THE DRAMA OF POLTAVA

The 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava (June 27, 1709, Old Style) is still far away. Nevertheless, preparations are already underway in Russia, where traditionally oriented historical articles rooted in the principles of great-power imperialist ideology are already being published. It would not be remiss to take a look at the events connected with this historic battle from a different angle.

The protracted conflict for control of the Baltic coast between Russia and Sweden in the late 17th century and early part of the 18th century, known as the Great Northern War, marked one of the most dramatic periods in Ukrainian history. The expeditionary corps under the command of the young Swedish king and distinguished military leader Charles XII won a number of spectacular victories, defeating Peter I’s army at Narva (1700) and the troops of the Polish king Augustus II the Strong (1702), conquering Saxony (1706), and invading Russia in 1708.

Hetman Ivan Mazepa decided to take advantage of the situation and liberate Ukraine from Moscow’s yoke. This time, however, fate turned her back on the talented Swedish military leader and the Ukrainian hetman. Owing to a number of tragic mistakes and miscalculations, the Swedish army was defeated at the Battle of Poltava, and Charles XII and his ally Hetman Mazepa were forced to flee to the Ottoman Empire. Peter I took advantage of this turning point in the war, which was to Russia’s advantage, and of Mazepa’s “ treason,” to establish his rule throughout Ukraine, enforcing a harsh regime of occupation terror and violence against the Ukrainian people. The unique Cossack-Hetman republic was transformed into Little Russia, which later became the southeastern province of the Russian empire.

WHOSE WEAPONS TRIUMPHED AT POLTAVA?

Strange as it may seem, I have been fascinated by this question for a long time — ever since I was a college student. I don’t remember whether I was in my second or third year at the History Faculty at Mechnikov State University in Odesa. I had to write a term paper on the Battle of Poltava. This was a regular academic topic, nothing special about it, so I didn’t anticipate any problems. Both historical and literary sources painted a clear picture: the Russian troops had scored a brilliant victory, Charles XII’s Swedish army was defeated, and at the same time the battle marked the inglorious end of the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa.

I remember that the professor supervising my project advised me to concentrate precisely on Mazepa. First, I had to demonstrate that Mazepa had become hetman illegitimately, because it was then an established fact that Prince Golitsyn of Russia had received a large bribe from him. (This fact was mentioned, in one way or another, in almost all the literary sources on Mazepa and Poltava.) Second, I had to demonstrate how this “treacherous” hetman led Peter I by the nose for more than 20 years, and that it was only on the eve of the Battle of Poltava that he showed his true colors. Third, I had to emphasize that Mazepa was a sworn enemy of the Ukrainian people because he wanted to separate them from the fraternal Russian people.

I stuck to these guidelines, studied the pertinent sources, and made meticulous use of all the cliches. Naturally, quoting from Pushkin’s long narrative poem “Poltava” was a must. (All the students knew this poem by heart, especially the parts dealing with Peter I and Mazepa.) We all remembered that Peter I was “splendid, formidable like a divine thunderstorm,” and that Mazepa was an unsurpassed scoundrel and villain.

All that was left was the formality of defending my term paper.

During this standard procedure unexpected problems sprang up. The dean of our faculty, the late Kyrylo Myhal (we called him a Westerner because he had recently come to Odesa from western Ukraine, from Lviv, if I remember correctly; he read his lectures only in Ukrainian, which was almost a sign of opposition to the regime that existed during the postwar years under Stalin), who was sitting in the classroom silently listening to the students defending their term papers, suddenly showed an interest in my humble presentation and peppered me with questions. I had no answers to most of them. Now I know that those questions were not addressed to me personally.

Other lecturers who were present tried to come to my rescue, defending the official point of view on this question. Afterwards, there was a debate with meaningful innuendos, references to little known authors and literary sources. Among other things we heard about an unusual book called Istoriia Rusov [The History of the Rus’ People] as well as works by banned historians. The students were exchanging puzzled looks; we didn’t understand what they were talking about. For us the whole thing was obvious: the Russian army had won a victory at Poltava. This fact was mentioned in every Soviet history textbook, and Pushkin laid special emphasis on this in his poem: The mighty Charles, enraged,
Sees not dispersing crowds
Of Narva’s miserable runaways,
But shining regiments,
All men there slim and perfectly correct,
With deadly bayonets
Held high in an unbroken line...

But these “arguments” clearly failed to satisfy our dean. It was only later that I understood why, after I had acquainted myself with historical sources that offered a convincingly different view of the drama of Poltava in 1709.

