Linda Gordon. Cossack Rebellions. Social Turmoil in the Sixteenth Century Ukraine. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1983. Pp. xiv, 289.

Abstract

This chapter investigates Linda Gordon's Cossack Rebellions (1983). This very interesting work focuses its attention above all on social questions, and not only on those prompted by the first Cossack rebellions in the Ukraine towards the close of the 16th century. The book deals more generally with the Cossack problem as it appeared in the Polish–Lithuanian Republic in the 16th century and, to a certain extent, in the 17th century. The Jewish question or, to be more precise, the question of anti-semitism has only a few pages. In these brief commentaries, the author cautions particularly against simplification of the question. At the turn of the 16th–17th centuries, according to the author, the Jewish population of the country came to 120,000 and so constituted a sizeable and wealthy minority group.