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Map of the Russian Empire, 1682-1762.

Map of the Russian Empire, 1682-1762.

 From 1569, the southeast of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot, pillage and capture slaves into jasyr (slavery). The borderland area to the southeast was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century.

In the mid seventeenth century, a Cossack quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Sich, was established by the Dnieper Cossacks and the Ruthenian peasants fleeing Polish serfdom.[20] Poland had little real control of this land in what is now central Ukraine, which became an autonomous military state, at times allied with the Commonwealth in the military campaigns. However, the enserfment of peasantry by the Polish nobility, overall emphasis of the Commonwealth's agricultural economy on the fierce exploitation of the workforce, and, perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the Orthodox church pushed the allegiances of Cossacks away from Poland. Their aspiration was to have a representation in Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry, all being vehemently denied by the Polish kings. The Cossacks turned toward Orthodox Russia, which was one reason for the later downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.[20]

 

  
 
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish king John II Casimir. [21] This uprising finally led to a partition of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.[22] Left-bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate, following the 1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav and the ensuing Russo-Polish War. After the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century by Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia, Western Ukrainian Galicia was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire.

Despite the promises of Ukrainian autonomy given by the treaty of Pereyaslav, Ukrainians never received the freedoms they were hoping for from Imperial Russia. Because of its geographic location, Ukraine played an important role in the frequent wars between East European monarchies and the Ottoman Empire. As a result of Russian successes in the wars against Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate of 1768–74 and 1787–1792, the territories along the Black Sea coast were annexed to the Russian Empire as well.

Within the Empire Ukrainians frequently rose to the highest offices of Russian state (e.g., Aleksey Razumovsky, Alexander Bezborodko, Ivan Paskevich), and the Russian Orthodox Church (e.g., Stephen Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitry of Rostov). At a later period, the tsarist regime was implementing a harsh policy of Russification, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in print, and in public.[23]

 

 

 

 

 

  

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