Haidamaka

The haidamakas, also haidamaky or haidamaks (singular haidamaka, Ukrainian: Гайдамаки, Haidamaky, from Turkish haydamak, "to pursue"), were paramilitary bands in 18th-century Ukraine. The haidamak movement was formed mostly of local Cossacks and peasantry (kozaky and holota), against the Polish nobility in right-bank Ukraine. The movement was not limited to the right bank only, and occasionally deteriorated to common robbery and murder, for example in the so-called Matsapura case in the Left Bank in 1734. The equivalent to haidamaka is opryshok in Ukrainian Galicia, and hajduk in the Balkans. Hajduk is also used in Polish language.