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The Ghosts of Pereyaslav: Russo-Ukrainian Historical Debates in the Post-Soviet Era

IN MARCH 2000 THE UKRAINIAN SECTION of the BBC broadcast a special programme devoted to Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1595-1657) and his historical legacy. A number of historians in Ukraine, Russia and Canada, as well as people on the streets of Kyiv, Moscow and Warsaw, were asked the same question: what did the name of Khmelnytsky mean to them? While in Warsaw the hetman's name was associated first and foremost with the Cossack rebellion of 1648, in Kyiv and Moscow his legacy was viewed almost exclusively through the prism of the 1654 Pereyaslav Agreement, which placed the Ukrainian Cossack state under the protection of the Muscovite tsar and initiated a long era of Russian domination in Ukraine.1 In Moscow Khmelnytsky was seen both by professional historians and by the 'man in the street' as the one who had brought Russia and Ukraine together by means of the Pereyaslav Agreement. A distinguished Russian historian, Gennadii Sanin, stated that he considered Khmelnytsky a great man, as he had not only united Russia and Ukraine but also conceived of a larger East European federation that would have included Moldavia, Wallachia and the Balkans as well.2 Khmelnytsky's Pereyaslav legacy was viewed from a different perspective in Kyiv. A woman interviewed by a BBC correspondent in the Ukrainian capital was not even sure whether Khmelnytsky could be considered a Ukrainian, as she believed that he was also claimed by the Russians. Other Kyivans interviewed for the programme strove to present the Pereyaslav episode in Khmelnytsky's career as an act forced upon him by unfavourable circumstances. One claimed that Khmelnytsky had been confronted with three choices-to accept the Turkish, Polish or Russian yoke-and had chosen the Russian one. The same opinion was expressed by another interviewee, who stated that Khmelnytsky's choice was the right one for his time. Similar ideas are to be encountered in the Ukrainian press, as well as in the writings of Ukrainian historians.3 Overall, despite a fair amount of sympathy for Khmelnytsky among these interviewees, his status as a national hero has been seriously shaken in independent Ukraine, first and foremost because of his role in bringing about the Russo-Ukrainian agreement at Pereyaslav. Why do scholars and ordinary people in Russia and Ukraine view the legacy of the Pereyaslav Agreement so differently? What accounts for these different approaches to