The struggle for an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church has been one of the main defining issues of Ukrainian Cossack history. But this struggle cannot be separated from the basic politics of the Cossack Hetmanates. The Cossack host throughout its long history, has had several purposes: first, to protect the Orthodox faith, second, to rescue Orthodox people when in trouble and third, to fight for Ukrainian independence. All of these are tightly interwoven. But within this, there is one major method: the creation of advantageous alliances of the moment. Hence, the Cossack alliance formations are based on the idea that Ukraine should be independent by making strategic alliances with whoever is opposed to the current occupant of the country.

The basic political configuration in Ukraine though the 16th to the 18th century looks like this: the main claimants to Ukrainian power were the hetmanate, Turkey, Poland and Muscovy. The hetmanate was in an alliance with any combination of these powers against the other. However, the basic economic configuration places this within a more realistic framework: the Moscow state, and to a lesser extent, the Polish one, sought to “buy off” the better off Cossack forces though grants of land and guarantees of political power. In other words, the larger landowners usually were supportive of Moscow, since it was the Russians who granted them this land and protected it. It was this strategic use of landownership by the Cossack upper crust that eventually destroyed the host and the possibility of Ukrainian independence.

Of course, the third configuration is religious: the battle between the Uniats, Poles and Russians, and the response: an independent Ukrainian church. Early on, the Uniats provoked the famed hetman Vyshnevyetsky (d. 1563) to make an alliance with Ivan the Terrible against the Poles and their centralizing tendencies. This became a seminal event for it developed the strongly Orthodox and decentralist tendency of the Host as a political unit. This will not be further developed until the Orlyk Constitution of 1710. The same might be said of Nalyvalko (d. 1597) who, economically, leaned towards the Poles, but the Uniat issue forced him to engage in open warfare with his former masters. But this tendency found its final synthesis in the brilliant reign of Peter Sahaidachny (d. 1622), who took the decentralist agenda of Vyshnevyetsky and used it to create the first autonomous and regular military formations of the Host itself – bringing the hetmanate into world politics as an organized military force. Again, the idea of the Orthodox center of the Host was central, and continued the policies of his predecessors. His main concern was the protection of the Orthodox schools against their incorporation into the Jesuit Uniat orbit. But in the process of doing so, he invited, in an event of global historical proportions, the Patriarch Theophanes III of Jerusalem to Ukraine to consecrate a new hierarchy independent of both the Uniats and the Russians. Hence, the circle had been complete: Ukraine was now an independent country, with its Cossack military formations and independent church. However, once these issues were resolved, the class-issue was then provoked by the enemies of Ukraine. The religious issue was of central importance. From an economic point of view, the Ukrainian Orthodox were the peasants, and many of the non-Cossack elite want over the Uniats, even changing their names in the process. In inviting the patriarch, Sahaidachny solved that problem, creating an independent Ukrainian church from the succession of the Apostle James. In protecting his new state, this brilliant hetman was a bit too soft on the Poles for his lower class compatriots, and this began a rebellion against Sahaidachny by the lower orders, already seeing a self-satisfied Cossack elite that will become the weakest link in this fledgling state and new Orthodox jurisdiction.

By the middle of the 17th century the problems became more acute. After the great victories of Khimilnistsky against Polish landlordism, his former lieutenants, including Vyhovsky and Teteria, slowly split the Host along class lines. One the one hand, Ivan Vyhovsky leaned towards Poland as a reaction to the Russian presence in Ukraine after the infamous treaty of Pereslav. But by his death in 1664, the Russians in the Pereslavian mold, created a new Cossack noble class, complete with serfs, that separated the formerly populist Cossack idea of Sahaidachny and created instead a Russianized noble class. They were pro-Moscow and fomented a major rebellion against Vyhovsky and his pro-Polish policies. Both class and ethnicity now split the Cossack host, and more or less, this became the norm from this era onward. Vyhovsky did not waver in his support for Poland, and was the first Cossack figure to approach Crakow with a “trilateralist” solution to Ukrainian independence: for Ukraine to create the thrid entity in the Polish-Lithuanian union with a great deal of independence and religious freedom. This became the anti-treaty of Peraslavl, the treaty of Haidaich. This was the specific cause of the Russian revolt among the Cossacks. Even more, the hapless but well meaning son of Khimilnitsky, Yuri, also maintained a close alliance with the Poles, only to become the puppet hetman of the Turks.

But the 1658 treaty needs further discussion. Here, the Polish parliament would have had to accept Ukrainian bishops as members on an equal footing. The church would have been proclaimed as an independent and autocephalous church if only because it was the only official Orthodox church within this proposed huge and powerful federation. This treaty, had it been ratified by the Poles, would well have created a new Ukrainian Orthodox identity outside of a Russian fold, complete with its own publically funded seminaries and institutions of translation and scholarship. It may well have solved the problem of the Old Rite in beginning the Old Believers into the Ukrainian communion as a mode of controlling the imperialism of Moscow (as the Austrians were to do later). However, the poorer Cossacks sow Vyhovsky’s negotiations with Poland as tantamount to the creation of a Cossack aristocracy with Polish rather than Russian titles. Hence, the class war develops again, with the lower class on the left bank supporting Vyhovsky against Russia and the same class supporting Russia against the proposed union with Poland and Lithuania. As they worked at cross purposes, the treaty was never ratified.

Nevertheless, under the reign of Paul Teteria (d. 1670) these tensions exploded into what Ukrainian historians call “The Ruin” the era where the victories of Sahaidachny and Khimilnitsky were negated and overthrown though class warfare over both the Treaty of Haidaich and the Russian elders on the left bank. Class dominated over everything, and the rank and file revolted on both banks. Teteria, himself also a veteran of the Khimilnitsky campaigns agaisnt Poland, saw the development of a major civil war that destroyed the infrastructure of the country and destroyed the autocephalous Church of Ukraine. Teteria responded to this by his ruthless purging of the officer corps of the Host.

