I wanted to figure it out and write about the gentry. And as soon as I started looking, I immediately noticed parallels. Thus, Ukrainian propaganda repeats 1 in 1 that the Poles wrote during the unification of Lithuania and Poland. And this united country immediately blossomed rapidly, eventually collapsing just as quickly. But the cultural and ethnic landscape of this region emerged then.
To understand what is happening, you need to read about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Republic of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with vassals (diagonal lines) and land ownership by magnates. There are many important things in this map:

Nobility
The gentry were a noble class, but mostly land-poor (poor). During the war, they took up arms and became a noble militia. There is no European analogue; it is sometimes compared to castes in India, for example, the Rajputs.

The gentry existed as a tribe, all gentry were considered brothers. Even the poorest but noble nobles, buckwheat farmers or wage earners (they were poorer than a wealthy serf - a peasant) had the same rights and golden freedom as the magnates who owned more lands than states.
The king was perceived as an equal “brother master” and always reserved the right to refuse obedience - rokosh.

Noble nobles were distinguished by a special sense of self-esteem - “arrogance” (Latin honor - honor) and demonstrative courage.

But this word arose later, and at first they called themselves lechs. And the entire Polish state nation (Poles) consisted of gentry. They had much greater democratic rights than citizens of most modern countries and cultivated such ideals as Honor, dignity, valor, as well as political ones: freedom, solidarity, collegiality.

The solidarity and equality of the gentry was expressed in the fact that each of those sitting in the Sejm had the right of veto.

Hunting, feasts, dancing and other gallant pastimes were considered worthy activities for the gentry in peacetime.

The gentry were subject to only land tax; corporal punishment and arbitrary, extrajudicial arrest could not be applied to them.

In some, more poinier, eastern regions, the gentry could make up 1/3 of the population, for example, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. In some areas, 1/2 of the people were gentry. In the capital Krakow Voivodeship, the gentry accounted for only 1.7%.

After the partition of Poland, half of the Russian nobility were gentry. They tried in every possible way to demote them, did not confirm their noble status and took away their economic basis. IN Russian Empire Some of the gentry were poorer than the serfs. But no matter how much money they have, this class is not ennobled by honor, dignity and solidarity.

However, from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth surnames such as Chaikovsky, Miloradovsky, Dostoevsky, Razumovsky, Poltoratsky entered the Russian Empire.

In 1921, all noble privileges were abolished in the new Poland. But this class influenced the Polish national character.

Polonaise
"The Polonaise is a royal dance that every Polish teenager should master." With sublime music. Originated in the 15th century. They started and finished dancing with him, and in the middle they switched to something faster.
The earliest were group dances, then couples appeared. Perhaps this reflects a shift in the character of society or another social function of dance.
Hodzonii, pedestrian, goose, great, old-fashioned, old-world, slow...

Vampires dance the polonaise:

Sharashkova Shlyakhta
Gray, dressed like peasants. Chatkova gentry - owners of part of the village. Golota gentry are landless, the lowest of the high. Walnuts and Polpanek.
Average shlakhta - they owned at least a village or had some kind of title and position.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, what is it?
In Polish, republic - “common cause” was translated as Rzhechpospolita, so that it sounded similar. The Russians could not pronounce this scary word and called it by its folk name.

It arose after the Union of Ljubljana, the unification of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The “Republic of both peoples” was invented after the disappearance. During its existence there was power and not ethnic peoples.

The coats of arms of Poland and Lithuania are heraldically combined twice, so that no one is higher and lower or to the right and left.

German Crusades
The Polish prince, Konrad of Mazovia, asked for help with the Prussian pagans. Then they scolded this help for a couple of centuries. As the Teutonic Order began to fight, it continued until the combined Polish, Lithuanian and Russian troops defeated them at the Battle of Grunwald (Zalgiris).

Polish winged cavalry

Grand Duchy of Lithuania- ON
Consequently crusades From the most distant Baltic lands a single Principality of Lithuania arose. In the north-west of Lithuania (Zhmud, Zhemaiti) there lived pagans, and in the east there was already Orthodoxy. After the Mongols, Rus' ceased to exist and the Lithuanians seized these lands, but they took “Russian law” as laws, and the written Western Russian language, also known as Old Belarusian, the self-named “Russian language” or “Russian language,” became the state (clerical) language.
Lithuania has just left the tribal system and taken over the already existing state organization.

At first, the Lithuanian nobility in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was superior to the Russian nobility. And then they became equal in position. The nobility quickly adopted the language and customs of their subjects. The highest Lithuanians spoke Western Russian and were called Bayars.

But even the nobility had only wealth and not rights and freedoms. In Lithuania, the harsh foundations of tribal leadership were preserved and paganism persisted. But on the other hand, the peasants were more equal, especially in Samogitia. Lithuania fought in the war, calling on the entire people. Then Vytautas (Vytautas) the Great, following the European example, created an aristocracy - a class of professional military men.

The Lithuanian language is similar to Latvian, but in fact the peoples are completely different. Lithuanians are even more understood by Latvian Russians and Kakvazians.
In a Lithuanian folk song it is sung that Lithuanian guys go to war to defend their country, many of them die, and then they appear like cuckoos and sing on a tree. Lithuanians also fed snakes with milk and left food at the graves for their ancestors.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a multicultural and multi-religious country, much more than the most liberal democracies of the EU. There were pagans, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, gentlemen Calvinists, Muslim Tatars, Litvak Jews, Karaite Jews, Russians of various nationalities and Scots.
Tatars were hired for the most difficult military positions. The Glinskys are a Tatar family.

Kingdom of Poland
It existed long before Lithuania and in the opposite way. It was created in a Western, Roman image, but rather even an ancient, republican one.

There are Western Slavs there. To the west of Poland, near Berlin, there was even a Slavic Venice - in German Wenden. Before the Hanseatic League, trade in the Baltic was mainly carried out by Scandinavians and Western Slavs.

Poland is not a maritime country and not Vendenian, it opposed Germany and included both Celtic and Germanic tribes. The population density there was much greater than in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

It is not known where the gentry came from. She often emphasized isolation, Sarmatian origin, or conquest by other Slavs. But they ruled almost like conquerors.

Galicia - Volyn Principality
After the collapse of united Rus', the Galician-Volyn principality became one of the important independent centers. It had close ties with the Golden Horde, was their vassal, and the Galicians fought in alliance with the Horde. However, this did not help them, and this principality was quickly divided.
War of the Galician-Volynian Succession - between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for possession of the territory of the weakened Galician-Volynian principality from 1340 to 1392.
But it remained a separate entity, not quite Ukraine.
Later it was called the mysterious name Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. (Vo)lodomeria, like Vladimir but with full publicity. And the real name is the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Krakow and the principalities of Auschwitz and Zatora. (Somehow everything disgusting came together.)

Litvins, Muscovites, and outskirts residents
In the region, the Russians were a large people, divided after the fall of Rus'.
Those who lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were called Litvins. And the inhabitants of the Moscow Kingdom are Muscovites.

Union of Lublin
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania could not resist the growing Moscow Kingdom. Due to the defeats, there was nothing left but to unite with the Kingdom of Poland. And the Poles offered them to unite on unequal terms and did not want to fight for nothing.
The Sejm was represented mainly by Poles, and for military services the Russian lands of Galicia and the outskirts (the future Ukraine), including the “Wild Field” (deserted territory) and also Podlasie, were transferred to the Kingdom.

Even before that, the ties were close. The Lithuanian prince Jagiello (gailis - rooster) was baptized into Catholicism, taking the baptized name Vladislav, married the Polish princess Jadwiga and became the king of Poland, and thereby founded the Jagiellonian dynasty. But the kings were a separate class and this did not mean that the countries were united.

During the Union of Lublin, the Polish author Stanislav Orekhovsky wrote the book “The Pyramid”, about how arbitrariness, bondage and complete dependence on the owner reigned in the Principality of Lithuania, who could destroy the subject for the sake of a whim. And if the Lithuanians want to live like people, let them join the Kingdom of Poland:

"All principalities are a nasty thing, they do not correspond to human nature and are cursed by God."
Bondage, despotism and arbitrariness of the masters reign there, who can punish, corrupt and even destroy their subjects for the sake of all sorts of whims and not suffer any punishment for it.
Residents of the principalities are poor; they live in eternal poverty and need, being completely dependent on their owners. And only in the Kingdom does a person receive real freedom and happiness. “He who does not live in the kingdom does not belong to free people. He is not a nobleman, he has no rights and lives forever in misfortune and poverty...

Every person in the principality is only a shadow of a person, and not a real person."
Not a single Lithuanian is free, everyone depends on someone, and everyone is dominated by the Grand Duke, who is the master of everyone from birth. Therefore, “when we see people from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we see slaves.” None of the natives of the Principality, even the noble and rich, can compare in their rights with the free Poles.

If Lithuania wants to get out of that innate bondage, let it carefully watch out for an alliance with the Kingdom of Poland, and persistently ask the Grand Duke, its hereditary master, and the Polish king about it.

And this is most likely true. This is the order in the Baltic states. This is probably why people are fleeing Lithuania and Latvia. And then the Russian nobility from the lands that passed to Poland (Ukraine), and who received free status, became ardent enthusiasts of Polonization.

This is a very significant story. These same slogans are heard from Ukraine. Only instead of Lithuania there are “Mongolia”, “Horde” or “RF” and “Putin”.

After the union, the Lithuanian nobility was “adopted” into the Polish noble families and received liberties. But the cities also received the Magdeburg Law, which guaranteed freedom. And they blossomed.

Russian nobility
The nobles of Russian families could easily rule the state. Lev Sapeha was the Grand Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russia and Samogitia. "Sapeha" sounds in Ukrainian. This was even before the emergence of Ukrainians, and there were linguistic features dating back to the tribes. Khodkevichi, Tisshkevichi sounds more Belarusian, and Ilinich sounds more Russian.

Over time, Russian nobles joined the Polish gentry. They said: “Russian origin, Polish nation.”

Many clans had a crescent moon with a Star of David in their coats of arms. For example, the Ostrogsky magnates. The Korybuts had a cross above the crescent and the star of David.

Tycoons
Tycoons, the same oligarchs, appeared in the Republic. They were large landowners, 200 - 300 throughout the country, and of them 40 - 50 had enormous political influence. Land was then the main source of wealth. They were also called karmazins, after their crimson clothes (raspberry jackets.)

There were more magnates in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In Poland there was a movement “for the execution of rights” so that the King would take the lands from the magnates.

