(dramatic music) - Okay, everyone,
greetings, happy Tuesday. Thursday is the exam. There's not, you know,
what is there to say? Think about what you would
ask on the essay question. Also, think about the year
1699 and what it means to you. It's a very easy year to remember, 1699. Lots of things happen in 1699. We're gonna cover some of them today. The thing that we're trying to do today is difficult for a couple of reasons. The first is that the 18th
century is just tricky. I don't know how often you guys think about the 18th
century, but the 18th century is somewhere before we
get into the comfortable, modern categories of mass politics. But it's also somewhere
after we're in the things we think we understand, like
Middle Ages and Renaissance and reformation. The 18th century is very tricky, but it's also fascinating to historians who I admire very much, the late Tony Judt and my colleague here, Paul Yushkovich. Both, you know, have always insisted to me that the 18th century is the best century. And I'm working on that. I'm working to try to make
the 18th century good, and hopefully I can make it accessible. The other reason that
this is tricky is that if we're gonna understand
what happened to Ukrainians in the 18th century, even
more than other times, we're gonna have to
keep geography straight. And this is why I've handed out, in addition to the the term sheets, I've handed out the two maps because the thing that
we have to understand in the 18th century is how Russian power ends up dominating the
zone from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, which is new. Up until now that zone
between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea has had
all kinds of powers in it, but it hasn't been the Russian Empire. In the 18th century, beginning from 1699, or beginning from 1700,
we see a turn of events, which leads to Russia, the Russian Empire dominating that zone. By the end of the 18th century, you know, if you're not gonna pay attention
for the next 54 minutes, this is where it's gonna go. By the end of the 18th century, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth is gonna be outta the picture. The Ukrainian Cossack states are gonna have lost all their autonomy and basically be working for Russia. And the Crimean Khanate, which we're gonna be talking about today, is going to cease to exist. So three major entities, which have been around for
centuries in one form or another, are going to be dominated or dismissed by the end of the 18th century. If this were a class
about the Russian Empire, you know, this would be
about the spread of Russia, and of course we'll be talking about that. But from our point of view, what we need to have in focus is the kind of simultaneous weakening and disappearance of these three entities. Because as these three entities disappear, they don't do so gracefully. They do so in conflict with one another. And that's one of the reasons, of course, why they do disappear, is the
conflict with one another. The other reason, which you can just have in the back of your mind
is that it is Russia, the Russian Empire, which breaks out into the
European age of discovery, right? Not the Crimeans, not the Poles, not the Ukrainians, but it's Russia which breaks out into the
European age of discovery, which becomes an empire in the fully global sense of the word, in having access to the Pacific Ocean and having access to the
Atlantic by way of the Baltic. In a sense, that's the big picture, that Russia becomes this
kind of modern empire, which is exactly how Peter and Catherine were thinking about it. But in our picture, what's happening is that these other three
entities are diminishing, they're fighting one another, and by the end of the 18th century, they are essentially gone. Now, this geography is a mess. It's a mess, it's a mess, it's a mess because we have to have in mind the zone from the Baltic Sea to the
Black Sea the entire time. And we have to have in
mind inside Ukraine, and this is where things really get hard, we have to have in mind
the Black Sea, the Azov Sea and then when we're
thinking about Ukraine, you might have noticed in your reading that there's constantly this mention of right bank and left bank. Okay, now I'm now gonna blow your mind. The only way to understand
right bank and left bank is that you have to think like a river. Yeah, exactly. You have to think like, this is serious. You have to think like a river. You have to know which
way does the river flow? It flows from north to south. And so what is the left bank, right? The left bank is the Eastern bank, and the right bank is the Western bank. And so it's not, you know, when you say right bank, left bank, it's not right and left on
the map, it's the opposite because right bank and left
bank are the banks of the river. And it's from the point
of view of the river. And if you can, you know, I don't have time to do all the zen work that's necessary here, but if you can think from the
point of view of the river, you're also doing something very important in terms of understanding the people. Because there's a reason
why right bank, left bank seemed like a sensible
way to describe reality, which is that so much of
what we're talking about in terms of economics
and power had to do with who was controlling the river, who was making use of the river, right? The river is so important to Ukraine, the Dnipro is so important to Ukraine, that right bank, left bank
seemed like a sensible way to describe the country for
hundreds and hundreds of years. And of course, that is still true. This is where the fighting
