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THE ORIGINS AND THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE UKRAINIAN COSSACKS
(October 2011)
The name Cossack (Ukrainian: kozak) is derived from the Turkic kazak (free
man), meaning anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society
and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority. In European
sources the term first appears in a dictionary of the Cuman language in the
mid-13th century. By the end of the 15th century the name was applied to
those Ukrainians who went into the steppes to practice various trades and
engage in hunting, fishing, beekeeping, the collection of salt and
saltpeter, and so on. In the mid-16th century the Cossack structure in the
Zaporizhia was created in the process of the steppe settlers’ struggle
against Tatar raids. The ranks of the Zaporozhian Cossacks were greatly
increased by fugitive peasants and townspeople who fled to the sparsely
populated steppe to escape serfdom and other forms of opression suffered
under their Polish landlords. A second category of Cossacks, known as town
Cossacks, was formed for the defense of the towns. In time the Cossacks
acquired military strength and experience as well as prestige in their own
society and fame throughout Europe, which at that time was resisting the
Turkish onslaught. The Cossacks became particularly strong in the first
quarter of the 17th century, when Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny not
only spread their fame through his successful campaigns against the Tatars
and the Turks and his aid to the Polish army at Moscow in 1618 and at the
Battle of Khotyn in 1621, but also tied Cossack interests to the Ukrainian
struggle against Poland, reviving the traditions of the Kyivan Rus’ state…
Learn more about the origins and the early history of the Ukrainian
Cossacks by visiting:
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COSSACKS. The history of the Ukrainian Cossacks has three distinct aspects:
their struggle against the Tatars and the Turks in the steppe and on the
Black Sea; their participation in the struggle of the Ukrainian people
against socioeconomic and national-religious oppression by the Polish
magnates; and their role in the building of an autonomous Ukrainian state.
The first period of the Cossacks’ history spans the years 1550-1648. The
town Cossacks were organized by the local officials, such as Ostafii
Dashkevych, Przeclaw Lanckoronski, Samuel Zborowski, and Prince Dmytro
Vyshnevetsky (Baida), to defend the southeastern borders of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Tatar incursions. Following the
establishment of the Zaporozhian Sich, the town and Zaporozhian Cossacks
ventured far into the steppes in pursuit of the Tatars in order to rescue
captives or to attack Tatar and Turkish coastal towns. By the end of the
16th and beginning of the 17th century, the Cossacks also mounted several
bloody uprisings against the oppressive Polish landowners and the Polish
government…
THE ZAPORIZHIA. The name of the military and political organization of the
Ukrainian Cossacks and of their autonomous territory (approx 80,000 sq km)
in Southern Ukraine from the mid-16th century to 1775. The name was derived
from the territory’s location beyond the Rapids (za porohamy). Its center
was the Zaporozhian Sich. The Zaporizhia’s territory was situated to the
south and east of Polish-ruled Right-Bank Ukraine. To the northeast it
bordered on the Left-Bank Ukraine’s Hetman state. To the east it was
separated from Russian-ruled Slobidska Ukraine by the Donets River. To the
southeast it bordered on the lands of the Don Cossacks. The Zaporizhia
extended southward deep into the steppe, where it bordered on the Crimean
Khanate. The Cossacks gained renown in the late 15th century as defenders
of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state against the Crimean Tatars. The rise of
the Zaporizhia resulted from the increasing colonization of that frontier
by Ukrainians fleeing serfdom. There they established homesteads and, to
defend themselves from Tatar raids, built fortified camps (sichi), which
were later united to create a central fortress, the Zaporozhian Sich…
ZAPOROZHIAN SICH. The name of several Cossack keeps on the Dnieper River
that were the centers of the Zaporizhia. The first Sich was established ca
1552 by Prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky on Mala Khortytsia Island in the Dnieper
River, near present-day Zaporizhia. It was besieged and destroyed by
Crimean Tatars in 1558. The new Tomakivka Sich was built 60 km to the south
on a now-inundated island near present-day Marhanets. It was also razed by
Tatars, in 1593, and the Bazavluk Sich was built on Bazavluk Island, now
also inundated, farther south near the mouths of the Chortomlyk River and
the Pidpilna River. A fourth Sich was built at nearby Mykytyn Rih, the site
of present-day Nykopil; it is first mentioned in 1628 and was captured by
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648. The Chortomlyk Sich was also built
nearby, at the mouth of the Chortomlyk River, in 1652. It was destroyed by
a Russian force on 25 May 1709, after Otaman Kost Hordiienko and his
Zaporozhian Host allied with Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Charles XII of Sweden
against Peter I. That last Sich was destroyed by a Russian army in June
1775…
VYSHNEVETSKY, DMYTRO, b after 1516, d 29 October 1563 in Istanbul. The
first Cossack otaman in the history of Ukraine, a founding member of the
Cossack nobility, and a landowner in southern Volhynia; nephew of
Kostiantyn Ostrozky. In the 1550s he was starosta of Cherkasy and Kaniv. He
built a fort (ca 1552) on Mala Khortytsia Island, in the Dnieper River,
which became the first Zaporozhian Sich. He recruited Cossacks for war
against the Tatars, which he waged with the help of Lithuania and Muscovy,
and he traveled to Turkey to enlist the aid of the Ottoman Empire in 1553.
