Pereiaslav Agreement

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(Redirected from
Treaty of Pereyaslav
)
Pereiaslav Agreement depicted on a 1954 Soviet stamp. Cossacks are standing left with traditional costume and a bandura. Vasiliy Buturlin stands at right making a declaration.
Soviet stamp in honor of the 300th anniversary of "Ukraine's reunification with Russia", 1954

The Pereiaslav Agreement or Pereyaslav Agreement

Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to address the issue of the Cossack Hetmanate with the ongoing Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and which concluded the Treaty of Pereiaslav (also known as the March Articles[2]). The treaty itself was finalized in Moscow in April 1654 (in March according to the Julian calendar
).

Khmelnytsky secured the military protection of the Tsardom of Russia in exchange for allegiance to the Tsar. An oath of allegiance to the Russian monarch from the leadership of the Cossack Hetmanate was taken, shortly thereafter followed by other officials, the clergy and the inhabitants of the Hetmanate swearing allegiance. The exact nature of the relationship stipulated by the agreement between the Hetmanate and Russia is a matter of scholarly controversy.[3] The council of Pereiaslav was followed by an exchange of official documents: the March Articles (from the Cossack Hetmanate) and the Tsar's Declaration (from Muscovy).

The council was attended by a delegation from

Kiev
.

Background of negotiations

In January 1648, a major anti-Polish

Zaporizhia lands. Supported by popular masses and by Crimean Khanate the rebels won a number of victories over the government forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth seeking the increase of Cossack registry (kept at the expense of the state treasury), weakening of the Polish aristocratic oppression, oppression by the Jews who governed estates as well as recovery of positions of the Orthodox Church in own lands. However, the autonomy obtained by Khmelnytsky found itself squeezed between three Great powers: the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Tsardom of Russia and the Ottoman Empire
.

Being the main leader of the uprising,

Bohdan Khmelnytskyi was not able to declare independence because he was not a legitimate monarch, and there was not such a candidate among other leaders of the uprising. Considering the economic and human resources, the rebellion was taking place in regions of the Polish Crown, Kijów (Kyiv), Czernihow (Chernihiv) and Bracław (Bratslav
) voivodeships. The Crimean Khan, the only ally, was not interested in a decisive victory of Cossacks.

Cossack — Moscow negotiations timeline

It is believed that negotiations to unite the Zaporizhia land with Russia started as early as in 1648. Such idea is common among Soviet historians of Ukraine and Russia such as Mykola Petrovsky.[4] Many other Ukrainian historians among which are Ivan Krypiakevych,[5] Dmitriy Ilovaisky,[6] Myron Korduba,[7] Valeriy Smoliy[8] and others interpret negotiations as an attempt to attract the Tsar to military support of Cossacks and motivate him to struggle for the Polish Crown which became available after the death of Władysław IV Vasa.

Preparations for official meeting

The 1653 Zemsky Sobor that took place in Moscow in the fall adopted decision on including Ukraine to Muscovy and on November 2, 1653 the Moscow's government declared war onto the

dyak
L.Lopukhin and representatives of clergy.

The travel took almost three months. Besides bad roads and disorder, a new

Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, who was delayed in Chyhyryn at the burial of his older son Tymofiy Khmelnytsky and later was not able to cross the Dnieper
since the ice on the river was not strong enough.

Pereiaslav meeting and the autonomous Cossack state

Boyar Buturlin receiving an oath of loyalty to the Russian Tsar from Bohdan Khmelnytsky

At a meeting between the council of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Vasiliy Buturlin, representative of Tsar Alexey I of the Tsardom of Russia, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. The Pereiaslav Council of Ukrainians took place on January 18; it was meant to act as the supreme Cossack council and demonstrate the unity and determination of the "Rus' nation". Military leaders and representatives of regiments, nobles and townspeople listened to the speech by the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who expounded the necessity of seeking the Russian protection. The audience responded with applause and consent. The treaty, initiated with Buturlin later on the same day, invoked only protection of the Cossack state by the Tsar and was intended as an act of official separation of Ukraine from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Ukrainian independence had been informally declared earlier in the course of the Uprising by Khmelnytsky). Participants in the preparation of the treaty at Pereiaslav included, besides Khmelnytsky, Chief Scribe Ivan Vyhovsky and numerous other Cossack elders, as well as a large visiting contingent from Russia.[3]

