The Road to Pereiaslav

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This article reexamines the political and cultural background to the 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement placing Bogdan Khmel´nyts kyi’s Hetmanate under the protection of Muscovite Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich—an action that had significant unforeseen consequences for the political development of Ukraine and that continues to generate controversy today. It argues that the adoption of the Pereiaslav Agreement had much less to do with discourse about the historical religious-political kinship of Ukrainians and Muscovites and the original unity of Rus´ (this discourse had only recently begun and had not yet achieved much coherence or credence) than with military considerations, specifically, Tsar Aleksei’s interest in securing Ukrainian cossack participation in his campaign in Belarus´ and Lithuania. It also argues that neither side came to Pereiaslav with a firm and concrete idea as to how protectorate would redefine the respective sovereignties of Muscovy and the Hetmanate, for the available historical models of protectorate derived from conditions Khmel´nyt´ski could not arrange given his strategic position at the time and which Muscovite tsars had no precedent for accepting.