Cossacks

The name Cossack is derived from the Turkish word Kazak, which meant a free man. Cossack meant anyone who could not find his appropriate place in society and went into the steppes, where he acknowledged no authority. In European sources the term first appears in the middle of 13th century. It is also found in Byzantine sources and in the instructions issued by Italian cities to their colonies on the Black Sea coast, where it is applied to armed men who protected trade caravans traveling the steppe routes. By the end of the 15th century the name acquired a wider sense and was applied to those Ukrainians who went into the steppes to practice various trades and engage in hunting, fishing, beekeeping, the collection of salt and so on.

The history of the Ukrainian Cossacks has three distinct aspects: their struggle against the Tatars and the Turks in the steppe and on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov; their participation in the struggle of the Ukrainian people against socioeconomic and national-religious oppression by the Polish magnates; and their role in the building of an autonomous Ukrainian state. The history of Cossacks could be divided into three periods.

The first period lasted from 1550 till 1648. In the middle of the 16th century the Cossack structure in Zaporizhia was created in the process of the steppe settlers' struggle against the Tatar raids. Cossacks went far into the steppes in pursuit of the Tatars in order to rescue captives or to attack Tatar and Turkish coastal towns. In time the Cossacks acquired military strength and experience as well as prestige throughout Europe.

Another important factor in the growth of the Ukrainian Cossacks was the socioeconomic changes taking place in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century. The nobility and the Polish government attempted to impose Catholicism and Colonization on the Ukrainian population. The basic form of opposition by the peasants and to some extent by the burghers, was flight. The fugitive peasants and townspeople fled to the sparsely populated steppe, established settlements. By the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, the pressure of the magnates and nobility led to bloody conflicts in which the Cossacks fought against the Polish landowners and the Polish government.

The Cossacks became particularly strong in the first quarter of the 17th century.

The second period lasted from 1648 till 1775. The offensive of the Polish Commonwealth against the Cossacks, together with intensified socioeconomic and national-religious oppression of the other classes of Ukrainian society, resulted in the Cossack-Polish War led by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Later the Hetman state was established.

From 1654, when Ukraine recognized the authority of the Moscow tsar, according to Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654, the principal political problem of the Cossacks and particularly their leaders, became the defence of the autonomous rights of Ukraine from the encroachment of Russian centralism. In the first half of the 18th century the Cossacks and their families made up over 40 percent of the total population of Left-Bank Ukraine.

The third period lasted from 1775 till 1917. The third period in the history of the Ukrainian Cossacks began with the destruction of the Zaporozhskaya Sich by the Russian troops in 1775 and the abolition of the Hetmanate, which took place in 1780s. The Cossack estates survived until the Revolution of 1917 and retained its lawful rights and privileges, excluding those connected with military service. The Kuban Cossacks was the only formation of Ukrainian Cossacks that still existed in 1917 and had partial and very limited autonomy.

Certain Ukrainian families retained their national Cossack traditions and many of their members took part in the Ukrainian independence movement and rebirth in the 20th century.

But Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky's attempt to revive the Cossack estate was not successful. As a result Ukraine was invaded by the soviet troops and remained one of the soviet republish for more than 70 years where Cossack power was totally abolished.

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