History seems to have a spell, and those lands that are called god-given and incomparably rich often become the cultivation fields of various forces. The history books often record the sword and light sword shadow bloody rain and wind, but also in each line of the warning of posterity is chaotic, the combination of life.
First, the gladiatorial arena of history
Around 2700 BC, a tribe known as the Tripoli discovered the Dnieper River over the vast plains of Eastern Europe. The river does not know where it comes from, but it flows all the way south into the sea. But for them, these may not be important, the water and grass are fertile, and the products are rich. So they lived along the river until they disappeared around 2000 BC.
Around the 7th century BC, the Scythians discovered this fine pasture after turning over to the Caucasians. The exiled Greek historian Herodotus (author of "History", the first complete prose work in the history of Western literature, known as the father of Greek history) traveled here to introduce the riches of the Black Sea steppes back to Greece, and the land entered the vision of Europeans.
Thereafter, the Scythians, described by Herodotus as "ruthless" and "drinking human blood", pointed west and drank the Madonna. He was defeated by Alexander the Great's father, Philip of Macedon, in 339 BC and declined.
In the 2nd century BC, the equally warlike Salmats from Iran conquered the declining Scythians, but their rule here was not secure. The endless steppes are a paradise for nomadic peoples, with the sound of horses' hooves, shouts of killing and the crash of weapons. In the 3rd century, waves of migration from the Germanic Goths washed out their dominance here, and the westward migration of the Huns (not identified as Huns) made them even worse. By the around the 6th century, the Sarmats had completely disappeared.
During this period, the power of the Romans also developed here, calling this land the edge of the world of Western civilization.
It was only at this time that the Slavs, the ancestors of the present-day Ukrainian civilization, or the Ukrainian nation, officially appeared. The Slavs had earlier settled near the Carpathian Mountains, on the border of present-day Ukraine and Poland, the western border of the Eastern European Plain. Around the 6th-7th centuries, some of them went eastward into the Eastern European plains, namely the East Slavs; some went south into the Balkans, that is, the Yugoslavs; and those who remained there were called West Slavs.
Unlike China, which currently has a complete chronicle of more than 2,800 years, the historical record of the Slavs is very vague. The more popular, legendary, and archaeological view is that the Ant'an tribal confederation was the beginning of East Slavic culture, in which the Polyans founded Kiev, the capital of present-day Ukraine.
However, the Ant tribal confederation was too dispersed and was soon defeated by forces from different directions. The north was dominated by the Varangians from Scandinavia (present-day Sweden and Norway), the central part was defeated by the Avars, a Turkic tribe that ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe, and the south was conquered by another Turkic branch, the Qajar. Fortunately, East Slavic culture and identity have been preserved.
In 882, when the fall of the Tang Dynasty was in the penultimate, Grand Duke Oleg attacked Kiev and established a new state as the capital, Kievan Rus'. Over the next hundred years, Rus' rapidly rose to become a grand duchy with the most advanced society in Europe.
In 980 AD, Grand Duke Vladimir stepped onto the stage of history. (Putin and Zelenskiy are both surnames, and their names are also Vladimir) He ended the struggle of the members of the dynasty and expanded his territory to become the largest country in Europe. At this time, the Rus' border stretched west to the Carpathian Mountains, east to north to pocket Moscow and St. Petersburg, and even launched an attack on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. His most profound influence on Rus' culture (Russia + Ukraine + Belarus) was the acceptance of Christianity as Orthodoxy in 988.
By choosing Christianity over Islam, Rus' sided with Europe rather than the Middle East. Orthodoxy helped Rus construct a common identity that laid the foundation for much of the Slavic culture, and later became known as Vladimir the Great.
By the 13th century, however, the Mongols' hooves had crossed the Caucasus Mountains. In 1237, Genghis Khan's grandson Battus burned the flames of war into Rus' and destroyed Kiev three years later. Soon after, the Archbishop of Kiev moved to Moscow, and Kievan Rus' came to an end in history.
