Ivan Mazepa - WikiHQ

Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa () was a Ukrainian military, political, and civic leader who served as hetman of the Cossack Hetmanate in 1687–1709. His long and stable rule was marked by economical and political recovery from the Ruin. A loyal subject of Russia during most of his rule, Mazepa's close relationship with Tsar Peter I deteriorated as a result of the latter's administrative reforms, which increasingly deprived Mazepa and the Hetmanate of their autonomy. In 1708, Mazepa abandoned his alliance with Peter I and sided with Charles XII of Sweden after the Tsar refused to protect the Hetmanate against the advancing Swedes, instead ordering that much of Ukraine be burned to prevent the Swedes from gaining access to supplies and winter quarters.

After the Swedes were defeated at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Mazepa went into exile in Moldavia and died there later that year. The political consequences and interpretation of his defection have resonated in the national histories of both Ukraine and Russia. The historical events of Mazepa's life have inspired many literary, artistic and musical works, and the hetman himself was famous as a patron of the arts.

The Russian Orthodox Church laid an anathema (excommunication) on Mazepa's name in 1708 and still refuses to revoke it. The anathema was not recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which considers it uncanonical and imposed with political motives as a means of political and ideological repression, with no religious, theological or canonical reasons. Pro-independence and anti-Russian elements in Ukraine from the 18th century onwards were derogatorily referred to as Mazepintsy (). The alienation of Mazepa from Ukrainian historiography continued during the Soviet period, but post-1991 in independent Ukraine Mazepa's image has been gradually rehabilitated.

Early life

thumb|left|upright=0.65|Maryna Mokiievska, later known as Mariia Mahdalena, Mazepa's mother

Birth and ancestry

thumb|Mazepa's coat of arms, originally installed on the façade of [[Chernihiv Collegium]]

Mazepa was born on in the village of , near Bila Tserkva, then part of the Kiev Voivodeship of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, into the noble Mazepa family. His father, Stepan Adam Mazepa-Kaledynsky (), was the town otaman of Bila Tserkva during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, while his mother, Maryna Mokiievska, was also of Cossack blood. Maryna later became the hegumene of the in Kyiv after the death of her husband and was then known by her monastic name, Mariia Mahdalena; the couple also had a younger daughter, Oleksandra.

Throughout his life, Mazepa used the coat of arms likely inherited from the Bulyha- family, whose members had served as starosts of Bila Tserkva between 1578-1618. In 1707 Mazepa's coat of arms was confirmed by Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor, who awarded the hetman with the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

In Polish service

In 1657, Stepan Mazepa became involved with Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, who pursued a pro-Polish policy. In 1659, he travelled to Warsaw to attend the sejm and placed his son Ivan in service at the royal court of John II Casimir Vasa. Before that, Ivan Mazepa studied at the Kyiv Mohyla Collegium in Kyiv graduated with a degree in rhetoric. According to Samiilo Velychko, Ivan was to complete his philosophy course at the Jesuit college in Warsaw.

According to late tradition, King John Casimir sent Ivan Mazepa to study "gunnery" in Deventer (Dutch Republic) in 1656–1659, during which time he travelled across Western Europe. From 1659 the Polish king was sending him on numerous diplomatic missions to Ukraine. – later the Russian Imperial government would effectively use this slur to discredit Mazepa.

thumb|[[Mazeppa and the Wolves by Horace Vernet (1826) showing a naked Mazepa tied to a horse]]

