A Short History of Ukraine 1648–1657, part 1: the dynastic plans of Khmelnytsky (26.05.2025)

The first part of an overview dialogue between Vitaliy Dribnytsya and a Russian-speaking interlocutor (“Aleksandrov,” an ethnic German from Kazakhstan) about the Cossack state of 1648–1657. The point central to the article on Pereiaslav is the emphasis that Bohdan Khmelnytsky was building precisely a dynastic state on the model of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: at the time a polity without its own dynasty was not regarded as a state. Hence the Moldavian direction (the marriage of Tymish to the daughter of Vasile Lupu as an attempt to gain the Moldavian throne), the explanation of why Sweden refused an alliance (Khmelnytsky did not represent a dynasty), and the characterization of the 1654 treaty itself as advantageous to the hetman. The material deepens the article “Pereiaslav 1654.”