Pereyaslav Council

In January 1648, a major anti-Polish uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi began in the Zaporizhia lands. Supported by popular masses and by Crimean Khanate the rebels won a number of victories over the government forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth seeking the increase of Cossack registry (kept at the expense of the state treasury), weakening of the Polish aristocratic oppression, oppression by the Jews who governed estates as well as recovery of positions of the Orthodox Church in own lands. However, the autonomy obtained by Khmelnytsky found itself squeezed between three Great powers: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tsardom of Russia and Ottoman Empire.

Being the main leader of the uprising, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi was not able to declare independence because he was not a legitimate monarch, and there was not such a candidate among other leaders of the uprising. Considering the economic and human resources, the rebellion was taking place in backward regions of the Polish Crown, Kijów (Kyiv, or Kiev), Czernihow (Chernihiv) and Braclaw (Bratslav) voivodeships. The Crimean Khan, the only ally, was not interested in a decisive victory of Cossacks.

The 1653 Zemsky Sobor that took place in Moscow in the fall adopted decision on including Ukraine to Muscovy and on November 2, 1653 the Moscow's government declared war onto the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. To conduct negotiations between two states to Ukraine from Moscow departed a big delegation headed by boyar Vasili Buturlin. In its composition were also okolnichiy I.Olferiev, dyak L.Lopukhin and representatives of clergy.

The travel took almost three months. Besides bad roads and disorder, a new royal standard had to be made, the Buturlin's speech text, and the mace (bulawa) designated to Hetman disappeared several precious stones that had to be recovered. Also, the delegation had to wait almost a week for arrival of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, who was delayed in Chyhyryn at the burial of his older son Tymofiy Khmelnytsky and later was not able to cross Dnieper since the ice on the river was not strong enough.

Boyar Buturlin receiving an oath of loyalty to the Russian Tsar from Bogdan Khmelnitsky

At a meeting between the council of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Vasiliy Buturlin, representative of Tsar Alexey I of the Tsardom of Russia, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. The "Pereyaslav Council" (Pereyaslavs'ka Rada in Ukrainian) of Ukrainians took place on January 18; it was meant to act as the supreme Cossack council and demonstrate the unity and determination of the "Rus' nation". Military leaders and representatives of regiments, nobles and townspeople listened to the speech by the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who expounded the necessity of seeking the Russian protection. The audience responded with applause and consent. The treaty, initiated with Buturlin later on the same day, invoked only protection of the Cossack state by the Tsar and was intended as an act of official separation of Ukraine from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Ukrainian independence had been informally declared earlier in the course of the Uprising by Khmelnytsky). Participants in the preparation of the treaty at Pereyaslav included, besides Khmelnytsky, Chief Scribe Ivan Vyhovsky and numerous other Cossack elders, as well as a large visiting contingent from Russia.[3]

The Cossack leaders tried in vain to exact from Buturlin some binding declarations; the envoy refused, claiming lack of authority and deferred resolution of specific issues to future rulings by the Tsar, which he expected to be favourable to the Cossacks. Khmelnytsky and many Ukrainians (127,000 total, including 64,000 Cossacks, according to the Russian reckoning) ended up swearing allegiance to the Tsar. In many Ukrainian towns, residents were forced to go to the central square to take the oath. Part of the Orthodox clergy took the oath only after a long resistance, and some Cossack leaders did not take the oath.[3] The actual details of the agreement were negotiated the following March and April in Moscow by Cossack emissaries and the Tsardom. The Russians agreed to the majority of the Ukrainian demands, granting the Cossack state broad autonomy, large Cossack register and preservation of the status of the Kiev Orthodox Metropolitan, who would keep reporting to the Patriarch of Constantinople (rather than Moscow). The Cossack hetman was prohibited from conducting independent foreign policy, especially in respect to the Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, as the Tsardom pledged now to provide the Hetmanate's defense. The status of Ukraine, seen by the negotiators as being now in union with the Russian state (rather than Poland), was thus settled. The erroneous but stubborn policies of the Commonwealth are widely seen as the cause of the Cossacks' changed direction, which gave rise to a new and lasting configuration of power in central, eastern and southern Europe.[3]

The seemingly generous provisions of the Pereyaslav-Moscow pact were soon undermined by practical politics, Moscow's imperial policies and Khmelnytsky's own maneuvering. Disappointed by the Truce of Vilna (1656) and other Russian moves, he attempted to extricate the Hetmanate from the dependency. The Pereyaslav treaty led to the outbreak of the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667) and in 1667 to the Truce of Andrusovo, in which eastern Ukraine was ceded by Poland to Russia (in practice it meant a limited recovery of western Ukraine by the Commonwealth). The Cossack Hetmanate, the autonomous Ukrainian state established by Khmelnytsky, was later restricted to left-bank Ukraine and existed under the Russian Empire until it was destroyed by Russia in 1764-1775.[3]

The contemporary written records of the Pereyaslav-Moscow transactions do exist and are kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow.

The eventual consequence for the Hetmanate was the dissolution of the Zaporizhian Host in 1775 and the imposition of serfdom in the region, as well as a systematic process of Russification.[15]

For Russia, the deal eventually led to the full incorporation of the Hetmanate into the Russian state, providing a justification for the title of Russian tsars and emperors, the Autocrat of all the Russias (Russian: Самодержецъ Всероссійскій). Russia, being at that time the only part of former Kievan Rus' which was not dominated by a foreign power, considered itself the successor of Kievan Rus' and the re-unifier of all Rus' lands. Subsequently, in the 20th century, in official Soviet propaganda and history, the Council of Pereyaslav was officially viewed and referred to as an act of "re-unification of Ukraine with Russia".

For the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the deal provided one of the early signs of its gradual decline and eventual demise by the end of the 18th century.

The decision adopted in Pereyaslav is seen by Ukrainian nationalists as a sad occasion and lost chance for Ukrainian independence. The "Rainbow" monument in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, colloquially referred to as the "Yoke of the Peoples", further demonstrates the controversial nature of the treaty. Pro-Russian Ukrainian parties, on the other hand, celebrate the date of this event and renew calls for re-unification of the three East Slavic nations: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

In 2004, after the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the event, the administration of President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine established January 18 as the official date to commemorate the event, a move which created controversy. In 1954, the anniversary celebrations included the transfer of Crimea from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the Soviet Union; in 2014 Crimea was annexed by Russia.

• Khmelnytsky Uprising
• Cossack Hetmanate
• Pereyaslav Articles
• History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1648–1764)