During one of his missions, Mazepa met Jan Chryzostom Pasek, whom he took to be a supporter of the anti-royal confederation. He led to Pasek's arrest and had him brought before the king, who was staying in Grodno at the time. According to Pasek's account, he managed to prove his innocence, the king rewarded him for the harm he suffered and Mazepa lost the royal trust. Further on in his memoirs, Pasek recounts the story of under what circumstances Mazepa left Poland in 1663. According to Pasek, Mazepa had an affair with Mrs. Falbowska, wife of his neighbour in Volhynia. When the neighbour discovered the affair, he tied Mazepa naked to a horse, head to tail, and fastened the horse. The horse carried Mazepa to his household, but he was so badly wounded that his own subjects were unable to recognize him. with the support of Vasily Galitzine. Following his confirmation, the new hetman signed the Kolomak Articles, which were based on the Hlukhiv Articles of Demian Mnohohrishny. In 1689 Mazepa supported the deposition of Tsarevna Sophia, who had served as de facto regent of Tsar Peter I. This helped him ingratiate himself with the monarch, who valued the wide experience and education of the much older hetman. In words of a Russian historian, Mazepa "was like a father to Peter I in a sense".

As hetman, Mazepa used his knowledge in military matters to introduce a new successful strategy in the fight against the Tatars and their Ottoman overlords. This success relieved both Ukraine and Muscovy from the danger of devastating enemy raids and led Peter I to award the hetman with the Order of St. Andrew, the Tsardom's highest honour. The order, as well as the title of honourable prince of the Holy Roman Empire, awarded to the hetman by Emperor Joseph I in 1707 as recognition of his help in the fight against the Ottomans and Tatars, greatly contributed to Mazepa's status both in Ukraine and at the Moscow court. and later reburied in Galați (now Romania), but his tomb was disturbed several times and eventually lost as a result of the Sfântul Gheorghe (St. George) Church demolition in 1962.

Appearance

thumb|left|upright=0.8|A portrait of a Jewish leaseholder by [[Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine|Norblin, often misattributed as a portrait of Ivan Mazepa himself]]

Contemporary description from 1704 described Mazepa as having bright eyes, thin fair hands ("like those of a woman") and a sturdy body. The hetman's face was said to be far from beautiful, but he still produced an image of elegance to those who met him, and was reputed to be a good horserider.

A large variety of contemporary portraits of Mazepa were produced at the height of the Ukrainian cultural renaissance, during which Ukrainian Baroque flourished under Mazepa's patronage. However, following his defection to Sweden, Russian authorities sought to erase the memory of the late hetman: his crest was removed from churches he had built, his name blacked out in books, while his portraits were destroyed or painted over. As a result of old material largely being lost, new portraits of the Mazepa often vary significantly; a portrait by the influential Norblin, long thought to be of Mazepa, in fact depicts a Jewish leaseholder, not the hetman.

An engraving by the German for the European Fama () periodical, first appearing in print in 1706 and then again in 1708 and 1712, is one of the most accurate surviving portraits of Mazepa and is used in this article. It is based on actual contemporary sketches or preliminary portraits made by the German adviser to the Tsar , rather than verbal description of the hetman's appearance. Huyssen transferred these sketches to Bernigerot for engraving, where the finished products survived Tsarist censorship.

Personal life

Personality

According to the memoirs of his secretary and close ally Pylyp Orlyk, Mazepa had a great talent for attracting people. His good education and manners, as well as knowledge of numerous languages, among them Polish, Russian, Latin, Italian, German, Tatar and Turkish (besides his native Old Ukrainian) made him a popular companion in conversation and an invaluable intelligence asset. In particular, his excellent knowledge of Latin, at a time when there were said to only be four Latin speakers in Muscovy, earned the powerful Prince Golitsyn's attention. Mazepa was, however, described by the French ambassador as being one who "belongs to those people that prefer either to

keep quiet or speak and not to say anything."

Mazepa was noted for being deeply proud of his own intellectual abilities, while being disdainful of those he who found to have inferior intelligence. The Russian historian writes that, "It is indisputable that Mazepa possessed an intellect, diplomatic abilities, and a broad political outlook."

