Ivan Mazepa

Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa (Ukrainian: Іван Степанович Мазепа; Polish: Jan Mazepa-Kołodyński; 30 March [O.S. 20 March] 1639 – 2 October [O.S. 21 September] 1709) was the Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host and the Left-bank Ukraine in 1687–1708. The historical events of Mazepa's life have inspired many literary, artistic and musical works. He was famous as a patron of the arts.
Mazepa played an important role in the Battle of Poltava (1709), where after learning that Tsar Peter I intended to relieve him as acting hetman of Zaporozhian Host and to replace him with Alexander Menshikov, he defected from his army and sided with King Charles XII of Sweden. The political consequences and interpretation of this defection have resonated in the national histories both of Russia and of Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church laid an anathema (excommunication) on Mazepa's name in 1708 and still refuses to revoke it. The anathema was not recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which considers it uncanonical and imposed with political motives as a means of political and ideological repression, with no religious, theological or canonical reasons.
Pro-independence and anti-Russian elements in Ukraine from the 18th century onwards were derogatorily referred to as Mazepintsy (Russian: Мазепинцы, lit. 'Mazepists'). The alienation of Mazepa from Ukrainian historiography continued during the Soviet period, but post-1991 in independent Ukraine Mazepa's image has been gradually rehabilitated.
The Ukrainian corvette Hetman Ivan Mazepa of the Ukrainian Navy is named after him.
Mazepa was probably born on 30 March 1639, in Mazepyntsi, near Bila Tserkva, then part of the Kiev Voivodeship in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (today – Drozdy rural council, Bila Tserkva Raion), into a noble Ruthenian-Lithuanian family. His mother was Maryna Mokievska (1624–1707) (known from 1674 to 1675 by her monastic name Maria Magdalena), and his father was Stefan Adam Mazepa (?-1666). Maryna Mokievska came from the family of a Cossack officer who fought alongside Bohdan Khmelnytsky. She gave birth to two children – Ivan and Oleksandra. Stefan Mazepa served as a Cossack Ataman of Bila Tserkva (1654).
In 1657, Stefan Mazepa became involved with Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, who pursued a pro-Polish policy. In 1659 Stefan Mazepa traveled to Warsaw to attend the Sejm and placed his son Ivan in service at the royal court of John II Casimir Vasa. Before that Ivan Mazepa probably studied at the Kiev Academy from the age of 10 and graduated with a degree in rhetoric. According to Samiilo Velychko, Ivan was to complete his philosophy course at the Jesuit college in Warsaw.
According to late tradition, King John Casimir sent Ivan Mazepa to study "gunnery" in Deventer (Dutch Republic) in 1656–1659, during which time he traveled across Western Europe. From 1659 the Polish king was sending him on numerous diplomatic missions to Ukraine. His service at the Polish royal court earned him a reputation as an alleged catholicized "Lyakh" – later the Russian Imperial government would effectively use this slur to discredit Mazepa.
During one of his missions, Mazepa met Jan Chryzostom Pasek, whom he took to be a supporter of the anti-royal confederation. He led to Pasek's arrest and had him brought before the king, who was staying in Grodno at the time. According to Pasek's account, he managed to prove his innocence, the king rewarded him for the harm he suffered and Mazepa lost the royal trust. Further on in his memoirs, Pasek recounts the story of under what circumstances Mazepa left Poland in 1663. According to Pasek, Mazepa had an affair with Mrs. Falbowska, wife of his neighbour in Volhynia. When the neighbour discovered the affair, he tied Mazepa naked to a horse, head to tail, and fastened the horse. The horse carried Mazepa to his household, but he was so badly wounded that his own subjects were unable to recognize him. Pasek's memoirs were written in 1690-1695, when Mazepa was already a Cossack hetman; it is possible that Pasek, who had a personal grudge against Mazepa, colored the story. However, this anecdote also appears in the anonymous Memoirs to the Reign of Augustus II and in the memoirs of Marquis de Bonnac. The story was later recounted by Voltaire in his Histoire de Charles XII and became a recurring motif in the literary works of such writers as Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, Alexander Pushkin or Juliusz Słowacki, as well as in the paintings of such painters as Horace Vernet, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Chassériau, Théodore Géricault and others. The tale was probably widespread by then and referred to Mazepa's reputation as a womanizer.
Despite Pasek's accounts, Mazepa still remained in royal service. In February 1663 he was sent to the Cossack Hetman Pavel Tetera, to whom he brought the Hetman's mace, presented to Tetera by Tomasz Jan Karczewski [pl]. Mazepa then took part in a royal campaign against Russia in left-bank Ukraine in years 1663-1664. Mazepa was certainly still at the royal court in 1665, probably until the abdication of John II Casimir in 1668.
