Koliivshchyna- Terror and Rebellion in 18th Century Ukraine
The story of the 1768 uprising of the Haidamakas, and its controversial legacy
In the 18th century, Ukraine was split along the Dnieper River between the Russian Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The eastern half, known as Left-bank Ukraine, had been incorporated into Russia after the Cossacks of the Khmelnitsky Uprising submitted to Tsarist rule in the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement. Later treaties further legalized this transfer of the territory from Polish to Russian rule, though Russia had every intention of seizing all of Ukraine at a later date.
Right-bank Ukraine, on the other hand, remained under the control of Poland-Lithuania (with the exception of Kyiv), but the Eastern Orthodox Cossacks that remained in the territory chafed at the idea of remaining under the yoke of the Catholic Poles. Further anger was generated by the existence of the Uniate Church, a historical church that followed Orthodox rites while still recognizing the Pope as the head of faith. Meant to serve as a compromise between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, it instead served as a source of anger and a symbol of Polish/Catholic oppression among Orthodox believers.
Although the Khmelnitsky Uprising may have ended in the partition of Ukraine and the continued subjugation of the Cossacks, the memory of the rebellion remained alive and served to inspire a new wave of Cossack resistance in Right-bank Ukraine. These were the Haidamakas, provincial militia groups who launched raids against the Polish government and nobility that oppressed them. They also targeted Ukrainian Catholics, Uniates, and Jews, who were viewed as collaborators by the Haidamakas and were thus subjected to harassment and even murder.
As the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth continued to deteriorate throughout the 18th century, the Haidamakas gained further recruits from dissatisfied peasants, serfs fleeing from their magnate masters, and even impoverished nobles angered at the magnates’ abuse of power. United in their shared dissatisfaction with the decaying Polish regime, the Haidamakas would lead several uprisings against Polish rule, most notably in 1734 and 1750. These uprisings were quickly suppressed, however, as Poland could still count on Russia, its ally and eventual murderer, for military assistance. For the moment, the Russian Empire preferred the Commonwealth to be weak but territorially intact.
The year 1768, however, would see the Haidamakas take advantage of Poland-Lithuania’s internal instability and precarious geo-political position to launch the largest and bloodiest uprising of all. Known as the Koliivshchyna, this short but brutal uprising against the religious and socio-economic oppression of the Ukrainian peasantry by the Polish nobility would result in an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 victims from both Haidamaka attacks and reprisals instigated by the Polish and Russian military.
Outbreak of Violence
The year 1768 was a turning point in the long political, economic, and social decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Decades of increasing Russian interference in Polish politics had transformed the former Central European superpower into a mere Russian protectorate, unable to exercise its own independent foreign policy and possessing a tiny, demoralized army.
Angered at the spread of Russian influence in Poland and the impotence of the central government under King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, a coalition of conservative nobles, including a young Casimir Pulaski, created a Confederation opposing the central government at the fortress of Bar in Podolia. Its ranks swelled with volunteers and deserters from the royal army, and the Commonwealth descended into civil war as Bar Confederate militias battled with both Royal and Russian troops.
It is important to note that while the Bar Confederation was generally an anti-Russian uprising, it held a strong pro-Catholic stance and considered the Commonwealth’s Orthodox population to be a haven of potential collaborators. This frequently led to violent raids and massacres by Bar Confederates against the Orthodox peasantry, especially in Right-bank Ukraine.
It was in this sea of political and religious turmoil that the Haidamakas decided to make their greatest bid for independence. Angered by the Pro-Catholic stance of the Bar Confederates and recognizing that the Polish and Russian armies would be distracted fighting them, peasant rebels and Cossack bands began gathering at Kholodnyi Yar forest, the traditional gathering point for Haidamaka rebellions. Under the leadership of Maksym Zaliznyak, a Zaporizhian Cossack, the Haidamakas emerged from Kholodnyi Yar in late May calling for a general peasant uprising against feudal obligations.
As the Haidamakas began spreading from village to village in Right-bank Ukraine, the nobles, Catholics, Uniates, and Jews who could not flee from the path of the uprising in time received little mercy. Thousands of civilians were murdered at the hands of the Haidamakas, and their corpses were sometimes strung up with dogs according to the maxim that ‘a Pole, a Jew, and a dog are all of one faith’. The religious radicalism of the uprising was only further exacerbated by local Orthodox monasteries, who spread anti-Catholic propaganda and openly assisted Zaliznyak’s forces.
The Massacre at Uman
By June of 1768, Zaliznyak had thousands of peasants, Cossacks, and other rebel groups in his ranks, and he controlled large swathes of territory in Right-bank Ukraine. Fueled by his rapid success, he now marched on the town of Uman, an important center of trade in the region.
The Haidamakas faced a far more daunting task ahead of them than they did previously- Uman was a fortified town that possessed a strong garrison of Bar Confederate militia along with some private Cossack contingents under the leadership of Ivan Gonta, a Cossack sent by the Bar Confederates to bolster the town’s defenses.
What the Bar Confederates did not know, however, was that Gonta was already making plans to defect to the Haidamakas. When ordered to attack Zaliznyak’s approaching forces, he instead joined them in encircling the town he was supposed to protect. With its defenses depleted and little hope of assistance from other Bar Confederates or the Polish army, Uman fell after a short siege on June 21st.
