Khmelnytskyi vs M. Kryvonis: Rivalry for the Bulava or Confrontation of Viewpoints on the Nature and Purpose of the Revolutionary Struggle of 1648?

Abstract

The current article attempts to reconstruct the relationship between two prominent figures of the initial stage of the National Revolution 1648—1676. The main objectives of the study are to determine the factors that caused the differences in the political sphere of activity, to clarify the process of their development into a conflict ground of clash of views on the nature and purpose of the national uprising, which transformed into a revolution, and to reveal the role of personal ambitions of each of them in this confrontation.

The research methodology is based on the theoretical frameworks of historical science of the twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries, the Annales school in particular, and the scientific views of A.J. Toynbee and J. Le Goff. The principles of objectivity, historicism, alternativity, and systematicity and the following methods are used: chronological, periodization, retrospective, reconstructive, historical and genetic, synchronic, historiographical analysis, and synthesis.

Main results. The analysis of the source base and scientific achievements of predecessors has revealed that the conflict between B. Khmelnytskyi and M. Kryvonis is a manifestation not so much of the confrontation of ambitions for power as of the personalized phenomenon of the clash of alternative trends during the uprising: the preservation of its Cossack character or transformation into the National Revolution. It is proved that in the summer — autumn of 1648, the Ukrainian state’s idea in the form of achieving the separation of Rus (Ukraine) from the Crown of Poland was generated in the minds of radical elders and ordinary participants in the revolutionary struggle, whose informal leader was M. Kryvonis, and not in B. Khmelnytskyi and the moderate-agreement group of elders (mainly from the registered Cossacks) led by him. The conflict between them was the result of the polarity of their views on the nature and purpose of the uprising and the emergence of ambitions to take over the bulava. In the personal and social space of the relationship between the two figures, we can distinguish three stages. The first (February — May) was marked by mutual understanding between them in the conduct of military operations. The second (June — the first decade of August) was characterized by the growth of the conflict and B. Khmelnytskyi’s use of force to resolve it. The third (second decade of August — November) was characterized by post-conflict alertness with the persistence of differences in views, which were clearly manifested during the Zamostyansky negotiations on 20—21 November 1648. Prospects for further research are seen in the need to study the processes of transformation of the Cossack elders into the Ukrainian political proto-elite in 1648 and the impact of the political activities of B. Khmelnytskyi and M. Kryvonis on them. The practical significance of the results obtained is in their possible use by scholars to write monographs and articles on the history of the National Revolution of the 17th century, as well as by university professors and teachers in the educational process. The originality of the study is due to the first attempt in historiography to reconstruct a holistic picture of the genesis, development, and violent resolution of the conflict between B. Khmelnytskyi and M. Kryvonis, as well as their political views.