Myths and Realities of the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654

II. THE MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND ODDITIES OF JANUARY 8 18, 1654

Convened by order of Tsar Aleksei Mikhaylovich on October 1, 1653, the Zemski sobor, or General Council, resolved to take Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the whole Zaporizhian Cossack Army under “high tsarist protection” and declare war on Poland. Official notification was sent to King Jan Kazimierz perhaps as late as December 31. Moscow sent a high-level delegation to Ukraine about October 9, but failed to draw up the necessary instructions or giving Boyar Vasily Buturlin any credentials. All this material was forwarded to the delegation after it had left. This haste, rather untypical for seventeenth century Muscovy, can be perhaps attributed to a keen desire to strike a deal with Khmelnytsky before officially declaring war on Poland. However, desires seldom coincide with the true state of affairs.

Rather strange and absolutely unpredictable delays began in areas under tsarist jurisdiction. The point was not only in poor roads and lackadaisical attitude, the traditional and timeless woe of Moscow. For instance, after Buturlin had already reached the Ukrainian border, he received a message that the tsarist standard and the text of the speech he was to deliver to the hetman and senior Cossack officers had been sent to him. But they had been irreparably damaged en route, so the tsar had ordered new ones. Another major misadventure involved the mace sent by Aleksei Mikhaylovich to Bohdan Khmelnytsky: a few of its precious stones were missing from it! Buturlin had to immediately restore the tsarist insignia at his own expense, but when he returned to Moscow, the government compensated him. On the evening of December 31, the tsar’s delegation arrived at Pereyaslav, where it was welcomed by local Colonel Pavlo Teteria.

WHY DID KHMELNYTSKY NOT HURRY TO GO TO PEREYASLAV?

After arriving at Pereyaslav, Boyar Buturlin had to wait nearly a week to begin talks with Khmelnytsky. The hetman had a valid excuse. Having just returned from the Zhanetsk campaign, he at last had an opportunity to pay last Christian respects to his elder son Tymosha who had died on Moldovan soil several months before. After the funeral ceremony in Chyhyryn, the hetman was again delayed for some time on a Dnipro crossing point near Domontov. The ice that covered the river was not hard enough to hold up the hetman’s carriage.

Khmelnytsky arrived at Pereyaslav on the night of January 6. General Recorder Ivan Vyhovsky and other senior officers came on the next day. It was not until the evening of January 7 that Khmelnytsky, accompanied by Vyhovsky and Teteria, had the first informal meeting with Boyar Buturlin, where they outlined the procedure of proclaiming the tsar’s protectorate over Ukraine. The boyar suggested that the ceremony of handing the tsar’s credentials to the hetman be held in the courtyard of the manor in which Buturlin was staying. Then the political act of placing Ukraine under the tsar’s protection was to be consummated in an oath-taking ceremony at the town’s cathedral. Finally, Khmelnytsky was to be awarded the mace and the standard.

The hetman had no objections to this scenario. All that Khmelnytsky added was a proposal that a senior officers’ rada or council be convened the next morning, so that he could acquaint the colonels with his intention to “stand under the high tsarist hand.” All the other items of the program, such as accepting tsarist credentials, swearing in the senior Cossacks, and transferring the tsarist insignia, were to remain in force.

How many Cossack radas were held in Pereyaslav on January 8, 1654, and which of them should be celebrated?

The morning of January 8, 1654, began according to plan. Yet, as the senior Cossacks assembled early in the morning, Khmelnytsky suddenly hit upon an idea to convene another General Rada, a meeting of all Cossacks, in the afternoon. Everyone understood that it takes far more time to prepare this kind of a gathering, since the hetman had disbanded the Cossack army after the exhausting 1653 autumn campaign. He had allowed his men to go home. Some lived hundreds of miles from Pereyaslav. Only local Cossacks and senior commanders invited by Khelnytsky were stationed in and in the vicinity of the town.

Two questions arise, one, regarding representation at the afternoon rada , and two, the very reason why it should have been convened. The hetman had last assembled a General Rada in 1651. From then on, aware of this assembly’s clumsiness and ineffectiveness, he only sought counsel from members of a more mobile senior officers’ rada. It is not known to which of the senior officers it occurred to allegedly convene the General Rada . Apparently, the hetman’s government tried to dissuade the Poles from continuing the war against the Zaporizhian Army which now had a strong ally, as well as to show the whole Ukraine and its neighbors the fact of the international recognition of a break with Jan Kazimierz.

