The story of an ‘accidental man’ in power
CHOICE ONE: EURASIAN (MUSCOVY)
“Glory to Hetman Khmelnytsky!” the Cossack brass cheered Bohdan Khmelnytsky when he announced that his son Yuri would take his mace. Without doubt, he realized that his eldest son Tymish would have made a far better hetman; he had a stronger will, intellect, and was in much better physical shape, but he made the announcement in the spring of 1657, four years after Tymish had died of wounds in the siege of the Suchava fortress in Moldavia [currently Moldova]. Most importantly, Bohdan wanted political power to remain in the family.
Vyacheslav Lypynsky noticed that Bohdan Khmelnytsky often spoke of “myself and my descendants” in his universals [decrees]. However, it took Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s singular talent and invincible character (Colonel Pavlo Teteria, one of his associates, wrote that the hetman “had everything and everybody under control; his men would do exactly as he wished). In other words, wrote Lypynsky, only a “brilliant autocrat could hold in his powerful hands that motley crowd of associates, varying in tradition, language, and culture.”
Determined to make Yuri his successor, Bohdan Khmelnytsky resorted to repressive measures. Legend (although partially documented) has it that he ordered Myrhorod Colonel Hryhory Lisnytsky executed on learning that he supported Ivan Vyhovsky, not Yuri. Vyhovsky was shackled and left laying face down under the open sky for almost a whole day. To think that the immensely responsible hetman’s office was to be taken by a 16-year- old youth, of whom Russian boyar Boris Sheremetyev said, “That little hetman ought to herd geese rather than hold that office...”
Events, however, took their predestined course. Bohdan Khmelnytsky died on July 27, 1657. The Cossack brass, faced with unstable relationships with the Moscow Tsar, imminent war with Poland, and Crimean tensions, decided to take no risks and persuaded Yuri to announce that he was unwilling and unprepared to take the hetman’s mace; that he wanted instead to study in Kyiv. Ivan Vyhovsky was proclaimed hetman in August 1657.
Yuri’s time came in 1659. Ukraine was gripped by devastation. Most of the Left Bank Cossacks, brainwashed by Moscow demagoguery and intimidated, were quickly losing all national bearings (as usual, the propertied Cossack brass were concerned primarily with power and property). It was then they remembered “little Hetman Yuri.” To the Russian-minded Cossack colonels (e.g., Vasyl Zolotarenko, Yakym Somko, Tymish Tsiutsiura), he looked a most convenient tool.
A Cossack Rada [Council], held in Hetmanivka not far from Kyiv in the fall of 1659, saw a well-rehearsed coup. Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky was deposed (mostly by Left Bank Cossacks voting him down, foreboding Ukraine’s rift) and Yuri Khmelnytsky proclaimed Hetman. The 18-year-old Ukrainian leader had to make his political choice in extremely adverse conditions, with the troops of the Russian Voivode (governor) Trubetskoy stationed nearby.
Despite his stubbornness (and cruelty, as will be demonstrated further on), resolving to assert his power, Yuri took the line of least resistance (as is often the case with such characters). The new hetman immediately held talks with the Russians, as with a superior force, and arrived in Pereyaslav, in late October 1659, to meet with Trubetskoy. The Tsarist Voivode turned out ambitious, tough, and resourceful. He made the most of his position. Yuri arrived practically without any troops and Trubetskoy managed to actually isolate him and dictated the terms and conditions of a peace treaty (the so-called Pereyaslav Treaty-II) that were most humiliating for Ukraine. The Russian side insisted that the clauses at issue were the genuine clauses contained in the original Treaty of Pereyaslav, signed by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1654 and sworn by the Cossacks. In reality, the original document was falsified. Mykhailo Hrushevsky pointed out that the second Pereyaslav treaty had fatal consequences for Ukraine.
