Ivan Mazepa and the Russian Empire

Rather, the author focuses on the key moments of Mazepa's political career, involving his relations with Peter I and the Russian political elite, on the one hand, and his interactions with the Cossack leaders and his twenty- year-long hetmanship of Ukraine, on the other. [...]the book is struct...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSeventeenth-century news Vol. 80; no. 3/4; pp. 106 - 111
Main Author Yermolenko, Galina
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published College Station Seventeenth-Century News 01.10.2022
Subjects
Administrative reform
Historiography
Peasants
Power
Separatism
War
Ukraine
Russia
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Summary:Rather, the author focuses on the key moments of Mazepa's political career, involving his relations with Peter I and the Russian political elite, on the one hand, and his interactions with the Cossack leaders and his twenty- year-long hetmanship of Ukraine, on the other. [...]the book is structured more by topics than by chronology. [...]Mazepa was "Peter's chief strategic and military consultant" (80), a role he performed as a ruler of a Russian protectorate at the time. Tairova claims that Mazepa acted not out of personal interest, but rather out of his great concern for the autonomous status of the Ukrainian Hetmanate, which was threatened by Peter's radical administrative reforms of 1707-1708 (252) and his plans to incorporate a significant part of the Cossack land into the Russian empire (280-81; 289; 292-93). Since Russia officially became an empire after the Great Northern War ended in 1721, it can as well be maintained that Mazepa's siding with the enemy earlier in that war bespeaks his attempts to prevent Russia from becoming imperial.