THE MYSTERY OF THE “MAJOR BATTLE”

When I was familiarizing myself with the historical literature on the Battle of Poltava, I noticed an almost complete absence of any data on its heroes, the officers in command of all those “shining regiments” and “rows of unwavering bayonets.” No names of the Russian generals who commanded their troops during the battle are mentioned. But where the Battle of Borodino is concerned, history has recorded not only its main figures — Kutuzov, Barclay de Tolly, and Bagration — but also the names of almost all the generals, colonels, and many other officers of lower rank who were defending Bagration’s fleches and Shevardin’s redoubts, who effectively counterattacked the enemy and showed some degree of bravery under enemy fire. We know the names of all those who “glorified Russian arms near the village of Borodino” (Mikhail Kutuzov). Among them were commanders of armies, corps, and divisions: generals Z. Olsufiev, M. Tuchkov, P. Stroganov, A. Bakhmetiev, N. Lavrov, I. Dorokhov, M. Raevsky, M. Platov, I. Paskevich, I. Vasylchykov, D. Neverovsky, M. Vorontsov, A. Kutaisov, I. Panchulidze, G. Emanuel, I. Markov, M. Lebedev, A. Gorchakov, P. Konovnitsyn; the colonels D. Davidov, A. Chernyshov, etc. The list of the known heroes of Borodino could be continued.

Examples of other battles may be found. Historical sources record the names of those who were in command of the regiments that fought in the Battle of Grunwald (1410) under banners decorated with a golden lion against a dark and light blue background, routing the Teutonic knights, or in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380) in which Mamai was defeated.

Once again, there is practically no information about those who were victorious in the battle against the “mighty Charles” in July 1709, on the banks of the Vorskla River near Poltava. Why are the authors of numerous works about Peter I and his age mysteriously silent about the heroes of his “major battle”? Even such a specialized and fundamental publication as the multivolume Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, in its rather substantial entry on the Battle of Poltava, vaguely mentions only two or three names apart from Peter I and his closest associate and friend, the former street vendor of buns stuffed with peas — the future Generalissimo Aleksandr Menshikov.

Neither are Pushkin’s personae in his poem about Poltava numerous: apart from the “noble Sheremetiev” he mentions only Bruce, Bour, and Repnin — the “baby birds from Peter’s nest.../ His friends and sons.”

Some light is shed on the mystery of that “major battle” by documentary and literary sources, such as D. Bantysh-Kamensky’s History of Little Russia, M. Markevych’s History of Little Russia, and Istoriia Rusov, written by the Cossack officer and chronicler Hryhorii Hrabianka. In fact, the Ukrainian regiments that remained loyal to the Russian tsar and were under the command of the battle-hardened military leader Semen Palii, played a decisive role in the Battle of Poltava and in defeating Charles XII’s army. Colonels Pavlo Polubotok, Ivan Skoropadsky, Danylo Apostol, and other courageous Cossack leaders were the ones whom the Journal of Peter the Great described as “the invincible Swedish gentlemen” who soon showed “their backs when the entire enemy army was completely overrun by our troops.”

“This battle,” The History of the Rus’ People relates, “was begun by the Swedes at dawn, when their cavalry attacked the regular Russian cavalry and forced it to retreat behind its entrenchments. However, the Cossack commander Palei [sic] with his Cossacks attacked the Swedish flanks and front line, fought their way through the breaches thus formed and defeated them with spears and rifles; the enemy panicked and ran to the fieldworks, losing General Schlippenbach, who was taken prisoner. The Cossacks chased the Swedes to their entrenchments, making way for a strong column of Russian infantry under the command of General Menshchikov [sic]...The Swedes, without their artillery and having suffered heavy losses at the hand of the Russians, left huge gaps in their front line and Palei, noticing this, broke through those gaps with his Cossacks and caused a great deal of turmoil in the enemy ranks. Overpowered by the Cossacks, the Swedes took to their heels.”

Therefore, the Cossack regiments of Semen Palii, Ivan Skoropadsky, and other heroes of that battle made the Swedes “show their backs.” If they had been absent from the battlefield, it would have been Peter and Menshikov, rather than Charles and Mazepa, who would have had to flee from Poltava.

But the warriors of the 20,000-strong Ukrainian Cossack corps were never acclaimed for their feat of arms. Peter I did not deem it necessary to acknowledge their achievement and praise them as heroes. On the contrary, the Battle of Poltava turned into a real tragedy for Ukraine. Enraged by Mazepa, the tsar decided to take revenge on the entire Ukrainian nation. Not only were thousands of Mazepa’s associates shot, hanged, and impaled, but the whole Cossack community suffered the tsar’s wrath. The Zaporozhian Sich was sacked and looted. By physically destroying Ukraine’s finest forces and ruining the material well-being of the Ukrainian nation, the Russian tsar depleted its strength so that it would never again be able to oppose Russia.