The Zamoyskis owned 1/4 of today's Estonia and many more possessions. The Radziwills owned vast lands. And their greatest dominance was on the territory of Ukraine: Ostrohsky, Vishnevetsky, Zbarasky, Zaslavsky. However, even now there is a dominance of tycoons Kolomoisky, Firtash, Akhmetov, and Poroshenko...

It was called magnateria, the same oligarchy.

Radziwills
There were 28,170 households on their estates in 1567. For the Grand Duchy of Lithuania troops, 939 horsemen and 1586 infantrymen were deployed.
On the territory of Belarus they were given the following cities: Geranyony, David-Haradok, Kletsk, Koidanovo, Kopys, Lakhvu, Mir, Nesvizh, Chernavchitsy, Shchuchin, in Lithuania: Kėdainiai, Dubingiai, Biržai and many villages. After the Olelkovichs, the Slutsk principality with Slutsk and Kopyl passed to the Radziwills.

In Lithuanian, the Radivillas, an ancient family according to legend, descended from Lithuanian pagan priests. The founder was Radivil, who converted to Christianity. What could it mean for the sake of forks - relatives to wolves. Motto: "God advises us."

The coat of arms features a royal robe. Also one of the privileges:

Surnames
The surnames of the Polish gentry were formed from their place of origin. Dambrova - oak forest, Dambrova - grove of oaks. Z Dambrovki or Dambrowski - from the oak grove. Later, due to prestige, other strata preferred to switch to such surnames.
In Polish Kuczynski, in Russian the diphthong i is added at the end.

Golden Liberty
Freedom in the old Polish way: upon taking office, the king signed two documents: the constitution and an election promise to the Sejm.
And golden liberty provided for rights, dignity and freedom, the opportunity to get together and choose your own policy. The gentry also enjoyed partial spiritual freedom from church clerics (freedom of opinion).

It did not provide special rights for billionaires and the rich, as in Ukraine and the United States. Liberty was within the law and not from the law.

But they had the right to rokosh - uprising.

Rokosh
This is the right of the gentry to rebel militarily against the king. In the original, this was the name of the national assembly in Hungary, and then the general conciliarity of the gentry, not only the deputies.
This measure is emergency. But if the king is leading the country to destruction, then why not?

Meeting, tycoons in crimson

Parliaments at all levels
The local nobility gathered in sejmiks, in which they came to a certain opinion and then elected and instructed two ambassadors, who were sent to the Sejm.

Local peasant issues were also resolved by the village assembly, in which peasant elders, elders, etc. were represented. Courts were held in them.

Jews and the economy
Unlike Western Europe Rzhechpospolita and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were a country of religious tolerance. And economic life in the territory of Rzhechpospolita was determined by a combination of gentry and Jews. The great nobility owned mills. They were handed over to the Jews. It’s like in modern capitalism, on the one hand, the owner, investor and shareholder, and on the other, operational management.
The aristocracy had the exclusive right to sell alcohol. But the noble magnates themselves, of course, did not distill vodka, brew beer, or run taverns. They gave these rights to the Jews. The estates received half their income from alcohol.

A certain anti-Polish governor-general of Belarus said that “the Jews are getting the Russians drunk.” And just to deprive the Polish aristocracy of income.

Well, there were a lot of Jews in Rzhechpospolit.

The biblical Noah had 3 sons. Shem became the forefather of the Jews. Japhet became the forefather of the gentry. And the son Ham, cursed by Noah for his sins, the forefather of the peasants. In Western Europe, it was believed that Ham became the forefather of Africans and other “black” peoples.

The Jewish religion was not an obstacle to joining the gentry. But according to some laws, conversion to Christianity was rewarded with nobilization. But it was a rare occurrence. It is mentioned that in the 18th century, certain followers of Jakub Frank joined a certain local gentry of Jewish origin.

In addition to “nobilitation” in Polish there was “congratulation” and a bunch of similar Slavic-Latin formations. It was considered good manners to speak both Polish and Latin at the same time.

Economic flourishing
After unification into Rzheczpospolita, the country experienced rapid economic growth. The country exported food, timber, etc. to the west. Thanks to the Magdeburg Law, cities grew rapidly. The masters attracted Masurian settlers to the sparsely populated territories (of Ukraine). There is also an exchange of technologies and a larger trade space.

Peanshchina or corvée
But with the growth of exports, more and more were imposed on the peasants.
At first, serfs were expected to work for the landowner one day a week. And then they increased their income by lengthening the corvee. As a result, the peasants did not even have enough time to spend on their plots.

Polish peasants tried to emigrate to Western countries, and the authorities tried to do the opposite - to root them. Laws were passed that if a peasant cultivates his owner’s land for 10 years, he becomes a serf. Then the period was reduced by 1 year.

Nevertheless, rich peasants had the right to pay their way out of forced labor.

"Road corvee" in Estonia was abolished only in the 60s or 70s (in the ESSR). According to the law, the estates provided building materials and the peasants provided transport and labor. This is how roads and bridges were maintained.

Duchy of Courland and Semigalsky
The possessions of Rzhechpospolita included the Prussian and Courland duchies, the lands of the crusaders. Livonia (Livonia) collapsed, Courland was annexed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. And after 8 years, a condominium of Poland and Lithuania was installed.

The Duchy of Courland was a vassal state and not part of the Republic, with an army limited by law. If in Livonia the state system was a theocracy, and the regions were ruled by bishops and the knightly order of the crusaders. Then the last Landmaster of the Order became a Duke. And for the peasants they introduced the most advanced law in the world - serfdom.

Doesn't sound progressive. But at the time of the creation of the Duchy there were almost no cities there. And the ducal castle in the center, Mittau, from die mitte - the center, now Jelgava, was chosen as the capital.

And the ducal dynasty of the Kettlers was advanced, traveling to the west and sending their children to advanced countries. Following the example of Holland, they created a merchant fleet, opened fatkoria, where iron was smelted from swamp ore. Before that there was only a collective farm and the military.
Courland, with 200,000 inhabitants, briefly acquired two overseas colonies: Tobago and an African river island. These territories are indicated on the map. Peasants were sent to the colony, for which they were promised freedom.

These dukes were similar to Peter 1 and gradually became closer to Russia. When Anna Romanov left Courland for St. Petersburg, the duke of another dynasty, Biron, actually ruled the Empire for some time.

The rest of Livonia (Inflantia), apart from Estland (northern Estonia), was owned directly by the Polish Republic. This territory was not advanced. The Republic just issued a decree that the peasants would now have to be treated no worse than in Poland or Lithuania. During anarchy, even a craftsman had the right to hang a peasant.

I haven’t studied about Prussia. Part of Prussia was part of Poland as a region, the other was a vassal state. It eventually took part in the division of Poland and became that Germany.

Prussia had few war resources but a well-trained army, so it was necessary to crush opponents as quickly as possible - a blitzkrieg.

In the coat of arms of the Dukes of Kettlers, Courland and Semigallia are also connected so that no part is higher or on the right side:

Sarmatism
In the Kingdom of Poland, an idea similar to modern Eurasianism developed. The gentry considered themselves descendants of the Sarmatians, an ancient tribe of Iranian-speaking nomads. And so they got rid of the rest of the “ordinary” population. They wore deliberately oriental clothes and carried curved sabers. Circassian armor was used. But they then fought with the Middle Eastern states and adopted their methods of war.

Sarmatism greatly influenced the culture; they deliberately built their castles in a simplified way, since it was assumed that this was how the Sarmatians should do it. There was a "Sarmatian portrait". They called the European aristocracy socks, after Western clothing.

Perhaps this ideology helped to keep many peoples and religions in one country, creating a single myth of the elites.

Sarmatism was led by the Polish historian Jan Dlugosz (1415-1480). The Sarmatians opposed themselves to both the West and tyrannical Asia.

The Sarmatian myth is still alive. I remember the series “Sarmat”, where it was said, “we are all Sarmatians here.” And the Ukrainians claim that they are descendants of the Sarmatians.

And to the south live the Hungarians. Although their nobility traces their ancestry back to the steppe nomads with the Khanti and Mansi languages. The inhabitants of the Hungarian region of Yasov are designated in treaties as descendants of the Alans, who are descendants of the Sarmatians. In turn, Ossetians are also descendants of Alans.

The word "Sarmatia" remains in the Lithuanian language. In Poland, Sarmatian is already perceived somewhat ironically. But in general, this is bookish.

Jan Sobieski
The Crown Hetman and then the Polish King John III Sobieski, elected by the Sejm, completely defeated the Turkish and Crimean Tatar armies at the Battle of Vienna. After this, Turkey ended the “magnificent century” that they show on TV.

A constellation was named in his honor, once Sobieski's Shield, and now the Scutum Constellation.

Cossack Hetmanate
In the outskirts, so to speak, known as the Lesser Poland region and Little Russia, there was a deserted “Wild Field”. A “strange people” arose there, a kind of melting pot of specific individuals like the Wild West. Russians, Tatars, nobles, some very noble families, and even Scots. From this cauldron the Cossacks and the Ukrainian nation were melted.

In the Zaparozhian Sich, Slavic and Tatar cultures were mainly mixed. The Cossacks are almost Slavic nomads, with Tatar weapons.

Ukraine, with the exception of the eastern regions, is part of Rus', which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania transferred to the Kingdom of Poland under the Union of Lublin.

Polonization and Catholicization
The rapid success of the Kingdom of Poland went to their heads. As a result, the state began to pursue a policy of polonization. Education was in Polish and the aristocracy gradually switched to it. State texts were no longer published in Western Russian. Instead they began to print in Lithuanian.
But Vilnius became Polonized and became a Polish city.

With the spread of the Counter-Reformation and the Western Jesuit order, Catholicism began to be imposed and other religions were persecuted (the Jews became infidels).

For the sake of reconciliation between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, they created a common state - the Greek Catholic or Uniate church.

This shook the foundations of the state.

One of the reasons for the separation of Ukraine and annexation to Russia was religious. The Russian Empire gave more rights to the common people; upon joining Russia, serfdom was abolished for Ukrainians. True, not for long - the Russian Empire, unlike the Republic, did not comply with the signed documents, everything was decided by the will of the Tsar;)

This has reached the point where today the Poles and Lithuanians have finally quarreled. They are united only in foreign policy, more precisely, American geopolitics.

End
Rapid success went to his head and created the preconditions for his fall.

The gentry as a class crushed the class of townspeople, depriving them of all rights. Why did cities stop developing? The once good higher education has deteriorated as unnecessary. The industry did not develop either.

One part - Poland, crushed the other - Lithuania, which did not help the overall situation.

The right to veto led to the impossibility of any progressive changes. Someone will always be unhappy. Even convening an army was difficult.

