THE UKRAINE PROBLEM
the east or the Turkish menace from the south: and in consequence anarchy grew apace throughout the Ukraine. It was under these unsatisfactory conditions that the Cossacks first became a serious political factor, forming as time went on “a regular guerilla republic of the steppe,” defying all foreign suzerainty, taxation or military service, and attracting to themselves large numbers of peasants who sought to escape the intolerable burden of serfdom. Thus the lands of the Dniepr and the Don were to all intents and purposes already lost to Poland long before the rising of 1648 united peasants and nobles in a common cause.
Under its famous Hetman, Bohdan Chmielnitsky, the Ukraine concluded in 1654 the Treaty of Perejaslavl, which, little as it has been respected, has ever since formed in theory the basis of its whole constitutional position. Drawn up in haste and ambiguously expressed, it was none the less a formal act of union between the Ukraine and Moscow, and as such must be regarded as one of the most important stages in the development of modern Russia. But no greater contrast in political outlook can be imagined than that between the two contracting parties. On the one hand stood ancient Moscow, in which autocracy, already strong in its semi-Tartar days, acquired additional strength from the methods which it borrowed from the West; on the other, a loosely-knit republican organisation resting upon essentially democratic local institutions. Just as fire and water cannot mingle, one of these opposing types of government was bound to yield to the other; and under 18th century conditions the victory of Tsardom was well-nigh inevitable.
From the very first the Tsars encroached upon the privileges of the Ukraine, whose Hetmans consequently wavered between Moscow and Poland, the victims of continual infringements and restrictions from both sides. The attempt to find fresh allies led them into alliance with Turkey and with Sweden, but in each case “the Northern Colossus” proved too strong for them. The picturesque figures of Charles XII and the Hetman Mazeppa illuminate for a moment this dark corner of history. The battle of Poltava (1709) put an end to all hope of Ukraine independence. Peter the Great, who in one of his ukases took the uncompromising line that “it is well known that all Hetmans since Chmielnitsky were traitors,” set himself deliberately to break their power. His
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