Romantic relationships

thumb|A painting by [[Taras Shevchenko depicting Motria Kochubey on the bed in Mazepa's palace]]

According to the classical interpretation based the historian Mykola Kostomarov's work, in 1668 Mazepa married one Anna (Hanna), the daughter of Bila Tserkva colonel Semen Polovets and widow of his successor Samuil Frydrykiewicz. That marriage allowed Mazepa to enter the circles of Right-bank Cossack starshyna, contributing to his career rise. Hanna died in 1702.

The above interpretation is increasingly challenged by modern scholarship, as in 2015, a 118 page long manuscript on Mount Athos was discovered which contains a wealth of information about the patrons of the Zograf Monastery from Ukraine and Russia. The names of patrons and their families were recorded from 1639 to the late eighteenth century. Multiple prominent Cossack officers are listed there, including Ivan Samoylovych, Danylo Apostol, Pavlo Polubotok and others, as well as the name of Ivan Mazepa and 19 members of his family (which is the most complete record of the hetman's family yet discovered). Immediately after Ivan, a certain Maria is listed while a Hanna is nowhere to be found, suggesting that Maria was the wife of Mazepa, as the entries for other patrons name the wife in the second place as well. This theory is partially supported by the common usage of Maria instead of Motrona or Motria when referring to the much younger love interest of Mazepa, Motria Kochubey, as by Alexander Pushkin in his Poltava poem: the true name of Mazepa's wife may have been preserved in folklore, but then mistakenly merged with the name of Motria Kochubey over time. Thus, Hanna Frydrykevych may not have been the wife of Mazepa. Whatever the true name or identity of Mazepa's wife was, she died in 1702.

In 1704, at the age of 65, Mazepa started courting the much younger Motria Kochubey, daughter of chief judge Vasyl Kochubey. No reliable records detailing Motria's age have been preserved: suggests she was 16, while Pavlenko states she was 18-22 years old in 1704. Motria's parents strictly opposed the possibility of their marriage, as the hetman was her godparent, and such a union would be prohibited according to church law. However, Motria disobeyed, and in the same year fled her parents' house to live with Mazepa. Fearing a scandal which could lead to his own anathema, the hetman sent Motria back, but the couple continued their contacts in correspondence. In total, twelve love letters written by Mazepa to Motria have been preserved. Kochubey eventually married his daughter to a member of Cossack starshyna called Chuikevych.

Mazepa's affair with Kochubey's daughter led to a conflict between the two men. In 1707 Kochubey accused Mazepa of treason in a letter to Peter I, but the following investigation blamed the denouncer himself due to being bribed by the hetman. After numerous tortures, in July 1708 Kochubey and another accuser of Mazepa, Poltava colonel Ivan Iskra, were delivered to the hetman's military camp and beheaded (following Mazepa's desertion both would be posthumously rehabilitated and reburied in Kyiv Pechersk Lavra). Motria herself was exiled to Siberia together with her husband, and upon her return would become a nun.

Ethnic identity

The term and concept of a fatherland () was an important feature of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century political discourse in both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the territory of modern Ukraine. Before Khmelnytsky's uprising, Poland or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were most commonly referred to as the fatherlands of their inhabitants, and Polonised Ruthenian noblemen such as Jeremi Wiśniowiecki or the Czartoryskis were described as sons of Poland or Lithuania, not of the Rus' or Ukraine.

After the formation of the Cossack Hetmanate and break from Poland, the slow transferral of the fatherland away from Poland or the Commonwealth began. While pro-Polish hetmans continued to refer to Poland as a "common fatherland" with the Poles, by the 1660s, Cossack Ukraine was increasingly seen as the fatherland of its inhabitants. Hetman Ivan Briukhovetsky of Left-bank Ukraine became one of the first to introduce this new idea of a Ukrainian fatherland into common political use (though his main rival, Hetman Pavlo Teteria of Right-bank Ukraine still called Poland a "common mother" of the Cossack Hetmanate). Notably, Bohdan Khmelnytsky himself was oft called the "father of the fatherland", clearly demonstrating that Ukraine primarily referred to the territory of the Cossack Hetmanate. While Ukraine became widely recognised as the fatherland by many, among them the hetmans Petro Doroshenko and Mykhailo Khanenko, the Rus' or Ruthenia was also sometimes called the fatherland, rather than Ukraine.