At this time, The Galician-Warren Prince Danielo challenged the Mongols of the Golden Horde in an attempt to retake Kiev and expel the Mongols. He appealed to Poland, Hungary and other European countries for help, and even Pope Innocent IV gave him a crown, but reinforcements did not arrive.
With the decline of the Golden Horde, the Lithuanians took advantage of the situation and occupied Kiev in 1362. Grand Duke Olgeld of Lithuania declared that "everything in Rus must belong to Lithuania".
In response to local rule, the Lithuanians took the initiative to win over the local nobles and give them the right to participate in the organization of the government, so they were supported by the Ukrainian elite.
Soon after, the Poles also came. Due to the lack of tolerance and religious oppression of the local population, Polish rule did not go well. The Poles, however, had harder guns. In 1471, Kiev and the surrounding territories officially became ordinary provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, ending any form of Ukrainian autonomy.
By this time, Russia had risen in the East, and some Ukrainian Orthodox Christians had gone to seek help. The Russian army, like a royal master, ate pot paste along the way, and some Ukrainian nobles also rebelled to defend their faith.
In order to counter the rise of Russia, Poland and Lithuania signed a cooperation agreement in Lublin in 1569, and the Polish-Lithuanian Republic was born.
The borders of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were redrawn within the Commonwealth, leaving most of the Ukrainian lands to Poland and the Belarusian region to Lithuania. The union of Poland and Lithuania thus meant the separation of Ukraine from Belarus. And on the fringes of its rule, a new group, the Cossacks, who had a profound impact on the land, was on the rise.
Second, the rise of the Cossacks
In 1492, Grand Duke Alexander I of Lithuania received a letter of condemnation from the Crimean Khan accusing his subjects of capturing and plundering a Tatar ship in the lower Dnieper. The Grand Duke demanded that Ukraine pursue possible involvement in the attack, execute the attackers and transfer the property to the Khan's representatives.
However, subsequent attacks became more frequent and the entire lower Dnieper became their crime scene. In order to prevent these people from descending from the Dnieper River to attack the Black Sea coast, the Crimean Khan even considered blocking the Dnieper River with iron chains. Of course, this idea was not implemented. And these attackers were the Cossacks.
The Cossacks are thought to have been a group of free knights assembled in the steppes of southern Eastern Europe by fleeing Russian, Ukrainian and Polish serfs, some adventurers or defectors. Unlike other races, they appeared in ethnic form, closer to a group that fought against Catholicism in defense of the Orthodox faith. They often launched attacks against the Tatars and Turks in the south to plunder, while also containing the massacres and plunders of Ukrainian areas that the Tatars had often launched before.
In the history of Ukraine, the Cossacks have been hailed as freedom fighters, "the beginning of a powerful national movement," "giving new hope to oppressed Ukrainians," and even arguing that the Cossacks created the first Ukrainian "state." In fact, however, the Cossacks were not Ukrainians in the modern sense. For the most part, they served the Russian Tsar and became instruments of the Tsar's rule.
After reviewing the historical data of Ukraine and Russia, I think that the Cossacks are more similar to Captain Barbosa and his men in Pirates of the Caribbean, or the army of the dead in The Lord of the Rings, and are mercenaries.
At first, the Cossacks, because they were displaced, had no self-management and organization, and were chaotic. Later, as their numbers grew and their own strength grew, they began to build fortresses along the Dnieper River, and even established a capital of their own, formed a parliament and elected their own leaders.
Their military prowess is very strong, and they don't seem to have any position. Sometimes I helped Russia fight Poland, and sometimes I helped Poland fight Russia. Therefore, although they are brave and brave, the countries treat them with both co-optation and vigilance. When needed, heavy money is bought into the battlefield, and when threatened, it is suppressed with all its might. Under the repression, one of the largest uprisings against the Poles broke out.