Istoriia Rusov continues: “The glorious and decisive victory over the Swedes was usually celebrated by thanksgiving services and feasts to which all the captured Swedish generals and ministers were invited. They were given back their swords and made welcome by the tsar... After that there were many promotions for generals and officers, and the men were given extra pay. The Little Russians and their troops were the only ones... who were denied rewards and gratitude.

Peter I put Mazepa’s act of treason to the best use in order to “take Ukraine in hand” (his own words). Instead of gratitude, Ukrainians suffered oppression to an unprecedented degree. Petro Polubotok, acting hetman of Ukraine (colonel of the Chernihiv regiment, he was among the Russian tsar’s supporters and one of four Cossack colonels who fought on the Russian side at the Battle of Poltava), wrote an angry letter that read in part:

“Instead of gratitude, all we have received is disrespect and mistreatment; we have found ourselves in ultimate bondage, we are paying an outrageous and unbearable tribute, we have to build walls and dig channels, drain impenetrable swamps, covering them with the festering dead bodies of our men, thousands of victims of fatigue, hunger, and unhealthy air; all these misfortunes and this mistreatment have multiplied under the current order; Muscovite officials are governing us, they do not know our rights and customs and are practically illiterate; all they know is that they can treat us any way they please.”

THE ENEMY OF RUSSIA AND PETER

Prof. Oleksandr Ohloblyn, a noted Mazepa scholar, convincingly proves that, although “enemy of Russia and Peter” is how Pushkin calls Mazepa in his poem “Poltava,” repeating this definition in multiple versions a dozen times, Mazepa was neither a Russophile nor a Russophobe. He believed that Ukraine could coexist with Russia on the terms and conditions of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Treaty of Pereiaslav, for such was the real situation he had inherited from his predecessors. Under these circumstances, Mazepa did his utmost to help develop his country, its culture, and the Ukrainian national spirit.

What made Mazepa leave one ruler and come under the aegis of another? Why did Peter’s favorite, who was the tsar’s most devoted servant for more than 20 years, suddenly become a “traitor” and his “implacable enemy”?

Of course, Mazepa’s decision was not made on the spur of the moment. Unbiased Ukrainian historians are seeking answers to this and other questions primarily by analyzing the Realpolitik of the Muscovite state, which was consistently aimed at the complete destruction of Ukraine’s national sovereignty and singular statehood, and its gradual incorporation into Russia. It is an established fact that this process began immediately after 1654, when Khmelnytsky forced the Ukrainian Cossack community into the yoke of the “Eastern Orthodox tsar.”

Toward the end of the 17th century the Muscovite government had begun reducing the range of issues under the jurisdiction of the hetman authorities — primarily the right to establish and maintain relations with foreign governments. Also, Muscovite control over the domestic political endeavors of the Ukrainian authorities, Ukraine’s fiscal policy, etc., was enhanced. A number of powers originally within the jurisdiction of the hetman and his government were being taken over by special Muscovite agencies.

The loss of autonomy of the hetman state became especially conspicuous in the early 18th century, under Peter I. For him and his successors, Ukraine and its people were not an autonomous state or nation but only construction material for raising the building of the Russian empire even higher. The more Peter I grossly interfered in Ukraine’s domestic affairs, the greater the economic burden on its population, which had to maintain Russian garrisons, pay heavy taxes to Russia’s budget, and so on.

Paying for the maintenance of numerous Russian garrisons stationed in the hetman state was especially onerous for the Ukrainian people. There were times when the number of Russian troops stationed in Ukraine reached 100,000 officers and men. As a result, the population suffered, especially in the countryside where peasants had to supply horse-driven carts, firewood, fodder for horses, and carry out other duties. To maintain the Russian forces in Ukraine, its commanders requisitioned hundreds of thousands of head of cattle and other livestock, and immense amounts of bread and other products. Ukraine’s agriculture declined as a result. It was then Ukrainian villagers recited these bitter humorous lines: Little Muscovites, falcons,
You’ve eaten all our oxen;
If you keep well afterwards,
You’ll eat the last cows we have.

Ukrainian Cossack troops were used as cannon fodder in the many wars Russia waged in the south and the Baltics, where they were thrown into the bloodiest losing battles. However, the greatest humiliation came when Peter I ordered Cossack regiments to build Russia’s new capital city, Saint Petersburg. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians died during the construction project, their skeletons left all over the Baltic marshlands.

