History of Ukraine-Rus

Volume 9 of Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus` is the longest and most extensively documented of its ten volumes. The two books of volume 9 contain the master historian’s study of the Khmelnytsky era from the height of Cossackdom’s political and military successes in early 1650 to the death of the founder of the Cossack Hetmanate, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, in 1657. The driving force of this era was, in Hrushevsky’s words, ‘the struggle for the liberation of the Ukrainian masses,’ dictated by socioeconomic conditions and led by the Cossack officer elite. The ‘great political upheaval’ that ensued effectively shifted the center of political gravity in eastern Europe from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Muscovy. Book 1 of volume 9 covers the period from early 1650 to late 1653. Topics examined here include the Cossack Hetmanate’s drive to overthrow the rule of the Commonwealth; Hetman Khmelnytsky’s efforts to secure Ottoman and Muscovite support; the disastrous defeat at Berestechko; Khmelnytsky’s rallying of his forces; the Bila Tserkva peace settlement; and the victorious Battle of Batih, which restored Cossack rule in Right-Bank Ukraine and parts of Podilia. Also examined are dramatic developments in Ukrainian-Moldavian relations, beginning with a victorious Cossack campaign in Moldavia and culminating in the marriage of Khmelnytsky’s son Tymish to the Moldavian hospodar’s daughter Roksanda. The book concludes with a discussion of the hetman’s political and dynastic plans, which came to an abrupt end with his son’s tragic death. Hrushevsky’s extensive research allowed him to examine the Khmelnytsky era in great detail. His illumination of the Cossack state’s relations with the Commonwealth, Muscovy, the Ottoman Empire, and the Danubian principalities, in particular, remains unsurpassed in clarity and thoroughness. Publication of his study in English is of particular value to specialists and students of Ottoman, Crimean, Romanian, and Hungarian history.

Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934) was Ukraine’s greatest historian. His academic career began at Kyiv University, where in 1890 he graduated from the Department of History and Philology. Appointed professor of history at Lviv University in 1894, he became a leading figure in the Shevchenko Scientific Society and in the scholarly and cultural community centered in Lviv. In 1918 he became head of government of the independent Ukrainian republic. From 1924 to 1931, in Kyiv, he organized historical studies at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. An extraordinarily prolific writer, he produced some 2,000 scholarly works. His magnum opus, the Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusy (History of Ukraine-Rus'), appeared between 1898 and 1937. These ten published volumes (in twelve books) trace Ukrainian history from prehistoric times to the post-Khmelnytsky era in the late 1650s. The History was internationally acclaimed at the time of its publication, but in Soviet Ukraine after the 1930s no scholarly references to it were permitted to appear. Attempts in the 1960s to `rehabilitate’ Hrushevsky and his works failed, and it was only in the late 1980s that the Ukrainian public began once again to have access to the History. The English-language edition prepared by the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research is the first to make Hrushevsky’s magnum opus fully available to the Western reader.