Social Contradictions in the Ukrainian Cossack State and the Socio-Economic Policy of the Hetman’s Government of the Ruins Era

Abstract

In the middle of the XVII century and during the liberation struggle, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi carried out important changes in the political system and social structure of Ukrainian society. Conditions were created for the development of the productive forces and the emergence of bourgeois relations. However, Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi radically changed the direction of social policy, which led to the beginning of the civil war in the Cossack state. In his article, the author finds out that, despite the aggravation of the socio-political situation in Cossack Ukraine, the hetman’s government in the late 50’s — early 60’s of the XVII century tried to pursue a balanced domestic political activity. In particular, Yuri Khmelnytskyi abandoned the course taken by Ivan Vyhovskyi to renew the pre-revolutionary model of socio-economic relations and continued the main directions of his father’s policy. Hetman provided land to monasteries, but restrained the growth of land ownership of the nobility and Cossack officers. The peasants retained the property won at the beginning of the National Revolution: the right to inherit land, personal freedom and the right to join the Cossack class. The feudal class continued to seek out the peasantry mainly through the state apparatus. The government supported the development of trade and fishing; regulated conflicts between certain classes of society (sergeants and burghers, sergeants and clergy, etc.). Trying to prevent a social explosion, Yuri Khmelnytskyi, contrary to the decision of the Warsaw Sejm in 1661, ordered the removal of the gentry and the Polish administration from the estates. However, despite these measures, the socio-economic situation continued to deteriorate. In Right-Bank Ukraine, the population suffered from the presence of soldiers and Tatar hordes, which plundered and ravaged towns and villages, and the influx of gentry in a hurry to occupy their estates. Social tensions increased after the Sejm in 1662 banned Cossacks from living in noble and royal lands in the Kiev and Bratslav provinces and forced Cossacks, burghers and peasants to perform feudal serfdom. On the Left Bank, social contradictions, in addition to the arbitrariness of the Russian voivodes, also had internal causes: the intensification of the exploitation of peasants, burghers and ordinary Cossacks by Cossack officers; education among the foremen of several groups fighting each other and using demagogic slogans to attract the lower classes to their side. All this together complicated the political situation of the Cossack state and weakened the government’s strength in the struggle to preserve territorial integrity, which ultimately led to its split into two hetmanates and loss of independence.