He described the scandalous role played by the national elite at the time: “Moscow upset all their plans and they gave in and swore allegiance to Russia, but bore the grudge against treacherous Moscow. They failed, however, to look deeper into the matter and try to analyze the reasons for their defeat and Moscow’s victory [and those reasons were] their aloofness from the people, and the fact that they relied in their policy ... not on their people’s conscious assistance and participation.” Yuri Khmelnytsky would later shamelessly admit, “They kept me prisoner in Moscow for two weeks; they did to me as they willed and there was no one to help.” Such was his first pro- Russian choice.
CHOICE TWO: EUROPEAN (POLAND)
The following year 1660, Yuri Khmelnytsky, acting as an obedient vassal, led a 30,000-strong force to join Vasily Sheremetyev’s army in another war against Poland. And again he remained true to himself, siding with the winner. After the Russian and Ukrainian troops were surrounded by the Polish army, Sheremetyev surrendered (the event went down in history as the Chudnovo Defeat). Yuri and the Cossack brass promptly signed the Treaty of Slobodishche (an even worse, more humiliating version of the 1658 Hadiach Treaty, depriving Ukraine of all autonomy, once again making it de facto part of the Rzeczpospolita Polish Kingdom).
This time Yuri Khmelnytsky held fast to the new ally. Cossacks opposing the hetman’s pro-Polish stand were purged. According to Dmytro Yavornytsky, Zaporozhzhian Cossacks referred to Yuri Khmelnytsky not as His Highness but as His Godlessness and wrote to him, “We are now in possession of conclusive evidence that you are incurably rabid; having shed rivers of human blood this summer, you are preparing yourself for another bloodshed; you are forcing yourself and our brothers into the accursed Polish League...”
In the end, hearing words of wrath and damnation from all Ukrainian lands, feeling “ailing and ill-equipped to live,” Yuri took vows under the name of Gedeon. Pavlo Teteria became Hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine. Ahead lay the most horrifying years of Ukrainian devastation.
CHOICE THREE: ASIAN (TURKEY)
The youngest son of Bohdan Khmelnytsky seemed to have sunk in oblivion. Little is known about his life in 1663-77, except that Yuri- Gedeon was eventually ordained archimandrite, before spending a term in prison in Malbork (then Prussia), and that in 1672, during a military campaign against Poland, he was taken prisoner of war by the Turks...
In 1677, the sultan remembered Khmelnytsky Jr. The ex-hetman was released from the Edichkul Fortress and, according to Dmytro Yavornytsky, “clad in a golden zhupan [Cossack mantle of rank], was given horses from the sultan’s stables and proclaimed Hetman of Ukraine...” — rather “Prince of Sarmatia and Chief of the Zaporozhian Host.”
Without doubt, it was the most disgraceful event in Yuri’s life (which was not too long). People started rallying round him, still trusting the good name of Khmelnytsky, but only for a short while. Yuri took an active part in two Turkish and Tatar campaigns against the celebrated town of Chyhyryn (in 1677 and 1678). After the second onslaught his father’s Cossack capital was practically wiped off the face of the earth. The ill-famed hetman chose Nemyriv in Podillia as his capital. His people ruthlessly marauded their fellow Ukrainians. And there were the Turks (a contemporary wrote that the Turks levied taxes “on children born today, on the right hand and left leg, on every finger”). It was then Yuri gave full vent to his pathologic cruelty. Dmytro Doroshenko recalled that he “ordered Astamatiy, his own assigned hetman, tortured to death, then a number of ranking Cossack officers suffered the same lot. Finally, his inhuman conduct outraged even the Turks and they executed that ‘Prince of Ukraine’ in Kamyanets, in the fall of 1681.”
People who knew Yuri Khmelnytsky well described him as “a born eunuch, little Yuri was a malicious character, intellectually limited, and physically weak.” His life story is a bitter lesson showing where one’s unscrupulousness can lead a country dominated by the proverbial vanity fair and where, in the words of a 17th century chronicler, “the rulers are dragons devouring themselves.”
