Historian Every Saturday: Viktor Horobets. The Cossacks: What's Not in the Textbooks (11.01.2025)
A lecture by historian Viktor Horobets (the “Historian Every Saturday” series) on Ukrainian Cossackdom — the things “not in the textbooks.” Key points: the “blood tax” and the Cossacks’ economic privileges; the deep stratification and heterogeneity of the Cossack estate (debunking the myth of “free and equal”); the regional differences of the Hetmanate; and the principle of electing all offices as a safeguard against tyranny, together with its dismantling by Peter I. A source for the articles on the Lithuanian-Polish and Cossack eras and on the legal tradition of early modern Ukraine.
Key moments
- 08:08 "The blood tax": a registered Cossack fought instead of paying direct taxes; Cossack economic privileges and the "Cossack land"
- 10:15 The Cossack estate was deeply heterogeneous — debunking the myth of "free and equal" Cossacks
- 15:39 An estate-based society was the norm across all of Europe until the French Revolution
- 24:48 The mid-17th-century social revolution let the petty ("castle") gentry into the Cossack ranks
- 23:29 The Hetmanate was not centralized: the Zabilas held a company captaincy for 130 years (north) vs. constant elections (south)
- 34:18 The elective nature of all offices as a Cossack safeguard against tyranny; the difference from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
- 38:30 Peter I's dismantling of elections: Polubotok rejected, Skoropadsky imposed, colonels appointed