Khmelnytsky's Realm (Khmelnychchyna). The national uprising of 1648–57 headed by Khmelnytsky liberated a large part of Ukrainian territory from Poland and established a Cossack Hetman state that was abolished only in the 1780s. Khmelnytsky's uprising induced some changes in the political system of eastern Europe, and brought about certain changes in the socioeconomic structure of Cossack Ukraine. It gave rise to a new elite of Cossack officers that eventually, in the 18th century, evolved into a Ukrainian variant of the Polish nobility and, in the 19th century, into a Ukrainian variant of the Russian nobility.
The Cossack state, or ‘kozatske panstvo,’ emerged long before the Khmelnytsky period. According to historians such as Ivan Krypiakevych, Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko, and Lev Okinshevych, a Ukrainian Cossack state—the Zaporozhian Sich—was established as early as the 16th century. V'iacheslav Lypynsky believed that the Cossacks ‘in a nationally alien Poland slowly became a state within a state.’ But the Zaporozhian Sich and the Cossack estate were only embryonic forms of the Cossack state that was established in the 17th century on old Cossack territories—the Dnieper region, including Kyiv—and on the recently colonized southern Left-Bank Ukraine. The Cossacks claimed these lands as their own by right of conquest and use. From the time of Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, Cossackdom as a ‘state within a state’ became absorbed into the Cossack world view. This view was accepted in Poland and in Western Europe, particularly in Sweden and Transylvania; eg, in 1628 Prince Bethlen-Gabor of Transylvania said: ‘The Cossack people can secede from Poland and build its separate Commonwealth ... if only it finds for its struggle a wise and noble leader and organizer.’ Khmelnytsky turned out to be that leader.
The first reports about Khmelnytsky's uprising and his alliance with the Turks and Crimean Tatars informed the Polish government that this was more than just a rebellion. Both Crown Hetman Mikolaj Potocki and Adam Kysil, the voivode of Bratslav who was knowledgeable in Ukrainian affairs, wrote in March and May 1648 respectively that the Cossacks ‘absolutely want to rule in Ukraine’ and that Khmelnytsky ‘will form a new duchy.’
In Ukrainian political circles there were different ideas on the structure of the new state. Among the Orthodox nobility and higher clergy the conception that two sovereigns—the Kyiv metropolitan and the hetman of the Zaporozhian Host—would enter into relations with Poland was quite popular. But Khmelnytsky's military victories in 1648–9 and his triumphal entry into Kyiv in 1648, at which he was hailed as ‘the Moses, savior, redeemer, and liberator of the Rus’ people from Polish captivity ... the illustrious ruler of Rus’,’ weighed on the side of a Cossack state. In February 1649 during negotiations with a Polish delegation headed by Adam Kysil in Pereiaslav, Khmelnytsky declared that he was ‘the sole Rus’ autocrat’ and that he had ‘enough power in Ukraine, Podilia, and Volhynia ... in my land and principality stretching as far as Lviv, Kholm, and Halych.’ It became clear to the Polish envoys that Khmelnytsky had ‘denied Ukraine and all Rus’ to the Poles.’ A Vilnius panegyric in Khmelnytsky's honor (1650–1) asserted: ‘While in Poland it is King Jan II Casimir Vasa, in Rus’ it is Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky.’
Khmelnytsky claimed the divine right to rule over Cossacks as early as 29 July 1648, when in a letter to a Muscovite voivode he titled himself ‘Bohdan Khmelnytsky, by Divine grace hetman with the Zaporozhian Host.’ This formula was repeated in all official Cossack documents. In a letter from the Hlukhiv captain, S. Veichyk, to the Sevsk voivode, Prince T. Shcherbatov, written on 22 April 1651, the following title is used: ‘By God's grace our Great Ruler, Sir Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Hetman of the entire Zaporozhian Host.’ Foreigners addressing Khmelnytsky titled him ‘Illustrissimus Princeps’ or ‘Dux.’ Greek metropolitans who visited Ukraine in 1650 prayed for him during the liturgy as ‘the Ruler and Hetman of the Great Rus’.’ The Turkish sultan called him a prince and monarch, and other foreign rulers called him ‘illustrissimus dux.’
The Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 did not change the political status of Ukraine, or the title or authority of its hetman. Although the presence of a Russian garrison in Kyiv and the tsar's new title ‘Tsar of Little Russia, Grand Prince of Kyiv and Chernihiv’ laid symbolic claim of Muscovite supremacy in Ukraine, the ‘Zaporozhian Host’ remained a separate, independent state known as the Rus’ state, or Hosudarstvo rosiiske, as it was called by Khmelnytsky in his letter of 17 February 1654 to the tsar. In Muscovite sources it was called the Little-Russian state (Malorossiiskoe gosudarstvo). It had its own head of state—the hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, elected for life—its own government and army, foreign policy, legislature and judiciary, finances, and independent religious and cultural life.
Khmelnytsky retained full state powers in both internal and external affairs. The hetman continued to be ‘the master and hetman’ of the Ukrainian state, ‘the supreme ruler and master of our fatherland,’ as he was called in official Ukrainian documents. Metropolitan Sylvestr Kosiv referred to him in 1654 as ‘the leader and commander of our land.’ Khmelnytsky referred to himself as ‘the master of the entire Rus’ land’ (1655) and as ‘Clementiae divinae Generalis Dux Exercituum Zaporoviensium’ (letter to C. Serban, the ruler of Wallachia, 1657). General Chancellor Ivan Vyhovsky described Khmelnytsky to a Transylvanian envoy in 1657 thus: ‘As the tsar is a tsar in his realm, so the hetman is a prince or king in his domain.’ Ukraine's status as a sovereign state received international recognition. The Korsun Treaty of Alliance with Sweden of 6 October 1657 recognized Ukraine as ‘a free people, subject to no one’ (pro libera gente et nulli subjecta).
Khmelnytsky's Cossack state can be regarded as a new political entity—‘Ukraine of the Zaporozhian Host,’ as it was known in Moscow—or as a restoration of the old Rus’ state (Hosudarstvo rosiiskoie, as Khmelnytsky called it in his letter to the tsar of 17 February 1654). In all his negotiations with Sweden and Transylvania, Khmelnytsky demanded that his claims ‘to all old Ukraine, or Rus’ (Roxolania), wherever the Greek faith and their language still exist, as far as the Vistula River,’ be recognized.
The issue of the legitimate historical boundaries of the Cossack state brought the Belarusian question to the forefront of Ukrainian politics. The Zaporozhian Cossacks were interested in Belarus as early as the 16th century, as is evident from Hryhorii Loboda's and Severyn Nalyvaiko's campaigns. Khmelnytsky paid close attention to Belarus from the very beginning of his uprising. He supported the Cossack movement led by Konstantin Paklonski in eastern Belarus. A Belarusian regiment under the control of the Zaporozhian Host existed in 1655–7. In 1656 Khmelnytsky took under his protection Slutsk principality, which belonged to Prince B. Radziwill, then in 1657 Staryi Bykhau, granting it the right to free trade with Ukraine, and finally, on 8 July 1657, at the request of the Pynske nobility, Pynske, Mazyr, and Turiv counties. These actions greatly disturbed Muscovy, which began, in V'iacheslav Lypynsky's words, ‘the struggle of two Rus’es over the third Rus’.’ Although Khmelnytsky's death put an end to Ukraine's expansion into Belarusian territory, the tradition of a ‘Rus’ state’ was preserved in the policies of Ivan Vyhovsky, and traces of it can be found even later.
