The Ruin (Ukrainian history)
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Right-bank Ukraine Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
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Ottoman Ukraine (from 1669) Ottoman Empire (from 1669) |
.svg){kind=small} Left-bank Ukraine.svg){kind=small} Tsardom of Russia
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Ottoman Hetmans
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The Ruin (Ukrainian: Руїна) is a historical term that was introduced by the Cossack chronicle writer (1670-1728) for the political situation in Ukraine that covers the period of Ukrainian history of the second half of 17th century.
The timeframe of the period varies among historians, for example:
This period is characterised by continuous strife, civil war, and foreign intervention of Ukraine's neighbours. The Ukrainian saying of the time: "Від Богдана до Івана не було гетьмана" (From Bohdan to Ivan there was no hetman [in between]) — accurately summarises the chaotic events of this period.
The Ruin started after the death of hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1657. Khmelnytsky had delivered Ukraine from centuries of Polish and Lithuanian domination though the campaigns of the Khmelnitsky Uprising (1648-1657) and Ukraine's Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654) with the Tsardom of Moscow. While Khmelnytsky had operated as a charismatic and influential leader, clearly one of the prominent figures in Ukrainian history, he did not establish clear rules of succession and his will favoured his son Yurii as the new hetman. Yurii Khmelnytsky (1641-1685), young and inexperienced, clearly lacked the charisma and the leadership qualities of his father, as he showed during his attempts to rule (1657, 1659-1663, 1677-1681, 1685).
At the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky's death, the Cossack state had a territory of about 250,000 square miles (650,000 km2) and a population of around 1.2 to 1.5 million. Society consisted of the remaining non-Catholic nobles, the starshina or richer Cossack officers, the mass of the Cossacks and those peasants who did not bear arms. The Orthodox Church held 17% of the land; local nobles held 33%. The remaining 50% had been confiscated from the Poles and was up for grabs. Ukrainians comprised a frontier society with no natural borders, no tradition of statehood and a population committed to Cossack liberty or anarchy. The land was thinly peopled by recent immigrants who could move again. The confiscated lands could easily change hands in any conflict. There was an unresolved conflict between the mass of poorer cossacks and the wealthier group who aspired to semi-noble status. The state was weak and needed a protector - but of the regional powers, the Poles wanted to take the Ukrainian lands back, Muscovite-Russian autocracy fitted ill with Cossack ideals of liberty, the Crimean Khanate concentrated on Slavic slave-raiding and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire showed little concern for the Ukrainian frontier. The Swedish Empire's territory remained still too far away during this period, and the Don Cossacks and the Kalmucks stayed out of the conflict.
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