COSSACK-POLISH WARS OF 1652–1653 IN THE INTERPRETATION OF THE POLISH HISTORIANS OF THE LATE 19th CENTURY TILL 1939

Abstract

Summary. The purpose of the research is to study the depiction of the events of the Cossack-Polish war of 1652–1653 in the works of the Polish historians of the late 19th century till 1939, and in particular, the battles of Batoh, Zhvanets and Zhvanets Peace Treaty; to find out the peculiarities of scientific approaches and interpretations by researchers of historical events and the influences on them of the intellectual discourse of the epoch in which scientists lived and worked; to identify the specifics of scientists’ interpretations of the facts of the past through the prism of their political sympathies and belonging to various historical schools and trends; to analyze the diversity of scientists’ approaches to the causes and consequences of battles and attempts to establish understanding between the parties to the conflict; to consider general historians’ assessments of the significance of the events of 1652–1653 in the fate of the Polish and Ukrainian peoples. The methodology of the research is based on the general scientific principles of objectivity, historicism, objectivism, scientific pluralism, systematics and reliance on historical sources. Both general scientific (analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison) and special-historical methods were used in the work: historical-genetic, historical-comparative, problem-chronological, historical-systematic ones etc. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it was the first to study the image of the events of the Polish-Cossack wars of 1652–1653 in Polish historiography of the late 19th century till 1939 on the basis of a significant set of historiographical sources. The peculiarities of ideological influences of political concepts and historical schools on the assessments of Polish scientists of the battles near Batoh and Zhvanets, Zhvanets Peace Treaty were studied in the research as well. Conclusions. Polish historians of the late 19th century – 1939 saw the cause of the new Polish-Cossack war of 1652 in the unresolved conflict during the Brest campaign, when the military victory of the crown armies was lost due to aristocratic anarchy and the flexibility of Polish commanders during negotiations at Bila Tserkva. Researchers believed that the difficult situation of B. Khmelnytsky after the defeat in 1651 pushed him to start a new round of war. Scholars exposed the Battle of Batoh itself as one of the greatest national tragedies of the Polish people and described these events in mythologized images. Special emphasis was placed on the depiction of the execution of captured Polish soldiers by Cossacks and Tatars, which emphasized the barbaric nature of the Cossacks. Scholars saw the very defeat of the crown troops as evidence of the problems of the society of the Commonwealth, which was ruled by aristocratic anarchy. For Polish scholars, the battle of Batoh became a symbol of the transition of the Polish-Ukrainian confrontation to a new stage, characterized by a special intransigence of the parties, and was a cornerstone in the destruction of the ancient brotherhood of both peoples. In the bloody finale of the campaign of 1652, scholars saw the reason for the conclusion of the Ukrainian-Moscow Agreement of 1654, because after the Battle of Batoh a peaceful settlement of relations between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Cossacks was no longer possible. The campaign of Zhvanets of 1653 was studied by many Polish historians in the context of the Moldavian campaigns of the crown and Cossack troops and it was considered to have been their finale. In assessing the significance of the Battle of Zhvanets, Polish researchers tended to define it as a hopeless forced confrontation between the hostile parties, who were aware of their futile chances for a final victory in this armed confrontation. Thus, scholars saw the campaign of Zhvanets as a failure for both sides of the conflict, which only exacerbated the depletion of their human and material resources. Similarly, scholars viewed Zhvanets Peace Treaty as a mere temporary agreement that was to suspend the military campaign of 1653 and had no prospect of continuing it to truly resolve the differences between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples. According to scholars, the treaty was forced by agreements with the Tatars for King John Casimir, while for B. Khmelnytsky it was fictitious because of his already reached agreement with Moscow. Historians have paid attention to the gradual strengthening of the role of the Crimean Khan as an arbiter in relations between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks during 1652–1653, as well as the growth of his role in the geopolitical structure of Central and Eastern Europe.