is going on right now, right? This is the Ukrainian
army is trying to get to the Dnieper River in
Kherson Oblast right now. Okay so all of these terms, I'm afraid we sort of
have to keep in mind. So let me begin with what I promise to do at the beginning of the class in which I'm now gonna try to pay off that promise, which is to make sense of the Muslim world and the Turkic world in Ukraine. Because as Serhii Plokhy reminds us in the reading, the unification of Ukraine is primarily a north to
south type enterprise. And we've gotten to where
the northern boundary is going to be, when we get to 1569 and the Union of Lublin and the Polish crown taking a great deal of what had been Lithuania
away from Lithuania and putting it under the Polish crown, then we're getting to something like the northern boundary of Ukraine. We're getting to a difference
between modern Belarus and modern Ukraine. But the south, we still have a lot of
work to do in the South. And it's complicated
work because it involves seeing the Crimean Khanate,
seeing the Ottoman Empire, and then watching how they get pushed out. And they're gonna get pushed out, again jumping ahead a little bit, they're gonna get pushed
out by Ukrainian Cossacks working for the Russian
imperial army, right? So the pushing out of the Tatars, right? The beginning of a process
of de-Turkification and de-Islamization of
the Crimean Peninsula is gonna be work that's done by Cossacks when they are already
dominated and ruled by and taking orders from
the Russian Empire, right? So, but to make sense of all this now, to do the South, to bring the South in, I wanna start with the Crimean Khanate. Okay, so the southern
border of today's Ukraine, which is the northern
coast of the Black Sea, is a very special zone
from our point of view, because this is the zone
where we do have sources, basically the entire
time, like as much as, so long as there's been like
a classical, ancient history, we have sources for this little zone. It's different with Kyiv,
it's different from the north. There when we talk about Christianization, we're also talking about the
beginning of written sources. Before Christianization, the written sources are very sparse, they're Muslim visitors,
they're Jewish visitors, but there aren't that
many written sources. On the coast of the Black
Sea, this is totally different because the Greeks have
been there for 2,500 years and they've left a written trace. The Greeks have been
there since 5,000 BCE. And they're there the entire time, right? They're still there, although
not in great numbers. They're there the entire time. We can't go through
all of ancient history, But they're there through Alexander, they're there through Rome,
they're there through Byzantium. When Constantinople is sacked
for the first time in 1204 by Western Crusaders. So one thing one has to remember when we're doing non-Western
European history, is that there were a lot of crusades, and the crusades went in directions that you might not have expected. So it turns out that if you're on the way to liberate the Holy land, it's a nice pit stop
to sack Constantinople, which is what happened in 1204, right? That isn't necessarily
something, or you know, the crusades that we did
earlier with the crusaders trying to kill slash convert
the pagan Balts, right? Those are crusades. The history of the crusades
also involves Europeans trying to convert Europeans, or in the case of Constantinople, just stealing a lot of nice things, which you can now visit if
you go to Italy or France, because Napoleon then stole
some of the good stuff again, a second time later on. Okay, so the point is that the Greeks are there the whole time. There's a classical
world which is durable, linguistically, the entire
time on the South coast. So that's one part of Crimea and that's what makes it special And I want you to just mark that. So because it's gonna
be important later on. It's gonna be important
later on when we talk about how Russia legitimates its claim. So the Crimean Hinterland
though is generally not touched by Greek settlement. The Crimean Hinterland is
also not touched by Rus. So this is very important. We spend a whole lot of time
trying to understand Rus, you understand how Rus
is a kind of synthesis of Vikings coming from the north, Byzantium coming from
the south, all of this. But Rus does not control
territorially Crimea. Rus does not control territorially, what's now Southern Ukraine either. So just note, you know,
this whole thing about who does Rus belong to in this war has this kind of strange feature that the war is actually taking place with the exception of a
little bit around Kharkiv, it's generally taking
place where Rus was not, as neither side is very keen to mention. Rus did not get this far south. It certainly did not get to Crimea. So Rus did not get to
the Crimean Peninsula, but the Mongols did, okay? So in our world, in our class,
in East European history, the Mongols are basically coming in and they're breaking things up, right? But from the Mongol point of view, that's not what they're doing. They're establishing trade routes, they're establishing states, and the Mongols don't care if
you're Rus or you're not Rus, I mean they're indifference
to what other people are is quite extraordinary. What they're doing is
establishing big states. The big state in the region
was called the Golden Hoard, which is a kind of unforgettable name. And then the history of
post Mongol statehood is the Golden Hoard breaking
up into smaller units. One of those units is Moscow,
