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The Pereyaslav Agreement,^[1]  also known as the Treaty of Pereyaslav, was an act undertaken by the Council (rada)  of Pereyaslav (Russian: Переяславская рада) convened in the town of  Pereyaslav (now Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi in central Ukraine ) in January 1654 on the  initiative of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to address the issue of the rebellious Cossack Hetmanate , at the time a vassal state  in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , securing the  military protection from the Tsardom of Russia in exchange for allegiance to  the Tsar. The Council was attended by a delegation from Moscow headed by Vasiliy Buturlin . The event was soon thereafter  followed by the adoption in Moscow of the so-called March Articles that stipulated an autonomous  status of the Hetmanate within the Russian state. The agreement precipitated the Russo-Polish War (1654–67) . The definitive  legal settlement was effected under the Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686 concluded by  Russia and Poland that re-affirmed Russia′s sovereignty over the lands of Zaporizhian Sich as well as the city of Kiev.

No written treaty was concluded in Pereyaslav. An oath of allegiance to the Russian monarch from the leadership of Cossack  Hetmanate was taken, shortly thereafter followed by swearing allegiance by other  officials, clergy and inhabitants of the Hetmanate. The exact nature of the  relationship stipulated by the agreement between the Hetmanate and Russia is a  matter of scholarly controversy.^[2]

Background

In January of 1648, a major anti-Polish uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytskyi began in the Zaporizhia lands . Supported by popular masses,  the rebels won a number of victories over the government forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth seeking the  increase of Cossack registry (kept at the expense of the state treasury),  weakening of the Polish aristocratic oppression, oppression by the Jews who  governed estates as well as recovery of positions of the Orthodox Church in own  lands. However, the autonomy obtained by Khmelnytsky found itself squeezed  between three Great powers: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , Tsardom of Muscovy and Ottoman Empire .

Being the main leader of the uprising, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi was not able to declare  independence, because he was not a legitimate monarch and there was not such a  candidate among other leaders of the uprising. Taking into consideration the  economic and human resources, the uprising was taking place in backward regions  of the Polish Crown, Kijow, Czernihow and Braclaw voivodeships. The Crimean  Khan, the only ally, was not interested in a decisive victory of Cossacks.

Cossack — Moscow negotiations timeline

It is believed that negotiations to unite the Zaporizhia land with Russia  started as early as in 1648. Such idea is common among Soviet historians of  Ukraine and Russia such as Mykola Petrovsky .^[3]  Many other Ukrainian historians among which are Ivan Krypiakevych ,^[4] Dmitriy Ilovaisky ,^[5] Myron Korduba ,^[6]  Valeriy Smoliy^[7]  and others interpret negotiations as an attempt to attract the Tsar to military  support of Cossacks and motivate him to struggle for the Polish Crown which  became available after the death of Władysław IV Vasa .