There is no precise information on the number of Ukrainian Cossacks, peasants, and craftsmen who perished during the construction of the fortifications and canals, and the swamp-draining operations. However, the mortality and injury rate may be estimated according to this statistic: 13,000 Cossacks died during the construction of the Ladoga Channel in 1721-25. Colonel Cherniak submitted a channel progress report to the Russian Senate in 1722. It reads, in part:

“There are large numbers of sick people and dead bodies on the site of the Ladoga Channel, particularly in the digging sections; high fever and swollen legs are the most wide-spread diseases, and people are dying from this. However, the officers charged with supervising this project pay no heed to the needs of the poor Cossacks. On orders from Mr. Leontiev, the foreman, they beat them mercilessly as they work — although they work not only day and night but also on Sundays and feast days. Therefore, I fear that these Cossacks will be destroyed like last year, when barely one-third of the crippled made it home...”

In his book Vladimir Raevsky (part of the popular Soviet series “ZhZL” devoted to the life stories of prominent personalities, published in Moscow in 1987), the Russian writer Foka Burlachuk recounts the construction of the “Northern Palmyra,” which was supposed to open a window for Russia to the rest of Europe: “Ten thousand Cossacks were herded to the construction site from Chernigov gubernia alone. None of them returned home. Our people had to pay a very dear price for this ‘window’”!

Taras Shevchenko lashes out at Peter I for his cruel treatment of Ukrainian Cossacks, calling him an inveterate torturer of Ukraine. In his poem “The Dream” the patriotic hetman Polubotok curses the frenzied Russian tsar: Merciful Lord, my spirit droops!
О greedy and voracious Tsar!
О wicked ruler that you are,
О serpent that all earth should shun,
What have you to my Cossacks done?
For you have glutted all these swamps
With noble bones! To feed your pomps,
You reared your shining capital
On tortured corpses of them all...

This subject is also broached in The Books of the Genesis of the Ukrainian People, the action program of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood. Paragraph 90 states that the Cossacks found themselves in “lasting bondage” at the hands of the Muscovite tsar, who left “hundreds of thousands of corpses in the ditches and built his capital on their bones.” So have the army’s leaders, Peter’s dogs,
Torn her apart and gnawed her bloody bones....
As their poor brothers were to swamplands driven
To build a capital...

This was why Mazepa decided to make his tragic attempt to rid Ukraine of Russia’s dominance and restore its national independence. In late October 1708 he sent a letter to the colonel of the Starodub regiment, Ivan Skoropadsky, detailing his reasons for siding with King Charles XII of Sweden: “The Muscovite potentate has long harbored all sorts of intentions against us. Lately, they have begun to seize Ukrainian cities and place them under their control, expelling their residents, who have been looted and driven to misery, replacing them with their troops. My friends have secretly warned me — and now I can see it for myself — that the enemy wants to take in hand all of us, the hetman, colonels, and the entire military command, and place [us] under his tyrannical yoke; they want to erase forever the Zaporozhian name and turn everyone into dragoons and soldiers, and place the entire Ukrainian people in eternal bondage. After I learned this, I realized that the Muscovite potentate set foot on our soil not to protect us from the Swedes, but to destroy us with fire, looting, and murder. And so, with the knowledge and consent of the officers, we have decided to submit to the protection of the Swedish king in the hope that he will protect us from the Muscovite tyrannical yoke and restore our freedoms...”

The drama of Poltava in 1709 and the punitive operations of the Russian troops imposed further sufferings on Ukraine. The economic and political violence against the Ukrainian people was intensified by its spiritual devastation after Moscow set its political course on assimilating Ukrainians through Russification. In 1720 Peter I issued instructions banning the publication of any books in Ukraine except ecclesiastical works. But religious publications could be printed only after unification with Russian books. The Russian bureaucratic language now reigned in Ukrainian offices. The same was true of education. Ukrainians even lost their name, having been turned into “Little Russians.”

In implementing his policy, which was aimed at liquidating the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman republic, Peter I consistently extirpated all vestiges of Ukrainian statehood while systematically weakening and physically destroying its population, ruining its well-being, and depleting its strength. The author of Istoriia Rusov had every reason to compare the Russian tsar with Asiatic tyrants and rebuke him for his cruel approach to Ukraine: “Placing an entire people in bondage and possessing slaves and serfs befits an Asiatic tyrant, not a Christian monarch...”