as we've discussed, right? The Moscow state is a post Mongol state, a post Mongol vassal state. Another one of these states
is called the Crimean Khanate. So Khanate, K-H-A-N-A-T-E. It's called a Khanate because
the ruler is called Khan, K-H-A-N. So, Muscovite is a post Mongol state as we've seen in the sense that there were princes of Rus there who were able to maintain
power by collecting the tribute for their Mongol overlords. And then eventually after
a couple of centuries, they break free, and then
they break out spectacularly against other European
cities and then southward against Muslims, and then eastward all
the way to the Pacific in a kind of spectacular
moment of expansion, which is not really our subject, but which is very
important for our subject because it explains how the Russian Empire is gonna be able to dominate
by the 18th century. The Crimean Khanate is a successor
state in a different way. The Crimean Khanate is ruled by princes who are direct successors, direct descendants of Genghis Khan, the Princely class and
the Crimean Peninsula and the Crimean Khanate
are direct successors, by blood, at least so they
claim, of Genghis Khan and they are ruling the people. The people who were there
before are Turkic speakers mainly, I don't think
I put this on the list, mainly from a group
that we call the Cuman. And the people who come into
being as the Crimean Tatars, who were still known as the Crimean Tatars are a synthesis of the
local Turkic speakers plus the Mongolian ruling
classes who come in later. Okay so the Crimean Khanate
has a political system, which is interestingly not so different from Poland, Lithuania. They have an assembly of nobles, which is called the (indistinct). The Assembly of Nobles
theoretically elects the Khan, just like the Polish Lithuanian parliament theoretically elects the
king, although in both cases, strangely, it's the same family that gets elected again and
again for a couple of centuries, which is nice if you can work it out. We know that the Khan who is the ruler had a second in command who
was called the (indistinct). We know that state functions
were held by nobles from various post Mongol families. We know that women played a public role until about the 1560s when
they disappear more or less from the sources. And then we also know, and this is where things
get very interesting, that the Crimean Tatars
and the Crimean Khanate had a centuries long
encounter with Lithuania, which, if you look at your
map, will begin to make sense. If you remember in the 14th centuries on one of your maps, on
the one from Magoshi, you can see the dates he
gives for the Lithuanians moving south into what's now
Belarus, what's now Ukraine. The Lithuanians move relentlessly south as a result of the pressure
of Teutonic Knights, right? Remember, they move relentlessly south, they gather in the lens
of Rus, to coin a phrase. And they also, so if you
gather in the lens of Rus, you are going to push up
against the Crimean Tatars. So the Lithuanians and the Crimean Tatars are fighting regular
wars against each other for decades and decades and decades. And the Lithuanians, as one does, are also constantly
trying to take advantage of the various power struggles
and succession crises inside the Crimean Khanate, which means that the Lithuanians
are actually recruiting dissenters, the people who
lose in these power struggles. There are also prisoners of war. They're recruiting Crimean
Tatars into their own state. So up until now, we've
talked about Lithuania as being, oh, it's not
just a little Baltic state, look it also controls Belarus, look, it also controls Ukraine, look, most of the population is Orthodox. Oh, and hey, the Lithuanian Grand Duke married the Polish King, who was a girl. And so Lithuania becomes
a much bigger, bigger, much bigger historical entity than we're used to thinking about. But I now wanna add one more dimension. The Lithuanians had a
very meaningful encounter with the Crimean Tatars, which meant that among other things, inside the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there were lots of Muslims. For centuries, for centuries, there were mosques in (indistinct), there were mosques in
basically every meaningful town in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. We've come across the city of Ostroh, which one of the students
kindly asked about, which is the place where the
first full Slavonic Bible was printed. When the first full
Slavonic Bible was printed, there was a mosque in Ostroh. The famous romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz, was born in a town called Novogrudok, or in Belorussian, Navahrudak. That town also had a mosque because of the Crimean Tatars, right? Every town that mattered in
the Grand Dutch of Lithuania had a mosque because
of the Crimean Tatars. So the point here is that for centuries, there's an encounter between
Lithuania and the Tatars because they are at war and because they have a common border. And when Lithuania and
Poland come together, then Poland Lithuania, we
can think about it like that, from 1386 onward, Poland
Lithuania also has durable contact with the Crimean Tatars. And this is a very important part of Polish Lithuanian identity. If you go to the Royal Museum in Warsaw, which I recommend, and you walk into it, you'll wonder why like
you were in the first room and suddenly there are all
these scimitars with gems and things like this, and you think, wow, this must be like war booty that the Poles took from their enemies. But it's not, it's the
