SUMMARY:

This essay discusses the construction of early modern political, cultural, and national identity in Ukraine. It begins with a review of sixteenth-century accounts that did not clearly define the ethnic or religious identity of the Cossacks and often treated them as a non-Ruthenian or even non-Christian community. This is followed by a discussion of the attempts of various groups to claim Cossackdom as part of their political, religious, or national space. The first to ascribe a clear Ruthenian identity to the Dnipro Cossacks were representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchy, who portrayed the Cossacks in the 1620s as heirs to the Kyivan princes and devoted Orthodox Christians. Around the same time, attempts were made to claim the Cossacks for the Polish noble nation by including them in the Polish canon of “knightly warriors.” The Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648) and its aftermath presented the Cossacks with the choice of constructing a new identity in the context of the Muscovite state or reinventing themselves as part of a reformed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. If the Pereiaslav Agreement (1654) laid the foundations of a Little Russian Cossack identity, the Union of Hadiach (1658) may be regarded as the basis for the view of the Cossack-led Ruthenian nation as an equal partner in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Poltava debacle (1709) put an end to the formation of a distinct Cossack-based national identity in the Hetmanate, forcing the Cossack literati to construct their new self-image within the limits imposed on them by the Little Russian identity of the period.