HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES Volume V Number 3 September 1981 : ‘: : : Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright 1981, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved ISSN 0363-5570 Published by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Printed by the Harvard University Printing Office Typography by Brevis Press, Cheshire, Conn. CONTENTS ARTICLES Intolerance and Foreign Intervention in Early Eighteenth- Century Poland-Lithuania 283 L. R. LEWITFER The Political Reversals of Jurij Nemyry 306 JANUSZ TAZBIR The Staging of Plays at the Kiev Mohyla Academy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 320 PAULINA LEWIN DOCUMENTS Ukrainian Hetmans’ Universaly 1678-1727 at the Lilly Library of Indiana University 335 BOHDAN A. STRUMINSKY NOTES AND COMMENT A Note on the Relationship of the Byxovec Chronicle to the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle 351 GEORGE A. PERFECKY The Origin of Taras Triasylo 354 GEORGE GAJECKY DISCUSSION Observations on the Problem of "Historical" and "Non- historical" Nations 358 IVAN L. RUDNYFSKY Some Further Observations on "Non-historical" Nations and "Incomplete" Literatures: A Reply 369 GEORGE 6. GRABOWICZ REVIEWS Bohdan S. Wynar, Doctoral Dissertations on Ukrainian Topics in English Prepared during the Years 1928-1978; Christine L. Gehrt Wynar, The Ukrainian American Index: The Ukrainian Weekly 1978 and 1979 Patricia Polansky 389 Leopold H. Haimson, ed., The Politics of Rural Russia: 1 905-1914 Bohdan Chomiak 390 Seppo Zetterberg, Die Liga der Fremdvölker Russlands, 1916-1918 Lawrence Wolff 393 Roy A. Medvedev, The October Revolution, trans. George Saunders R. C. Elwood 396 R. W. Davies, The Industrialization of Soviet Russia, vol. 1: The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivization of Soviet Agricul ture, 1 92 9-1930, vol. 2: The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930 Joseph S. Berliner 398 Theodore H. Friedgut, Political Participation in the USSR John A. Armstrong 400 John F. Besemeres, Socialist Population Politics: The Political Implications of Demographic Trends in the USSR and Eastern Europe Peter Woroby 402 Hryhorii Kostiuk Kostjuk, Okajanni roky: Vid Luk"janiv s’koji tjurmy do Vorkuts’koji trahediji 1 935-1940 Kazuo Nakai 404 Orysia Prokopiw, The Ukrainian Translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Stylistic Analysis Boris Hlynsky 405 Robert Auty and Dimitri Obolensky, eds., An Introduction to Russian Language and Literature Tanya Page 407 Robin Milner-Gulland and John Bowlt, An Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture James Cracraft 408 BOOKS RECEIVED 411 CONTRIBUTORS L. R. Lewitter is professor of Slavonic studies at the University of Cambridge, England. Janusz Tazbir is associate director of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Paulina Lewin is a research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. Bohdan A. Struminsky is a research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. George A. Perfecky is associate professor of Russian at La Salle College, Philadelphia. George Gajecky is a research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. Ivan L. Rudnytsky is professor of history at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. George G. Grabowicz is associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University. Intolerance and Foreign Intervention in Early Eighteenth-Century PoIandLithuania* L. R. LEWITFER We need hardly remind ourselves that on the political horizon of northern Europe the first quarter of the eighteenth century saw the eclipse of Sweden, the ascent of Russia, and the continuing decline of Poland-Lithuania. Although the Commonwealth did not suffer any territorial losses, it was weakened by the ravages of war and reduced to acondition of inferiority or vulnerability in relation to all its neighbors. The delicate balance of power and influence between the Common wealth and Russia which had been adjusted by the treaty of peace and alliance of 1686 gave way within a span of twenty years or so to an unequal partnership of the two countries in the conflict with Sweden. After the battle of Poltava, Peter I took charge of the conduct of the war and made the Commonwealth a strategic and logistic base for his operations in Pomerania and North Germany against Sweden. His assertion of 1720 that Augustus II, king of Poland and, as Frederick Augustus II, elector of Saxony, was indebted to him not only for recovering the Polish throne in 1710, but also for mounting it in the first instance in 1697 when Peter threatened to invade the Grand Duchy of Lithuania if the Saxons’ Bourbon rival, the prince of Conti, were enthroned is an exaggeration bordering on distortion. Be that as it may, its boastfulness exemplifies the attitude of superiority which the tsar and autocrat adopted towards an elective and constitutional monarch whom in the end he wished to replace with an incumbent of his own choosing, probably Francis II Rákóczi of Transylvania. His undoubted contempt for the Commonwealth’s form of government notwithstanding, Peter I took care not to tamper with it, preferring to maintain and manipulate it to his own advantage. Although from 1710 he was more than once lured by Prussia to take part in some scheme or other for the dismemberment of the Commonwealth, he never yielded * This essay is the amended text of a paper presented at the Seminar in Ukrain ian Studies at Harvard University on 2 April 1981. 