swords they used themselves because they synthesized what they learned from their long encounter
with the Crimean Tatars. Okay, so the Crimean Tatars
are an important state for several hundred years. The tragedy of the Crimean
Khanate is that they fall under Ottoman dependency at about the same time that the Ottoman Empire
itself begins to weaken. That's it in a word. So somewhere around 1650, the Crimean Khanate yields to the Ottomans in terms of setting its own policy. There had been a kind
of interaction of equals for a couple of hundred
years where the Ottomans basically farmed out their
northern foreign policy to the Crimean Khanate and the Crimean Khanate, you know, decided what was going
to happen with Moscow, with the Poles, with the Lithuanians. Around 1650, it looks like the Ottomans are basically taking control. And the problem with this is
that it's around this time that the Ottoman Empire becomes weak. Okay, so let me briefly now
try to do the Ottoman Empire. From our point of view, what's
crucial for the Ottomans is the Ottoman Empire as a European power. Of course, the Ottoman Empire
also controls Northern Africa. It also controls Arab lands. It also controls the
Near East into Persia. But the Ottoman Empire,
from our point of view in this very brief synthesis, we have to think of it as a European power which is pulling back from
Europe in the 17th century, okay? That's the crucial thing. The Ottoman Empire is gaining control over the Crimean Khanate, but losing control of everything else. So you can justify thinking
of the Ottoman Empire as a European power. The Ottomans, so the Osman family, that's why they're called the
Ottomans, the Osman family, O-S-M-O-N, they gain control
of Anatolia, today's Turkey, for the same reason that the Lithuanians gain control of territory
north of the Black Sea. The Osman family gains
control of territory south of the Black Sea,
because the Mongols fragment and pull back, right? So whereas the Lithuanians
rush in north of the Black Sea, the Ottomans rush in
south of the Black Sea, and they conquer Anatolia. The next thing they do is
they conquer the Balkans. So the Ottomans are a European power, basically from the beginning. They conquer other things as well, but they're a European
power from the start. From our point of view, again,
there's much else to say, but from our point of
view, the crucial struggle, and I'm afraid this is where the geography has to add one more dimension. The crucial struggle
is between the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. The Hapsburgs, who we're
gonna hear a lot about after the exam a week from now, the Hapsburgs are the family
that rules from Vienna, which also has a big age of
exploration, age of discovery, world empire, which
we're gonna talk about. The Ottomans are a very
important land empire, which has been boxed up in
the Eastern Mediterranean by superior navys, and never breaks out into
the wider world, right? So the Ottomans are in
this category of powers that don't make it into this,
if you want, globalization, this age of discovery. They're very powerful, they
control an awful lot of land. But unlike the Russian
Empire, unlike, and of course, unlike the Portuguese,
the Spanish and so on, they don't break outta the Mediterranean. They're stuck in the Mediterranean. So from the point of view of Istanbul, the natural vector of
expansion is northward. And the story of the
16th and 17th centuries is a couple of attempts
to besiege and control the Hapsburg capital, which is Vienna. In my other class, I spent a lot of time talking about this. Here we can only do it very briefly, but the crucial point is
that a couple of times the Ottomans try and fail to take Vienna. They try and fail in 1526. In 1526, they gain control
of a lot of territory. They gain control of the land which is on the west side
of the Black Sea, Moldavia, Wallachia, the west side of the Black Sea. They gain control of most of Hungary, but they don't take Vienna. They're gonna sit in
Hungary for 150 years, but they don't get to Vienna. They try again in 1683. And this is a crucial turning
point for a lot of people. 1683 is the famous moment when the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth lifts the Ottoman siege of Vienna. In sort of conventional
histories of Europe and how Europe is built, this
is a hugely important moment because it's
counter-reformation, Catholicism, Vienna and Warsaw together defeating this Islamic army around Vienna. So huge amounts of Baroque
painting and symbolism and recollection along
those lines of this event. From our point of view, this
has some different resonances. So the king of Poland,
who liberates Vienna, who raises the Ottoman siege of Vienna, who's called Sobieski, I probably forgot to
put his name on there. By the way, there are two
sides on the term sheet today, because that's the kind
of day we're having. Jan Sobieski is the king of Poland. When he liberates, as
Ukrainians will tell you, so you should visit this
if you're in Vienna, which I know you all now will be, if you're in Vienna, the little mountain from which the Polish
Lithuanian army comes down is called the Kahlenberg. And you can walk up it, it's a nice hike. You can take the bus up and walk down, if you're not that energetic,
there's ice cream at the top. Lovely views, strongly recommend. Oh, and on the way down
there are these places called (indistinct), which have fresh wine and like very simple
food, and it's lovely. So you should definitely all do this. But as any Ukrainian will tell you, when the Polish Lithuanian