The Poles believe that the Republic was ahead of its time, but in the late Middle Ages it was necessary to switch to absolutism. When decisions are made by royal decree, and although often incorrect, they are made quickly.

True, the reason lies solely in class solidarity. If the peasants were given a share of the freedom and dignity of the gentry, there would be fewer centripetal tendencies.

As a result, only 100 years after Jan Sobieski, the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place. A second and a third followed until everything was divided. And there was nothing left of the once powerful power.

Polish messianism
This philosophical movement developed after the fall of the Republic. Then the Polish people became not the gentry, but all Poles. The idea was created that the Polish people have special characteristics and, relying on spiritual strength, carry a mission for the whole world. Poland as Jesus Chrestos. This flourished during the period of the uprising.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was to be “the stronghold of Christianity, the refuge of freedom and the breadbasket of Europe.” And the Polish people, as descendants of the Sarmatians, should play a special role in the history of the world.

According to one version, Polish Massianism developed due to close contact with Jews. The Jewish Hasidic movement arose in the domains of the Polish Crown, and charismatic leaders appeared there, often recognized as messiahs. According to another, messianism came from the great religiosity of the Poles.

In general, in Latvia, too, every election some new savior appears. And the people believe in them. And those in power in Latvia mostly have Polish and German names, not Latvian or Swedish ones.

The result of political messianism is more negative than positive; there is nothing evil in foreign policy.
But on the other hand, if not all these saviors relied on the power of spirit, probably here (and in Poland) there was the same regime of thieves as in Ukraine and Moldova, who rely on the power of money.
Only they tend to start holy wars.

Such ideas are also heard in Israel. Only there is also an ideology that everyone is our enemy and wishes harm (well, except even the saints of the USA), which prevents any cooperation.

In already modern Poland there was the Jagiellonian Idea, the creation of a multicultural empire that would go to the east and impose its will there. And with this is the competing idea of ​​the Piasts, about a national state at war with the Germans. That is the problem. (The Poles' main profession is historian.)

ON - Lithuania or Belarus?
Belarusian historians call the Grand Duchy of Lithuania nothing less than ancient Belarus. What historical figures originally from the eastern part, from Belarus. But in the west there was nothing, not just one city.
Lithuanian historians object to them that at that time the Lithuanians lived much east of Nine Lithuania. Tautville, Vaishvilk, Goshtout are not Slavic names and considered themselves Lithuanians.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Lithuanian scientists also say that the Balts in Belarus became Slavs. The state language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - Western Russian - had distinct features of the Belarusian language. And the first capital - Novogrudok (Novgorodik) was in Belarus.

Before the emergence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania there was Polotsk. And ON was created according to the example of what they saw.

No matter how large the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is, progressively inclusive, noble and important, the scary structures described in the “Pyramid” are similar to today’s Lithuania and Latvia. Why are the people fleeing?

In the south of Belarus there still lived a Slavic tribal association - the Drevlyans, who fought with Kiev and the Varangians for dominance in Rus'. But they lost.

Results:
I associate Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic with Rzeczpospolita.
It’s impossible to cover everything in one article. But in the history of Rzheczpospolita there is an understanding of much that is happening now. Ukraine, Baltic states, Belarus and Israel. Cultures have mixed there, and regional histories have become part of the national identity of some countries.

Modern Poland is not a particularly attractive country with their nationalism. There are many radicals in the east. And unlike the gentry, it does not have an original culture. Can we be proud that our cities, like those in Germany, are only worse? Russia has its own architecture.
Favorite Polish composer Frederic Chopin does not grab it, unlike the same Chaikosvsky. This is some kind of faceless Europe.
And Lithuania, in my opinion, is a little horror.

p.s.
This post is a saber strike against tyranny, lawlessness, the culture of the lower classes and fantasies of national purity.

The gentry are a special caste of Poles, which justified their uniqueness not only by status, appearance or manners, but also origin. There was no place for Slavic roots in the noble family tree.

Other Slavs

Events taking place recently in Ukraine have renewed lively discussions on the topic of inter-Slavic relations. Today, the ideas of Pan-Slavism, born in the 18th century and strengthened in the 19th century, have been devalued like never before. But even in the middle of the 19th century, the Czechs saw in the unification of the Slavs a powerful political force capable of resisting Germanism.

The Czech initiative was supported by Russia, but Poland reacted to it at least coolly. The union of the Slavs with the dominant role of the Russian Tsar meant the collapse of hopes for an independent Polish state. Religion also played a role in the Poles’ resistance to the ideas of Pan-Slavism: Catholic Poland traditionally acted as an antagonist to Orthodox Rus'.

The Kingdom of Poland, of course, had its Slavophiles. Prince Adam Czartoryski enthusiastically accepted the idea of ​​Slavic unification, and the Decembrist Julian Lubinski even headed the Society of United Slavs - the first organization that openly proclaimed the ideas of Pan-Slavism.

However, some of the Polish elite always had ideas about the special status of the Polish people, which in many ways made it difficult to find common ground with their Slavic neighbors. Ethnologist Stanislav Khatuntsev noted that in the course of their historical existence, the Poles largely lost many mental properties, components of the spiritual and material structure of that ancient tribe and instead acquired features of mental organization, material and spiritual culture, typical of the Celto-Roman and Germanic peoples.

The Polish historian Franciszek Piekosinski, for example, put forward a theory about the dynastic origins of the Polish gentry, linking this with the reproduction of old Scandinavian runes in Polish coats of arms, as well as with Scandinavian expressions found in the so-called “zavolani”. However, at one time the nobles themselves took a hand in proving the uniqueness of their pedigree.

We are Sarmatians

In the 15th – 17th centuries, when the final stage of the formation of European peoples took place, interest in ancient literature. In ancient books, early modern thinkers searched for the origins of their states and nations. The Romance countries saw their roots in the Roman Empire, the Germans - in the ancient Germanic tribes, and the Poles also found their ancestors in the far East.

One of the first to put forward the idea of ​​Sarmatism was the Polish historian Jan Dlugosz (1415-1480). He argued that ancient writers and historians called the territory of Poland European Sarmatia, and the Poles were called “Saramats”.

Later, this idea was consolidated by the astrologer Maciej Karpiga from Miechów (1457-1523) in his famous treatise “On the Two Sarmatias,” which went through 14 editions in the 16th century. In his work, the author substantiated the significant difference between the Poles, as descendants of the valiant Sarmatians, from the Muscovites, descended from the barbarian Scythian tribe.

Over the next few centuries, the idea of ​​Sarmatism was dominant among the Polish aristocracy, transforming from a fashionable, romanticized hobby into a conservative political ideal - a Gentry Republic, where broad democratic freedoms were available only to a select few.

The cornerstone of gentry Sarmatism was “golden liberty,” which was opposed to both servile despotic Asia and bourgeois businesslike Europe. However, this did not prevent the nobles from combining the Eastern love of luxury and purely European enterprise.

An echo of the ideology of Sarmatism was the so-called “Polish messianism”, which developed in the 17th-18th centuries, according to which the Poles, by virtue of their origin, should play a special role in the destinies of the world, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth should become “a stronghold of Christianity, a refuge of freedom and the breadbasket of Europe.”

Emphasizing uniqueness

The Sarmatian myth has always been an important ideological basis for Poland, acting as an unofficial national idea. Polish historians have done a lot to strengthen the idea that the Sarmatian tribes actually lived on the territory of Poland and laid the foundations of Polish statehood.

The Sarmatian past served as a kind of standard by which the image of the ideal nobleman was cut. He, like his Sarmatian ancestor, is a courageous warrior, merciless to his enemies, but at the same time a knight for whom honor and justice are not an empty phrase. Another incarnation of the nobleman is the Pole tycoon, the keeper of the traditions of patriarchal antiquity, who harmoniously fits into the bosom of the rural idyll.

An important feature of Polish Sarmatism is the cultivation of a chivalrous attitude towards women, one of the components of which was the gallant custom of kissing a woman’s hand. Supporters of the Sarmatian theory referred to the fact that the high position of women in society was unusual for other Slavic peoples. According to historians, the special status of women in gentry culture was influenced by the myth of the Sarmatian Amazons.

Over time, the image of the ideal nobleman became firmly embedded in the genome of Polish identity. “Fearlessness, bordering on almost madness, when a man goes to certain death in a white uniform, in a Confederate cap proudly tilted to one side, with a rose in his teeth, he knows that he will be shot in a minute, but he does not allow himself to get out of this for a minute the image of the ideal Sarmatian knight is the reality of the Polish national character right up to the 20th century,” writes journalist Tamara Lyalenkova.

We must not forget about the other side of the gentry’s worldview - the irrepressible arrogance with which the arrogant gentry distanced himself from the Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians and even a significant part of the Poles living in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a terminological sense, this looked like a contrast between the Sarmatian elite and the peasant “cattle” (Bydło - draft animals), with which the Slavs were also associated.

Little in common

Sarmatism still exists in Polish culture today, although it is more of a form of ironic self-identification. Sometimes this word is used to emphasize the uniqueness of the Polish character, any differences from their Slavic neighbors.

Nowadays, divisions within the Slavic family are obvious, and there are many reasons for this of a socio-political and cultural nature. One of them dates back to approximately the 6th century AD - it was then, according to researchers, that the Proto-Slavic language, common to all Slavs, began to fall out of use. As one thinker put it, “The Slavs used national languages ​​more to divide than to unite.”

However, the differences between the Slavs are not explained only through history or language. Polish anthropologist and bioarchaeologist Janusz Piontek writes that from a biological point of view, the Slavs can be classified as different groups that originally inhabited Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, and they are noticeably different from each other.

“Slavs and Poles have a lot in common. Poles and Slavs - nothing. They are uncomfortable in their Slavic origins, uncomfortable to realize that they are from the same family as Ukrainians and Russians. The fact that we turned out to be Slavs is an accident,” states the Polish writer Mariusz Szczygiel.

The events of World War II and the consequences of the collapse of the USSR largely alienated the Poles not only from everything Soviet, but also, to some extent, from what is the basis of Slavic identity. The trend of recent decades, when the situation forces Polish citizens to look for work and better living conditions in the West, leads to the fact that Poles began to feel more in common with residents of Great Britain and Germany than with Belarusians or Ukrainians.

Journalist Krzysztof Wasilewski, in his article “Slavs against Slavs,” calls the post-Soviet period in the history of Poland years of transformation, when the Poles “tried at any cost to become like the West, dissociating themselves from everything that bore the imprint of the East.”