In the early 17th century, the Cossacks stood with the Poles. They took part in the Polish military campaigns along the Baltic coast and against Russia; attacked austria-Hungary from the south, even to the outskirts of Istanbul; and saved poles nearly wiped out by the Turks at the Battle of Hoking.
However, the Cossacks were able to come together briefly with the Poles because of the common good, after all. As soon as the disagreement arose, the Cossack saber was raised.
The reason for this is that the Cossacks want to be among the upper echelons of power in Poland, after all, they have fought all their lives and enjoyed what is the matter; the second is the ownership of land, the Cossacks try to seek a certain amount of land, because it is impossible to live on horseback all their lives, they have to go down to the land to grow some food, build a house and a small courtyard; third, during the war, the Poles made a lot of promises, promising to give you this and give you that after the war; the fourth is that the Cossacks seek more autonomy and do not want to report big things and small things to the Polish king And one of the most important reasons is that the faith of both sides is incompatible.
Logically, Poland should have expressed itself. After all, the Cossacks fought for your Polish Crusade in the West and the South, and that was really a great achievement. However, in the eyes of the Poles, the Cossacks were more like a consumable and would never allow them to grow.
Poland, apart from recognizing the Orthodox status of the Cossack faith, was unwilling to make any concessions, and took up the butcher's knife.
The Poles revoked the autonomy previously granted to the Cossacks, outlawed their own parliaments, deposed cossack chiefs, and passed laws that transformed thousands of Cossacks from warlords into serfs, a reign of terror. The Poles describe this as follows: Cossacks are Polish nails, and they want to grow longer, so they need regular trimming.
Where there is oppression, there is resistance. In 1648, a massive uprising, which affected the world pattern hundreds of years later, the Great Revolt of Bogdan Khmelnytsky, broke out.
Unlike many Cossacks who were displaced and serfs, Khmelnytsky was a man of letters. After completing his studies, he first served in the Polish army, then returned to his hometown to take over his father's estate and became a registered Cossack. He was promoted first to captain and then to legionnaire. Because of his logical clarity and excellent eloquence, he became a member of a delegation to Warsaw at the age of 42 and defended the Cossacks before King Władysław IV of Poland, winning the respect of his Cossack companions.
This was supposed to be the time when Khmelnytsky had unlimited scenery, but the fate of the class was so cruel that a storm was being generated in his hometown.
The Grand Commander of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, Who advocated fair treatment of the Cossack nobility, Stanisław Koniecpols, died genetically unexpectedly, and his heir Alexander, after redrawing his property map, proposed ownership of Khmelnytsky's lands and estates, declaring that all belonged to Alexander.
Khmelnytsky, of course, guarded his property, sought help from powerful magnates, wrote many appeals to the representatives of the Polish royal family, and even used his advantageous position in the Polish court to seek the king's help.
Because the nobility had absolute control over the land and population at the time, the king did not want to clash with the powerful local aristocratic forces. Not only did Khmelnytsky lose his estate, his wife was also robbed and his young son was beaten to death.
For any man, this is an absolute shame. Khmelnytsky sought help from his Cossack friends and subordinates, and polish injustices against the Cossacks led him to the legion's strong support. Khmelnytsky traveled back and forth between the tribes, consulting with the Cossack leaders.
His actions made the Polish authorities suspicious, as Cossack uprisings were common in Poland at the time. He was quickly arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. However, the Cossack jailers who imprisoned him released him after being persuaded by him. Khmelnytsky fled with his supporters to the Zaporozhye tribe.
Khmelnytsky used his intellectual and diplomatic skills to quickly gain the support of the oppressed Ruthenians in the area. Immediately afterward, the Cossack Assembly elected him chief. After uniting with the Tatars of Crimea, Khmelnytsky marched north and officially rose to prominence.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth underestimated the uprising, and the grand commanders of the royal family and the commanders of the royal army did not even wait for the prince's reinforcements, but only sent 3,000 soldiers and horses to quell the rebellion. Khmelnytsky led a surprise attack on the way, and many Cossacks who had been loyal to the Federation also counterattacked. Khmelnytsky took the opportunity to take the Big Tent of the Chinese Army and captured two commanders.
