A Short History of Ukraine 1657–1921, part 2: the dynasty failed, the hetmanate became elective (28.05.2025)

The second part of Vitaliy Dribnytsya’s dialogue with the same interlocutor, on the fate of Cossack statehood from the death of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1657) to 1921. For the article on Pereiaslav, the first part of the conversation matters: Khmelnytsky’s dynastic project failed — Yurii was too young (16), and the general chancellor Ivan Vyhovsky was elected hetman instead, while the Hetmanate itself became an elective state on the model of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (just as the gentry elected a king, so the Cossacks elected a hetman) until the abolition of the hetmanate in 1764. Tellingly, the last hetman, Kyrylo Rozumovsky, likewise tried to make the hetmanate hereditary within his family — and it was precisely this that collided with Catherine II. The rest of the conversation (the period 1917–1921) duplicates the material of the article on the Ukrainian Revolution and is not used here.