It is quite natural that Polish historians are looking for theories of common roots with anyone - with the Germans, Scandinavians, Sarmatians, treating with disgust the words of the author of the oldest Polish chronicle, Gallus Anonymous: “Poland is part of the Slavic world.”

And since then the nobility is revered in the states
for the natural army, whose position is from the samago
age to old age to the sovereign and the state, without sparing
health and belly, serve
V. N. Tatishchev. A conversation between two friends about the benefits of science and schools (1733)

1) Existing etymology

A) Wiktionary

Root: -gentry-; ending: -a. Meaning: privileged class in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, after the Union of Lublin in 1569, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as some other states; in the Czech Republic (;lechta, Slovakia (Slachta), Poland, Belarus, Lithuania (Slekta) - nobility in general. Etymology - no.

B) Wikipedia (Polish), szlachta (Google translation)

In seventeenth century Poland from the German word wywodzono Schlachten (battle). … The existence of legal privileges, such as the right to bear arms, the right to own land and property, the right to hold office or the right to vote, depends on the laws of the country and the privilege of the nobleman.

B) Wikipedia (Polish), Szlachta (Google translation)

*The term szlachta comes from the Old High German word slahta (modern German Geschlecht), which means "(noble) family", just as many other Polish words related to nobility come from German words - for example, the Polish "Rycerz" ( knight, cognate with German Ritter) and "grass" Polish (coat of arms, from German Erbe, heritage).

* 17th-century Poles assumed that "szlachta" came from the German "schlachten" (to slaughter or slaughter); Also suggestive is the German "Schlacht" (fight). Early Polish historians thought that the term may have come from the name of a legendary proto-Polish leader, Lech, mentioned in Polish and Czech works.

* "Szlachta" becomes the correct term for Polish nobility starting around the 15th century.

* Strong cultural ties with the Polish nobility led that in the 16th century a new term to name the Lithuanian nobility appeared slekta—a direct borrowing from the Polish gentry. From point of view historical truth Lithuanians also had to use this term, slekta (gentry), to name their own nobility, but Lithuanian linguists banned the use of this Polish loanword. This refusal to use the word szlachta (in the Lithuanian text slekta) complicates the whole naming process.

D) Max Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary

I Nobles, Ukrainian, blr. gentry, other Russian gentry "small nobility" (gram. 1563; see Srezn. III, 1597). Through Polish szlachta (from the 15th century; see Brückner 550) from the Middle Ages. slahte "genus, origin, breed, species"; see Mi. EW 341; Brückner, ibid.; Korbut 371; Preobr., Proceedings I, 101. In the same way, derivatives: gentry “nobility”, in the era of Peter I (see Smirnov 331), from Polish. szlachetnosc - the same; gentry (Repnin, 1704, Christiani 17) - from Polish. szlachecki – the same; gentry "nobility, gentry" (Gogol) - from Polish. szlachectwo - the same.

II gentry “carpenter’s axe”, gentry, gentry “hew away with gentry”. Borrowing from English-German slichten "plane" (Sass, Sprache d. ndd. Zimmerm. 7), cf. also above, shlintik, sander.

2) National Corpus of the Russian Language

* Prophecy from Krakow about the death of Poland (1558–1665): “The gentry will settle down with the peasants, and honor and dignity will be abolished.”

* Notebook of the Polotsk campaign (1562-1563): “And those children of the boyars and hammer nobles and the townspeople will remain to live in the settlement in the fort behind Polota, and those people, in any yard, will not have a saadok or a saber, there was no sword, no military weapon.”

* V. N. Tatishchev. A conversation between two friends about the benefits of science and schools (1733): “But these were twofold, some had to be hereditary in the war and for this purpose, some were horsemen, or cavalry, while we have nobles, like court warriors, among the Poles, nobles from nobles, or the paths are named, you must always be ready for campaigns.”

* D. I. Ilovaisky. The beginning of Rus' (1876): “In the same way, the popular name Lyakhi or Lehi is found among the Slavs in a class meaning; in this meaning it was later preserved in the word gentry.”

3) Historical sources

A) Gall Anonymous. Chronicle and deeds of the Polish princes or rulers (around 1113)
http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus9/Gall/frametext1.htm

"8. About the splendor and power of Boleslav the Brave

The deeds of Boleslav are greater and more numerous than we could describe them or talk about them in artless speech. Indeed, what expert in arithmetic could accurately count the iron ranks of his warriors or describe his countless victories and triumphs? Indeed, in Poznan he had 1300 knights with 4 thousand shield guards, in Gniezno - 1500 knights and 5 thousand shield guards, in the city of Włocławk 67 - 800 knights and 2 thousand shield guards, in Gdecz 68 - 300 knights and 2 thousand shield guards; all of them in the time of Boleslav the Great were very brave and skilled warriors in battle.”

B) Eastern literature; http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/rus10/Meier/framevved1.htm

"B. Even in their appearance and clothing, they (the Jews) were almost no different from the Polish gentry. Cardinal Commendoni, who visited Ukraine in the second half of the 16th century, noted that Jews who owned lands, in violation of the decrees of church councils, did not wear any signs on their clothes that distinguished them from Christians and even carried a saber - a sign of belonging to the gentry.

B) Koshitsky led to 1374; http://law.edu.ru/article/article.asp?articleID=1182888

King Louis of Hungary (1326-1382) after the death of Casimir the Great in 1370, unopposed (inherited) received the crown of Poland; lived permanently in Hungary and had little interest in the life of Poland. However, in order to secure Poland for the dynasty, he attracted to his side the most numerous knighthood in the noble class (szlachta), and issued the Koszycki Prively in 1374, in which he secured the rights of the possible owners (large feudal lord, baron) and knighthood (szlachta). This was the first normative act royal power, covering the entire mass of the gentry.

The knighthood-gentry was exempt: from all taxes and duties (only two pennies per field as a sign of submission to royal power), the obligation to build and repair castles, bridges and cities, and maintain the royal court in their territories; Only Poles held positions. The gentry remained responsible for military service in the event of an attack by enemies or campaigns in another state; For battles, the gentry received soldiers' salaries, losses were compensated by the treasury. The “Košice Privilej” turned the serving nobility, dependent on the king, into a political and military force with which the royal power and magnates (possessors) were forced to reckon; further in time the privileges of the gentry expanded.

4) Generalization and conclusion

* The etymology of the term “gentry” is not defined. Some researchers derive the term from German language(battle, battle, slaughter, clan, noble), others from the legendary ancestor Lech (Lyakha) or “road” (road). Polish historians have not decided on the etymology and date of appearance of the term (c. XV century).

* In European countries, the formation of the service nobility occurred in approximately the same way. In the tribal society, groups of professional warriors were created who defended their fellow tribesmen in case of attack, performed guard duty and protected the nobility, for which they received a certain allowance from the tribe. During the period of the emergence of kings (princes), groups of warriors concentrated around the royal (princely) court, defended power, participated in the collection of tribute, legal proceedings and administration, and made campaigns to expand the territory and seize property and slaves. Over time, a social stratum of the population was formed (approximately 6-10%) - the military class, earning its livelihood through military activities, it received the name - knighthood, servants of the nobility, boyar children, and in a number of countries - gentry. Main function – military service, the class was supported by land grants received from the authorities and the plunder of conquered territories.
The external signs of a nobleman are the obligatory carrying of bladed weapons (saber).
* Cm.
In the Middle Ages, the entire population was armed; these were the conditions of existence. Peasants and townspeople armed themselves with long knives (length up to 60 cm was allowed), axes and used other working tools to protect themselves from animals or humans. To know - with swords and sabers (length 110-117 cm), actually WEAPONS, which have one purpose - killing a person.

Thus, based on written sources, we can identify for the medieval period one characteristic (external) difference between a nobleman (gentry) and a commoner - the nobleman always carried a saber (at least this is how the gentry is depicted in art). Constantly carrying a bladed weapon (saber) – distinguishing feature gentry (nobleman), a free and independent person.

The term appeared in Judeo-Christian territory; in the Middle Ages, large Jewish diasporas also lived here (Poland, Lithuania). It is advisable to consider the word in connection with biblical terminology and imagery.

5) Hebrew terminology and biblical image

Let's put the term in a form close to Hebrew grammar and highlight the roots - SZLACHTA = SZLACH+TA. We immediately identify two Hebrew terms characterizing the activities of the military class, “gentry” - sword + to establish a border; those. The gentry establishes the borders (of the state) with weapons.

A) Terminology

SHLYAH+TA = SZLACHTA = SZLACH+TA = Hebrew. SHELAH weapon (sword, spear) + TAA to designate, assign a limit, set a boundary; those. to set the border with weapons.
The main function of the military class in medieval times, when the borders of states were unstable.

*See Strong Hebrew 7973, SHELAH

http://www.greeklatin.narod.ru/hebdict/img/_491.htm

*See Strong Hebrew 8376, TAA

* See Hebrew and Chaldean Etymological Dictionary of the Books of the Old Testament, Vilna, 1878.
http://www.greeklatin.narod.ru/hebdict/img/_510.htm

B) Biblical image

* 2 Chronicles 23:7: “And the Levites shall surround the king on all sides, every one with his weapon in his hand, and whosoever shall enter into the temple shall be put to death. And you will be with the king when he comes in and goes out”... 2 Chronicles 23:10: “And he stationed all the people, every one with his weapon (SHELAH) in his hand, from the right side of the temple to the left side of the temple, at the altar and at at home, around the king."

* Nehemiah 4:17, 18: “They that built the wall, and carried the burdens that were laid upon them, did the work with one hand, and with the other held the spear (SHELACH). Each of those who built had a sword girded around his waist, and so they built. There was a trumpeter next to me.”

* Job 33:18: “(God speaks one day) ... to lead his soul from the abyss and his life from being struck by the sword (SHELAH).

* Numbers 34:7: “To the north shall your border be: from the great sea ye shall draw it (TAA destined, assigning a limit) unto Mount Hor.”

Thus, using biblical terminology and images, we have identified the content of the term “way + ta”, which is not understood by etymologists. It contains the meaning (principle) of the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian military class - to establish (expand) borders with the sword. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century occupied the territory from the Baltic Sea to the borders of the Wild Steppe (Ukraine), from Smolensk to the borders of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.

In the literature that concerns the history of Poland, the word “gentry” appears one way or another. Majority modern people have no idea what it is, but for the Poles, the class of gentry has been an integral element of national pride for many centuries.

Big Soviet encyclopedia in the third volume he gives the following definition to the word “gentry” (Polish szlachta, from ancient German slata - breed, origin, clan) - in a number of countries in Eastern Europe the name of the main part of the ruling feudal class, noble families of intellectuals who belonged to the elite of society..

