Khmelnytsky Uprising - The Aftermath

The Aftermath

Within a few months almost all Polish nobles, officials and priests had been wiped out or driven from the lands of present-day Ukraine. The Commonwealth population losses in the uprising were over one million. In addition, Jews had substantial losses because they were the most numerous and accessible representatives of the szlachta regime.

The uprising began a period in Polish history known as The Deluge (which included the Swedish invasion of the Commonwealth during the Second Northern War), that temporarily freed the Ukrainians from Polish domination but in a short time subjected it to Russian domination. Weakened by wars, in 1654 Khmelnytsky persuaded the Cossacks to ally with the Russian tsar in the Treaty of Pereyaslav, which led to the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667). When Poland-Lithuania and Russia agreed on to truce and anti-Swedish alliance in 1657, Khmelnytski's Cossacks supported the invasion of the commonwealth by Sweden's Transylvanian allies instead. Although the Commonwealth tried to regain influence over Cossacks (of note is the Treaty of Hadiach of 1658), the new Cossack subjects became even more dominated by Russia. With the Commonwealth becoming increasingly weak, Cossacks became more and more integrated into the Russian Empire, with their autonomy and privileges eroded. The remnants of these privileges were gradually abolished in the aftermath of the Great Northern War in which hetman Ivan Mazepa sided with Sweden. By the time the partitions of Poland ended the existence of the Commonwealth in 1795, many Cossacks had already left Ukraine to colonise the Kuban.