284 L. R. LEWITFER to the temptation and claimed credit with its inhabitants for his abstemiousness. In 1716 he had the satisfaction of being invited by the rebellious nobility to arbitrate between them and their king in the dispute caused by the quartering of Saxon troops in the Republic, something which he himself had done and was soon to do again with his own forces. By mutual agreement the Russian army was to strike at whichever party was found to be willfully obstructing the negotiations. The task of mediation was carried out on the tsar’s behalf with great skill by Prince Grigorii Fedorovich Dolgorukii, his envoy plenipotenti ary in the Commonwealth, one of the few Russians who in this period succeeded in gaining a modicum of popularity with the Poles - some of which, however, he lost when his master’s troops reappeared on the scene. The series of measures embodied in the agreement concluded at the end of 1716 between the plenipotentiaries of the king and the delegates of the confederacy - a polite term for a constitutionally recognized movement of protest - was approved early in 1717, with out debate, by a one-day Diet convened for the purpose and known in history as the "dumb" or speechless diet. Its mood of cooperativeness and self-restraint owed much to the presence in the offing of sizeable contingents of Russian soldiers. Their task accomplished, the tsar’s troops nevertheless remained on the territory of the Commonwealth, once more eating its inhabitants out of house and home and ready to serve their overlord’s undisclosed political intentions. To the surprise and intense irritation of Tsar Peter, J. H. von Flemming, Augustus II’s chief minister in Saxony and right-hand man in the Commonwealth - where he commanded the troops organized on the foreign, that is, western model - succeeded in bringing into being a league between the emperor and the kings of Great Britain and of Poland, as electors, respectively, of Hanover and Saxony. One of the express purposes of the alliance was to defend and preserve Poland-Lithuania, and one of the secret ones, to ensure that the Russians kept the promise to withdraw their armies from that area. The tsar, temporarily cornered, moved his troops out of the Republic in the first half of 1719, but they remained in readiness on the other side of the frontier, and until Peter’s death in 1725 their return never ceased to be a possibility. The Commonwealth remained a sovereign state, but one well within the Russian sphere of influence and so long as he lived, in the power of Tsar Peter. His supremacy in Poland Lithuania from 1710 is, I believe, indisputable. From the outset one factor constituted a potential threat to the INTOLERANCE AND INTERVENTION IN POLAND-LITHUANIA 285 balance of power between Russia and Poland-Lithuania. This was article 9 of the treaty of 1686, which obliged the king of Poland to uphold all the ancient rights and liberties of the Orthodox dioceses, parishes, communities, and individuals, and to prevent their being oppressed in any way or compelled to adopt the Roman Catholic religion or the Uniate rite. This stipulation virtually cast the ruler of Russia - whether regent, co-tsar, or tsar - in the role of guardian of the Orthodox community in the Commonwealth, and in practice gave him the right to make official representations on behalf of his co-reli gionists there whenever circumstances demanded or justified such action. The concomitant requirement that the handful of Roman Catholics in Russia should likewise not be allowed to suffer any ill-treatment or discrimination and should be free to practice their religion at home could hardly be accounted a reciprocal condition. The Greek Catholic church or the Uniate church was from the Russian point of view a dangerous offensive weapon in the hands of the Polish state and ecclesiastical hierarchy, since it made possible, in theory at any rate, a rapid and wholesale conversion of the Orthodox population on both sides of the border, although regarding the Russian side the apprehensions of the Orthodox clergy on the one hand and the rosy hopes of the papacy on the other were wholly unrealistic. But in the Belorussian and Ukrainian lands under John III Sobieski, the support received by the Uniate church from the crown, the Roman Catholic church and the chief dignitaries of the realm who were also the biggest landholders was of a kind to give rise to protests from across the border as frequent as they were fruitless, since all conversions were assumed to be entirely voluntary.