Pereiaslav Agreement

thumb|200px|Pereiaslav Agreement depicted on a 1954 Soviet stamp. [[Cossacks are standing left with traditional costume and a bandura. Vasiliy Buturlin stands at right making a declaration.]]

thumb|200px|Soviet stamp in honor of the [[Union of Russia and Ukraine Tercentenary|300th anniversary of "Ukraine's reunification with Russia", 1954]]

The Pereiaslav Agreement or Pereyaslav Agreement (, ) was an official meeting that convened for a ceremonial pledge of allegiance by Zaporozhian Cossacks to Russian tsar Alexis () in the town of Pereiaslav in central Ukraine, in January 1654. The ceremony took place concurrently with ongoing negotiations that started on the initiative of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to address the issue of the Cossack Hetmanate with the ongoing Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and which concluded the Treaty of Pereiaslav (also known as the March Articles). The treaty itself was finalized in Moscow in April 1654 (in March according to the Julian calendar).

Khmelnytsky secured the military protection of the Tsardom of Russia in exchange for allegiance to the tsar. An oath of allegiance to the Russian monarch from the leadership of the Cossack Hetmanate was taken, shortly thereafter followed by other officials, the clergy and the inhabitants of the Hetmanate swearing allegiance. The exact nature of the relationship stipulated by the agreement between the Hetmanate and Russia is a matter of scholarly controversy. Many other Ukrainian historians among which are Ivan Krypiakevych, Dmitriy Ilovaisky, Myron Korduba, Valeriy Smoliy and others interpret negotiations as an attempt to attract the tsar to military support of Cossacks and motivate him to struggle for the Polish Crown which became available after the death of Władysław IV Vasa.

June 18, 1648 – the first known official letter of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi to Tsar Alexis I; it was finished: "So let the God fulfill the prophecy, which was celebrated from ancient times, to which we gave ourselves, and to the merciful feet of your royal majesty, like the lower ones, submit obediently."
June 18, 1648 – letter of Khmelnytskyi to the Muscovite voivode of Siveria, Leontiev. Mention of favorable attitude of the Cossacks to the tsar. The issue of allegiance to the tsar is not raised.
July 21, 1648 – letter of Khmelnytskyi to the Muscovite voivode of Putivl, Pleshcheyev. Mention of motivation of the Russian tsar to the struggle for the Polish Crown. The issue of allegiance to the tsar is not raised.
January 1649 – in Moscow, Patriarch Paisius convinced the tsar of Khmelnytskyi's intentions "...striking with forehead to your Imperial Majesty, so the emperor ordered to grant him, Khmelnytskyi and all the Zaporizhian Host adoption under His high imperial hand...", but in the Muzhylovsky's notes is mentioned only request for military assistance, while the issue of allegiance to the Tsar was not raised. to encourage him to fight for the Polish Crown.
March 1, 1651 – Zemsky Sobor in Moscow. The Moscow clergy found it possible in case of not following by the Polish side conditions of the Eternal Peace permit Alexis Mikhailovich to adopt the Zaporizhian Host as one of his subjects. and on November 2, 1653, the Moscow government declared war on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. To conduct negotiations between two states, a large delegation headed by the boyar Vasili Buturlin departed from Moscow to Ukraine. In its composition were also okolnichiy I. Olferiev, dyak L. Lopukhin and representatives of the clergy.

The travel took almost three months. Besides bad roads and disorder, a new royal standard had to be made, the Buturlin's speech text, and the mace (bulawa) designated to Hetman disappeared several precious stones that had to be recovered. Also, the delegation had to wait almost a week for arrival of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, who was delayed in Chyhyryn at the burial of his older son Tymofiy Khmelnytsky and later was not able to cross the Dnieper since the ice on the river was not strong enough.

Pereiaslav meeting and the autonomous Cossack state

thumb|right|250px|Boyar Buturlin receiving an oath of loyalty to the Russian Tsar from Bohdan Khmelnytsky

At a meeting between the council of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Vasiliy Buturlin, representative of Tsar Alexis I of Russia, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. The Pereiaslav Council of Ukrainians took place on January 18; it was meant to act as the supreme Cossack council and demonstrate the unity and determination of the "Rus' nation". Military leaders and representatives of regiments, nobles and townspeople listened to the speech by the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who expounded the necessity of seeking the Russian protection. The audience responded with applause and consent. The treaty, initiated with Buturlin later on the same day, invoked only protection of the Cossack state by the tsar and was intended as an act of official separation of Ukraine from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Ukrainian independence had been informally declared earlier in the course of the Uprising by Khmelnytsky). Participants in the preparation of the treaty at Pereiaslav included, besides Khmelnytsky, Chief Scribe Ivan Vyhovsky and numerous other Cossack elders, as well as a large visiting contingent from Russia.

