Ukraine1

Kyiv and Ukraine: 1564-1795

    The word 'ukraine' means 'borderland' in proto-Slavic languages. It turns up as early as 1187 in a Kyivan Chronicle, in the sense of 'borderland'; so where the population of one polity thinned out to uninhabited Steppe and fronted another polity, they could each refer to their borderland or their 'ukraine'. 

    However, by early 1600s maps were appearing with the capitalised proper noun Ukraine. Thus "Vkraina" and "Kyovia" turn up together on the Radziwill map of 1613.  In mid seventeenth century, Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan, a French cartographer working for the Polish army, published a map of "Ukrainska" in 1635 covering the area from the river Don in the east to the river Dniester in the west, and from Kyiv south to the Black (or Euxine) sea. His book Description d'Ukranie of 1651 was very widely read and republished in western Europe. 

Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595 - 1657) 

(This section is the expansion of a paragraph in my post Kyiv3 it tells how, in an effort to free itself from Polish control, what we now think of as Ukraine passed into the control of Moscow.)

    Born c. 1595, Chigirin, Ukraine

    Died  1657, Chigirin. (Aug. 16, [New Style])

Khmelnytsky was the leader of the Zaporozhian Cossack  rebellion (1648–57) against Polish rule in Ukraine that ultimately led to the transfer of the Ukrainian lands east and south of the Dnieper River from Polish to Russian control. In summary: the revolt, with the taking of Kyiv and Lwów, was initially successful but, after repeatedly being let down by the Islamic Crimean Tartars, Khmelnytsky made a treaty with the Russians (1654).

Although Ukrainian born, Khmelnytsky had been educated in Poland and had served with Polish military forces against the Turks. He had become chief of a Cossacks regiment at Czyhryn (Poland), but quarreled with the Polish governor there and fled (December 1647) to the fortress of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, a semi-military community that had developed from runaway serfs, bandits, and traders who had settled along the Dnieper River (Zaporizhzhia="below the rapids"). There he organized a rebellion among the Zaporozhian Cossacks and, with the support of the (Islamic) Crimean Tatars, marched against the Poles in April 1648. His victorious advance into  Kyiv won him additional support from the dissatisfied peasants, townspeople, and clergy of Ukraine, who joined him in a mass uprising that enabled him to enter Poland proper and seize Lwów (now Lviv) in October 1648.

After winning more victories in 1649, Khmelnytsky made peace with the new Polish king, John Casimir, concluding the Compact of Zborów (Aug. 18, 1649); its terms permitted him to establish a virtually independent Cossack principality in Ukraine. 

That treaty, however, satisfied neither the Polish gentry nor Khmelnytsky’s followers. He therefore renewed the war in the spring of 1651 but was defeated at the Battle of Beresteczko in June 1651 and was compelled to accept a new, less advantageous, treaty. 

In the face of a growing threat from Poland and forsaken by his Tatar allies, Khmelnytsky asked the the tsar of Russia (Tsar Alexis) to incorporate Ukraine as an autonomous duchy under Russian protection. The Russians were reluctant to enter into such an agreement, and it was not until October 1653 that they approved the request and Tsar Alexis sent a delegation to the Cossacks.

Pereyaslav Agreement   Only after the Cossacks had suffered a further disastrous military defeat (December 1653) did they  receive the Muscovite delegation at Pereyaslav and formally submit to “the tsar’s hand.” Two months later (March 1654), the details of the union were negotiated in Moscow. The Cossacks were granted a large degree of autonomy (under a Cossack 'Hetman'), and they, as well as other social groups in Ukraine, retained all the rights and privileges they had enjoyed under Polish rule. But the unification of Ukraine with Russia was unacceptable to Poland. It launched the Russo-Polish war ("Thirteen Years’ War") which ended (1667, Truce of Andrusovo see below) with the division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia, along the Dniepro river, but with Kyiv allocated to Russia .  

Early in the Thirteen Years’ War, the Russians invaded Poland, but Khmelnytsky, not content with his pact with Alexis, entered into secret negotiations with Sweden, which was also at war with Poland. He was about to conclude a treaty with the Swedes, placing the Cossacks under Swedish rule, when he died (1657).