Mazepa himself was no exception to this new trend. By the turn of the 1700s, his circulars often spoke of a distinct "Little Russian fatherland", while he himself was sometimes also called the "father of the fatherland" (that is, the Hetmanate). After Mazepa's defection to the Swedes in 1708, however, Peter I — who had not frequently used the term before — positioned himself as champion and defender of "Little Russia", while labelling Mazepa a traitor who wished to restore Polish subjugation.

thumb|upright=1.25|A map depicting "Ukraine, or the Land of Cossacks" by [[Johann Homann, made around the time of Mazepa's rule]]

Now locked in an ideological battle with Peter I, Mazepa called upon Ivan Skoropadsky to attack the "Muscovite" troops as a "true son of the fatherland"; in explaining his reasons for siding with the Swedes, he stated that he was acting for the welfare of "the common welfare of my father-land, poor unfortunate Ukraine". A significant innovation of Mazepa was framing the war against Russia as a battle between two wholly separate nations: the Little Russians (Ukrainians) and Great Russians (Muscovites).

Despite Mazepa's defeat at the Battle of Poltava, the usage of Ukraine as the name of a national fatherland distinct from Great Russia or Muscovy became only more popular in the years after his death, while the old terms which referred to a supposed All-Russian nation (such as Little Russia) declined; a 1728 drama dedicated to the new Hetman Danylo Apostol likened him to Khmelnytsky and called upon the viewers to celebrate Khmelnytsky's victories: "Do not weep, o Ukraine, cease to grieve; it is time to turn your sorrow into joy." Subsequently, the modern Ukrainian national identity developed largely out of the 18th century Little Russian or Cossack Ukrainian identity, which Mazepa (and his close ally, Pylyp Orlyk) had done much to advance.

During his lifetime, Mazepa widely used an early form of the Ukrainian language for official matters, such as to issue orders or grant privileges. The linguist notes that for his highly private and personal love letters to Motria Kochubey, the hetman used "the most polished Ukrainian that the sixteen-year-old object of his affection could understand", suggesting Mazepa was most comfortable using that language, rather than Polish or Russian. For these reasons, modern historians generally refer to Mazepa as a Ukrainian figure; Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva speaks of Mazepa as a "Ukrainian historical leader"; while Paul Robert Magocsi calls him "the Ukrainian hetman", as does Bushkovitch.

Title and style

Mazepa's styles and titles as hetman are contained in his acts and treaties in following variations:

thumb|Text of a [[Universal (act)|universal issued by Mazepa]]