The Cossack leaders tried in vain to exact from Buturlin some binding declarations; the envoy refused, claiming lack of authority and deferred resolution of specific issues to future rulings by the tsar, which he expected to be favourable to the Cossacks. Khmelnytsky and many Ukrainians (127,000 total, including 64,000 Cossacks, according to the Russian reckoning) ended up swearing allegiance to the Tsar. In many Ukrainian towns, residents were forced to go to the central square to take the oath. Part of the Orthodox clergy took the oath only after a long resistance, and some Cossack leaders did not take the oath.

For Russia, the deal eventually led to the full incorporation of the Cossack Hetmanate into the Russian state, providing a justification for the title of Russian tsars and emperors, the autocrat of all Russia ('). Russia, being at that time the only part of former Kievan Rus' which was not dominated by a foreign power, considered itself the successor of Kievan Rus' and the re-unifier of all the lands of Rus'. Subsequently, in the 20th century, in Soviet history and epistemology, the Council of Pereiaslav was viewed and referred to as an act of "re-unification of Ukraine with Russia".

The treaty was a political plan to save Ukraine from Polish domination. For the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the deal provided one of the early signs of its gradual decline and eventual demise by the end of the 18th century.

The decision adopted in Pereiaslav is viewed by Ukrainian nationalists negatively as a failed opportunity for Ukrainian independence. Ukrainian statehood during the Russian Civil War was short-lived as a result of the Ukrainian–Soviet War, with the country finally achieving independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Legacy

Historiography

The treaty of Pereiaslav has received various evaluations by historians and lawyers. One point of view, represented among others by Dmitry Odinets, Iakov Rosenfeld and Venedikt Miakotin, saw it as an act of incorporation of Ukraine into the Tsardom of Moscow; others, such as Boris Nolde, claimed that the treaty provided autonomy to Ukraine inside of the Tsardom and the succeeding Russian Empire; Mikhail Diakonov, Aleksandr Filippov and Aleksandr Popov saw it as a real union of two states, meanwhile Vasily Sergeevich and Rostyslav Lashchenko described the agreement as a personal union under the Tsar. Scholars have variously characterized relations between the Cossack Hetmanate and the Tsardom of Moscow as vassalage (Nikolay Korkunov, V. Miakotin, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Mykhailo Hrushevsky), protectorate (Dmytro Doroshenko, Ivan Krypiakevych), quasi-protectorate, or military union (Vyacheslav Lypynsky, Oleksander Ohloblyn).

During the early years of Communist rule, Soviet historians tended to view the agreement in purely class terms, seeing it as a pact between feudal landowners aimed at increasing the exploitation of proletarians. However, under the rule of Stalin,starting from the 1930s, Soviet historiography started fully denying the legal character of Pereyaslav agreement, claiming to be an act of "unification of two brotherly people inside of the Russian state".

References

Literature

Printed

Basarab, J. Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton 1982) [https://www.ciuspress.com/catalogue/history/38/pereiaslav-1654--a-historiographical-study]
Braichevsky, M. Annexation or Unification?: Critical Notes on One Conception, ed and trans G. Kulchycky (Munich 1974)
Hrushevs’kyi, M. Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy, vol 9, bk 1 (Kiev 1928; New York 1957)
Iakovliv, A. Ukraïns’ko-moskovs’ki dohovory v XVII–XVIII vikakh (Warsaw 1934)
Dohovir het’mana Bohdana Khmel’nyts’koho z moskovs’kym tsarem Oleksiiem Mykhailovychem (New York 1954)
Ohloblyn, A. Treaty of Pereyaslav 1654 (Toronto and New York 1954)
Prokopovych, V. ‘The Problem of the Juridical Nature of the Ukraine's Union with Muscovy,’ AUA, 4 (Winter–Spring 1955)
O'Brien, C.B. Muscovy and the Ukraine: From the Pereiaslavl Agreement to the Truce of Andrusovo, 1654–1667 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1963)
Pereiaslavs'ka rada 1654 roku. Istoriohrafiia ta doslidzhennia (Kiev 2003) [https://www.ciuspress.com/catalogue/history/39/pierieyaslavs'ka-radea-1654-roku]
Velychenko, S., THE INFLUENCE OF HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL IDEAS,
ON THE POLITICS OF BOHDAN KHMELNYTSKY AND THE COSSACK OFFICERS BETWEEN 1648 AND 1657 PhD Dissertation (University of London, 1981) <[http://aleph.ukma.kiev.ua/e-lib/V/Velychenko_The%20Influence.pdf]>

Online

To the History of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, Zerkalo Nedeli (the Mirror Weekly), October 4–10, 2003, available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
Encyclopedia of Ukraine entry on the subject
Ukrainian World Congress' Statement Press Release - On Observance of the Pereyaslav Treaty
The Treaty of Pereyaslav