UKRAINE’S OMINOUS ANGEL

It is appropriate here to clarify the relations between Ivan Mazepa and the Swedish king. Istoriia Rusov states that Charles XII guaranteed Ukraine the status of an independent Cossack republic on behalf of his own and other European countries. In a message to the Ukrainian people he writes: “I am aware that the Muscovite tsar, being an inveterate enemy of all peoples and desirous of conquering them, has once again placed the Cossacks under his exclusive bondage, ignoring, denying, and annulling all our rights and liberties set forth in all those treaties and agreements solemnly proclaimed and signed...

“Therefore, I do promise — and solemnly pledge to keep it before the whole world — to restore the land of the Cossacks, or the Rus’ land, to its original independent state and not dependent on any other country, concerning which I have agreed with your Hetman Mazepa and pledged and ratified by means of written acts, and Europe’s leading countries have pledged to guarantee them.”

The author of Istoriia Rusov provides eloquent proof of the Russian and Swedish troops’ attitude to Ukrainians. “‘I am a servant of the tsar. I serve my Lord and my tsar, for the good of the entire Christian world. Chickens, geese, and girls are ours by the soldier’s right and on our officer’s orders,’ Russian soldiers brazenly declared. In contrast, the Swedes demanded nothing and took away nothing from the burghers by force. They purchased what they needed and paid cash.”

It is regrettable that our people were not destined to benefit from the noble intentions of this outstanding European military leader, who also experienced defeat and landed in a very difficult position. Historians are still trying to ascertain the causes of that dramatic situation with regard to the Swedes, and especially the Ukrainians. Some blame Charles XII for his miscalculations and bad military campaign plans, while others blame Mazepa. Prussia’s King Frederick the Great wrote: “Charles XII is accused of giving in to Mazepa’s promises. However, the Cossack hetman did not betray him; on the contrary, Mazepa himself was deceived by the unexpected course of events, something he could have neither foreseen nor avoided.”

Scholars name a number of tragic circumstances and tactical miscalculations that could have been avoided, with the result that the tragedy at Poltava would never have taken place. Then a Swedish empire would have existed in the northeast, and Russia would have had to make do without that “Baltic window,” just as it has to make do without the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, although the empire sought this for many centuries.

HE WAS DISTINGUISHED BY THE TRAITS OF HIS PEOPLE

In characterizing the majestic figure of Hetman Ivan Mazepa and his role in Ukrainian history, every unbiased Ukrainian should reflect on whether there are even the slightest grounds for regarding as a traitor a statesman who sought to rid his people of social and national oppression. Could the leader of a nation to whom the destiny of his homeland was of the greatest importance and whom foreign diplomats described as a politician who shared “every trait of his people,” have been a traitor of this very people? Can we Ukrainians regard his activities as treasonous, considering that he acted with inspired devotion in such spheres as the protection of the interests of his state, the development of national education, culture, and national spirit, and the construction of dozens of churches?

Aleksandr Bruckner, a Russian historian of the second half of the 19th century, was absolutely correct when he claimed that Mazepa’s alliance with the Swedish king Charles XII “can be no more immoral than the alliance that was made two years later by Dimitrie Cantemir of Moldova and the Russian tsar Peter the Great against the Turkish sultan.” Therefore “the politics of Hetman Mazepa should be regarded as ein Meisterstuck [a masterpiece], and his attempt to rid Ukraine of the dominance of what was then an empire with a low cultural standard, as a heroic act.”

In the history of many nations, leaders who dared to carry out similar feats are eternalized as the greatest and most respected national heroes. Capital cities, even countries, are named for them. Such honors have been conferred on the first American president George Washington, who “betrayed” Great Britain by leading an army of colonists in a war for national independence; Simon Bolivar, who headed the struggle of the South American peoples (Venezuela, Colombia, Peru) against Spanish rule. This number includes the heroes of our neighbors: the Pole Thaddeus Kosciuszko (of Ukrainian descent, incidentally), the Hungarian Sandor Petofi, and many other outstanding leaders of national liberation struggles. After all, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who led the liberation war of the Ukrainian people in 1648-54 also “betrayed” the Rzeczpospolita.

It is a great misfortune that history turned out to be merciless to the Great Hetman, a glorious Ukrainian patriot who sought to gain freedom and champion the dignity of his Fatherland. But exhausted by his difficult struggle, he died branded by anathema. A difficult fate also befell the Ukrainian people, as historical events took a course that in no way benefited Ukraine. For Russia those events were triumphant. For Ukraine, Poltava was a drama whose painful consequences we are still experiencing today.

Prof. Semen Tsviliuk teaches in the Department of Ukrainian State History at Odesa Institute of Law.