The Cossack hetmanate

(Today part of: central Ukraine)

In general, the Cossacks were a common name for a number of military organizations that differed in their time and mode of origin, ethnic composition, and territory in which they operated, and common to all of them was to defend the border of the state within which they would be located. The Cossacks around the Dnieper River on the eastern borders of the Polish-Lithuanian state were a kind of military fraternity whose headquarters were in Sich. In their ranks were adventurers, criminals as well as peasants seeking shelter from the pressure of gentlemen. Their military services were used by the Polish nobility, although they still operated independently, and in relation to Poland they were somewhat like the Tatars in the Crimea, who themselves sometimes attacked the Polish territories without the knowledge of the authorities in Istanbul. On the one hand, Poland did not want to completely suppress the Cossacks, very useful in the wars against the Ottomans and Russia, and on the other, the nobility and the Polish greats never intended to allow the granting of noble titles to their leaders.

Tensions stemming from social discontent, religious struggles, and Cossack indignation against the Polish authorities finally accumulated and came to the fore in 1648 when they raised a successful rebellion under the hetman (commander) Bogdan Khmelnytskyi, which aimed at separating from the state and putting it under control. the protectorate of the Russian emperor.

It is this Cossack area that will become the center of Ukrainian nationalism that emerged in the 19th century. under the pressure of rusification. By the way, the word 'Ukraine' literally means a landscape or a border whose original meaning originates from a time when the steppe region was indeed the border that separated the East European Byzantine culture of Kievan Rus from Asia and the nomads. The transition of the local population to the ethnonyms "Ukrainians" and "Ukraine" will only take place in the 19th century. as a result of opposition to Russian assimilation policy in the period of the rise of the nation's idea.