In the same year, the Polish king died, and the Polish region of the Commonwealth was immediately thrown into chaos. Khmelnitz, who basically wanted to do well, proposed increasing the number of registered Cossacks, restoring the churches that had been forced to reduce their loyalty to the Orthodox Church, and remunerating long-overdue Cossack wages.
At the same time, intelligence from all over the world also flew to the headquarters like snowflakes. After analysis, the Cossack leadership suddenly found that the autonomy they had dreamed of had reached the point of being at their fingertips. The status quo was like a huge gift, and the rebel army immediately reorganized its soldiers and horses, giving another heavy blow to the exhausted Polish army at the Battle of Piłavzy, and the rebel army finally captured Kiev.
As the war continued, the two sides reached a stalemate, and the divisions within the Cossacks grew. The Cossack elite continued to promote themselves as descendants of the Sarmatians to emphasize the legitimacy of their dominance, but this accelerated class divisions within the rebel army. At the same time, the discussion on whether to abolish serfdom was also very heated, and Khmelnytsky, who opposed the abolition, even allowed the Tatars to take Ukrainian serfs to the slave market in Crimea at will, in return for supporting the Tatars.
The Polish army then began to counterattack. After several defeats of the rebel army, the Tatars first made a sudden retreat, forcing Khmelnytsky to make a temporary truce with Poland, and then suddenly betrayed and kidnapped Khmelnytsky at the Battle of Belestekhko. After this battle, the Cossack side was seriously injured, losing nearly 30,000 people.
Immediately after Khmelnytsky's release, he returned to the battlefield and defeated the Polish army at the Battle of Bartog. However, due to the heavy losses of the previous war, the Cossacks were no longer able to remove the Polish king from the throne.
In this case, Khmelnytsky had to rediscover his foreign allies. For the Cossacks, de facto independent from Poland, still need legitimacy, the approval and asylum of foreign monarchs. Thus, Khmelnytsky first approached the Ottoman Sultan, but the Turks offered to make the Cossacks a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and to convert to Islam, contrary to the wishes of the Cossacks.
Khmelnytsky had no choice but to set his sights on the northeast and seek help from the Russian Tsar on the grounds of orthodoxy. The Tsar initially took a wait-and-see approach, until Khmelnytsky had to discuss the alliance further with the Ottoman Sultan, and he finally made a decision. For the Tsar, Russia's strategic goal was to go west and penetrate into Europe.
On January 8, 1654, there may be goose feather snow in the sky, and the biting cold wind whistled through, even the warm coat will not help. In the small town of Pereyaslav on the outskirts of Kiev, Khmelnytsky reached (note "reached") the controversial Pereyaslav Agreement with the Tsar's representative, Buturlin. For more than three hundred years from then, the pattern of the whole Of Europe and even the world has shaken violently.
The Pereya Slavic Agreement – the unstoppable dominoes
You show off that we once brought destruction to Poland
That's right, Poland fell
But you also follow up with being destroyed
--[Ukraine] Taras Shepchenko
When the troubled Cossacks meet the rising Russia, everything is doomed to be not equal.
According to Polish tradition, the oath is required by both sides. Thus, Khmelnytsky proposed that the Oath of The Tsar be taken by Buturlin on behalf of the Tsar first, to protect the Cossacks from Polish oppression and not to undermine the freedoms and rights of the Cossacks. However, Buturlin categorically refused Khmelnytsky's request.
In Buturlin's view, Khmelnytsky's request was contrary to his position as a monarch. The tsar swore an oath to a Cossack leader to form a system.
