Bohdan Khmelnytsky

Ukraine is a fascinating country.

Its history is hard to navigate and understand. You’ve got Ukrainians, whose ancestors were called Ruthenians, Cossacks, Tatars, Russians, Jews, Poles. Plus four monotheistic religions are cohabitating on the same plain: Christian Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam. 

The Catholic Poles were mistreating the Orthodox Slavs, using the Jews to do their dirty work, which in turn caused resentment towards them and led them to be targeted in rebellions. The Tatars and Ottomans were raiding and pillaging everybody, taking Christians and Jews as slaves.

And then there’s the Tsar in the background of it all. 

When history gets this complicated I try to focus on historical personalities. Reading about a singular leader, a rebel, a military hero, a king, helps narrow your gaze and allows you to see more clearly. It brings into focus the many lenses of history. Otherwise you just get overwhelmed. 

It’s clear that Ukraine has always been a trouble spot. Everyone wants a piece of it. Its national identity is newly constructed and still contested to this day. Its history is marked with massacres and misrule by various rulers and rebels. It doesn’t know its true destiny as it is constantly being pulled between East and West.

It is a buffer state, it is bait, it is a wild beast, it is many things in one.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and especially since the 2014 U.S.-backed coup, it has become a failed terrorist state. Its only purpose today is to make war on Russia. And it is doing badly at that. 

II. Bohdan Khmelnytsky

Wikipedia:

Zynoviy Bohdan Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky of the Abdank coat of arms (c. 1595 – 6 August 1657) was a Ruthenian nobleman and military commander of Zaporozhian Cossacks as Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, which was then under the suzerainty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led the Cossacks to victory in a successful uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648–1654) that resulted in the creation of an independent Cossack state in Dnieper Ukraine.

. . .Khmelnytsky had a crucial influence not only on the history of Ukraine, but also affected the balance of power in Europe, as the weakening of Poland-Lithuania was exploited by Austria, Saxony, Prussia, and Russia. His actions and role in events were viewed differently by different contemporaries, and even now there are greatly differing perspectives on his legacy.

. . .A different image of Khmelnytsky emerged in England, which was at the time engulfed by its own revolution. It is claimed, that Oliver Cromwell saw the hetman as a possible ally against the Catholics, and even addressed him in a letter. A dedication supposedly stemming the Lord Protector described Khmelnytsky as “by the Grace of God generalissimo of the army and ancient Greek religion and Church, master of all Zaporozhian Cossacks, dread and exterminator of Polish nobility, conqueror of fortresses, eradicator of Roman priests, persecutor of pagans, Antichrist and Jews”.

In Ukraine during Khmelnytsky’s time the hetman’s name was interpreted as a sign of his divine mission to liberate the country. In a poem printed as an appendix to the Zaporozhian Host registry of 1649 he was mentioned along with Petro Mohyla as a protector of Christianity and benefactor of Rus’. During the hetman’s entry into Kyiv, students of the Kyiv Mohyla Collegium welcomed him as “Moses” and “liberator from Polish slavery”. Many dumas which emerged after the uprising depicted the hetman in a similar way, but other songs presented a negative attitude, condemning Khmelnytsky for his cooperation with Tatars. A negative point of view on Khmelnytsky’s rebellion as a cause of human suffering is presented in the Eyewitness Chronicle. History of the Ruthenians contains passages blaming the hetman’s union with the tsar for leading his people into an even worse slavery.

In modern Ukraine, Khmelnytsky is generally regarded as a national hero.[64][65][66] A city[67] and a region of the country bear his name. His image is prominently displayed on Ukrainian banknotes, and his monument in the centre of Kyiv is a focal point of the Ukrainian capital. There have also been several issues of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky – one of the highest decorations in Ukraine and in the former Soviet Union.

However, despite this positive appreciation of his legacy, even in Ukraine, is far from being unanimous. He is criticised for his union with Russia, which, in the view of some, proved disastrous for the future of the country. Prominent Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, was one of Khmelnytsky’s most vocal and harsh critics.[68] Others criticize him for his alliance with the Crimean Tatars, which permitted the latter to take a large number of Ukrainian peasants as slaves, as the Cossacks as a military caste did not protect the kholopy, the lowest stratum of the Ukrainian people. In 1649 alone, Crimean Tatars plundered up to 70 Ukrainian towns and hundreds of villages, taking as many as 40,000 inhabitants as slaves. Contemporary witnesses claim that members of Cossack starshyna directly oversaw that process, acting on hetman’s orders. In 1653, the events repeated on an even bigger scale, with the khan receiving permission to take 100,000 captives in exchange for peace with Polish authorities. Folk songs gathered by 19th-century Ukrainian author Panteleimon Kulish in Khmelnytskyi’s native region of Cherkasy cursed the hetman, depicting him as an ally of the Turks, who facilitated the enslavement of local inhabitants.

On balance, the view of his legacy in present-day Ukraine is more positive than negative, with some critics acknowledging that the union with Russia was dictated by necessity and an attempt to survive in those difficult times. In a 2018 Ukraine’s Rating Sociological Group poll, 73% of Ukrainian respondents had a positive attitude to Khmelnytsky.

Video Title: Khmelnytsky’s Revolt 1648: The Man Who Broke Poland and Made Russia. Source: Chronicles of Power. Date Published: April 4, 2026. Description:

In 1647, a fifty-year-old Cossack officer had his land stolen, his son beaten half to death in a marketplace, and his intended wife forcibly married by a neighbor who had friends in high places. He went to court. The courts sided with the magnate. He went to Warsaw. Twice. The king gave him a royal charter. Nobody enforced it.

By Christmas 1648, he rode into Kyiv while crowds called him “Moses, savior, liberator of the Rus people.” He had destroyed three Polish armies in less than a year. He controlled most of Ukraine. He was the most powerful man in Eastern Europe who didn’t have a throne.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky never set out to reshape the map of Eastern Europe. He set out to get his land back and recover the woman who had been taken from him. What happened instead was that a private grudge became a rebellion, the rebellion became a revolution, and the revolution is still unresolved today.

We’ll follow the full story — the Cossack military system that beat the best cavalry in Europe, the Crimean Tatar alliance that made every victory possible and sabotaged every decisive win, and the council at Pereyaslav in January 1654, where Khmelnytsky asked Moscow for protection and the Russian envoy refused to swear a reciprocal oath. The tsar’s word was sufficient. Subjects don’t receive oaths from sovereigns.

Khmelnytsky accepted. He needed troops. Two years later, Moscow made a separate peace with Poland without telling him.

He died trying to undo what he had created.

The Soviet Union called him a liberator who united Ukraine with Russia. Ukrainian nationalists call him the founder of their state. Polish historians call him the man who ended Poland’s golden age. Jewish communities remember the massacres of 1648 as one of the worst catastrophes in their history before the twentieth century. Every description is accurate. None is complete.