In Polish society, only people of royal blood stood above the gentry. The gentry in the history of Poland is a noble class, the knights themselves or their descendants. Nominally at the time of its appearance, the gentry represented the lowest class of secular landowners - knights. Soon this class began to play an important role in Polish society and the state.

History of the formation of the gentry

At the beginning of the second millennium, a new rule for the appointment of knights appeared in Poland, which was initially not enshrined in written documents. Knights had to come from a certain clan, which would accept them into its ranks. The formation of clans took place on the basis of unification around powerful clans that had extensive territorial possessions or great power in the country. Most of these clans included a Polish-speaking population; foreign knights, who wanted to join a noble family and thus secure a high position in society, came mainly from German lands and came to Poland as a result of expansion. Initially, the gentry did not have much influence on the political life of the country and was not very numerous, but over time it transformed into a powerful layer of citizens, and by the 16th century Poland had greatest number privileged citizens than any other European country. There were about 25 thousand noble families, which in general accounted for 6.7% of the total population of the country.

The Polish gentry was not homogeneous in its composition; it was divided into three unequal branches: magnates-gentry, middle gentry and small gentry. Among the magnates there were eight to ten families who owned the most important strategic territories in the state and occupied high positions in government. Among such genera we can distinguish the Pototskys and Radziwills. In addition to direct influence through senatorial posts and financial leverage on state policy, they also had their own armies, which allowed them to virtually feel impunity, no matter what they did.
Each clan belonging to the middle gentry owned from one to six family land plots. They were not as rich as the magnates, but nevertheless, the bulk of clerical officials and other small managers in the state apparatus came from this branch. The average gentry constituted approximately 10% of the entire gentry class.

The small gentry did not have significant land holdings. Their possessions sometimes constituted simply part of a plot of land. Famous families that went bankrupt often fell into this category, the lowest among the gentry. The main reason why all these people, who made up about 70% of the gentry, could enjoy all the privileges of the gentry, was due to the nobility of their origin and a good family tree. But after the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided between the Austrian state, the Russian state and Prussia, the gentry was obliged to document their noble origin. However, most of the representatives of the small gentry did not have any written confirmation, and they were recorded in the list of classes subject to taxes, while, of course, losing their privileged position.

Systematic strengthening of the position of the gentry: privileges

For a long time, the gentry fought to increase their rights, in which they were gladly supported by the kings of Poland, trying, by expanding the privileges of the middle gentry class, to reduce the power of the magnates, who actually seized all the power in the state. The basis on which the power of the gentry was built were royal privileges and charters (statutes).
In 1374, the ruler Louis of Anjou granted the Koshitsky privilege to the nobility. According to its text, when performing military service, the gentry were exempt from paying all taxes, except for land taxes, which were established within minimal limits. Also, the nobility were granted government positions as an exclusive right, that is, any legitimate nobleman could rightfully occupy a place in the government, and not because of his personal merits, but only by birthright.

In 1433, Jagiellon granted the right of personal integrity to every nobleman. For murder, the death penalty or a fine was imposed, tens of times higher than the fine for killing a person from any other class. The Tserekvitsky privileges, which received the final approval of the Nieszava Statute in 1454, granted the gentry the right to change the legislative framework of the country and influence the creation and approval of certain laws through the gentry diets.
Jan Olbracht in 1496 proclaimed the Piotrkow Privilege, which completely monopolized land holdings for the gentry. In addition, enslavement of the peasants was finally introduced. According to this privilege, the nobility was also exempt from paying taxes on goods imported from abroad. In fact, this opened the way for monopolization of trade foreign goods on the territory of Poland.
The year 1573 was marked by one of the most important expansions of the rights of the gentry: Valois allowed them to take part in royal elections. Thus, the political regime of Poland acquired the appearance of a gentry republic.

Throughout the history of Poland, the gentry played the role of not only a colossal political trigger, but also a cultural trigger, since all new trends penetrated into the country precisely through the intellectual elite, which in Poland was the gentry.

The fall of Little Russia from Poland. Volume 1 [read, modern spelling] Kulish Panteleimon Alexandrovich

Chapter II. Polish burghers and Polish gentry. - Agriculture and urban industry. - Polish-Russian peasants. - The collision of the European economy with the Asian one. - Little Russian peasants in the new colonies. - Rivalries between the bourgeoisie and the gentry. - Colonization of Little Russian deserts. - Ukrainian mountains

Chapter II.

Polish burghers and Polish gentry. - Agriculture and urban industry. - Polish-Russian peasants. - The collision of the European economy with the Asian one. - Little Russian peasants in the new colonies. - Rivalries between the bourgeoisie and the gentry. - Colonization of Little Russian deserts. - Ukrainian cities. - The origin of the Cossacks. - The enmity of the Cossacks towards the bourgeoisie and towards the master's government. - The thought of destroying the Cossacks.

At a time when the Jesuits were working to create a single faith and a single nationality within the Polish nobility, this nobility turned its economic activities to extracting income from the luxurious deserts of the Little Russian region, untouched by the plow since the time of the Tatar hard times.

The economic side of Polish-Russian history is interesting in itself. In connection with the events to which economic activity led the Polish and our Little Russian gentlemen, its interest becomes tragic.

Indigenous or old Poland was divided very clearly into urban and rural. The city belonged almost exclusively to people from other, more civilized or more restless countries. The countryside was almost the exclusive property of the natives. According to hereditary knightly concepts, it was humiliating for a nobleman to engage in petty-bourgeois trades and trade. Only war and agriculture were suitable for him. On the other hand, the Polish peasant was so simple and patriarchal that in urban life he could not withstand competition with aliens. The rest of the state of both these classes, in comparison with the inhabitants of the European West and South, united their moral and material forces into an inseparable, voluntary and involuntary enterprise. Pan, as a landowner, had to increase the peasant's working capital. The man, as a trapper and nomad, was interested in the freedom and vastness of the master's lands. Evidence of the mutual agreement of these two states, or their natural affinity before the time of Jogaila, is the unusually dense population of the Krakow, Sendomierz, Masovian, Greater Poland and Lesser Poland lands, which almost did not increase the number of their forces from the 12th and 13th centuries to the 18th.

This agreement, which, of course, had its sad exceptions, began to be violated by various circumstances arising from the personal freedom that had been sought from time immemorial, which the Polish gentry most valued and were proud of. Having wrested from their sovereigns a significant part of the ancient princely right (jus ducale), but without developing the public to an appropriate degree, the Sarmatian landowners did not know how to establish peace and order in their privileged class, they made mutual seizures of land, field crops and all other property, and when they gathered together their diets, or veches, turned them into such massacres as the veche time of our appanage princes and their warriors was distinguished by. Hence, the “lower gentry,” or small nobles, arose the custom of “putting themselves under the lord’s shield,” that is, gathering around a warlike landowner and seeking military justice with their common forces, while richer or more inveterate people exhibited their shield coat of arms, called curse, otherwise inviting, and obliging all relatives and all those who accepted the same coat of arms as a sign of union, or “kleinotnichestvo,” to appear at the call of their leader. This custom had the practical significance that warlike and enterprising nobles, with the help of their vassals, increased their hereditary estates either by actual seizure, or by the superiority of armed force at the judicial assembly. Finally, and without any falsehoods, people with a proud character had to take care of the size of their land holdings and increasing their income in order not to become the playground of their raked neighbor. Estates and income increased both by petitioning the king for grants and special privileges, and by purchasing land from small owners who preferred to sell their lands and forests to one noble “duke” rather than see them appropriated by others.

Thus, in distant times, the beginning of Polish canpower, or the nobles, who, in order to maintain political balance between the lords, formed several dozen appanage principalities in Poland, called lordships, keys, volosts, and divided the gentry into several vassal parties. According to Dlugosz, already in the 12th century there were seventy such master's houses in Poland, which “raised the shield” from own name and, neglecting, in the consciousness of their strength, the name of the nobles, they called themselves lords.

The preponderance of fighting strength and wealth of the fighting landowners on one side or the other encouraged the peasants to run over to the lord who was safer and more comfortable for them. Since it would be in vain to demand from neighbors that they not accept defectors, the gentry, already at the end of the 14th century, came to the need to vest their legislative rights on the peasants, and achieved that until then they were free kmetyam It was forbidden to move from place to place. In Polish loans, something similar to the upper and lower flow of air occurred. The demands of life and everyday life ordered large landowners to expand their property at the expense of small ones, and the same demands prompted peasants from small estates to rush to where it was more free.

A similar movement occurred in Poland and in relation to neighboring tribes.

The mixed population of the German Empire, tormented by feudal unrest and aware of superiority in trades over the backward Pole, was constantly resettled in semi-wild Sarmatia, as in the old days it was relatively quiet and promised more profit. Here, as in pre-Tatar Ruthenia, people have long been concerned about populating cities with German immigrants, and imagined that the Germans (as the German Slavs were also called) preserve the laws and customs of their native land. But the rural population looked at the newcomers as wicked people. IN holidays The Germans organized auctions near churches with taverns, music, and songs that violated the order of worship and distracted young people from prayer. At the same time, the craft guilds, always hostile to each other, usually started fights, in which drunken men also got involved. If, after the fights, they washed down the peace, then the general agreement of the workshops was even more harmful for the villagers than their discord. Taking advantage of their commercial organization, the petty-bourgeois guilds set arbitrary prices for goods brought to the markets. In vain did local governors and elders publish their own tariff; defense against German traders was beyond the capabilities of the culturally backward villagers.

The feeling of disgust from rural Poland towards urban Poland further increased the licentiousness of family and social life, unseen either in the lord's houses or in the villages. It was known that the Germans, regardless of church marriages, entered into new marriages through dousing, that is, drinking, and that they kept several wives in this way. It was also known that the city guilds, called brotherhoods, met in their private meetings not to discuss cases, but for ugly revelry, which was called Bruderbier. At the same time, as during craft work, the Germans dressed in such short and strange clothes that even looking at them was considered obscene. Monday, celebrated by the Germans, was characterized by extreme riotousness and debauchery, like a pagan bacchanalia.