Authentic sources

Hetman of [Zaporozhian Host on/of] both sides of the Dnieper (гетманъ обойхъ сторонъ Днепра; Войска Запоро(ж/з)ского (c) обоихъ сторонъ Днепра гетман(ъ)) - first mentioned in a pledge made by the newly elected hetman under the terms of Kolomak Treaty of 1687, signifying his claims to both Left- and Right-bank Ukraine; also present in latter documents.
Hetman with Their Illustrious Tsar's Majesty's Zaporozhian Host (гетманъ з Войскомъ их царского пресвѣтлого величества Запоро(з/жс)ким(ъ)) or Hetman of Their [Most Illustrious and Sovereign Lords'] Illustrious Tsar's Majesty's Zaporozhian Host ([Пресвѣтлѣйшихъ и державнѣйшихъ великихъ государей] ихъ царского пресвѣтлого величества Войска Запорозского гетманъ) - used by Mazepa under the joint rule of Peter I and Ivan V (1687–1696).
Hetman of His [Most Illustrious and Sovereign Lord's] Illustrious Tsar's Majesty's Zaporozhian Host ([Пресвѣтлѣйшого и державнѣйшого великого государя] его царского пресвѣтлого величества Войска Запороз(с/жс)кого гетманъ) - under one-person rule of Peter I (after 1696).
Hetman of His [Illustrious and Most Sovereign Lord's] Illustrious Tsar's Majesty's Zaporozhian Host and Knight [of the Glorious Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew] ([Пресвѣтлѣйшого и державнѣйшого великого государя] его царского пресвѣтлого величества Войска Запорожского гетманъ и [славного чина святого апостола Андрея] кавалер(ъ)) - after being awarded with the Order of St. Andrew in 1704.
Hetman of His Illustrious and Most Sovereign Lord's (and) Tsar's Majesty's Zaporozhian Hosts and Knight of the Glorious Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew and White Eagle (Пресвѣтлѣйшого и державнѣйшого великого государя его царского величества Войскъ Запорожскихъ гетманъ и славного чина святого апостола Андрея и Бѣлого Орла кавалер(ъ)) - after being awarded with the Order of the White Eagle and attaching Right-bank Ukraine to the Hetmanate in 1705.

Dubious sources

Prince of Ukraine (князь України) - supposedly contained in the 1708 treaty between Charles XII and the Cossack Hetmanate as claimed in a 1925 article by Ilko Borshchak.

Legacy

Political legacy

Mazepa's decision to abandon his allegiance to the Russian Empire was considered treason by the Russian Tsar and a violation of the Treaty of Pereyaslav. However, others argue that it was Imperial Russia who broke the treaty by not even trying to protect the Cossack homeland during busy fighting abroad, while Ukrainian peasants were complaining about the conduct of local Muscovite troops. Many Cossacks had died while building Saint Petersburg, and the Tsar planned to deploy Cossack troops far from their homeland.

According to Russian historian Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva, Mazepa had little chance of remaining in power if he had not risen up against Peter I, as the tsar's imperial ambitions envisioned the destruction of Ukrainian Cossack autonomy. In the aftermath of the Battle of Poltava, the Hetmanate was deprived of much of its independence, although it formally remained an autonomous entity. Its final demise took place in 1764, under the rule of Catherine the Great, who transformed the territory formerly ruled by hetmans of Ukrainian Cossacks into the Little Russia Governorate. Russia has repeatedly condemned Ukraine for honoring the figure of Ivan Mazepa. The same day, around 100 people held a protest in Simferopol against the marking of the 370th birthday of Mazepa. was unveiled at Dytynets Park in Chernihiv. The opening was accompanied by clashes between the police and opponents of Mazepa.

thumb|Unveiling of a monument to hetman Ivan Mazepa in Poltava by Ukrainian president [[Petro Poroshenko in 2016]]

In August 2009, Yushchenko decreed the resuming of a halted construction of an Ivan Mazepa monument in Poltava. A monument to Mazepa was to be erected on Slava Square in Kyiv in 2010 to fulfill a decree of Yushchenko. In May 2010 Kyiv city civil servants stated the city was ready to establish a monument as soon as the Cabinet of Ukraine would fund this project. The monument to Orlyk was unveiled in June 2011, while on 14 October 2015 the Mazepa monument was transported and put on display in Poltava. The Poltava City Council on 25 February 2016 voted in favor of the monument.

The name of the part of Ivan Mazepa Street in Kyiv, which runs past the Pechersk Lavra, was changed to Lavrska Street in July 2010. The move was met with protests. An exhibition dedicated to Mazepa is active in the Hetmanship Museum in Kyiv.

Mazepa's portrait is found on the ₴10 (Ukrainian currency) bill. In 2018 a representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople proclaimed the anathema on Mazepa to be uncanonical, as it had been laid out of political grounds. During his visit to Mazepa's former capital of Baturyn in 2019, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko compared the hetman to George Washington, Simon Bolivar and Mahatma Gandhi. A major exhibition dedicated to Mazepa and his era opened in 2025 in Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

In other countries

In Galați (Romania), Mazepa is remembered in the name of two central neighbourhoods (Mazepa I and II) and with a statue in a park on Basarabiei street.