But the Ruin, while it negated the victories of pervious Hetmans did not destroy the ideas. The sucessor to the Ruin was Petro Doroshenko, a true follower of both Saidachny and Khmilnitsky. Doroskenko blamed the upper classes of the Cossack host on both banks (but especially the right, or pro-Russian bank), for the Ruin, and sought to continue the state building policies of Sahaidachny. He created two councils: first, the supreme military council which was open also to junior officers. He created, in addition, a Cossack parliament where class was not a barrier to participation. To protect these reforms against the upper classes, Doroshenko created a personal guard completely loyal to him and appointed by him alone. While the Treaty of Haidaich was a dead letter, Doroshenko maintained his anti-Moscow position and fought the armies of Russia on a regular basis. The Russian state helped elect his right bank rival, Samoloyovitch, to lead the landowning rivals against Doroshenko in the west. Knowing full well that Doroshenko was also fighting Poland, another major fratricidal war broke out. Finally, Doroskenko, facing rebellion both at home and abroad, went to the Turks for support. The Turks took much of Doroshenko’s old lands and plundered them. The common folk loathed this move by their hetman and rebelled against him. Eventually, the Russian supported Samoloyivitch captured him and sent him into exile.

The Ukrainian state was dead. Turkey was now the main enemy and a list of pro-Russian Cossacks ruled much of Ukraine. Ivan Briukhovsky on the left bank asked the Russian synod to send a metropolitan to Ukraine to take over for the moribund Ukrainian autocephalous church. In 1666, at the same time the Old Believers were anathematized in Russia, the Russian church also took over the Ukrainian lands. Even more, the so called Moscow Articles of 1665 were signed, that led to the complete domination of Moscow over Ukraine. From then on, the Old Rite and the Ukrainians were allies, seeking independent church structures from the Moscow synod, now a department of the Muscovite state. Throughout the beginning of the 18th century Ukraine had become part of the Muscovite empire after the defeat of Ivan Mazeppa, the last rebel against Peter (though this time, supporting the Swedes against Peter I). From this point until Orlyk (the Mazeppist Hetman in Exile) the likes of Mikhail Khanenko ran Ukraine, huge landowners benefitting from a strong Moscow and a weak Poland. The defeat of Sweden by Peter meant that there was no where else for the hetmanate to go but in exile. This defeat, as bad as the Ruin, crated a remarkable document that finally laid out in systematic form the political ideology of the Cossack host, the Orlyk Constitution of 1710. It is also called the Bendery Consittiution, but it seems to this writer that its main drafter, Hetman Philip Orlyk, should be honored here.

While it is unfortunate that a neo-liberal institution, the so called, US-Ukraine Foundation, an elite financed thinktank (partially financed by the US government and the World Bank), has a Philip Orlyk Institution for Democracy, his constitution bears no resemblance to the liberal, oligarchic nature of the US-Ukraine Foundation. First of all, it holds that Orthodoxy should be the official religion of Ukraine, and that it should be an Autocephalous church. It holds that all Russians are to be expelled from Ukraine and that a Cossack parliament should be founded. A military council of Cossack officers was proposed, as well as very low taxes and independent towns. It is a decentralist and nationalist constitution, diametrically opposite the elite financed and highly cynical US-Ukraine Foundation. Nevertheless, this program became the center of the Cossack and nationalist movement in Ukraine. It was never put in force.

The final act of the Cossacks was also the final act for the church. The autocephalous movement was dead, suppressed by Cossack wars and the violence of the Petrine state. Hetman Ivan Skorpadsy (d. 1722) sought to negotiate with Peter I and to gain the trust that Mazeppa once had with Petrograd. Skoropadsy thought that negotiations would work better than fighting with Peter, since both Mazeppa and Charles of Sweden both ended up in exile in Turkey for a time. But it was the poor judgement (of not realistic) of Daniel Apostol, a large pro-Russian landowner, that finally put the final touches on the Repression of Ukraine and the end of Cossack autonomy. Both Skorpadsy and Apostol fought against Mazeppa and sought an alliance with Peter I. With this leadership and a demoralized Cossack host, it was just a matter of time before Ukraine was subsumed into the Russian empire and, with the destruction of Poland and the increasing irrelevance of Turkey, there was no where left to run. The total state of the modern world destroyed both Ukraine and her church. She could only be reborn at the final destruction of the USSR, only to be thrown into the arms of a power no less imperialistic than the USSR, the USA and her bankers, who engineered the Orange Revolution with Soros money (and not a little cash from the US-Ukraine Foundation) so as bring Ukraine under the umbrella of the American banks.

Little remains. The failed attempt to resurrect a Ukrainian church at the “sobor” of 1921 ended up being canonically regularized by +Polykarpos of Poland (within whose line is Patriarch +Mystyslav and the Synod of Milan), himself authorized to function ultimately thought the Patriarch of Antioch, who asked for the Russians to consecrate a canonical Ukrainian church ultimately through +Dionysii of Poland. Nevertheless, that line died out with the murder of Patriarch +Volodymyr as the married and liberal-ecumenist Filaret took over, using his tremendous financial resources to do so. Hence, the Ukrainian church exists only within the Synod of Milan in the west, and the Old Believers in the east. The Cossacks remained Old Believers in Ukraine as well as Ukrainian separatists, holding those two movements to be one. After the Orange Revolution, many Cossacks then supported Russia, and today, serve largely as border guards in the southern part of the country. But today, the Cossacks remain Old Ritualist and Ukrainian in their basic orientation, still motivated by the Constitution of Orlyk, and waiting for the fall of the current regime to put it into place.