All this was outrageous in itself, both for landowners and sedate peasants. But the cities, filled and organized by Germans, annoyed the Poles even more by luring rural youth of both sexes to work for them, who, having become infected with the habits of a riotous life, strove to leave rural life forever. Every bad member of rural society, when committing his pranks, had in mind hiding among the townspeople, under their clothes, which made the fugitive unrecognizable. And even if the defector was recognized in the city, the Polish Germans had a custom not to hand over the newcomer; in case of extreme cases, they sent him away to another city and even abroad. As foreign cities poured out everything unnecessary, painful or harmful to them into the rural Slavic region (for not the best, but one might say, only the worst Germans moved to Poland), they attracted young people from the rural Slavic region who were forced to work for them for a piece of bread, sometimes in the form of homeless vagabonds, sometimes in the form of craft apprentices. In addition, before the start of each harvest, foreign Germans, through Polish citizens, recruited rural workers in Poland, and thus undermined Polish agriculture.

The loss of labor from the proximity of semi-German cities and from the recruitment of peasants for foreign earnings forced landowners to take countermeasures. At the congresses of the nobility, a law was finally developed that allowed only those members of peasant families who seemed to constitute a surplus to travel to the cities and abroad. The position of the rural peasant became more difficult, but it became more difficult in proportion to how he violated the obligations of his citizenship, which was initially voluntary. Due to the impossibility of taking more humane measures in that century, one evil was neutralized by another. Both classes, united by need, sought a way out of local circumstances, and each found it in what depended on it.

The man, dissatisfied with the gentleman, ran to his neighbor, or to the city workshops. The gentleman, deceived by the peasant, protected his farm with strict measures of the law.

When economic affairs were in such a tense situation, both economic classes, these, one might say, two hands of the same industrial body, attacked a way out of it that promised them the restoration of harmony, violated by the temptations of crude freedom. This solution was the settlement of the Little Russian deserts, which opened up to us after the union of Lithuania with Poland, or the civil union that took place in Lublin in 1569. But here both the lords and their subjects encountered new obstacles to economic prosperity.

Landowners of the Polish Crown in its union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were given scope for the sale of rural products in the port of the Baltic Sea and for the establishment of land-owning farms in vast areas that had until then been the scene of border raids and clashes with Lithuanian Russia. In a disastrous era for Poland, when Lithuania was still a ferocious pagan, the Poles, promoting the spread of Christianity and wanting to develop the strength of their predatory neighbors, ceded their Baltic coastline to the Teutonic knights, as warriors of the Holy Cross.

The Teutons, or Kryzhaks, repaid the Poles for this with wars that forced them to seek an alliance with the same, already semi-Orthodox Lithuania. The result of the union of the two tribes into one state was the subordination of the Kryzhaks to Polish rule and the opening of free access by water to the Baltic Sea. This sea, almost unnecessary for Poland in its time, now, with the development of its economic life, has returned to it, like a profitable estate after ancestors wretched in their ignorance. The master's goods, relieved of social burdens by privileges, began to bring in incomes hitherto unheard of. Enormous fortunes grew with the same labor forces, and the excess of funds gave a new movement to economic enterprise.

It was then that the untouched plow deserts of neighboring Lithuania, or rather Lithuanian Rus', which became Polish Russia, came in handy for the Polish lords.

But the hopes of Polish economists did not suddenly come true. The Turks had long threatened Europe with conquest, and this required extraordinary efforts of self-preservation from it.

As the leading post of European culture, Poland was more exposed to danger than other countries. Already the son of Jogaila, Vladislav III, fell in battle with Alurat II near Varna (1444).

Under his successor, Casimir IV, the Crimeans, subject to the Turkish Sultan, destroyed the port of Kochubey (now Odessa), which belonged to Poland, through Lithuanian Rus', on the Black Sea, which, during the existence of the Byzantine Empire, supplied Constantinople and the Greek islands with Podolian wheat. Litvorussian loans at the mouths of the Dnieper and Dniester became Turkish-Tatar. In 1482, Khan Mengli-Girey burned and captured the Polish-Lithuanian border city, the capital of pre-Tatar Rus', Kyiv. Ten years later, the Crimeans, by order of the Turks, rebuilt Ochakov, standing on Polish-Russian land, and then Tegil (in the old days, as now, Bendery), which the Lithuanian sovereigns, in disputes with the khans, called their homeland. The Black Sea trade in Russian and Polish grain gave way to the Tatar trade in Russian and Polish captives. In vain did King John Albert try to take away Voloshina or Moldavia from the Turks, which, being a fief of the Polish Crown, covered Podolia and Red Rus’ “like a shield.” His army, treacherously led into the so-called Bukovina (impenetrable forests of mountainous Moldavia), was beaten to the last (1498), and opened the way for the Turks, Tatars and fickle Volokhs to Podolia, from where the fires spread all the way to Lvov. Only the extremely frosty winter of that year, which killed tens of thousands of riders, saved Poland from Asian conquest.

Under such circumstances, moving to the east with economic loans was a matter of not only economic calculation, but also knightly heroism. At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, Tatars were seen not only on the right, but also on the left side of the Vistula, near Sendomierz and Opatow. Even Patsapov was unsafe from them, and in Krakow itself there was more than once a commotion from their proximity; and in 1578, the Horde surrounded the wedding party of Prince Vasily, who was celebrating the marriage of his eldest daughter with Radivil Perun.

During these times of struggle with the Asians for the safety of the master's plow, the economic life of the Polish-Russian republic, called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, presented a remarkable contradiction between the legal oppression of the unskilled worker, the plowman class of peasants and its actual agreement with the legislative authorities and landowners. We read in the Sejm resolutions draconian laws on the master's subjects, and under the same years we find resolutions on the establishment of new povets and new voivodeships in Ukrainian Poland, “due to the concentration of the knightly population” throughout the entire space from the Carpathians to the Narev and from the Dniester to the Sluch. The knightly people, that is, the gentry, did not march alone to the borderlands against the Asian miners: they were accompanied by those very nobles, peasants, or subjects against whom more and more restrictive measures were invented at the gentry congresses.

This movement occurred due to the pressure of landowners on the small-scale gentry, which, together with their subjects, fell into decline as large landowners, through privileges received from the king, seizure and bribery, increased their property. The impoverished or oppressed nobles, instead of becoming servants and vassals of their brothers, wanted to prove the truth of the proud proverb: “A noble in the garden is equal to a governor.” .

Forming outposts of the Polish-Russian colonization of the deserts from the Vistula to the Dnieper, they led with them peasants deprived of all freedom and even property according to the letter of the master's legislation, but they did not lead by force. These peasants were partly fugitives from neighboring estates, counting on the desolation of the border region, inaccessible to detectives, but partly they were subjects who looked at the escapes of rural youth and rural scoundrels through the eyes of their master. In both cases, their rapprochement with the landowner was not only natural, but also necessary.

Idleness in the newly occupied deserts was shown by hunger, and the lack of obedience was shown by the raids of the Crimeans, Nogais and the Volokhs themselves, who, with their submission to Asian rule, became the same predators for the Poles as the Tatars.

The border landowner was the head of the economic association and at the same time the leader of the fighting squad. In essence, he was not so much the father of the newly settled land as its conqueror. Through the eviction of the gentry to Ukrainian lands, a new land grew to the old, or comparatively old, land, based on the same beginning of gentry's freedom, but without its arbitrary and forced abuses - a land that promised to be as much better than the old as colonies are always better than metropolises theirs. But the Turks, trying to occupy the Slavic soil of Europe, at the forefront of their movement to the west sent merciless devastators, the Tatars, who, earning their daily bread by robbery and yasir, burned out empty villages and the harvest abandoned by the fledgling plowmen out of love for the wild space. Everything that small owners in their colonies could do against Asian raids turned out to be insufficient.

The freedom-loving gentry, delirious of equality with the magnates, were themselves ready to beg the noble oppressors to accept them under their powerful shield. But the gentry, in turn, suffered from the power that suppressed the lower gentry. Exhausted in the fight against people stronger, or more skilled in court intrigues, they sought a field for their talents on the outskirts of the Polish-Russian republic, in a country that rumor compared with India and the New World.

They begged the king for a grant of the so-called deserts, under the condition of protecting them from the Asians, otherwise they bought these deserts from inactive owners, or seized them by right of the strong; they sent the settlers to dangerous places with a company of armed people and with fiery battle; sometimes they appeared in person in the form of a royal headman of a border town, for example Kanev or Cherkassy, ​​or in the form of a governor of such a devastated city as Kyiv was after 1482; and in this way, among the free, equal gentry, with its free subjects, the same power arose that tormented the gentry in its ancient, primordial sieges.

Since in human affairs of a lower order the useful constantly prevails over the true, and the mental over the moral, then we must attribute the energy of settling the Little Russian deserts in a lesser proportion to such generous and merciful people as the father of Prince Vasily was, and more to those who should have been descendants of a domestic horseman known in 14th-century Poland under the characteristic nickname of the Bloody Devil of Venice. And in general, we are unlikely to be mistaken if amazing successes economic development Wormwood in the 15th and 16th centuries Let us explain it to ourselves not so much by the mental superiority of the cultivators, but by their greed for seizing other people's property, the audacity of strength and talent in matters of domestic robbery.

We know, for example, that the contemporary Hetman of Ostrog, Prince Constantine I, the Kiev voivode, Yuri Montovtovich, dealt with the Pechersky Monastery no better than the Tatar Baskak. We know that the protege of the then court lords, Archimandrite of Pechersk, Vassian, was no better than an ordinary Jew tenant, and the virtuous Prince Konstantin I of Ostrozhsky, despite his omnipotent importance among the king, tolerated Montovtovich in his important post and patronized Vassian, not looking at the invasion of the monastery of one and the church robbery of another. The totality of such phenomena makes us think that the economist of that time, who achieved his intended goal in spite of all obstacles, knew only the truth of the strong over the weak; that they did not know any other truth in the economic life of Little Russia at that time, and if it was sometimes encountered, it was not respected. And it was this crude primitive truth that controlled the Polish and our native plow in the Little Russian deserts. She advanced farming, crafts, and trade along difficult, untrodden, dangerous paths, and to the extent that our rabble of Rus' knew how to use it, she took part in the extraction of agriculture, which was both the most profitable and the most common occupation of the colonists.

Seeing and knowing all these circumstances, one must agree that it is possible to rule, this system of land ownership, antipathetic to our century and refuted by political economy, was in that century for the gentry people the only possible economic system that moved forward the colonization of the desert region, which was a necessity not only for the independent, the amateur, talented part of the Polish-Russian nobility, but also for the entire composite state.

It led the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to an unhappy end, transforming the Ukrainian gentry, if not into vassals, then directly into a service force, and producing in this wretched and inveterate gentry either people loyal to the magnates, or those who were able to take advantage of the first opportunity to destroy their noble lords; but it did its job, protecting for so long the cultivated areas and entire European states from the overflow of Asiaticism.

