Khmelnytsky Uprising - Background

Background

With the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Union in 1569, a growing number of Ruthenian lands were gradually absorbed under the control of a powerful aristocratic republic—the Rzecz Pospolita. In 1569 the Union of Lublin granted the southern Lithuanian-controlled lands of Ruthenia--Galicia-Volhynia, Podlaskie, Podolia and Kiev--to the Crown of Poland under the agreement forming the new Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although the local nobility was granted full rights within the Rzeczpospolita, their assimilation of Polish culture alienated them from the lower classes. This Szlachta, along with the actions of the upper-class Polish Magnates, oppressed the lower-class Ruthenians, with the introduction of Counter-Reformation missionary practices, and the use of Jewish arendators to manage their estates.

Local Eastern Orthodox traditions were also under siege from the assumption of ecclesiastical power by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1448. The growing Russian power in the north sought to reunite the southern lands of Kievan Rus' with its successor state, and with the fall of Constantinople it began this process with the proclamation that its Metropolitan was now Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. The pressure of Catholic expansionism culminated with the Union of Brest in 1596, which attempted to retain the autonomy of the Eastern Orthodox churches in present-day Ukraine, Poland and Belarus by aligning themselves with the Bishop of Rome. While all of the people did not unite under one church, the concepts of autonomy were implanted into consciousness of the area, and came out in force during the military campaign of Bohdan Khmelnytsky.