“A true son of Ukraine”

The Cossack chronicles of the late 17th and early 18th century are a fascinating and important part of the Ukrainian people’s national historical heritage. No matter whether we are speaking of the unusual literary value of works by Samovydets, Hryhorii Hrabianka, and Samiilo Velychko or considering these achievements of historical and philosophical thought from the viewpoint of an academic who does research on his homeland’s past on the basis of existing documentary evidence, we cannot help acknowledging the special value and lasting instructive and esthetic importance of the leagcy of these three outstanding Cossack-era “Herodotuses.”

Naturally, one can also assert that, out of the above-mentioned chroniclers of Cossack Ukraine, history holds a special place for Samiilo Velychko. There are several reasons for this. First, his work — with the lengthy title customary in those days, The Tale of the War between the Cossacks and the Poles, Which Lasted for Eight Years under the Leadership of Zaporozhian Cossack Hetman Zinovii-Bohdan Khmelnytsky and for Twelve Years between Poland and Other States, As a Result of Which He, Khmelnytsky, Assisted by Almighty God, the Cossacks and Tatars, Cast off the Onerous Liakh Yoke. Prepared and written by the efforts of Samoil Velychko, former chancellor of the Zaporozhian Army, at the village of Zhuky, Poltava district, in 1720 — is a monumental result, in terms of concept, style, and execution, of the efforts of a true devotee, a great patriot of Ukraine, and a person of exceptional modesty, lucid mind, intellectual honesty, and devotion to his native land.

Second, Velychko’s Tale is by far the most mystifying work of the old Ukrainian historiography. To this day we know very little about this personality (“ex-chancellor at the Zaporozhian Army”), his inner world, and what prodded him to shoulder the heavy burden of writing this colossal opus after he lost his eyesight and was apparently not able to rely on his descendants’ grateful memory.

We do not know how this writer looked; no portraits of him have survived. There is no information about any details pertaining to his life. All we know is that, to quote Velychko himself, in 1690 he, “the writer and narrator of these chronicles, at a certain age began to serve in the Zaporozhian Army at the house of the respected Little Russian nobleman, His Grace Vasyl Leontiievych Kochubei (executed together with Iskra in July 1708 on Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s orders — Author) who is said to have been the general secretary during Mazepa’s hetmanship.”

“I served loyally and diligently,” Velychko continues, “as my dignity required, not only on behalf of my lord’s various domestic matters but mostly as a secretary, when I had access to the most sensitive and secret military affairs — even those that went to the all-Russian monarch, His Majesty Peter I.”

There are reasons to believe that Velychko was a Cossack by birth and received a typical education required for office secretarial service (probably at the Kyiv Academy). In 1705, after leaving Kochubei’s service, Velychko began working at the Zaporozhian Army’s chancellery (the writer himself notes that he occupied “quite a high post” on the staff). Then our chronicler says: “For my lengthy irreproachable service, my cruel fate paid me with an extreme misfortune at the very end of 1708, which can be recounted later under the above-mentioned year.” It should be kept in mind that Velychko’s work only spans the time period from 1648 to 1700.

The “misfortune” mentioned by the author was a terrible thing but not uncommon in that age: Velychko served a four-year prison term (seven, according to other sources). If we recall the events of late 1708, which were earth-shattering for Ukraine, when Mazepa sided with King Charles XII and allied himself with the Swedish army, prompting Peter I to conduct harsh reprisals against the Cossacks, it is a wonder that Velychko managed to stay alive at all. Velychko’s sheer willpower is astonishing. Having lost his freedom, career, health, and prospects, against all odds he still chose to write a fundamental work, a historical chronicle spanning 52 years of Cossack Ukraine, based on a large number of sources now lost or forgotten. He took on this work even though he was in dire straits; at the time Velychko was living the life of a recluse in various villages in the Poltava region, focusing exclusively on his fundamental work.

The fate of this wonderful epic-chronicle is also highly dramatic. The title page of Velychko’s manuscript is dated 1720, so it can be assumed that he worked on his book literally until his final breath. We can determine the date of the author’s death only approximately: historical sources last mention Velychko, who was already blind, in 1728. Only in 1840 the well-known Russian historian and author Mikhail Pogodin happened to buy The Tale at an auction. Realizing that he had acquired a rare and unusual work, Pogodin gave the manuscript to Osyp Bodiansky and Mykhailo Maksymovych, who immediately recognized the significance of this sensational find and tried to persuade Pogodin to sell them the manuscript. But Pogodin demanded an enormous sum of money in a clear attempt to remain the owner of the book. Then he gave the chronicle to the Kyiv-based archeological and geographic commission that dealt with ancient documents, which in turn printed the book in four volumes in 1848, 1851, 1855, and 1864, respectively.

It should be noted that what we have now is by no means the full version of Velychko’s work. The first volume in particular was marked by numerous glaring abridgments and omissions. But even in this version, The Tale of a Cossack War against the Poles... was and still is a superior work of 17th — and 18th-century Ukrainian historical thought and letters. Velychko’s main contribution to the Ukrainian cause is that when he assessed the role of certain hetmans (Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Vyhovsky, or Ivan Samoilovych), he always proceeded from the following fundamental criterion: did the deeds of those leaders satisfy the common interests of the people, above all, the Ukrainian Cossacks, for Velychko, unlike Samovydets, e.g., adopted an “all-Cossack” platform, rather than an officers’ one. Velychko was not, and could not have been, an indifferent person, for he was tormented by Ukraine’s tragedy. Our chronicler saw a ghastly picture: “Wrath, strife, lust for power, divisions, changes, desperation, envy, squabbles leading to bloodshed, and other similar misdeeds and outrages (translated from the bookish Ukrainian language by Valerii Shevchuk). He continues: “As a result of this mayhem but mostly through the spread of God-angering lawlessness among them (Ukrainians — Author) the people were instilled [with the idea] to ‘love many’ and from that increased and spread all the aforesaid ruinous actions, divisions, strife, and other evils. Because of this it has been stated firmly: glorious Cossack Ukraine will fall, fall, like that ancient Babylon, that great city!”

This is the way Velychko wrote — in the lofty language of the biblical prophets. Let us read these terrible lines attentively: they were written by an individual who, despite his modesty, had the right to call himself “a true son of Little Russia.” Is historical experience not teaching us anything?