and artsflourished here, particularly Polish-influenced baroque architecture in
cathedrals, town halls, and noble estates. Its Uniate establishment nurtured Ukrain-
ian language and culture, particularly after Galicia was ceded to the Habsburg
empire in thefirst partition (1772).
The Hetmanate remained an autonomous political entity within the empire in
the eighteenth century, despite Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s fateful decision in 1708 to
throw his support behind Charles XII of Sweden in the Great Northern War.
Alarmed by Peter I’s cavalier use of Cossack forces outside of Ukraine, Mazepa
sought protection in a Swedish alliance. Defeated at Poltava in 1709, Mazepa
barely escaped with his life. Personally enraged at Mazepa’s“treason,”Peter I
instituted Russian oversight of the hetman’s court and appointments of hetmans
and major offices. He punitively conscripted thousands of Cossacks to hard labor,
introduced heavy imperial tariffs and taxes, purged the hetman’soffices, and
asserted Russian control over the Hetmanate’sfinances and judiciary. When the
Great Northern War was over (1721), Peter I regularized Russia’s relations with a
variety of Cossack Hosts, here transferring the Hetmanate from the jurisdiction of
the Foreign Affairs College to the new Little Russia or Malorossiiskii College, a step
symbolic of Russia’s intent to integrate Ukraine more directly.
But Russia soon found it difficult to assert direct power over the Cossack
administrative system and, since these borderlands were an important staging
ground for wars against the Ottomans, Russian policy vacillated over the century.
As Zenon Kohut writes,“from 1727 to the 1760s the local administration
and judicial organs of the Hetmanate functioned without interference from
St. Petersburg.”Controls over the selection of the hetman waxed and waned in
the 1730s–50s; Empress Elizabeth (1741–61) personally favored the Hetmanate,
allowing a“golden autumn”of hetman autonomy through the 1750s. Structurally
the Left Bank’s autonomy from the Russian empire can be seen in thefiscal realm.
No direct Russian burdens were instituted here until late in the eighteenth century,
most notably the poll tax and the responsibility to provide military recruits. Rather,
the Hetmanate’s rather chaoticfiscal system continued. Different categories of taxes
were levied by different corporate institutions—the hetman’s administration, mon-
asteries, private landlords. A few taxes were paid by all taxed peasants and Cossacks
in the“hired labor”social rank, one to support the Cossack army and another to
support Russian troops stationed in the Hetmanate. But these were collected locally
by local agents.
The Hetmanate also maintained independence from Russia in its legal struc-
tures; in addition to criminal courts run by the hetman’s administration, Cossack
landlords had broad civil and minor criminal administration over their people.
Towns and the Church maintained their own courts. Various legal codes were
applied: church law for religious issues in ecclesiastical courts; Magdeburg Law in
towns with such charters; the Lithuanian Statutes of 1566 and 1588, Cossack and
Ruthenian customary law, and hetmans’decrees (universaly) from 1648 on. When
legal cases came to the Senate in St. Petersburg on appeal, Russia as a rule affirmed
local norms and laws. The Hetmanate compiled a comprehensive legal code in
1743; although never approved formally by the Senate, it was used widely in the
Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century 107