The Cossack leaders tried in vain to exact from Buturlin some binding declarations; the envoy refused, claiming lack of authority and deferred resolution of specific issues to future rulings by the Tsar, which he expected to be favourable to the Cossacks. Khmelnytsky and many Ukrainians (127,000 total, including 64,000 Cossacks, according to the Russian reckoning) ended up swearing allegiance to the Tsar. In many Ukrainian towns, residents were forced to go to the central square to take the oath. Part of the Orthodox clergy took the oath only after a long resistance, and some Cossack leaders did not take the oath.

Kiev Orthodox Metropolitan, who would keep reporting to the Patriarch of Constantinople (rather than Moscow). The Cossack hetman was prohibited from conducting independent foreign policy, especially in respect to the Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, as the Tsardom pledged now to provide the Hetmanate's defense. The status of Ukraine, seen by the negotiators as being now in union with the Russian state (rather than Poland), was thus settled. The erroneous but stubborn policies of the Commonwealth are widely seen as the cause of the Cossacks' changed direction, which gave rise to a new and lasting configuration of power in central, eastern and southern Europe.[3]

The seemingly generous provisions of the Pereiaslav-Moscow pact were soon undermined by practical politics, Moscow's imperial policies and Khmelnytsky's own maneuvering. Disappointed by the

Russo-Polish War (1654-1667) and in 1667 to the Truce of Andrusovo, in which eastern Ukraine was ceded by Poland to Russia (in practice it meant a limited recovery of western Ukraine by the Commonwealth). The Cossack Hetmanate, the autonomous Ukrainian state established by Khmelnytsky, was later restricted to left-bank Ukraine and existed under the Russian Empire until it was destroyed by Russia in 1764-1775.[3]

The contemporary written records of the Pereiaslav-Moscow transactions do exist and are kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow.[citation needed]

Historical consequences

1954 Soviet stamp marking the 300th anniversary of "Ukraine's reunification with Russia".

The eventual consequence for the Hetmanate was the dissolution of the

Zaporizhian Host in 1775 and the imposition of serfdom in the region.[15]

For Russia, the deal eventually led to the full incorporation of

Soviet history and epistemology, the Council of Pereiaslav was viewed and referred to as an act of "re-unification of Ukraine with Russia
".

The treaty was a political plan to save Ukraine from Polish domination.[16] For the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the deal provided one of the early signs of its gradual decline and eventual demise by the end of the 18th century.

In 1954, anniversary celebrations of "Ukraine's re-unification with Russia" were widespread in the

transfer of Crimea from the Russian Federation to Ukraine
.

In 2004, after the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the event, the administration of President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine established January 18 as the official date to commemorate the event.

The decision adopted in Pereiaslav is viewed by Ukrainian nationalists negatively as a failed opportunity for Ukrainian independence. Since then, Ukrainian independence during the Russian Civil War was short-lived as a result of the Ukrainian–Soviet War, with the country achieving independence during the dissolution of the USSR.[17] Pro-Russian Ukrainian parties celebrate the date of this event and renew calls for re-unification of the three East Slavic nations: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.[17][year needed]

In 2023,

Russian invasion of Ukraine for the signal of a peace treaty.[18]

