Yaroslav Fedoruk – författare

This tome, in which Mykhailo Hrushevsky analyzes the last two years of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s rule, consists of the final chapters (10-13) of volume 9. Hrushevsky presents the most comprehensive discussion to date of Khmelnytsky’s foreign policy in the aftermath of the Treaty of Pereiaslav (1654), a topic closed to research in Soviet Ukraine from the 1930s to the 1980s. He also discusses Khmelnytsky’s renewed efforts to annex the western Ukrainian territories and to control the Belarusian lands conquered by the Cossacks. He concludes with an assessment of the hetman and his age that has long been controversial in Ukrainian historiography.The volume shows how Ukraine’s relations with Muscovy were strained by the Muscovites’ failure to help fend off devastating Polish and Crimean attacks, which prompted Ukrainian leaders to seek support elsewhere. Tensions were exacerbated by the Ukrainian-Muscovite dispute over Belarusian territory. When Charles X of Sweden attacked the Commonwealth in 1655, while Khmelnytsky sought to recover the western Ukrainian lands, a Swedish-Ukrainian alliance seemed to be in the making. A military convention was concluded, but Charles, under pressure from his allies among the Polish nobility, would not cede western Ukraine to the Cossacks. Once Muscovy declared war on Sweden in 1656, it opened peace negotiations with Poland to which Cossack envoys were not admitted, convincing Khmelnytsky’s officers that the Muscovites had betrayed them. Khmelnytsky then began a complicated diplomatic offensive to break up Muscovite-Polish negotiations. After the Vilnius accord between Muscovy and the Commonweath (November 1656), he sought to form a Swedish-Transylvanian-Ukrainian league in cooperation with Brandenburg and supported the abortive effort by György Rákóczi II of Transylvania to gain the Polish throne. Khmelnytsky also negotiated with the Ottoman Porte, giving rise to the vexed question of his possible request for vassal status. Hrushevsky’s exhaustive discussion of diplomatic affairs greatly advances understanding of the role of Ukraine and the countries of East Central Europe in the political crisis of the mid-seventeenth century.This volume was translated by Marta Daria Olynyk and edited by Yaroslav Fedoruk (consulting editor) and Frank E. Sysyn (editor in chief) with the assistance of Myroslav Yurkevich.In a comprehensive introduction to the volume, Yaroslav Fedoruk considers issues of foreign policy, as well as the larger problem of national historiographies and their limitations with regard to the highly complex European situation. Frank Sysyn analyzes Hrushevsky’s assessment of Khmelnytsky’s rule in chapter 13 as a polemic with the conservative historian Viacheslav Lypynsky (1882-1931). The preparation of this volume for publication was funded by a generous donation from Dr. Maria Fischer-Slysh (Toronto, Ontario) in memory of her parents, Dr. Adolf and Olha Slyz.

Volume 10 covers most of the hetmancy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s successor, Ivan Vyhovsky (1657–59). Its three chapters constitute only the first part of the volume as Hrushevsky planned it. When he wrote them in 1929–30, the Soviet authorities in Moscow had begun their sweeping attack on Ukraine’s political and cultural autonomy, including an effort to enforce conformity on the historical profession. Arrested in March 1931, Hrushevsky was exiled to Moscow, where he worked mainly on his History of Ukrainian Literature. After the historian’s death in 1934, his daughter, Kateryna, edited the incomplete volume 10 and managed to have it published in 1936.Hrushevsky’s account begins with the tensions surrounding Vyhovsky’s assumption of the hetmancy following Khmelnytsky’s death. The late hetman’s son and designated successor, Iurii, was not yet of age and did not command the loyalty of the Cossack rank and file. Vyhovsky emerged as a ‘caretaker’ identified with the Cossack officer establishment. He was soon faced with a revolt of Zaporozhian Cossacks led by a rival for command of the Host, Iakiv Barabash, and the colonel of Poltava, Martyn Pushkar. Although Vyhovsky routed their forces in battle, his relations with Muscovy grew increasingly difficult, as he suspected the tsarist government of exploiting rank-and-file dissatisfaction in order to depose him. This led Vyhovsky to consider a reconciliation with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in which Rus’ would be a co-equal principality—a settlement whose conditions were elaborated in the Treaty of Hadiach (1658). The volume closes with Hrushevsky’s detailed assessment of the treaty, on which he renders a negative judgment.Volume 10 was translated by Marta Daria Olynyk, who is also the translator of volumes 8 and 9, book 2, part 1, and 9, book 2, part 2. The volume was prepared for publication by two staff editors—editor in chief Frank Sysyn, who was involved in all aspects of the volume, and senior editor Myroslav Yurkevich, who edited the translation for content and style—and two consulting editors, Andrew B, Pernal and Yaroslav Fedoruk. Professor Pernal provided an introduction discussing the sources and structure of the volume. Dr. Fedoruk provided a second introduction, based largely on archival sources, that offers the most complete account yet written of Hrushevsky’s creative work during his final years.