Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the Cossack uprising that broke Polish rule over Ukraine and then placed it under Moscow. Born around 1595 into a family of minor Orthodox nobility, he was educated by Jesuits at Lviv, fought the Ottomans at Cecora in 1620 where his father was killed and he was taken prisoner, and spent two years in Constantinople. He was a registered Cossack officer and a landowner at Subotiv. His revolt began as a private grievance. A Polish noble raided his estate, killed his son and abducted the woman he intended to marry, and the courts gave him no remedy — a case that stood for the general position of Orthodox Ukrainians under Polish and Catholic landowners. He fled to the Zaporozhian Sich in 1648, was elected hetman, and allied with the Crimean Tatars. He destroyed Polish armies at Zhovti Vody, Korsun and Pyliavtsi that year. The rising became a general war. It was accompanied by massacres of Polish nobles, Catholic clergy and above all Jews, who had frequently served as estate managers and were killed in very large numbers — the figures are disputed and run into the tens of thousands. He established a Cossack state, the Hetmanate, and could not sustain it alone. After the Tatars deserted him at Berestechko in 1651 he sought a protector, and at Pereiaslav in January 1654 swore allegiance to the tsar. Ukrainians and Russians have read that agreement differently ever since — as an alliance, a protectorate or a union. He died in 1657. He is on the Ukrainian five-hryvnia note, and assessments of him differ sharply between Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and Jewish historiography.
- Lived: 1595 CE – 1657 CE
- Nationality: Ukrainian
- Roles: hetman, military_leader, statesman