What followed was the bloodiest massacre in the entire course of the Koliivshchyna. Uman had been the gathering point for Polish, Catholic, Uniate, and Jewish refugees fleeing the spreading violence, and several thousand men, women, and children would be massacred at the hands of the Haidamakas. Uman also possessed a large Uniate school and monastery, and the rebels made sure to ritually destroy every Uniate artifact they were able to seize.
With the capture of Uman, the road to further conquests laid open for Zaliznyak and his Haidamakas. Zaliznyak had already been proclaimed Hetman by his men, signifying that he intended to create an independent Cossack state in Right-bank Ukraine. Gonta, meanwhile, was granted the rank of colonel as well as command of the garrison at Uman. With the civil wars in the Commonwealth being far from resolved, the possibility did exist that the Haidamakas could move deeper into Poland-Lithuania or even turn east in an attempt to seize Kyiv.
Subjugation and Legacy
The massacre of Uman would prove to be the highwater mark of the Koliivshchyna Uprising. The rapid spread of the uprising and the massacres it inflicted alarmed Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who was sympathetic to the rebellion’s Orthodox leanings but feared that the Haidamaka movement could spread into Left-bank Ukraine. In order to prevent the violence from spreading, Polish and Russian troops began advancing against Haidamaka territory in late June.
It took the Russians only two weeks to crush the Haidamakas, for they lacked the equipment and discipline to stand against a professional standing army. Zaliznyak and his followers were surrounded and captured on July 8th, with the Cossack being sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. Gonta, meanwhile, was captured by Don Cossacks loyal to Russia, who lured him and his followers to a banquet under the pretenses of defecting to the rebels. The Don Cossacks handed Gonta over to Polish authorities, who had him executed after several days of torture.
By late August, the Koliivshchyna was crushed, though bands of Haidamakas would continue to harass Polish and Russian troops for years to come. The suppression of the rebellion was just as brutal as its initial conflagration, as suspected rebels were rounded up, tortured, and then executed through brutal methods such as impalement, flaying, and quartering. Many of these executed “rebels” were peasants who had remained neutral during the uprising, but the general mood of retribution among the Poles and Russians left little room for distinction.
The Koliivshchyna had left Right-bank Ukraine devastated and depopulated, with thousands of peasants and serfs fleeing to safer territories. Catholic and Jewish communities in Ukraine were left decimated, with some ethnic and religious minorities disappearing entirely from the record. The Uniate Church survived the devastating blow inflicted to its worshippers by the Haidamakas, but a century of suppression by Russia following the Partitions of Poland would see it almost completely vanish as an independent church. Thousands of Ukrainian peasants would also perish at the hands of Polish and Russian troops, putting the final death toll at around 100,000 to 200,000 victims.
As for the Bar Confederates, the outbreak of the Koliivshchyna weakened their hold over Ukraine but also gave them an opportunity to evade the distracted Russian army. They would continue to resist until 1772, when Russia, Prussia, and Austria utilized the chaos gripping the Commonwealth as justification for the First Partition of Poland-Lithuania.
Due to the brutal nature of the uprising, the Koliivshchyna holds a controversial legacy in both Poland and Ukraine. In Ukraine, the Haidamakas were idealized in folk songs and literature as freedom fighters battling against Polish/Catholic oppression, with Maksym Zaliznyak and Ivan Gonta being elevated to the status of national heroes. In Poland, the Koliivshchyna is another bloody chapter in the decline and fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Haidamakas were depicted by Polish literature as religious fanatics under the influence of Russia.
Another issue clouding the interpretation of the Koliivshchyna is the violence inflicted on Jewish communities by the Haidamakas, some of which never recovered from the violence. The anti-Semitic aspect of the uprising continues to cause heavy debate and controversy whenever it is brought up, such as when a 2018 attempt by the Kyiv City Council to honor the 250th Anniversary of the Uprising led to protests by Ukrainian Jewish organizations.
When unclouded by national sentiments, the Koliivshchyna was the brief but brutal flaming-up of religious, social, and economic tensions that existed for centuries between Catholics/Uniates and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Poles and the Cossacks/Ukrainians, and the nobility and the peasantry. Massacres from one side led to even more brutal reprisals from the other, creating an escalating spiral of violence that left tens of thousands dead and Right-bank Ukraine utterly devastated.
In the end, the brutality and violence of the uprising would prove to be entirely senseless, as both the Poles and the Haidamakas would soon face destruction at the hands of the Russian Empire. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be entirely dismembered by its neighbors by 1795, while the Ukrainian peasants and Cossacks in Right-bank Ukraine found their culture and way of life suppressed by their new Russian masters.
Works Cited:
Butterwick, R. (2021). Martyrdoms. In Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame (pp. 108–127). chapter, Yale University Press.
Hrabovsky, S. (2018, May 30). Koliivshchyna: without extremes. day.kyiv.ua. Retrieved from https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/koliivshchyna-without-extremes
Stone, D. (2001). The Haidamak Rebellion of 1768. In The Polish-Lithuanian State: 1386–1795 (pp. 272–273). chapter section, University of Washington Press.
Zhukovsky, A. (n.d.). Koliivshchyna rebellion. Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved from http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CK%5CO%5CKoliivshchynarebellion.htm
