The Commonwealth nobel’s opinion about the Khmelnytsky Uprising’s origins

Abstract

The article discusses the political reasons for Khmelnytsky's uprising in the opinions of the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The outbreak of the Cossack insurrection led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky with the beginning of 1648, which from the first moment stimulated the broad strata of Ukrainian society and quickly transformed into a national liberation war, provoked terror in broad circles of noblemen. An additional factor influencing the mood of the nobility was the growing awareness of Khmelnytsky's political ambitions, whose implementation was a deadly threat to the current political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Therefore, the main part of the lecture was devoted to discussing the views of the nobility on the subject of political motives encouraging the Cossacks to armed resistance against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which fundamentally influenced its assessment of the nature of the uprising. Detailed analysis concerned such sources as correspondence, lauda and sejmik instructions as well as occasional and journalistic literature. It was emphasized that there was a conviction among the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the political motives of the Cossack uprising. This conviction was based mainly on the news coming to her about Khmelnytsky's aspirations to separate Ukraine and build an independent state entity, referred to by her as the Russian Principality. Understanding by the gentry of the emancipatory aspirations of the insurgents had a huge impact on the shape of the Republic of Poland's policy towards events in Ukraine in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Keywords:

opinion, nobility Commonwealth, Ukraine, Cossacks, Khmelnytsky Uprising