• June 18, 1648 – the first known official letter of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi to the Tsar Alexis I ;
• June 18, 1648 – letter of Khmelnytskyi to the Muscovite voivode of  Siveria, Leontiev. Mention of favorable attitude of the Cossacks to the  Tsar. The issue of allegiance to the Tsar is not raised.^[8]
• July 21, 1648 – letter of Khmelnytskyi to the Muscovite voivode of  Putivl, Pleshcheyev. Mention of motivation of the Tsar of Muscovy to the  struggle for the Polish Crown. The issue of allegiance to the Tsar is not  raised.^[8]
• end of December of 1648 – departing of Khmelnytskyi delegation to  Moscow. The delegation included the chief envoy Syluyan Muzhylovsky and Patriarch Paisius I of Jerusalem .^[9]
• January of 1649 – in Moscow Patriarch Paisius convinced the Tsar of  Khmelnytskyi's intentions "...striking with forehead to your Imperial  Majesty, so the emperor ordered to grant him, Khmelnytskyi and all the  Zaporizhian Host adoption under His high imperial hand...",^[10]  but in the Muzhylovsky's notes is mentioned only request for military  assistance, while the issue of allegiance to the Tsar was not raised.^[10]
• April of 1649 – meeting of Khmelnytskyi with the Tsar's envoy Grigoriy Unkovsky in Chyhyryn . Hetman emphasized on the kinship  of Ukraine with Moscow: "...from the baptizing by St.Vladimir we had with  Moscow our one pious Christian faith and one power..."^[10]  and asked for military assistance.^[9]
• May of 1649 – deportation of Khmelnytskyi's envoys to Moscow headed by Chyhyryn Colonel Fedir Veshnyak. In  accreditation letter it was expressed petition for protectorate of the  Muscovite Tsar.^[9]  "...take under own mercy and defense... whole Ruthenia"^[9][10]  At the same time, similar delegation was sent to the Prince of Transylvania George II Rákóczi ^[11]  to encourage him to fight for the Polish Crown.^[9]
• August 16, 1649 – hollow victory at the Battle of Zboriv . Betrayed by Crimean  Tatars, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi blamed Moscow for not sending help.^[7]  Cossack-Moscow relations worsened.^[9]  Hetman and his associates resorted to diplomatic pressure on Moscow: openly  expressed about the need for campaign onto Muscovites^[10]  and refused to give impostor Timofey Akudinov who claimed to be the son of  Moscow Tsar Vasili IV of Russia .^[8]
• March of 1650 – Khmelnytskyi ignored orders of the King of Poland on preparations to a shared  Polish-Crimean campaign against Moscow.^[9]
• Summer-fall of 1650 – revival of the Turkish-Ukrainian dialogue to  transfer under the Ottoman protectorate: "... Ukraine, White Ruthenia,  Volhynia, Podolie with whole Ruthenia all the way to Wisla..."^[12][13]
• March 1, 1651 – Zemsky Sobor in Moscow . Moscow clergy found it possible in  case of not following by the Polish side conditions of the Eternal Peace  permit Alexis Mikhailovich to adopt the Zaporizhian Host as one of his subjects.^[9]
• September of 1651 – to Chyhyryn arrived envoy Osman-aga and  informed about readiness of the High Porte to take under its protection  Ukraine.^[7]  Khmelnytskyi did not rush anticipating the Moscow's answer.^[9]
• March of 1652 – Khmelnytskyi's envoys in Moscow. Envoy Ivan Iskra proposed immediately to take the Zaporizhian Host under the Tsar's custody.  The Tsar's government agreed to take only the army without the territory  anticipating in the future give it lands in the interfluve of Don and Medveditsa.^[9]

Preparations

The 1653 Zemsky Sobor that took place in Moscow in the fall adopted decision  on including Ukraine to Muscovy and on November 2, 1653 the Moscow's government  declared war onto the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth . To conduct  negotiations between two states to Ukraine from Moscow departed a big delegation  headed by boyar Vasili Buturlin . In its composition were also okolnichiy I.Olferiev, dyak L.Lopukhin and representatives of clergy.  The travel took almost three months. And not just because of bad roads and  disorder: there had to be made new royal standard , the Buturlin's speech text,  from the mace (bulawa) designated to Hetman disappeared several precious stones  that had to be recovered. Also the delegation had to wait almost a week for  arrival of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi who was delayed in Chyhyryn at the burial of his older son Tymofiy Khmelnytsky and later was not able to  cross Dnieper as the ice on the river was not strong  enough.

Pereyaslav meeting and the autonomous Cossack state

At a meeting between the council of Zaporozhian Cossacks and Vasiliy Buturlin , representative of Tsar Alexey I of the Tsardom of Russia , during the Khmelnytsky Uprising . The "Pereyaslav Council"  (Pereyaslavs'ka Rada in Ukrainian ) of Ukrainians took place on January  18; it was meant to act as the supreme Cossack council and demonstrate the unity and  determination of the "Rus'  nation". Military leaders and representatives of regiments, nobles  and townspeople listened to the speech by the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky , who expounded the necessity  of seeking the Russian protection. The audience responded with applause and  consent. The treaty, initiated with Buturlin later on the same day, invoked only  protection of the Cossack state by the Tsar and was intended as  an act of official separation of Ukraine from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Ukrainian  independence had been informally declared earlier in the course of the Uprising  by Khmelnytsky). Participants in the preparation of the treaty at Pereyaslav  included, besides Khmelnytsky, Chief Scribe Ivan Vyhovsky and numerous other Cossack  elders, as well as a large visiting contingent from Russia and their  translators.^[2]

