Eastern Ukraine - Ukraine - page 449

Cossacks
Later lionised - perhaps overoptimistically - by nationalist writers such as Taras
Shevchenko and Ivan Franko, the Cossacks are central to the country's identity. They
arose out of the steppe in the country's sparsely populated mid-south. In the mid-15th
century, this area was a kind of no-man's-land separating the Polish-Lithuanian settle-
ments in the northwest from the Tatars in Crimea.
However, the steppe offered abundant natural wealth, and poorer individuals in Polish-
Lithuanian society began making longer forays south to hunt or forage for food. The area
also attracted runaway serfs, criminals, bandits and Orthodox refugees. Along with a few
semi-independent Tatar bands, the hard-drinking inhabitants formed self-governing milit-
aristic communities and became known as kozaky (Cossacks in English), from a Turkic
word meaning 'outlaw, adventurer or free person'. The people elected the ruling chieftain
(hetman) . The most famous group of Cossacks was based below the rapids (za porozhy)
on the lower Dnipro, in a fortified island community called the Zaporizhska Sich.
Although they were officially under Polish-Lithuanian rule from 1569, and sometimes
joined the commonwealth army as mercenaries, the Cossacks were, for the most part, left
to their own devices. They waged a number of successful campaigns against the Turks
and Tatars, twice assaulting Istanbul (in 1615 and 1620), and sacking the Black Sea cities
of Varna (in today's Bulgaria) and Kaffa (modern-day Feodosiya). While millions of
peasants in the Polish-Lithuanian state joined the Uniate Church, the Cossacks remained
Orthodox.
As Poland tried to tighten its control in the 17th century, there were Cossack-led upris-
ings to try to win greater autonomy. In 1654 the Cossacks formed their own so-called
Hetmanate to assert the concept of Ukrainian self-determination. While initially success-
ful, ultimately the Cossacks' military uprisings only led to a change of overlord - from
Polish to Russian.
Terry Brighton's Hell Riders: The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade inter-
weaves participants' accounts and factual reports to unravel the Crimean War's greatest
blunder.
Russian Control
It's safe to say (though possibly not in Russia) that without Ukraine and its abundant nat-
ural wealth, Russia would never have become such a powerful nation. Ukraine also
offered access to the Black Sea, so after a series of wars with the Turks in the 18th cen-
tury, Russia was keen to expand into southern Ukraine. Catherine the Great led the
charge to colonise and 'Russify'. In 1775, the same year she destroyed the Zaporizhska