Khmelnytsky, Bohdan (Fedir) Zinovii [Xmel’nyc’kyj], b ca 1595–6, d 6 August 1657 in Chyhyryn. Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host from 1648 to 1657, founder of the Hetman state (1648–1782). (Portrait: Bohdan Khmelnytsky.) By birth he belonged to the Ukrainian lesser nobility and bore the Massalski, and later the Abdank, coat of arms. His father, Mykhailo Khmelnytsky, served as an officer under the Polish crown hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski and his mother, according to some sources, was of Cossack descent. Khmelnytsky's place of birth has not been determined for certain. Little more is known about Khmelnytsky's education. Apparently, he received his elementary schooling in Ukrainian, and his secondary and higher education in Polish at a Jesuit college, possibly in Jaroslaw, but more probably in Lviv. He completed his schooling before 1620 and acquired a broad knowledge of world history and fluency in Polish and Latin. Later he acquired a knowledge of Turkish, Tatar, and French. The Battle of Cecora (1620), in which he lost his father and was captured by the Turks, was his first military action. After spending two years in Istanbul, he was ransomed by his mother and returned to Ukraine.
There is no reliable information about Khmelnytsky's activities from 1622 to 1637. All later accounts of his exploits in wars against the Tatars, Turks, and Russians (1632–4) have no documentary foundation. Only one fact is certain—that in the 1620s he joined the registered Cossacks. Sometime between 1625 and 1627 he married Hanna Somko, a Cossack's daughter from Pereiaslav, and settled on his patrimonial estate in Subotiv near Chyhyryn. By 1637 he attained the high office of military chancellor. His signature appeared on the capitulation agreement signed at Borovytsia on 24 December 1637 that marked the end of a Cossack rebellion.
There are grounds to believe that Khmelnytsky belonged to the faction of officers that favored an understanding between the Zaporozhian Host and Poland. Subsequent events, however, dashed any hopes of reconciliation. By the Ordinance of 1638 the Polish king revoked the autonomy of the Zaporozhian Host and placed the registered Cossacks under the direct authority of the Polish military command in Ukraine. The office of military chancellor, which Khmelnytsky had held, was abolished and Khmelnytsky was demoted to a captain of Chyhyryn regiment. In the fall of 1638 he visited Warsaw with a Cossack delegation to petition King Wladyslaw IV Vasa to restore the former Cossack privileges.
In the next few years Khmelnytsky devoted his attention mostly to his estates in the Chyhyryn region, but in 1645 he served with a detachment of 2,000–2,500 Cossacks in France, and probably took part in the siege of Dunkirk. By this time his reputation for leadership was such that King Wladyslaw IV Vasa, in putting together a coalition of Poland, Venice, and other states against Turkey, turned to him to obtain the support of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. In April 1646 he was one of the Cossack envoys in Warsaw with whom the king discussed plans for the impending war. These events contributed to his reputation in Ukraine, Poland, and abroad, and provided him with wide military and political contacts.
Khmelnytsky, however, had been regarded with suspicion for many years by the Polish magnates in Ukraine who were politically opposed to King Wladyslaw IV Vasa. The new landowners of the Chyhyryn region, A. Koniecpolski, Crown Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski, and his son, Crown Flag-bearer A. Zolkiewski, treated Khmelnytsky with particular hostility. With the collusion of the Chyhyryn assistant vicegerent D. Czaplinski, who bore some personal grudge against Khmelnytsky, they conspired to deprive Khmelnytsky of his Subotiv estate. In spite of the fact that Khmelnytsky received a royal title to Subotiv in 1646, Czaplinski raided the estate, seized movable property, and disrupted the manor's economy. At the same time Czaplinski's servants severely beat Khmelnytsky's small son at the marketplace in Chyhyryn. Under these conditions of violence and terror Khmelnytsky's wife died in 1647, and towards the end of the year A. Koniecpolski ordered Khmelnytsky's arrest and execution. It was only the help and the surety put up by his friends among the Chyhyryn officers, and particularly by Col Mykhailo Krychevsky, that saved Khmelnytsky from death. At the end of December 1647 he departed for Zaporizhia with a small (300–500-man) detachment. There he was elected hetman. This event marked the beginning of a new Cossack uprising, which quickly turned into a national revolution (see Cossack-Polish War).
Khmelnytsky was married three times. His first wife, who was the mother of all his children, died prematurely. His second wife, Matrona, whom he married in early 1649, was the former wife of his enemy D. Czaplinski. In 1651 while Khmelnytsky was away on a military campaign, she was executed for conspiracy and adultery by his son Tymish. In the summer of 1651 Khmelnytsky married Hanna Zolotarenko, a Cossack woman from Korsun and the widow of Col Pylyp (Pylypets). Surviving him by many years, she entered a monastery in 1671 and adopted the religious name of Anastasiia. Khmelnytsky had two sons and four daughters. His older son, Tymish Khmelnytsky, died on 15 September 1653 in the siege of the Moldavian fortress of Suceava (see Battle of Suceava). The younger son, Yurii Khmelnytsky, was elected during his father's lifetime heir apparent under Ivan Vyhovsky's regency. Eventually, Yurii twice held the office of hetman. Khmelnytsky's daughter Kateryna (Olena) was married to Danylo Vyhovsky, and after his death in Muscovite captivity she married Hetman Pavlo Teteria. The second daughter, Stepaniia, was the wife of Ivan Nechai, who died in Muscovite exile. She later became a nun in Kyiv. The names of the other two daughters are unknown. One of them was married to Capt Hlyzko of Korsun regiment, who died in 1655 fighting against Poland. The other was married in 1654 to L. Movchan, a Cossack from Novhorod-Siverskyi. Khmelnytsky's line died out at the end of the 17th century. The Khmelnytskys were numerous in Left-Bank Ukraine and Russia but were of a different lineage. Khmelnytsky was buried on 25 August 1657 in Saint Elijah's Church in Subotiv, which he himself had built.
Khmelnytsky's greatest achievement in the process of national revolution was the Cossack Hetman state of the Zaporozhian Host (1648–1782). His statesmanship was demonstrated in all areas of state-building—in the military, administration, finance, economics, and culture. With political acumen he invested the Zaporozhian Host under the leadership of its hetman with supreme power in the new Ukrainian state, and unified all the estates of Ukrainian society under his authority. Khmelnytsky not only built a government system and developed military and civilian administrators, including Ivan Vyhovsky, Pavlo Teteria, Danylo Nechai and Ivan Nechai, Ivan Bohun, Hryhorii Hulianytsky, and Stanyslav Morozenko, out of Cossack officers and Ukrainian nobles, but also established an elite within the Cossack Hetman state. In spite of setbacks and difficulties, this elite preserved and maintained its gains in the face of Muscovy's invasion and against Polish and Turkish claims almost to the end of the 18th century.