See also

References

  1. ^
    Britannica
    .
  2. .
  3. ^ a b c d e Piotr Kroll (August 6, 2012). "Kozaczyzna, Rzeczpospolita, Moskwa" [Cossack Country, the Republic, Moscow] (in Polish). Rzeczpospolita. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  4. ^ Petrovsky, M. Liberation war of the Ukrainian people against the oppression of szlachta Poland and annexation of Ukraine to Russia (1648-1654). Kiev, 1940.
  5. ^ Krypiakevych, I. Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Lviv, 1990.
  6. ^ Ilovaisky, D. History of Russia. Vol.5. Moscow, 1905.
  7. ^ Korduba, M. Struggle for the Polish Crown after the death of Władysław IV. Sources to the History of Ukraine-Ruthenia. Vol.12. Lviv, 1911
  8. ^ a b c Smoliy, V., Stepankov, V. Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Social-political portrait. Kiev, 1995.
  9. ^ a b c Acts relating to the history of Southern and Western Russia Collection and publications of the Archaeographical Commission. Vol.3. Saint Petersburg, 1861.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Horobets, V. Moscow policy of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi: objectives and attempts of their realization. Ukraine and Russia in historical retrospective: outlines in three volumes. Vol.1. Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). Kiev "Naukova Dumka", 2004.
  11. ^ a b c d e Unification of Ukraine with Russia. Documents and materials in three volumes. Vol.2. Moscow 1954.
  12. ^ Korduba, M. Between Zamość and Zboriv. "Shevchenko Scientific Society notes". Vol.33. Lviv 1922.
  13. ^ Bohdan Khmelnytskyi documents (1648-1658). Compiled by I.Krypiakevych, I.Butych. Kiev, 1961.
  14. ^ Butych, I. Two unknown letters of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Shevchenko Scientific Society notes. Vol.222. Lviv, 1991.
  15. ^ Чирков О. А. Слабкі місця сучасної українознавчої термінології (за текстами навчальних програм з українознавства) // Українознавство. 2002, № 3, С. 79–81.
  16. ^ Krasnikov, Denys (June 22, 2018). "Honest History 10: How one treaty made Ukraine vassal of Russia for 337 years". Kyiv Post. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved July 21, 2021. Called the Treaty of Pereyaslav, this political maneuver in 1654 was designed to save Ukraine from Polish domination.
  17. ^ a b Bodie, Julius (October 1, 2017). "Modern Imperialism in Crimea and the Donbas". Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review. 40 (2): 270, 274. Archived from the original on July 21, 2021 – via Paperity.org. {{cite journal}}: External link in |via= (help)
  18. ^ "Duda: After its victory, Ukraine should sign peace treaty with Russia in Pereiaslav". Ukrinform. 1 February 2023.

Literature

Printed

  • Basarab, J. Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton 1982) [1] Archived 2019-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
  • Braichevsky, M. Annexation or Unification?: Critical Notes on One Conception, ed and trans G. Kulchycky (Munich 1974)
  • Hrushevs’kyi, M. Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy, vol 9, bk 1 (Kiev 1928; New York 1957)
  • Iakovliv, A. Ukraïns’ko-moskovs’ki dohovory v XVII–XVIII vikakh (Warsaw 1934)
  • Dohovir het’mana Bohdana Khmel’nyts’koho z moskovs’kym tsarem Oleksiiem Mykhailovychem (New York 1954)
  • Ohloblyn, A. Treaty of Pereyaslav 1654 (Toronto and New York 1954)
  • Prokopovych, V. ‘The Problem of the Juridical Nature of the Ukraine's Union with Muscovy,’ AUA, 4 (Winter–Spring 1955)
  • O'Brien, C.B. Muscovy and the Ukraine: From the Pereiaslavl Agreement to the Truce of Andrusovo, 1654–1667 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1963)
  • Pereiaslavs'ka rada 1654 roku. Istoriohrafiia ta doslidzhennia (Kiev 2003) [2] Archived 2017-11-09 at the Wayback Machine
  • Velychenko, S., THE INFLUENCE OF HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL IDEAS,
  • ON THE POLITICS OF BOHDAN KHMELNYTSKY AND THE COSSACK OFFICERS BETWEEN 1648 AND 1657 PhD Dissertation (University of London, 1981) <[3][dead link]>

Online