridge the gap of per- including the fateful one of 1648.9 ceived inferiority within the Polish- Up to the end of the sixteenth Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was century, the leadership of Rus’ was still certain that it had created the most exercised by the princely households enlightened Orthodox Church—one and executed through a system of that could and should play a leading subordinate noble retainers.10 For role in the renovation of Eastern example, the princes of Ostrih led the Orthodox Christianity.7 Orthodox revival by printing the The new learning and polemics Orthodox Bible and founding the over the church union sparked a keen Ostrih academy, which generated the interest in history, particularly that of cadres for the revival in the late six- Kievan Rus’. In the early seventeenth teenth and early seventeenth centuries. century, not only were the old Kievan However, owing to the extinction of chronicles recopied, but new historical some princely households and the writing brought them up to more conversion to Roman Catholicism and contemporary times. The polemical Polish culture of others, princely literature debating the Union of Brest leadership began to wane and the made use of the Rus’ past. Moreover, subordinate Ukrainian nobility became spurred by Polish historical writings, disoriented. By the time of the the Ukrainian authors introduced new Khmel’nyts’kyi uprising, the lesser terminology and concepts into history Ukrainian nobles had either become writing, such as a Rus’ “fatherland” Polish or joined the Cossacks, but had and a Ruthenian or Rus’ people. These ceased to act on behalf of a Ruthenian writings went beyond the Polish- noble estate. A new leadership