army comes crashing down that mountain, they have 5,000
Ukrainian Cossacks with them, okay? 5,000 Ukrainian Cossacks. And then this brings us to
the more interesting thing. There was a problem, there
were many interesting problems between the Austrian command
and the Polish command. And one of the problems
was that the Austrians could not tell the
difference between the Poles and the Crimean Tatars. They literally could
not tell the difference. And so, because in dress and
attire and also in tactics, they were very similar. And the Crimean Tatars, of
course, oh, I didn't say this, but the Crimean Tatars were there in 1683 on the Ottoman side, right? On the Ottoman side. So these Poles, Pol
Lithuanians and Crimean Tatars, who've been fighting on their
own border for a long time, are now fighting in
somebody else's border. Like if you imagine Crimean
Tatars, 10,000 of them in and around Vienna,
fighting the Polish army coming down from the mountain, right? And the Viennese cannot tell the Poles, cannot tell the Lithuanians
from the Crimean Tatars, right? Because of the hairstyles,
because of the scimitars, right? Because of the calvary, they
cannot tell the difference. And so the decision that
was made was that the Poles are going to put a bit of
straw in their helmets. You know, the way modern
armies will have a color on their sleeves or whatever. Like the Ukrainians
and the Russians today, the Poles will put a bit
of straw in their helmets, so that the Austrians
could tell who they were. So it's an anecdote, it's funny, but it reveals something
which is deeply true, which is that this long,
centuries long encounter between the Lithuanians and the Tatars, and then the Poles and
Lithuanians and the Tatars, mark them just as it
marks the Cossacks, right? The Viennese, of course
couldn't tell the Cossacks from the Tatars, right? That goes without saying, because the interaction between the Cossacks and the Tatars has been even more
intimate for even longer, because the Cossacks are
precisely the people who found that free spot
between Polish Lithuanian power and the Crimean Tatars
and lived in that spot, lived in it geographically,
lived in it culturally. Okay, so the 1683 victory
is most important for us because it leads to 1699. If we're off in central European history, 1683 is the moment when the
Austrians turn the tables on the Ottomans. And not only do they defend
themselves in Vienna, but between 1683 and 1699, they fight their way
southward through the Balkans, and they establish
themselves as a land power in the Balkans, which is
the beginning of the story, which will eventually lead
to the First World War, different class. But for our point of view, when the Ottomans have to
sign a peace tree in 1699, which by the way is the
first time they have to sign a peace treaty as a defeated power, when they have to sign
a peace treaty in 1699, that changes the balance of power in our part of the world, right? The Ottomans have been defeated, their armies have been
defeated in Southern Europe. The treaty which is signed is the Treaty of Karlowitz in
1699, the Treaty of Karlowitz, that's the time when the
Ottomans sign a treaty as a defeated power. Hugely important turning
point in the balance of power, because as I said, the Crimean Tatars they're now basically
hitched to the Ottomans. They're hitched to the
Ottomans at a moment when the Ottomans then lose
this big important war. And Ottoman power has been
driven southward, okay? Now that changes everything. That changes everything for the Russians as we're gonna see in a moment. Okay, now, before I get to the Russians, we've gotta briefly talk about Cossacks, the Ukrainian Cossack state. So the Ukrainian Cossack state gets blurred out of Polish history, gets blurred out of Russian history. We have 1648, which everyone
is keen to treat as a violent, you know, moment of violent rebellion, which of course it was, but that's not the only thing that it was, it was also the construction
of a new political order in which the governing
elite has been driven away or physically eliminated
or discredited, right? So it's also something like a revolution in which a new class emerges
to control territory, which are the Cossacks
and the Cossack officers. Now, these Cossacks and
Cossack officers, however, are not in the position after 1648 to rule territory themselves. They are constantly forced
to align with the Russians as in 1648, sometimes
still with the Poles, sometimes with the Ottomans, which is why this lecture
is called "The Triangle". There is something like
Ukrainian statehood, it's called the Hetmanate,
after the Hetman. But the Hetmanate is
constantly bending and turning and being turned against itself, right? So you have right bank Hetmans,
you have left bank Hetmans, you have Hetmans who
are trying to rule both the right wing and the left wing. You have a Hetman called Doroshenko, who I hope I put on the
list, tell me if I didn't. But Doroshenko in 1669 becomes
a vessel of the Ottomans in order to try to unite the right bank and the left bank where the
right bank is controlled by the Russians, the left bank
is controlled by the Poles. So if you're a Hetman, your great project is to bring these things together and then ideally to
shove everybody else out. But that they're not able to do. So, okay, this is another date and treaty. So I'm gonna tell you right off, if you're paying attention,
you're right here with me, these dates and these treaties
are gonna be on the exam, all right? They're gonna be on the exam, know the dates of the treaties. So the Treaty of Andrusova, 1667, that is when the Poles and the Russians, lots of inspired note taking now. That's when the Poles and
