Kyiv4

Kyiv and Ukraine: 1764-1918

As mentioned in my earlier post, the 'heart' of Ukraine existed from 1654 to 1764 as an independent 'Hetmanate' in the Russian State.  (Polish 'Hetman', or 'Warlord', from the German 'Hauptmann'). That status ended in 1764 when Catherine II (the Great) abolished the post and rôle of Hetman.

Catherine, born Sophie in 1729, the German wife of tsar Peter III,  deposed and murdered her husband and assumed the throne as  Catherine II (1762 - 1796). Her first preoccupation was to refill the State treasury.  That  she did by expropriating the vast estates of the church. Her next ambition was to introduce political reform and intellectual enlightenment, following the best examples of Western Europe: education, consulting the nation, freeing the serfs, fostering science and the arts. But she soon realised that Russia was not ready for liberal democracy. Her power rested on the support of the nobles. Free serfs would have no livelihood. 

Catherine's next expedient was territorial expansion. Her predecessors, Empress Anna (1730-1741) and Catherine's virtual 'mother-in-law', the childless Empress Elizabeth (1741-1762), had shown the way, for the power of the Ottoman Empire to the south was diminishing. (See the map below.) 

[https://cdn.britannica.com/48/3848-050-2473BB98/russia-expansion-1300-1796.jpg ]

The land of the lower Dnipro can be called the 'right bank' (to the west) and the 'left bank' (to the east). By the Treaty of Eternal Peace (1686), right bank had been left to Poland, while the left bank + Kyiv + the land of the Zaporidsia Cossacks + people of Orthodox faith came under the suzerainty and protection of Moscow. Anna's German commander, Münnich, had reformed the army and established, in the field, that one Russian was equal to two Ottomans. He forced Moldavia to accept Russian suzerainty. Elizabeth devoted (perhaps wasted) resources combatting the Swedes and Prussian in the north west to scant effect, but in the south she gained more control over the Hetmanate on the left bank. 

On becoming Empress in 1762, Catherine II dissolved the Hetmanate. The last Hetman, (Krill Razumovsky, younger brother of Empress Elizabeth's 'partner') was retired as a Field Marshal of the Russian army. 

Catherine's own lover (Orlov, who had master-minded the coup whereby Peter III was captured and killed) was made a General, and in 1769 was put in charge of the fleet which destroyed the Turkish fleet off the coast of Anatolia.

Catherine's Russia continued to push south against the weakening Islamic powers. The Crimea was annexed in 1783, which provoked the Turks into another war, the Russo-Turkish war of 1787–1792. The Turks were again thoroughly beaten, losing control of the north coast of the Black Sea from Azov westward to the mouth of the Dniester, where Catherine II founded the city of Odessa to mark the occasion.

Three times Catherine and her allies forced the partition of Poland-Lithuania, in1772, 1793, 1795. On each occasion Poland-Lithuania lost territory to Russia and Prussia, and on two occasions to Austria as well; till in 1795 there was nothing left. 

Of course, there were plenty Poles left, and polish speaking Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukranians. In the 19th century, though the population of right-bank Ukraine was mostly Ukrainian, the land was mostly owned by Poles or the Polish-speaking Ukrainian upper class. In fact, until 1825 Russian influence in the territory of modern Ukraine was largely military and bureaucratic; the culture and language was predominantly Polish or indigenous, what was called "Little Russian", or "Ruthenian" (the Latinized form of the name 'Rus'); that which we would now call Ukrainian. Education, such as it was, was given in Polish. The Ukranians were uneducated, and poor.

After the widespread uprisings in November 1830 which spread from Poland into other vassal states including West-Bank Ukraine, the Russians began a process of deliberate Russification [2].

Nevertheless, a Russian survey of the languages spoken in Kyiv in 1874 found:

Ukranian 39%

Yiddish 11%

Russian 10%

Polish 6%

German 2%

Remainder 32%

(According to the website https://translatorswithoutborders.org/languages-of-ukraine-interactive-en, the first languages in Ukraine in 2001 were:

Ukrainian 68%

Russian 30%

Romanian 0.7%

Crimean 0.5%

Hungarian 0.3%

Remainder 0.3%

The major 'second' languages spoken were Russian 36%, Ukrainian 20%, English 1.5%.)

The Pale of Settlement 

The surprisingly high number of  Yiddish speakers is worth a comment. Jews were not welcome in Moscow or the major cities like Kyiv, but were allowed to inhabit certain clearly designated areas which came to be called the "Pale of Settlement" [1] (originally west of a line or 'pale' down the western border of the Duchy of Moscow.) At the end of her reign, Catherine found the Ukrainian territory underpopulated and made several efforts to plant communities there. Specifically, Catherine sought to encourage Jews into Kyiv to trade, and Jewish farmers to farm in the underpopulated steppe lands of the conquered areas of Ukraine. 

Ukranian Nationalism

The year 1848 saw popular uprisings in 50 European countries, with varied results: in Italy, failure; in France, initial republican success followed by reactionary restoration; in Germany, exile of hot-heads; in Swden 18 casualties; in Denmark, gracious accommodation by the king; in Switzerland a new federalist constitution; in Poland, accommodation; in Romania, successful regime change.

The causes were as varied as the outcomes: discontent with absolutist monarchs, famine (potato and rye crop-failures), urbanisation and mechanisation, increasing populations, intellectual middle-class frustration and demand for more democracy. The chief link that brought all this to a head in 1848 seems to have been ideas; the idea of change, of self-determination, of nationalism. Clear examples of the rise of nationalist ideas are:- Finland, and Czechia, where the 'common' language was vastly different from the 'official' language.

The idea of Ukrainian Nationalism started in Galicia, the part of old Kyivan-Rus (or old Ukrainian Right Bank) that was granted to Austria after the Congress of Vienna (1815); perhaps because the 'common' language ('little-Russian', written in Cyrillic) was so different from Austrian German. 

A nation needs more than a distinct language; it needs a 'founding myth', its own distinctive set of  heroes, and cultural 'icons'. The Rus hero Rurik is a founder for both Ukrania and Russia, and Kyiv is an 'icon' venerated by both nations. 

It is a pity that Moscow tends so often to behaves in such a way as to alienate its neighbours . 

REFERENCES:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Ukraine

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_nationalism

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