The Lists of the Nobility (1762) As a Little-Known Source on the History of the Ukrainian Cossack Officers

(вступна стаття й публікація С.Потапенко)

Abstract

This article aims at making The Lists of the Nobility (1762), a little-known source on the history of the Cossack officers (starshyna) of the Hetmanshchyna and the Sloboda Ukraine regiments, available for scholars through its contextualized publication and in-depth analyse.

The methodology employed by the author includes methods of source studies as well as instruments applied within genealogical, prosopographic and social history studies, also in historical research of mentality.

The scientific novelty of the article stems from the following: the author has found out the circumstances under which The Lists were composed, discovered The List of the Nobility of the Ostrohozk Regiment in the collections of the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv and prepared these sources for publication in keeping with the stateof- the-art in the Ukrainian archeography and historiography.

Conclusions. The Lists were drawn up in response to Peter III’s charter addressed to the hetman K.Rozumovskyi and the Senate order issued on January 18, 1762, which both required The Lists of the Little-Russian Nobility together with the corresponding documents on the ennoblement to be sent to the Heraldry Office of the Senate. It seems that in the Hetmanshchyna this governmental command remained largely ignored, while in the Sloboda Ukraine regiments it caused certain discussions between the Kharkiv and Izium regimental chancelleries as well as resulted in the preparation of The List of the Nobility of the Oztrohozk Regiment. If taken broadly, these documents give grounds to assert that the Sloboda Ukraine Cossack establishment was aware of its close relationship with the elite of the Hetmanshchyna, yet traced own rights and privileges from the tsarist charters that had been bestowed to the Sloboda Ukraine regiments in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Moreover, The List of the Nobility of the Ostrohozk Regiment and the relevant sources demonstrate that the Ostrohozk starshyna did not constitute a consolidated community at the time when the local Cossackdom was abolished. However, in the ensuing decades the Ostrohozk Cossack-rooted nobility managed to preserve own cohesion even despite having been incorporated into the noble stratum of the Voronezh viceroyalty.