Both the pan's vassals, who owned relatively small estates, and the pan's “hand-made servants”, who disposed of the lands of large landowners, despite all the disasters that befell them, moved forward courageously and steadily along the hard way colonization of the Little Russian deserts. Playing the bold role of commanders of magnate outposts, they, in turn, surrounded themselves with a serving fighting force of the lowest rank. The innate arrogance of these governors and officials, these settlers and governors was not inferior to that of the lord.

Their ideal of class freedom was in no way lower than that of the lords. Proud of the personal exploits of the sword and the plow, they were just as eager for freedom and space in the Ukrainian lands, like those magnates proud of the merits of their ancestors who did not want to give up primacy to the royal chosen ones. Brought up outside the rules and customs of civil subordination, they were ready to overthrow any dependence on the favor and power of the people who anticipated land ownership and high dignitaries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But ahead of them wandered the Horde, too strong for them to be able not to put themselves under the lord’s shield, not to go to the lords as hand-made servants, not to ensure the fate of their families with the patronage of a noble and powerful man. The pressure of Asian game consolidated them with the magnates, contrary to ancient legends about the equality of the gentry, violated by the nobles, and people who were oppressors of the small gentry in one case became their refuge in another. This is how the gentry developed in “New Poland,” containing within itself the makings of a revolution against old Poland.

As for the master's and royal subjects, whatever their position in the depths of the Polish-Russian region, they were not and could not be oppressed in the new settlements and farms among the Ukrainian deserts. When establishing a settlement outside the Old Polish and Old Russian Pale of Settlement, the lords, or their settlers, first of all announced that the settlers would enjoy a 10-year, 20-year, 30-year, and in some places a 40-year will or settlement from all duties and payments. Until the term agreed upon between the lords and their free subjects expired, it was necessary for the ruling and subordinate classes to come together on such points of mutual service or favor that, on the one hand, did not allow the severity of the landowner lordship, and on the other hand, did not bend the subject’s neck too low in front of he was, as they called “Pan” here, a virtuous man. The landowner, unfaithful to his promises, was curbed by the fact that new sieges, freedoms, settlements (all these are synonyms) were constantly founded on neighboring estates; that anyone dissatisfied could flee there, and returning a defector from someone else’s estate would mean the same thing as taking him prisoner through war with a neighbor. The war between lords and lords was already ongoing incessantly over mutual invasions of foreign borders, and it was a measure of the landowner’s ability to bind his subjects to himself. The success of not only the farm, but also those eternal fights that accompanied the determination of the boundaries of each new loan depended on their numbers, on their diligence, on the coincidence of their benefits with the benefits of the landowner. Therefore, the further into the Little Russian deserts from the centers of the old nobility, the more the nature of landowner and peasant relations changed, the less the squalor of everyday life depended on the subordination of the peasant to the will of the landowner, the simpler and more independent the subject behaved in the presence of his master.

The difference between the internal, long-prospered parts of the state and its deserted outskirts was further increased by the fact that from the centers of the Polish-Russian Pale of Settlement, not only the dissolute, but also the most decent, most talented, energetic representatives of the unskilled working class came out to its outskirts.

Those who remained on the ancient ashes, under the yoke of economic routine, lost even the idea of ​​a better social position, a better relationship between the peasant personality and the gentleman; silently resigned themselves to their harsh fate; they repented hopelessly before the tyranny of the gentry, and made the most painful impression on an outside observer.

It was not so in the country that bore the vague name of Ukraine, a country colonized from the north-west by enterprising masters and threatened from the south-east by alien nomads. Here the master's subject rarely saw the “great master.” He was brought closer to the small landowner by the common dangers of frontier life for both the nobleman and the peasant, and the master's governors, or servants, who were called in the kingships, that is, the local estates, captains and sub-elders, were looked upon almost as equals to equals and freemen to freemen. Because of this, the slightest pressure from officials and tenants was felt in Ukraine, or in Polish in chairs, strongly. According to the best of the local chronicles, the local peasant, living in contentment on the vastness of the master's lands and lands, would not have spared anything for his master, but the rapid enrichment of the master's clients irritated him. With the vastness of economic institutions scattered over long distances, the so-called great lords did not have the means to regulate the behavior of their hand-made servants and tenants, who, together with the power or lease, received all the rights of local and patrimonial owners over their subjects. That is why the Little Russian villager had a lot of such annoyances and falsehoods boiling up in his heart, which in the internal, long-prospered parts of the kingdom did not leave any rancor.

But whatever the relationship of the Ukrainian peasant to the landowner or his governor, the domesticity of border life reflected on his character far less sharply than his homelessness. Tatar raids, which turned vast expanses of populated land into a barren desert, very often made a rich man poor, a family man lonely, a sedentary wanderer, among the influx of new and new settlers. Without shelter, without a family and without everything that a plowman lives and has fun with, a stranger to everyone, along with the dissolute goultai, wandered from one settlement to another, looking for a return to the way of life from which merciless fate knocked him out, and every year lost the ability to do it. Finally, he ended up in some border town, mixed with the bourgeois servants, who made up the muddy sediment of the not very bright city life, and increased the mass of the people, poor, drunk and ready for the most desperate enterprises.

In contrast to the Ukrainian villages, which were dominated by the leaders of the master's plow, Ukrainian cities were the seat of royal power. But they were subject to Polish law only from the side of the castle, otherwise the city, which represented a fulcrum for the agricultural colonizers of the region. From the outside places being at the disposal of the mestiches, or burghers, our cities were subject to German law.

The castle, or city, was the residence of royal officials, with their armed command. He sent sentry patrols into the field to monitor the Tatars. He judged and ordered sub-deputies, people of the castle court, residents of the royal suburbs, who delivered food supplies to him and served their assigned duties. He collected duties, according to the then customs, on imported and exported goods. At certain times called roars, the city (criminal) and zemstvo (civil) courts sat in it. Povet sejmiks also met there to elect zemstvo ambassadors to the central sejm.

The representation of the bourgeois municipality operated completely independently of the castle district. The main administration of the city was entrusted to the burgomaster, who was elected monthly from the annual rashmans, or raits, and judicial power was granted to the voyt and the lords, who were elected for life.

Such self-government existed even in those cities and towns that did not have the privilege of Magdeburg and were under the authority of the royal elder or the lord's governor. It was introduced among us by German immigrants and was a counterbalance to princely law (jus ducale), otherwise Polish (jus polonicum).

The Germans who came to New Poland, like those who settled in the old one, after two or three generations lost their nationality and became glorified, due to the invincible dominance of the local element. But their customs in matters of trade, crafts and city life, their relations with the neighboring gentry and villagers remained the same as in the cities of Old Poland. The same hostility between the urban and rural populations was here, expressed by the incessant competition between the gentry and the burghers for mutually appropriated lands and rights. The same rivalry existed between the city and rural industry. In the same way, cities absorbed the labor force of the master's villages, through their workshops, taverns and public square amusements. By the same procedure, the rural authorities, together with the fathers of respectable families, kept their youth from fleeing to the bourgeois communities.

The cities of old, or Privislansky, Poland were the first seats of foreignness among the northern Slavs and the first freemen who opposed the interests of the rural plough. The cities of New, or Pridpeprovskaya, Poland, by the nature of their formation, retained a family resemblance to the cities of Old Poland. But the guild freemen of the Ukrainian cities, taking advantage of the anarchic state of the newly populated loans, developed into a unique form, transformed into a mining partnership, divided the bourgeoisie into obedient and disobedient, that is, into those who submitted to duties and into those who, calling themselves free people, adjoined the bourgeois municipalities in the form of nomads; finally became known under the general name of the Cossacks.

Cossack fishing has existed in Rus' since the times of Svyatoslav, at times taking on the character of protecting the Russian land from predators and representing constant domestic predation. It was in use throughout all eras of colonization of the region devastated by Batu, and finally, in the struggle of the remnants of Rus' with the remnants of the Kipchak Horde, it received the Tatar name. The Tatars called Cossacks those who fought without permission and were tolerated by the Horde because they were unable to cope with them. The word Cossack translated from Tatar means thief. This not very flattering name was also assigned to Russian miners, who occupied a corresponding, more or less thieves' position in the Russian social environment. As much as Moscow, Lithuania and Lyakhva had in common with the Horde life on the outskirts of their possessions, so did the semi-Asian Cossacks develop among them. It was a crowd of people disobedient to any authority, not even paternal or maternal - a partnership of fugitives threatened with punishment for crimes, or of individuals who, due to various accidents, were too wretched for a sedentary life and too obstinate to subordinate themselves to homely people.

There is reason to think that the city of Cherkassy is named after its first settlers Cherkassy, now called Circassians, and that these settlers, giving shelter to the bandit rabble of the natives (whom Dietmar knew from this side), spread the Cossacks under their name up and down the Dnieper. Otherwise, the Great Russians, who had their own Cossacks, would not have called the Dnieper Cossacks Cherkasy. They did this, obviously, out of old memory of the time when the Cherkasy colonists had not yet merged with the natives. At least in the 16th century, before the start of the Cossack-gentry strife, the Dnieper and even Dniester Cossacks in Poland were not mixed with the Russian people, like other nomads of the steppe interfluve. The doctor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Samuel Kolinis, calls Cherkassy (no doubt, according to Moscow legend) a Tatar tribe, and the oldest Russian chronicle name torques mixes indifferently with the name Cherkas. The Polish historian Sarnitsky, who wrote in Latin, conveying the rumor about the Coward brothers, who were awarded chants for their militancy, qnae dumae russi vocant, at the same time speaks of the Cossacks as a foreign tribe. As an ambassador to the Muslim sovereigns, Sarnitsky passed more than once the places of Cossack exploits, marveled at the Cossack courage, listened to Cossack stories about the dangers of mining on the Turkish trade route, and yet wrote the words that puzzled later readers that the Cossacks professed the Turkish faith. All this together suggests that only a strong influx of the Russian element into the dens of the primitive Dnieper Cossacks degenerated them into Russian people, just as the exclusively German communities of cities such as Poznan, Gniezno and Krakow at the beginning degenerated into Polish communities.

Regarding the colonization of the Little Russian deserts, the Cossacks played a role reminiscent of those Dnieper nomads whom the Varangian Russian princes either drove into the depths of the deserted steppes or recruited into their militias. Like the Torks and Berendeys, the black hoods of the pre-Tatar period of Russian history, the Dnieper Cossacks sometimes formed garrisons in the royal border cities, and sometimes were hired into the royal militia only for a while, along with the Nagai and Belogorod Cossacks. The very limits of their original nomadism between the Ross River and the Dnieper rapids coincide with the places where history finds nomads similar to them before Batu’s invasion. To these limits the Cossacks attracted to themselves everything similar to them in terms of the inclinations of life from all over the Polish-Lithuanian region, and from here they carried out their operations, which made a lot of talk in the chronicles, but the basis of which was the wild task - to exist on the products of other people's labor, without caring about the fate workers.

