The Russian Empire 1450–1801

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

Hetmanate and stands as a sharp contrast to the Russian empire’s inability to codify
its own laws despite efforts by Peter I and Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine.
In the eighteenth century, social inequalities within the Cossack class that had
developed in the seventeenth century only worsened. Since the Hetmanate’s
administrative structure was based on the Cossack regimental model, the Cossack
officer elite orstarshynabuilt wealth from access to power. A cohesive landed gentry
developed, legally identified as the Society of Notable Military Fellows; it was
divided into three social categories associated with three levels of office holding—in
the hetman’s, the central, and the regimental (provincial) administrations. The
Society’s approximately 2,000 members effectively excluded lower rank Cossacks
from the privileges of Cossack status and monopolized the economy; by 1735
approximately 50 percent of the cultivated land of the Hetmanate was in their
control. Culturally over the century this Ukrainian gentry became more European-
ized in education and culture, and domestically it enjoyed privileges akin to a
nobility: freedom from taxation, trade privileges, right to own estates and demand
labor from peasants, the right to produce alcoholic beverages and trade in certain
commodities and to participate in councils and offices. But Hetmanate offices were
not included in the Table of Ranks, so gentry elites could not earn the status of
“hereditary nobility”on a par with Russian nobles.
As high as the families of the Society rose in the eighteenth century, so low did
much of the rest of Cossackdom fall. Rank andfile Cossacks fell into impoverishment
from the dual obligations of rendering Cossack service and supporting themselves
from the land, and became unable to equip themselves tofight. The number of
battle-ready Cossacks fell from 60,000 in 1650 to 30,000 in 1669 and 20,000 in



  1. Reliant on Cossacks for border defense and campaigns against the Ottoman
    empire, Russia attempted in the 1720s to slow this military degradation by prohib-
    iting Cossacks from becoming peasants and prohibiting officers’purchase of rank and
    file Cossack farms. A wide-reaching reform of 1735 attempted to alleviate military
    burdens on poor small-holder Cossacks or landless Cossacks by creating legal
    categories of Cossack“helpers”and Cossack hired laborers; they retained Cossack
    legal privileges and status, but gradually became liable for taxation. By the 1760s
    45 percent of the Hetmanate’s population was Cossack, but the majority fell into one
    of these two non-fighting categories of impoverished, taxed Cossacks. With the
    Society of Noble Military Fellows becoming a landed gentry and most Cossacks
    too poor to serve, as Orest Subtelny says, by the 1760s traditional Cossackdom had
    “ceased to exist in Ukraine,”militarily and economically.
    It was also a difficult time for the taxed population. The plight of the peasants
    worsened: thestarshyna, church hierarchs, and monasteries expanded their lands at
    the expense of peasants such that by the 1760s 90 percent of peasants were living on
    private lands, owing two days of labor service as well as other services and dues to
    their landlords. Still, there were differences from the Russian center. Peasants’
    position as property owners was stronger than that of their Russian peers. In Russia
    peasants farmed lands regarded as village or landlord property, andfields were
    regularly reallocated as communes struggled to meet the collective tax burden. But
    in the Hetmanate and former Grand Duchy lands, individual family holdings


108 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801

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