the Russians divide Ukraine, left bank and right bank,
1667 Treaty of Andrusova. Which means that now you have Hetmans, you have leaders of the
Cossacks on both sides, right? And of course, if you're on one side, your greatest aspiration is
to be also on the other side. And then your next aspiration is then to get clear of
whoever was sponsoring you, whether that's the Russians
or the Poles or the Ottomans. That's the triangle. You wanna bring it all together. And then you wanna drive
out whoever sponsored you. They don't manage to do
this, but that's the pattern. So 1672, Doroshenko helps the Ottomans to defeat the Poles in Podolia, okay? Podolia is this region
in South Western Ukraine. And then after that happens, so the Ottomans then control
Podolia, which I'm gonna, you guys write down Podolia,
please, just like it sounds. They control Podolia and
then at the end of the 1670s, the Ottomans make peace with Poland. In 1681, you're gonna see
how this fits together, in 1681, the Ottomans make
peace with the Russians, okay? So now the Ottomans are
at peace with the Poles and the Russians, it's
1681, what do they then do? They make their big move
northwards to Vienna and fail, right? So important. Their move is to go to
Vienna and they fail. Okay and so then everything turns around. After 1683, the Ottomans are driven south. The Crimeans have been defeated. The Crimean Khan, by the way, takes personal responsibility
for the defeat and retires. And in 1699, the Poles take Podolia back. The Poles take Podolia back. And the reason why, there are many reasons why
we're concerned about this, but one of the reasons why
we're so interested in Podolia is because of the way that
Brooklyn looks like now, so have you heard of the Hasidism, right? So it's a version of Jewish orthodoxy. It's present on Yale's campus. You don't have to look
too hard to find it. So, okay, I gotta stop
myself, that was a tangent. See, in the 18th century, you
have no time for tangents. That's what the 18th century is like. So no tangents, but Hasidism, which is a version of Orthodox Judaism, which is still let's say thriving. It's one of the reasons
why Yiddish still exists as a language is created in Podolia after the Poles come back. And the reason why, I'll tell you what Hasidism
is in a moment very briefly, but the reason why it arises is that it's in this
territory which has shifted from Muslim Ottoman
control back and forth to Polish Christian control. And this whole Polish system of coming in with the aristocracy and the serfdom, and then going back out
with the aristocracy and the serfdom, then coming back in with the
aristocracy and the serfdom, is very disruptive for the
Ukrainians who rebel against it. And in this whole boiling
atmosphere in Podolia is what gives rise to Hasidism. Where Hasidism is created by
someone who's called the Besht. Besht means the Ba'al Shem Tov,
the Master of the Good Word. Very briefly, the idea of
Hasidism is to give to Judaism a kind of a more earthly
and more corporeal component where joy and direct
contact with the mystic are more important. It's also a movement which has
to do with the printing press and access to the book by
people who are not necessarily completely literate. Which let's admit, like not
everybody is completely, you know, there's a funny moment, right? 'Cause the printing press
runs ahead of literacy by several hundred years, right? Kind of like the internet
now, you know, like the technology is way
out ahead of what people, it's a good analogy actually. Because what people did with books when they're first published,
they did things like, oh look, I know that letter. Maybe it stands for something. And that's kabbala. That's one way of
reading the Bible, right? Is you don't, like, you take
various combinations of letters and you say, okay there's a hidden meaning in this biblical verse, right? That's a way of interpreting the Bible, a much more accessible way, which is associated
with Hasidism precisely. So it also has to do with printing press at a time of limited literacy. So the reason why I
mention this is because it's the next step in the
history of Jews in Ukraine, Hasidism. And Hasidism is also a
version of Orthodox Judaism, which is going to break out
of Podolia and into Ukraine and into Poland and
eventually into North America. Okay, so no time for tangents. There was time for a
parenthesis on the Hassids. Now I'm closing that parenthesis and we're getting back
to where we need to be, which is Russia. Okay, so now let's think about all this from the point of view of Russia. What the Russians are able to do, what the new Russian empire,
as it's called from 1721. And by the way, Russian
Empire is a conscious rebranding exercise, right? It's called Russia because of Russ, not the other way around, right? I mean, I realize you're history students, so you know that like
chronology is very important. So Russia is called Russia
because it's named after Russ. Russ was not called Russ because
it was named after Russia. And once you get that straight, a lot of other things fall into place. Okay, so in the 18th century,
Russia makes its move back into Europe with tremendous success under two great rulers,
Peter and Catherine. So how does this happen? The Ottomans are down, right? They're defeated and they're in the south. Between 1683 and 1699,
they're being driven southward and Russia takes advantage
of this by going north, going to the Baltic again. We saw how Ivan the Terrible foundered on the shores of the Baltic, he starts the Livonian wars, which he basically