Khmelnytsky had sought autonomy for his Cossack followers but succeeded only in devastating their formerly flourishing Dnieper lands and in subjecting them to the rule of Moscow, which gained control of Ukraine east of the Dnieper and gradually curtailed their liberties, until in 1764, when Catherine II (the 'Great') of Russia abolished the 'Cossack Hetmanate'. (See my post Kyiv 4). 

The Truce of Andrusovo (1667) established a thirteen-and-a-half year truce, signed on 9 February [N.S.] 1667 between the Tsardom of Russia and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. That this war trailed on for 13.5 years shows that neither side was vastly more powerful. In 1610, Poland had invaded Russia, captured Moscow, and taken the Tsar (Vasili IV) back to Poland in a cage.  But this truce seems to have  tipped the balance from Poland to Russia.

[Based on several articles in Encyclopedia Britanica and Wikipedia]

How bad is social inequality?

  How Bad is Social Inequality?

       Paul Johnson (director of  the 'Institute for Fiscal Studies') gave a talk at Clare College, Cambridge, on Thursday 2nd May 2024, titled:

 "Inequalities: what they are, why they matter, and how to address them". 

I was disappointed. I did not think he showed at all clearly why inequalities are bad. And he provided few ideas on how to sort them. 

He presented many inequalities; of income, education, wealth, health, inheritance, ethnicity, gender, geography. And he showed correlations; the unhealthy are poor, and the poor are unhealthy. But he was neither curious nor analytical about the causes of these inequalities, and their correlations. He seemed to assume a mechanism – the usual suspects; poor people are badly educated, are sick, die young and live in the north. It seemed to me insufficiently analytic; more like journalism than academia. And he scarcely touched on remedies.

It is not self-evident to me that inequality itself is a 'bad thing'. Some inequality could be called variety. Some people are tall, some short, some fast, others slow, some numerate others literate. 

Some inequality may be by choice. Some people may choose to live on a croft on Raasay, keep a cow and fish for lobsters. Some seek paid work, others may choose to remain unemployed in the north east of England, preferring that life to any alternative that they can imagine. After all, I do not want to make money on the Stock Market, nor by flying planes, nor by cutting people open. We should beware of making choices for other people. 

We are not all born equal. Inequality is inevitable. It can often seem 'unfair', and that unfairness can be painful to contemplate. Our idealism feels let down. Some people feel we have an inherent right to two legs, etc.; and that society has a duty to level up. I do not. But we do have an opportunity to correct the oversights of providence. Inequality can be mitigated, but not abolished. 

What, then, is positively bad for society about this God-given inequality, and how far should we go to lessen it? Does inequality simply indicate a wrong, or does it actually cause damage? Does it indicate cruelty; or actively breed indifference; or lead to bad government?

I believe that great disparity of wealth is bad for society in two different ways. The existence of very poor people dehumanises us. Their poverty hurts and rebukes us, unless we look away.  The very rich can also offend by causing envy in the less fortunate, as man is susceptible to envy. But envy alone is not enough reason to dispossess the rich. 

We are beginning to see how the very rich can cause positive harm. They can be hard to control. They can corrupt. Money confers power in so many ways. We are careful to give each adult an equal vote, but pay little attention to the fact that some voters can deploy a thousand or a million times the resource of the average voter. We are governed by the rich, as well as guided; we buy their newspapers, and watch their television channels. 

In particular, excessive wealth provides excessive means of making more wealth. Without explicit limits, the situation is mathematically explosive. Most people will use most of their resource most of the time. A billionaire will not; his wealth does not trickle down, significantly, to his hairdresser, or butler; it is salted away for his heirs. An inheritance tax (like the feudal 'fee') is essential. Unspent wealth should revert to the state. This has been said many times before. 

At a more mundane level, we should look for action points? Perhaps identify a metric that would indicate where state interference with the free market could be beneficially applied – for example we could monitor 'the increase in GCSE grades per GB£ spent, on the grounds that a pound spent in Ashington, Northumberland, would yield more marginal benefit than a pound spent in Haslemere, Surrey. Perhaps implement a focussed improvement of the transport infrastructure, e.g. in areas remote from London?

I was hoping Paul Johnson would have thought himself into such territory. He must be well informed on all aspects of taxation, and could, I am sure, make a significant contribution. I hope he can be encouraged to do so.

Sincerely, Ian West

(See also my post of 12 Mar 2012 –– "Taxing the Wealthy")