Such a unilateral oath was also unacceptable to the Cossacks, but at this time the Russian envoys swore that the Tsar would protect the interests of the Cossacks in every word and would supplement these relevant documents at a later date.
Perhaps Khmelnytsky needed Russian patronage too much, and he believed in the promises of his Russian envoys and unilaterally swore allegiance to the Tsar. This move led to a split in the hearts and minds of the Cossacks, as a significant number of people preferred to remain independent and unwilling to sell themselves to Russia.
Importantly, this agreement was reached verbally between the two sides at the time, and it was not until the following year when cossack envoys arrived in Ukraine that the fine prints were laid down.
The terms of the agreement were numerous, which probably summed up in the fact that the Cossacks basically continued to retain their power, institutions, finances, and taxes, but to recognize the Tsar as the supreme ruler of the land, and all diplomatic activities had to be copied to the Tsar.
The final signing of this agreement completely changed the history of Ukraine and Russia, and can even be considered a major event that affected the direction of human destiny.
Why? Let's first look at the Russian-Ukrainian interpretation of this agreement hundreds of years later.
In Russia's view, the signing of the agreement marked the reunion of two brothers of russia and Ukraine, both belonging to the Slavic race.
Since Kiev was razed to the ground by the Mongols in 1240, the East Slavs entered a turbulent era of 414 years. The Mongols have come, the Poles have come, the Lithuanians have come, and anyone can ride on the neck of the East Slavs. By this time, the Russians had saved the Ukrainians, and they were finally united.
Many Ukrainians, on the other hand, take the opposite view.
In their view, the signing of the agreement did indeed prevent Ukraine from being freed from the domination and plunder of the Poles and Tatars, and would not eventually disappear into the long river of history like many of the peoples who once came to this land, and the Ukrainian nation gained new hope.
At the same time, Ukraine, which had broken away from Polish rule as a result of the Cossack uprising, was recognized by great powers such as Russia, and Ukraine became an important part of the international arena.
But they still consider the signing of the agreement to be a major mistake made by the Ukrainian nation in history, because after the signing of the agreement, Russia has been trying to integrate Ukraine from the land to the nation, and this behavior has deprived Ukraine of its national and national independence. This is the general view of the Agreement by The Soviet Union collectively post-Ukrainians.
It can only be said that it is indeed the ass that determines the head.
For Russia, the signing of the agreement is like a big stimulant for the country. After acquiring a large amount of land and population, its power expanded rapidly to the west and south, and then defeated Poland and Ottoman Turkey, becoming the hegemon of Europe, and profoundly affecting the world pattern.
For Ukraine, the agreement freed them from Polish rule and avoided the worst of being exterminated. As for what they think is the loss of the opportunity for independence, how to say it, of course, it is a good thing to have hope and faith, but after all, people must live first, and only by living can they have combat effectiveness.
If that were the end of the day, the world today might be much less sorded. However, the Pereya Slavic Agreement, like a specter, continues to affect both Russia and Ukraine.
In 1954, the first lunar year. In order to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Pereyaslav Agreement and to commemorate the deep friendship between Russia and Ukraine, Khrushchev, the first secretary of the CPSU who had just taken office for one year, gave a big hand to Ukraine the Crimean Oblast, which belonged to Russia at that time.
In 2014, another year of A-noon. Crimea referendum, with 97% of the electorate supported, Crimea became independent and returned to Russia. Russia and Ukraine, the brothers who originally belonged to the East Slavs, have finally embarked on the road of breaking up.
If Khmelnytsky had known about it, I don't know how he would feel in the face of this fallen domino.
Resources:
1. A History of Ukraine, [U.S.] Paul Kubisek
2. "Europe's Gate – Ukrainian Calendar 2000", [American] Procchi
3. The Chronicle of the Past: The First Chronicle of Ancient Rus
4. Re-acquaintance with the Pereya Slavic Agreement, Shen Lihua