In 1557-61 he served the Muscovite government and then again organized wars
against the Tatars, but his attempts to form an alliance to do battle in
the Crimea failed in 1561. In 1563, during a military campaign in Moldavia,
he was defeated, taken prisoner by the Turks, and executed. Vyshnevetsky is
the hero of the folk historical song about Baida. Because of his noble
origin, Soviet historians disputed the fact that he founded the Zaporozhian
Sich and that he is the folk hero Baida…
NALYVAIKO, SEVERYN (Semerii), b ca 1560 in Husiatyn, Galicia, d 21 April
1597 in Warsaw. Cossack leader. He participated in campaigns of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks against Turkey and the Crimean Tatars and then served
as a captain in Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky’s private army. In 1594 he
became otaman of an independent Cossack force in the Bratslav region and
led it on a campaign into Moldavia, where it defeated the Crimean Tatars
advancing against Hungary. In the spring of 1595, together with Hryhorii
Loboda and Matvii Shaula, he successfully engaged the Turks in Moldavia and
Transylvania, thereby halting their advance on Austria. After Nalyvaiko
returned to Ukraine, he led a popular rebellion against the Poles that
spread from the Bratslav region throughout Right-Bank Ukraine and into
Belarus. On 26 May 1596 the rebels were surrounded by a superior Polish
army near Lubny. After a two-week Polish siege a mutiny arose among th
e
rebels. Hryhorii Loboda was lynched, and Nalyvaiko and Shaula were handed
over to the Poles. Nalyvaiko was taken to Warsaw, where he was cruelly
tortured before being beheaded…
KONASHEVYCH-SAHAIDACHNY, PETRO, b 1570? in Kulchytsi, Sambir region,
Galicia, d 20 April 1622 in Kyiv. Zaporozhian hetman, organizer of
Ukrainian Cossack armies, and political and civic leader. He was a member
of the Orthodox nobility in Galicia, and he studied at the Ostrih Academy.
He traveled to the Zaporozhian Sich in 1601 and participated in campaigns
against the Tatars and Turks. Under his leadership the Cossacks captured
Ochakiv and Perekop (1607) and various towns along the Anatolian coast in
Turkey (1608), including Sinop and Trabzon, where they destroyed a force of
10,000 Turks and freed many slaves. In 1618 Sahaidachny led a 20,000-strong
Cossack army in Wladyslaw IV Vasa’s Polish campaign against Muscovy.
Sahaidachny’s transformed the Cossack Host into a regular military
formation and imparted a statist character to the Cossack movement. He also
fought for the religious and cultural rights of the Ukrainian people. He
contributed to the establishment of a cultural center in Kyiv and sought to
unite Cossack military might with the Ukrainian clergy and nobility…
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The preparation, editing, and display of the IEU entries featuring the
origins and the early history of the Ukrainian Cossacks were made possible
by the financial support of the the MICHAEL KOWALSKY AND DARIA
MUCAK-KOWALSKY ENCYCLOPEDIA ENDOWMENT FUND at the Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies (Edmonton, AB, Canada).
*******
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