Kinlore
1648–57

The Khmelnytsky Uprising and the Cossack Hetmanate

A Cossack revolt led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky breaks Polish rule over central Ukraine and creates a Cossack state.

  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • Hetman state (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)

Debated by historians statehoodwaridentitytrauma

The Cossacks

The steppe south of Kyiv was a frontier in the sixteenth century. It was thinly settled, raided by Tatars, and a refuge for runaway peasants and adventurers who called themselves Cossacks. In the 1550s a nobleman, Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, built a fortress on Mala Khortytsia, a small island below the Dnipro rapids. It was a forerunner of the Zaporozhian Sich, the Cossacks’ self-governing military camp.

  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
From 1572 the Polish crown enrolled a limited number of “registered” Cossacks for military service. Those left off the register were treated as peasants, which caused constant discontent.

By the 1640s, Ukraine under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was full of grievances. Cossacks resented limits on their numbers and rights, enserfed peasants worked the estates of Polish and Polonised magnates, and Orthodox townspeople faced pressure from Catholicism and the Uniate church.

  • Jews (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — Timothy Snyder, Yale University Press (2003)

The uprising

A Cossack officer, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, had his estate raided by a Polish official. At the end of 1647 he left for the Zaporozhian Sich and raised a revolt.

Allied with the Crimean Tatars, his Cossacks crushed Polish armies at Zhovti Vody in May and at Pyliavtsi in September, and peasants joined them in huge numbers.
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
Ukrainian historiography counts the uprising among the most cataclysmic events in Ukrainian history.

The war was savage on all sides. Polish troops killed Cossacks and peasants, women and children included, while rebels killed nobles, Catholic clergy and Jews, many of whom were seen as allies of the lords.

  • Cossack-Polish War (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — Timothy Snyder, Yale University Press (2003)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
How many Jews died is fiercely debated. Jewish chroniclers of the time wrote of 100,000 or more dead, but only about 40,000–50,000 Jews are estimated to have lived in Ukraine in 1648. The historian Shaul Stampfer estimates that fewer than 20,000 Jews died, perhaps 18,000, and that it is unclear how many of them died violently rather than in the uprising’s wake. Either way, many communities were wiped out.
In Jewish memory, 1648–49 stands among the great catastrophes before the Holocaust.

The Hetmanate

Out of the war came a Cossack state, the Hetmanate, led by a hetman. When Khmelnytsky died in 1657 it held the old Kyiv, Bratslav and Chernihiv provinces, home to about 1.5 million people.

Unable to win alone, Khmelnytsky sought foreign protectors, including the Muscovite tsar, whose help he had asked for since 1648. This led in 1654 to the fateful agreement with Muscovy at Pereiaslav.

The Hetmanate survived, shrinking and steadily losing autonomy, until Russia abolished the office of hetman in 1764 and destroyed the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775.

Three memories

In Ukrainian national memory, shaped largely by nineteenth-century writers such as Taras Shevchenko, the Cossacks are bound up with the struggle for freedom and self-rule, and the Cossack era is a core chapter of national history.

In polls in 2022 and 2023, around 90% of Ukrainians viewed Khmelnytsky positively.
In Poland the uprising is remembered as the rebellion that began the Commonwealth’s long decline.
  • The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — Timothy Snyder, Yale University Press (2003)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
  • Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (5th revised ed.) — Andreas Kappeler, C.H. Beck (2019)
For Jews it remains a byword for massacre. These memories do not cancel each other out. All three are true to the experience of the people who hold them.

How it's seen
How Ukrainians see it

A national liberation war against Polish lords that created the first Ukrainian Cossack state. Khmelnytsky is a founding hero.

Polish memory

A destructive rebellion that tore apart the Commonwealth and began its decline, remembered through Sienkiewicz's novel With Fire and Sword.

  • The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 — Timothy Snyder, Yale University Press (2003)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
  • Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (5th revised ed.) — Andreas Kappeler, C.H. Beck (2019)

Jewish memory

One of the great catastrophes of East European Jewry, the "Gezeirot Tah ve-Tat" (decrees of 1648–49), with Khmelnytsky as its perpetrator.

Why it matters today

Ukraine

The Cossacks are the heart of Ukraine's image of itself as freedom-loving and self-governing, and Khmelnytsky is honoured as a founder of statehood. The same years are remembered as a catastrophe by Jews and Poles, which is worth knowing before you praise him.