loses the Livonian wars, bring the Poles and
Lithuanians closer together, Union of Lublin, all of that. And then there's terror
inside the Muscovite state. This time, the move to
the Baltic succeeds. The great northern war
that begins in 1700, which is only one year after
1699, by no coincidence, the Great Northern War
which begins in 1700, it turns out to be a Russian victory. But this great northern war
turns out to be Russian victory, partly because the Cossacks
are fighting there, but they're fighting with
the Ukrainian Cossacks, but they're fighting there in conditions which are
highly unfavorable, right? So the Cossacks have been
fighting for hundreds of years with and against the Polls, with and against the Lithuanians, with and against the Tatars, right? That's with the Tatars too. The Khmelnytsky Uprising
was with the Tatars against the Poles, it's a triangle. You have to lie with pretty much everybody in different circumstances. So, but anyway, that is their home turf down there, right? With the Tatars, with the
Poles, with the Lithuanians. When they are brought
up to fight in Sweden, in northern Europe, they're
facing a modern army with modern weapons, they're
taking huge casualties, they're far away from home and they're taking orders from
Russian imperial officers, all of which leads to a
great deal of discontent. Meanwhile, while they're up north, Poland threatens to invade Ukraine. And the Hetman, who is the
Hetman of the left bank, the Hetman of the Russian part of Ukraine, who is a man called Ivan Mazepa, realizes that we're now
in a moment of crisis. And so Mazepa makes a decision,
which is quite fateful. Mazepa makes the decision in 1708 to switch over to the Swedish side, okay? So there are operas about this, there's lots of Russian
literature about this. And it's like, it's the great betrayal by, it rings down the century, literally rings down the centuries, because Russian bells
were supposed to ring out because of Mazepa's betrayal. Mazepa had been a kind of
counselor to Peter, okay? Mazepa is older than Peter, Mazepa had this fantastic
European education. He'd been the counselor
to the King of Poland. He'd been educated at the Kyiv Academy. Then he was educated by Jesuits in Poland, then he was the counselor to
the King of Poland, right? And so he then became a
kind of counselor to Peter in his turn. And Peter trusted him. So in 1708, when Mazepa switches sides, which he believes he
has no choice but to do, to try to preserve his homeland, Peter sees this understandably
as a huge betrayal. And it's remembered as
a tremendous betrayal, as a moment where the Ukrainians
betrayed the Russians. So Mazepa switches sides to the Swedes, right before they lose,
right before they lose. In 1709 at the Battle of Poltava,
Russia defeats the Swedes, reaches the Baltic and
becomes a North European power that is then gonna be followed 1721, founding of the Russian Empire, the creation of Petersburg, new European capital, window
on Europe, all of that. Mazepa dies in 1709. So this is a turning
point for the Cossacks. I mean, Cossack power
probably wasn't gonna persist much longer anyway, but
it's a turning point. Mazepa dies that same year, 1709. 1719, the Cossacks are
banned from selling grain, not a detail. They're banned from
selling grain on their own. They can only sell grain
through Russian ports. And since we know that part
of the deep history of Ukraine is that Ukraine has the most fertile soil in this part of the world, that ban is a big part of
their dependency on Russia. 1722, the Russians create something called the Little Russian Collegium, which is going to co-rule
or eventually rule the Cossack lands. Little Russia, Malorussia is then a Russian term for
which I'll talk more about later for referring to Ukraine. So after these turning points, right? After 1699, Battle of Karlowitz, sorry, the Treaty of Karlowitz, and after 1709, the Battle of Poltava, the Ottomans are down
and the Swedes are down, and the Russians have
basically a free hand with the Cossacks and they're using the
Cossacks to fight the Swedes. And then they're using the Cossacks to fight the Crimean Khanate
and to fight the Ottomans. That's the way it goes. So you can see the Cossack
power is being spent northward and being spent southward. In the 18th century in
a series of battles, the Russians managed
to drive Crimean power out of what is now southern Ukraine. And then eventually they manage
to conquer Crimea itself. This happens in a couple
of wars, 1735 to 1739, then 1768 to 1774. Crimea becomes a
protectorate that year, 1774. 1783, its annexed by the Russian Empire. Now, while this is happening, while the Cossacks are
being played out, right? Cossack power is being spent
in these wars southward, it's not that it's new that the Cossacks are fighting the Crimean Tatars, they've been doing that forever. What's new is that they're
doing it under Russian command. And when that job is done, all that remains of their
autonomy is taken away, right? So you're seeing this
triangle kind of crushes in on everyone at the same time. The Crimean Khanate is
being defeated by Ottomans, but in that defeat, sorry,
it's being defeated by Cossacks. And, but in that defeat, the Cossacks are also being
defeated by Russia, right? The institutions of the
Cossacks are going to disappear at basically the same
time that the institutions of the Crimean Khanate
are going to disappear. And then they are swept up. And here's where things get