The border towns, which absorbed everything wayward from the villages and gave shelter to every vagabond out of need for working hands, in turn vomited out of themselves a void unsuitable for guild practice. This hunger was forced to do proper work in guild establishments only by hunger and cold; but when the spring sun warmed her, she strove to flee from society, which was relatively comfortable, and indulged in her independent crafts until another winter and trouble.

The structure of the Cossack community, with its initial division into hundreds and tens, was nothing more than an imitation of the bourgeois community, adapted to a nomadic and mining life. Even the Cossack lynching was a repetition of the guild or Magdeburg lynching. But the city fugitives and outcasts, finding themselves free from the order they hated, had the same hostile feeling towards the bourgeoisie that all Cossacks in general had towards the societies from which they fled to such gangs.

The Dnieper Cossacks, along with the Tatars, made themselves known to Kyiv even at a time when it was an appanage possession of the Olelkovich princes. Their constant incursions into the area of ​​land ownership forced the widow of Prince Simeon Vladimirovich Olelkovich to abandon the tomb of her ancestors, and to exchange the marshy environs of Pinsk, Kobrin and Rogachev from King Alexander Kazimirovich for the fertile Kyiv lands. Having become, due to such an exchange, from a princely appanage city a royal-voivodeship city, Kyiv, as already said, fell into deserted ruins before the Horde of Mengli-Girey. But the Cossack dens, Kanev and Cherkassy, ​​continued to stand among the surrounding deserts, like islands, inaccessible to the Tatars due to the belligerence of their inhabitants, not worth a raid due to their squalor, and, perhaps, because they were in a certain connection with the Horde bands. Populated by new seekers of happiness, the Kiev ashes protected themselves by an act of 1499 from the Cossacks, who brought fish here from the top and bottom of the Dnieper for sale and indulged, together with the bourgeois gultai, in gross debauchery. Cossacks are known throughout the Dnieper and Black Sea regions as outright robbers. Trade routes are not safe from them. They don't even give permission to royal ambassadors. But, not constituting a people in any sense and not representing any society or class, they are constantly divided into miners entrenched in nomadic life and traitors to the interests of nomadic life in favor of a comparatively cultured society, just as the Nenrovian Torques, Berendeys, black hoods. The majority of the Cossack horde indifferently rushes to all places where there is a smell of robbery without much danger; but some of the Cossacks, obeying the instinct of family, or in need of more durable household items, enter into terms with the Polish kings and border magnates, receive gifts from them of cloth, carp, casings, money, value the permission to nest with their wives and children on royal loans, finally, in the form of special obedience to the government, he accepts from him the leaders whom he calls his hetmans, and, under their command, scares away not only the Horde, but also the nomadic Cossacks, his former comrades.

Since the time of Sigismund-August (1548 - 1572), the king’s Cossack leaders were princes and lords who went far from the Cossack views on war and booty, and moved to Ukraine, that is, to the Kresy, in the form of royal elders, due to the impossibility of playing a prominent role in a civilized country. However, the age of chivalry often called famous warriors to the Muslim borderlands of Poland, who, in the form of a religious vow, devoted their lives to fighting “the enemies of St. cross" among the brave and fierce Berendeys. These pious and stern warriors liked the idea of ​​humanizing the immoral crowd of miners with the best rules of life and turning their craft to the extermination of Muslims. During the reign of Sigismund Augustus and Stefan Batory, two or three such personalities flashed among the Cossack crowds. They added several new echoes of military glory to the history of the crusader army and gave the Cossack life some shine, like a brightly colored cloak thrown over the rags of a tramp, but did not change the robber character of the Cossacks. Soon, memories of such Cossack nobles who glorified themselves under the leadership of Prince Konstantin I of Ostrog completely disappeared, and the Cossack freemen acquired a nomadic democratic character.

The Cossacks founded a military outpost beyond the Rapids, under the name Sich, which resisted repeated attacks by the Tatars and Turks. Cossacks served Christian sovereigns, defending their possessions from Muslims, and the same Cossacks, under the leadership of Prince Dimitry Vishnevetsky, at one time were in the service of the Turkish Sultan; 30 years later, under the leadership of the Banite magnate, Samuil Zborovsky, who assumed the honorary title of Khan's son, they were ready to go with the Tatars to Persia, and in the interval between these events they took one or another impostor to the Voloshsk rulership, just to plunder local residents same religion as them. Finally, the Zaporozhye miners began to become dangerous for the king himself. On the Dnieper Bottom, interspersed with knights without fear or reproach, dreaming of the “eternal glory of the Cossack name,” there appeared those who were ready to overthrow the hated rulers of the Polish state, even if only through regicide. History positively knows the intention for the life of Stefan Batory in Samuil Zborovsky, who, hetman of the Nizovites, drew them into the bloody intrigue of his home. The king took his head off his shoulders, like a banita who boldly appeared in public places with a band of violent nobles; but the direct purpose of the execution was to destroy the coup he had planned. Batory did not spare other Cossack leaders. In addition to the contender for the Moldavian rulership, known as Hetman Podkova, the royal sword, which at that time was not called long for nothing, cut off the heads of several dozen more adventurers like him who quarreled Poland with the Turkish Sultan during the difficult time of the war with Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Finally, Batory decided to drive the Cossacks completely from the Dnieper, and organized a Russian-Tatar league against them, namely: Prince Konstantin II of Ostrog entered into an agreement with the Crimean Khan to attack the Cossacks simultaneously from the top and bottom of the Dnieper. Then the Dnieper Cossacks fled to the Don Cossacks. But the homeliest of them submitted to the royal elders in order to, under their command, serve as guards, and during the campaign join the crown army.

Stefan Batory, not allowing the Cossacks to nest beyond the Rapids, provided them with the town of Terekhtemirov, or Trakhtomirov, lying above the Dnieper above Kanev, to cover military needs with income from it, and the monastery located in it to support the Cossack disabled people. This was done on the basis that the town of Mezhygorye and the Mezhigorsky monastery were assigned, among other royal lands, to the Kyiv castle for the maintenance of its garrison. But the Cossacks, disciplined in this way, strengthened by a new influx of freemen from Ukrainian cities, began to go to the Niz again for robbery, and attracted their Don associates to their den among the Dnieper reeds and floodplains, known as the Zaporozhye Sich. The royal nobleman sent to them with threats, Glybotsky (named Malorussa), was drowned in the Dnieper, and, in turn, they began to threaten the king, in the person of his border representatives. When the leader of the city Cossacks, obedient to the government, Prince Rozhinsky, captured a dozen Cossacks accused of killing Glybotsky, the head of the castle team, the Kiev commander, Prince Borovitsky, refused to place them in the castle, avoiding a quarrel with the Nizovites, and representatives of the Kiev Magdeburg, for their part, refused accept the killers of the royal ambassador into the magistrate's prison, saying that “they themselves are not safe in their homes from the Cossacks, like in Ukraine.”

Batory died soon after, and it is not in vain that the legend of the regret he expressed on his deathbed for not destroying the Cossacks has been preserved. As soon as he left the scene of action, the Cossacks assumed unprecedented proportions.

During the difficult time of the interregnum for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before the election of Sigismund III to the throne, when the lords argued among themselves in favor of various seekers of the Polish crown, the Dnieper miners ruined Ochakov and opened up the prospect of a Turkish war. The war with Turkey terrified the master's republic. According to one of the Sejm speakers, the first lost battle would have destroyed Poland, while the Turks would have endured fifteen unfortunate battles. But at that time there was no way to curb the Cossacks. The gentry was divided into two camps: some wanted to elevate a Swedish prince to the Polish throne, others - an Austrian one.

These latter already led Archduke Maximilian with his German army to Krakow, and only the skillful maneuvers of the leader of the Swedish party, Crown Hetman Jan Zamoyski, saved Poland from Austrian domination. In 1588, a decisive battle took place near Byczyna, in which Zamoyski took Maximilian prisoner and suppressed civil strife among the gentry. Some of the new Torks and Berendeys, with their ataman Golubok, helped Zamoyski in this important matter, but other Nizovites continued to bring the threat of a Turkish war to Poland. Crowds of Ukrainian miners plundered the Kozlev slave market in Crimea, and burned Techinya, Belgorod and several other border Turkish colonies on the Dniester. War with Turkey became inevitable. Meanwhile, there was no money in the state treasury. They wanted to make a loan in Germany or Italy; but even there, economic affairs were upset either by the Catholic-Protestant wars or by the wars of Christians and Mohammedans. While the zemstvo ambassadors were looking for means to repel the Turks at the Sejm, the harbingers of the Turkish invasion, the Tatars, invaded Podolia and Galician Rus', collected yasyra, and took several noble people into captivity, including Prince Zbarazhsky and his princess. Only the descendant of the Strusya brothers, glorified by their thoughts, defended the sister of the crown hetman, surrounded by the Tatars in Bavarovo, although he fell, chopped into pieces, with almost his entire retinue. The Cossacks benefited from the lord's misfortunes: they lay down in the steppe on the Tatars, burdened with booty, broke into one of their camps at night, and the property stolen from the lords became Cossack prey.

Meanwhile the storm was approaching. The Turks promised to spare Poland only on the condition of paying an annual tribute of one hundred horses laden with silver, or accepting the Mohammedan faith. The Polish ambassador in Istanbul was called a dog and they threatened to hang half of his retinue on iron hooks, and put the other half as rowers on galleys.

The crown hetman, having hastily prepared the border fortresses of Lviv and Podolsk Kamyanets to delay the Turkish invasion, begged on his knees the Sejm assembly to save the fatherland, and the first sacrificed all his fortune. A head tax was imposed, which excluded neither the clergy, nor the royal nobles, nor even landless people. But the voivodeships of Kiev, Volyn, Podolsk and Bratslav were so devastated by large and small Tatar raids that they were completely freed from the general tax. The terrible danger passed, however, thanks to the intrigues of the Sultan's seraglio, in which one beglerbek undermined the other and allowed himself to be bought in favor of peace.

From book Ancient history Cossacks author Savelyev Evgraf Petrovich

Chapter IV Fugitive peasants and Old Believers on the Don The peasantry in Ancient Rus', no matter what name it was found and no matter what lands it sat on - state, volost, princely, monastic and other owners, enjoyed complete freedom to move from one

by Hervé Gustav

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