The Cossack leaders tried in vain to exact from Buturlin some binding  declarations; the envoy refused claiming lack of authority and deferred  resolution of specific issues to future rulings by the Tsar, which he expected  to be favorable to the Cossacks. Khmelnytsky and many Ukrainians (127,000 total  including 64,000 Cossacks, according to the Russian reckoning) ended up swearing  allegiance to the Tsar nevertheless, while numerous other leaders, Cossacks and  private individuals objected or refused^{[citation  needed]}. The actual details of the agreement were  negotiated the following March and April in Moscow by Cossack emissaries and the Tsardom.  The Russians agreed to the majority of the Ukrainian demands, granting the  Cossack state broad autonomy, large Cossack register and preservation of the status  of the Kiev Orthodox Patriarch, who would keep  reporting to the Patriarch of Constantinople (rather than  Moscow). The Cossack hetman was prohibited from conducting independent foreign  policy, especially in respect to the Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire , as the Tsardom pledged now to  provide the Hetmanate's defense. The status of Ukraine, seen by the negotiators  as being now in union with the Russian state (rather than Poland), was thus  settled. The erroneous but stubborn policies of the Commonwealth are widely seen  as the cause of the Cossacks' changed direction, which gave rise to a new and  lasting configuration of power in central, eastern and southern Europe.^[2]

The seemingly generous provisions of the Pereyaslav-Moscow pact were soon  undermined by practical politics, Moscow's imperial policies and Khmelnytsky's  own maneuvering. Disappointed by the Truce of Vilna (1656) and other Russian moves,  he attempted to extricate the Hetmanate from the dependency. The Pereyaslav  treaty led to the outbreak of the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667) and in 1667 to the Truce of Andrusovo , in which eastern Ukraine  was ceded by Poland to Russia (in practice it meant a limited recovery of  western Ukraine by the Commonwealth). The Cossack Hetmanate, the autonomous  Ukrainian state established by Khmelnytsky, was later restricted to left-bank Ukraine and existed under the Russian Empire until it was destroyed by Russia  in 1764-1775.^[2]

The contemporary written records of the Pereyaslav-Moscow transactions do  exist and are kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in  Moscow.

Historical  consequences

The eventual consequence for the Hetmanate was the dissolution of the Zaporizhian Host in 1775 and the imposition of serfdom in the region, as well as a systematic  process of Russification .^[14]

For Russia, the deal eventually led to the full incorporation of the  Hetmanate into the Russian state, providing a justification for the title of  Russian tsars and emperors, the Autocrat of all the Russias (Russian: Самодержецъ Всероссійскій). Russia,  being at that time the only part of former Kievan Rus' which was not dominated by a  foreign power, considered itself the successor of Kievan Rus' and the re-unifier  of all Rus' lands. Subsequently, in the 20th century, in official Soviet propaganda and history, the Council of  Pereyaslav was officially viewed and referred to as an act of "re-unification  of Ukraine with Russia".

For Poland, the deal provided one of the early signs of its gradual decline  and eventual demise by the end of the 18th century.

The decision adopted in Pereyaslav is seen by Ukrainian nationalists as a sad  occasion and lost chance for Ukrainian independence. The "Rainbow" monument in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, colloquially referred to as the "Yoke  of the Peoples", further demonstrates the controversial nature of the treaty.  Pro-Russian Ukrainian parties, on the other hand, celebrate the date of this  event and renew calls for re-unification of the three East Slavic nations: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus .

In 2004, after the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the event, the  administration of President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine established January 18  as the official date to commemorate the event, a move which created controversy.  In 1954, the anniversary celebrations included the transfer of Crimea from the Russian Republic to the Ukrainian Republic of the Soviet Union , a movement reversed by the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation   in 2014.

See also

• Khmelnytsky Uprising
• Cossack Hetmanate
• Pereyaslav Articles
• History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth  (1648–1764)