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THE COSSACK MYTH

In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, a mysterious manuscriptbegan to circulate among the dissatisfied noble elite of the RussianEmpire. Entitled The History of the Rus′, it became one of the mostinfluential historical texts of the modern era. Attributed to aneighteenth-century Orthodox archbishop, it described the heroicstruggles of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Alexander Pushkin read thebook as a manifestation of Russian national spirit, but TarasShevchenko interpreted it as a quest for Ukrainian national liberation,and it would inspire thousands of Ukrainians to fight for the freedomof their homeland. Serhii Plokhy tells the fascinating story of thetext’s discovery and dissemination, unravelling the mystery of itsauthorship and tracing its subsequent impact onRussian andUkrainianhistorical and literary imagination. In so doing, he brilliantlyilluminates the relationship between history, myth, empire, andnationhood, from Napoleonic times to the fall of the Soviet Union.

serhii plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of UkrainianHistory at Harvard University. His previous publications includeUkraine and Russia: Representations of the Past (2008) and The Originsof the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine andBelarus (2006).

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new studies in european history

Edited by

PETER BALDWIN, University of California, Los AngelesCHRISTOPHER CLARK, University of Cambridge

J AMES B . COLL INS , Georgetown UniversityMIA RODRI

´GUEZ-SALGADO, London School of Economics and Political Science

LYNDAL ROPER, University of OxfordTIMOTHY SNYDER , Yale University

The aim of this series in early modern and modern European history is to publishoutstanding works of research, addressed to important themes across a widegeographical range, from southern and central Europe, to Scandinavia andRussia, from the time of the Renaissance to the Second World War. As itdevelops, the series will comprise focused works of wide contextual range andintellectual ambition.

A full list of titles published in the series can be found at :www.cambridge.org/newstudiesineuropeanhistory






THE COSSACK MYTH

History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires

SERHII PLOKHY






cambridge university press

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Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107022102

# Serhii Plokhy 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Plokhy, Serhii, 1957–The Cossack myth : history and nationhood in the age of empires / Serhii Plokhy.

pages cm. – (New studies in European history)Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-02210-2 (Hardback)1. Ukraine–Historiography. 2. Istoriia Rusov. 3. Istoriia Rusov–Authorship. 4. Ukraine–History–Sources. 5. Cossacks–Ukraine–History–Sources. 6. Cossacks–Ukraine–Folklore.

7. Nationalism–Ukraine–History. 8. Ukraine–Relations–Russia. 9. Russia–Relations–Ukraine. 10. Imperialism–History. I. Title.

DK508.46.P55 2012947.7′00491714–dc23

2012000083

isbn 978-1-107-02210-2 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence oraccuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred toin this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such

websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






For Olena






Contents

List of figures page ixList of maps xNote on transliteration and dates xi

Introduction 1

part i the mystery

1 A call for freedom 15

2 The Cossack annals 28

3 The birth of the myth 47

part ii on a cold trail

4 A noble heart 69

5 The Cossack prince 88

6 The Kyiv manuscript 108

part iii pieces of a puzzle

7 A matter of time 131

8 Uncovering the motive 149

9 How did he do it? 170

10 The Cossack treasure 188

vii






part iv unusual suspects

11 People and places 207

12 The Cossack aristocrats 225

13 The liberated gentry 243

14 A history teacher 261

part v a family circle

15 A missing name 287

16 A son-in-law 307

17 The rivals 328

Epilogue 351

Appendix: Cossack family networks 369

Acknowledgments 371

Index 374

viii Contents






Figures

Between pages 176 and 177

1 The History of the Rus′, c. 1818. (Andrei Sheptytsky NationalMuseum, Manuscript Division, no. 563.)

2 A Chronicle of Little Russia, 1813. (Volodymyr VernadskyLibrary of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine(Kyiv), Manuscript Institute, I, no. 6099.)

3 Aleksandr von Brigen. From A. F. Brigen, Istoricheskie sochineniia(Irkutsk, 1986).

4 Mykhailo Myklashevsky. From Chernigovskie gubernskievedomosti, no. 666 (1895).

5 Myklashevsky mansion in Ponurivka at the turn of the twentiethcentury (Photo Collection of Chernihiv State Archives).

6 Archbishop Heorhii Konysky (unknown artist, NizhynEparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church).

7 Hryhorii Poletyka as the author of the History of the Rus′.From Narodzheni Ukraınoiu. Memorial ′nyi al ′manakh udvokh tomakh (Kyiv, 2002), vol. ii.

8 Vasyl Poletyka. From Kievskaia starina, no. 1 (1893).9 Oleksandr Bezborodko. By Dmytro Levytsky. From Russkaia

Zhivopis′ v XVIII veke, vol. i: D. G. Levitskii (St. Petersburg,1902).

10 Ivan Hudovych. From Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti,no. 592 (1895).

11 Mykola Borozdna. From Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti,no. 164 (1894).

12 Stepan Shyrai. From Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti,no. 632 (1895).

13 Nikolai Repnin. From V.V. Ruban, Ukraıns′kyi portretnyizhyvopys pershoı polovyny XIX stolittia (Kyiv, 1984).

ix






Maps

1 The Hetmanate and surrounding territories in the 1750s.From Zenon E. Kohut, Russian Centralism and UkrainianAutonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. xiv. page xii

2 The Starodub regiment in the 1750s. xiii3 Imperial provinces: the Hetmanate as part of imperial

Russia, 1809. From Kohut, Russian Centralism, p. xv. xiv4 Modern Ukraine. From Encyclopedia of Ukraine, ed.

Volodomyr Kubijovyc and Danylo Husar Struk,vol. v (Toronto, 1993), p. 441. xv

x






Note on transliteration and dates

In the text of this book, a simplified Library of Congress system is usedto transliterate Ukrainian and Russian personal names and toponyms.The same system is applied in non-bibliographic references to persons andplaces in the footnotes. In bibliographic references, where the reader mustbe able to reconstruct Cyrillic spelling precisely from its Latin-alphabettransliteration, the full Library of Congress system (ligatures and brevesomitted) is used. Toponyms are transliterated from the language of thecountry in which they are now located, with the notable exception of theStarodub region of the Russian Federation, which in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries constituted part of the Ukrainian Hetmanate. In thisparticular case, both Ukrainian and Russian spellings are given on firstmention. Pre-1918 dates in this book are given according to the Juliancalendar, which in the nineteenth century lagged behind the Gregoriancalendar by twelve days.

xi






Dnieper River

Desn

a River

Myrhorod

0 100 200 300 km

0 50 100 150 200 miles

Starodub

Chernihiv

Nizhyn

KyivPereiaslavLubny

Poltava

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The Hetmanate

The Hetmanate andsurrounding territoriesin the 1750s

POLISH-

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COMMONWEALTH

N O V O - S E R B I AS L AV I A N O - S E R B I A

Izium

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S L O B O D A U K R A I N E

C O S S A C K S O FKharkiv

Z A P O R O Z H I A N C O S S A C K S

T AT A R S

Zaporozhian Sich

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Bahçesaray

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R U S S I A N

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Map 1 The Hetmanate and surrounding territories in the 1750s.






0 10 20 30 40 50 km

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