intellectually very interesting. They are then swept up by
Catherine's idea of a new Russia. Okay, so this is fascinating
because what Catherine does, educated woman, German, by the
way, her real name is Sophie. And there's nothing Russian about her except the husbands who had to be murdered so she could rule, that's it. So Catherine has this idea,
which is very elegant. It's also a classically colonial idea that these lands that
have just been conquered, there wasn't anybody there, right? These are virgin territories. So the place is renamed
what's now Southern Ukraine where the Cossacks had had
power and the Crimean Peninsula where the Crimean Khanate had had power, these places are renamed New Russia, okay? Now that word new is magical, right? Like with New England or New
South Wales or New Caledonia, that word new is magical
because it suggests this is our new Russia. It's powerful, right? It's powerful. More than 200, you know, 200
years later, 300 years later, people are gonna be still
drawn by this notion of New Russia. But when you say something is new, you're not saying it's yours, you're saying that we
want it to be ours, right? That's the whole point. So Novorossiya does not mean
something which is Russian, it means something that
we're gonna make Russia, we're gonna pretend that
nothing else is there. And how do you do that? Well, you send multiple,
and the Russians did this, they sent four expeditions of the Russian Imperial Academy
of Sciences to Crimea to name everything, find all the species, map everything, right? Because science is one of the tools by which you gather imperial knowledge. And then the naming, I mean, this is, one has to admit this is quite brilliant on Catherine's part,
they rename everything. So all the Turkic names, the Muslim names, the Crimean Tatar names are replaced. And what are they replaced with? Greek names or names that sound Greek, like Kherson, okay? Like Kherson, that city that's being
fought over right now. Kherson, completely invented name, right? Or it comes from the
Greek city of Kherson, which is in Crimea. Mariupol, sounds Greek sorta, right? That's the whole idea. They took the old names and then they replaced
'em with Greek names. And when they founded new places, those two examples I gave are new places, Kherson and Mariupol, they gave them Greek or
Greek-ish, Greek sounding, Greco whatever names. And the point of this is to say Russia is connected with
the classical world, right? And in that we're European, right? We're in the enlightenment. Connecting Russia with
the classical world, going back all the way 2000 years, means that you obliterative everything that happens in between. So the Crimeans don't matter,
the Ukrainians don't matter, it's Russia here alone with
its historical destiny, which goes all the way back to Greece. And so it's new Russia, but it's justified by this connection to the classical world. Okay, that brings us
to where we need to be. The Crimean Tatars themselves are going to be physically displaced. About a third of them,
roughly 300,000 of them are going to immigrate while Russia takes
control of the peninsula, most (indistinct) Ottoman Empire. During the Crimean War of the 1850s, another 140,000 Crimean
Tatars are going to leave. Jumping ahead a bit, the remainder of the
Crimean Tatar population is going to be deported
every man, woman and child in 1944 under Soviet rule, so that the entire peninsula is deprived of its indigenous population. The Ukrainians, and this
is the very last thing, when this is all over, when the
Cossacks have been disbanded, when the territories have been integrated into new Russia districts,
as soon as that happens, in the spirit of romanticism, the Ukrainians from a new
university in today's Kharkiv, what was called Kharkov
in Russian back then, from a new university,
which is founded in 1805, the first move is going to be classical traditional
European style romanticism, where they start looking
back to the Cossack past and start writing about
Cossack state continuities. And in the 19th century,
they will move into a mode where they turn their own
past into something like a usable national story, which
we're gonna talk more about in the weeks to come. For the Crimean Tatars,
for various reasons, this wasn't possible. The Crimean Tatars aren't gonna be able to make a move like this. They're going to be largely dispersed and they're gonna be treated as alien and their domination is
gonna be much more complete. I'm gonna talk more about that when we get to the 20th century, 'cause it's really interesting in itself and it's very important for the way that the war is being fought. Just one closing thought. People find it easier to think
that Crimea is really Russia than Ukraine is really Russia, right? Today. And why is that? I mean, it's because the
history of Crimea has been, although the history of Ukraine has been pretty successfully obliterated, the history of Crimea has been very successfully obliterated. And so the idea that
Ukraine is always Russia, maybe like, you know,
you might ask a question, but Crimea is always Russia? People are more likely
to believe that, right? And so part of the work that
we have to do in history is to fill in the gaps and get things where they were in the past and make these always claims,
whatever they might be, seem unbelievable. And in that way, prepare
ourselves for the exam. Good luck. 1699, 1699 is definitely gonna
be on this exam, 100%, 1699. Okay, thank you everybody,
thanks for listening. The 18th century is tough work and I appreciate that you're here with me. (soft music)