Cultural legacy

thumb|100px|A [[torban that shows the Mazepa coat-of-arms, lost during the Second World War]]

Literary works attributed to Mazepa

In an addition to being a politician and statesman, Mazepa is also known to have created works of literature. Writings attributed to Mazepa are his letters to Motria, the daughter of Vasyl Kochubey, as well as a short verse in a mix of Old Ukrainian and Polish signed with the hetman's name, which was reportedly found in a prayer book stored at a monastery near Putyvl in 1770. According to Oleksander Ohloblyn, the poem was created circa 1698 and preserved in the notes from the 1708 trial of Vasyl Kochubey, who used it to prove his accusation of treason against the hetman. The author of the "Duma" laments the state of Ukrainian lands during the Ruin, which led to the country's division between Poland, Moscow and the Ottomans, and calls on his compatriots to unite and fight against common enemies, and represents an important document of Ukrainian political thought of that era.

Works of art dedicated to Mazepa

thumb|"Mazeppa" by [[Théodore Géricault, based on an episode in Byron's poem when the young Mazeppa is punished by being tied to a wild horse]]

The historical events of Mazepa's life have inspired many literary and musical works:

Lord Byron – Mazeppa, poem (1818)
Alexander Pushkin – Poltava, poem (1828–1829)
Victor Hugo – Mazeppa, poem (1829)
Juliusz Słowacki – Mazeppa, drama (1840)
Franz Liszt – Mazeppa, symphonic poem (1851); Transcendental Étude No. 4.
Marie Grandval – Mazeppa, opera (1892)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Mazeppa, opera (1881–1883)
Michael William Balfe – The Page, cantata (1861)
Taras Shevchenko
Kondraty Ryleyev
A Ukrainian-language film by Yuri Ilyenko, loosely based on historical facts and called Молитва за гетьмана Мазепу (Prayer for Hetman Mazepa), was released in 2002.
The Italian composer Carlo Pedrotti wrote a tragic opera titled Mazeppa in 1861, with libretto by Achille de Lauzieres.

In 2009 the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, instituted the Cross of Ivan Mazepa as an award for cultural achievement and service.

In 2020 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave the 54th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army the honorary title of "Ivan Mazepa". In 2022 Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian Navy Ada-class corvette after Mazepa.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Books

Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Illustrated history of Ukraine. "BAO". Donetsk, 2003.
Orest Subtelny, The Mazepists: Ukrainian Separatism in the Early Eighteenth Century (1981).

Journals

Thomas M. Prymak, "Voltaire on Mazepa and Early Eighteenth Century Ukraine," Canadian Journal of History, XLVII, 2 (2012), 259–83.
Thomas M. Prymak, "The Cossack Hetman: Ivan Mazepa in History and Legend from Peter to Pushkin," The Historian, LXXVI, 2 (2014), 237–77.
Thomas M. Prymak, “Who Betrayed Whom? Or, Who remained Loyal to What? Tsar Peter vs. Hetman Mazepa,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, LV, 3 (2022), 359–76.

External links

Mazepa at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine by Oleksander Ohloblyn
The Name of Ivan Mazepa
Re-Fighting the Northern War: The Celebration of the Battle of Poltava in Russia. Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva, Professor, Department of History, St. Petersburg State University. Author: Joseph Dresen (Kennan Institute)
Velychenko, S. The Battle of Poltava and the Decline of Cossack-Ukraine in light of Russian and English methods of rule in their Borderlands (1707–1914). historians.in.ua. 5 July 2012.

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| width="25%" | Predecessor Ivan Samoylovych

| width="10%" | 50px

| width="20%" | Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host 1687–1709