At 2 p.m., by the senior officers’ order, drummers began to call for the assembly of what is known as the “Pereyaslav Rada .” It has become a cult subject in the Soviet historical science, and so much part of official Soviet ideology, along with old school required reading, belles-lettres, painting, and cinema, that it seemingly requires no further comment because everything is clear. But the truth is different...

First of all, before judging whether more or less well-known scenes of the 1654 Pereyaslav events are historically authentic, it is worth recalling Kozma Prutkov’s quip that you can hardly trust the inscription on the elephant’s cage if some other creature is inside. In addition, the well-known monumental images of the Ukrainian people’s wholesome rapture in front of Khmelnytsky and Buturlin run counter to reality for the simple reason that the tsarist envoy did not attend the General Rada, staying behind at his lodging place.

Also questionable is the claim of well-known Cossack chronicler Samiylo Velychko that, when addressing the rada, the hetman read out articles of his treaty with the tsar. This story was later repeated in the works of well-known historians, such as Mykola Kostomarov, who started a deep-seated historiographic tradition. Khmelnytsky could not have read the treaty because it had not yet even been negotiated. All that the rada really did was formally proclaim that an alliance should be formed with the Muscovite tsar rather than any other potentate.

What does not also fit in with the ideal picture of nationwide jubilation are the events that unfolded a little later at the Peryaslav cathedral where the hetman and the envoy arrived after Buturlin had handed over the tsarist credentials at his lodging place. When the Ukrainian clergy and Russian priests who accompanied Buturlin on his way to Ukraine were ready to begin a ceremonial service, it turned out that the two parties... had neglected to spell out the oath-taking procedure. Khmelnytsky and the senior officers knew very well the way international agreements were concluded and nobility was “brought into submission” to the monarch in Poland. There, the king and his subjects made a reciprocal vow not to break the pledges taken. So the Cossacks were sure that after the Ukrainian side read out the text of the oath, the Russians would do the same. But Buturlin, raised in an entirely different political culture, said that no Muscovite tsar had ever taken an oath before his subjects.

Since the cathedral was not the best place for debating this point, Khmelnytsky left the tsarist delegation there and, accompanied by the senior officers, went to the house of Colonel Teteria to convene a third Cossack rada of the day. This meeting concerned only senior officers. As Buturlin wrote in his official report, the hetman and the colonels held a lengthy consultation about what to do, while the Russian delegation nervously waited in the cathedral. At last, the hetman sent his messengers, Colonels Pavlo Teteria and Hryhory Lesnytsky, who repeated the demand that Buturlin read out the tsar’s oath. The envoy responded that he could not do so, and a brief political science debate still began in the cathedral. Teteria and Lesnytsky, noblemen by birth, cited the practice of Polish kings. However, the tsarist envoy found this example unconvincing because Polish kings were, firstly, “unfaithful,” secondly, “not autocratic,” and, thirdly, “they always renege on what they swear to.”

It would be wrong to say that this reasoning fully satisfied the Ukrainians, but it surely convinced them that the current situation might end up in a diplomatic embarrassment. Such a turn of events could thwart Khmelnytsky’s long- time efforts to conclude an agreement with the tsar, which had already been announced at the rada as a fait accompli . Clearly, such developments could suit neither Chyhyryn nor Moscow, for the government of Aleksei Mikhaylovich had already declared war on Poland. The impasse was broken when the hetman and the senior officers finally agreed to swear allegiance to the tsar, while Buturlin assured them, perhaps counting on Aleksei Mikhaylovich’s word of honor, that the tsar would obligatorily confirm all the Zaporizhian Army’s rights and freedoms.

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

So Khmelnytsky and his advisors had to content themselves with these promises, and only time could show the true share of sincere truth and perfidy in them. But as the short winter day of January 8, 1654, was coming to an end, the allies came out of the cathedral and the hetman received the tsar’s standard, the mace and a symbolic garment ( ferezeya ). The envoy and Khmelnytsky had a brief conversation. Too many emotions had been expressed on that hard day. The future would bring even harder negotiations regarding practical implementation of the promises made by the tsar’s boyar.

The future also brought the creation of a myth about historical inevitability, nationwide expression of will, a conflict-free solution of problems, and Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s unconditional and unqualified pursuit of the “reunification of Ukraine and Russia.” This myth originated from overly zealous descendants. In 1654, as historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky aptly noted over two centuries later, neither Khmelnytsky nor his trusted lieutenants felt what latter-day historians called fateful significance of the moment. On that day, the hetman finally managed to enlist the support of a strong ally in his war against Poland. He considered this action a major coup. The talks on the nature of this alliance were to have started on the next day, January 9, 1654.