Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

The Russian Tsar, Alexi Romanov, and the leader of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, reached an agreement at Pereiaslav in 1654, an agreement transferring the Ukraine from the bounds of the Polish Commonwealth to those of Muscovy. Pereiaslav thus served notice of the weakness of seventeenth century Poland as well as the power of the growing Russian state. The Ukraine thus became Russia’s first “window on the West” long before Peter the Great founded his new capital on the Baltic. However, the nature of this agreement between Khmelnytsky and the Tsar is a matter of dispute. Moreover, no copy of the actual agreement exists; historians have had to reconstruct the negotiations and the exact provisions of the agreement. Considering the importance of Pereiaslav and the lack of proper documentation, it is little wonder that the agreements made at Pereiaslav have generated widely differing interpretations among Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian historians.

John Basarab, a professor at the University of Maryland, has aimed at discussing these various interpretations, producing a historiographic study of Pereiaslav. He does not limit himself to the agreement itself but also treats the events preceding and following it as well as the personalities involved, all within the context of the various historians’ aims and discoveries. There is no doubt that a work on Pereiaslav is needed in English. However, the historiographic nature of this study will limit its use only to the most serious students of seventeenth century Eastern Europe. By often taking his readers over the same ground, albeit from different historical perspectives, Professor Basarab soon has one wondering just which ones of these assorted versions of the truth have the greatest claim on scholars.

Any work concerning Pereiaslav inevitably becomes a part of the historiographic controversy, and this book is no exception. One of the primary reasons for this study surely must be to contradict the Stalinist and neo-Stalinist historians in the USSR who saw Pereiaslav as the means for the “re-unification” of the Ukraine with Russia. This concept was most blatantly presented in the tercentenary “Theses” on Pereiaslav produced in 1954.

Understandably, this idea disturbs the susceptibilities of Ukrainian nationalists. However, Professor Basarab’s own view of Ukrainian history also will produce misgivings in readers whose sympathy for the Ukrainian nationalist cause is not as great as those of their compatriots. For example, it is difficult for me, as an historian of Poland, to accept the notion that the Polish Commonwealth might have been transformed into a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian union. By 1654, the Lithuanian-Belorussian nobility was completely polonised and it is doubtful if the Polish nobility — whether living in the Kingdom of Poland or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — would have failed to assimilate any Ukrainian elite. The Commonwealth historically served not as a multinational union but rather as an agent for Polish acculturation (not to be confused with nationalism). I also find it difficult to accept that in 1654, there was a Ukrainian nation. Since historians of neither Western nor Eastern Europe would accept the development of nationalism at this early date, I think it foolish to try to prove it for the Ukraine. Certainly there were definite ethnic and religious affinities, ties which encompassed most of the people of the territories of the present-day Ukraine — but that is far from attaining nationhood. Professor Basarab manages to discuss repeatedly the events of the 1648 revolt against the Polish state which led to the Pereiaslav agreement, while reducing the savage anti-Semitic pogroms in which Khmelnytsky’s followers indulged to a single line!

Despite these reservations, there is no doubt that Professor Basarab has laboured to produce a work of scholarship. The editorial work supporting this monograph is superb: proper transliterations from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, Canadian cataloguing information, Canadian spellings. Certainly, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, which sponsors the series of which this volume is a part, has reason to be proud. I agree with the use of Ukrainian names to cities located in the present-day Ukrainian USSR. However, a curious myopia has meant that this principle has not been used in other lands. (Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is referred to by its Russian name; Belorussian cities receive the same bizarre treatment.) Moreover, the nationalist refusal to use the definite article “the” before “Ukraine” will prove a little puzzling to English-language readers, who might mistakenly believe that this usage is simply normal Slavic confusion as to the use of articles (for none exists in most Slavic languages). Ignoring such examples as “the” United States and “the” Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists assume that by dropping the article, they are affirming the Ukraine’s nationhood. This misconception may prove a little disconcerting to readers. In general, however, this work accomplishes what it set out to do, tracing the treatment of the events at Pereiaslav in 1654 through the work of numerous historians. This monograph will serve the Anglo-Saxon world as an introduction to one of the most important events in Eastern Europe’s early modern history.