After the death of his father (ca. 1665), he inherited the title of the Chernihiv cupbearer. From 1669 to 1673 Mazepa served under Petro Doroshenko (Hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine from 1665 to 1672) as a squadron commander in the Hetman Guard, particularly during Doroshenko's 1672 campaign in Halychyna, and as a chancellor on diplomatic missions to Poland, Crimea, and the Ottoman Empire. From 1674 to 1681 Mazepa served as a "courtier" of Doroshenko's rival Hetman Ivan Samoylovych after Mazepa was captured on the way to Crimea by the Kosh Otaman Ivan Sirko in 1674. From 1677 to 1678 Mazepa participated in the Chyhyryn campaigns during which Yuri Khmelnytsky, with the support from the Ottoman Empire, tried to regain power in Ukraine. The young, educated Mazepa quickly rose through the Cossack ranks, and from 1682 to 1686 he served as an Aide-de-Camp General (Heneralny Osaul).
In 1687 Ivan Mazepa accused Samoylovych of conspiring to secede from Russia, secured his ouster, and was elected the Hetman of Left-bank Ukraine in Kolomak, with the support of Vasily Galitzine. At the same time Ivan Mazepa signed the Kolomak Articles, which were based on the Hlukhiv Articles of Demian Mnohohrishny. In 1689 Mazepa supported the deposition of Tsarevna Sophia, who had served as de-facto regent of Tsar Peter I, which helped him ingratiate himself with the monarch, who valued the wide experience and education of the much older hetman. In words of a Russian historian, Mazepa "was like a father to Peter I in a sense".
As hetman, Mazepa used his knowledge in military matters to introduce a new successful strategy in the fight against the Tatars and their Ottoman overlords. This success relieved both Ukraine and Muscovy from the danger of devastating enemy raids and led Peter I to award the hetman with the Order of St. Andrew, the Tsardom's highest honour. The order, as well as the title of honourable prince of the Holy Roman Empire, awarded to the hetman by Emperor Joseph I in 1707 as recognition of his help in the fight against the Ottomans and Tatars, greatly contributed to Mazepa's status both in Ukraine and at the Moscow court.
With the personal agreement of Peter I, Mazepa managed to become an undisputed ruler of the Hetmanate, concentrating most power over Ukraine, including gathering of taxes, in hands of his own administration. As hetman, Mazepa became known as a patron of culture and arts. A multitude of churches were built all over Ukraine during his reign in the Ukrainian Baroque style. He founded schools and printing houses, and expanded the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, the primary educational institution of Ukraine at the time. In many regards Mazepa greatly contributed to the establishment of the Russian Empire by supporting the policies of Peter I and providing the monarch with people needed to bring his reformist ideas into life. For example, the majority of religious figures who helped Peter I to reform the Russian Orthodox Church by bringing it under increased state control came from the Hetmanate, including Orthodox bishops Stefan Yavorsky and Theophan Prokopovich.
Himself a highly educated person who could speak both Latin and German, Mazepa established his court in a Western manner, reflecting the influence of Baroque art and literature on Ukrainian lands during that period. Mazepa's personal residence was reported to house one of the most extensive libraries of its time, containing numerous books and illuminated manuscripts from around Europe.
In 1700, as the Russian Empire entered the Great Northern War against the Swedish Empire, Mazepa, despite having concerns about the Tsar's adventurous foreign policies, supported Peter I with troops and resources. In 1702, the Cossacks of Right-bank Ukraine, under the leadership of colonel Semen Paliy, began an uprising against Poland, which after early successes was defeated. Mazepa convinced Russian Tsar Peter I to allow him to intervene, which he successfully did, taking over major portions of Right-bank Ukraine, while Poland was weakened by an invasion of Swedish king Charles XII. In 1704 Peter I allowed the hetman to incorporate the Right-bank territories into the Hetmanate, uniting Ukraine on both sides of the Dnieper for the first time in decades.
At the same time, Peter I decided to reform the Russian army and to centralize control over his realm. In Mazepa's opinion, the strengthening of Russia's central power could put at risk the broad autonomy granted to the Cossack Hetmanate under the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. Attempts to assert control over the Zaporozhian Cossacks included demands of having them fight in any of the tsar's wars, instead of only defending their own land against regional enemies as was agreed to in previous treaties. Now Cossack forces were made to fight in distant wars in Livonia and Lithuania, leaving their own homes unprotected from the Tatars and Poles. Ill-equipped and not properly trained to fight on par with the tactics of modern European armies, Cossacks suffered heavy losses and low morale. The Hetman himself started to feel his post threatened in the face of increasing calls to replace him with one of the abundant generals of the Russian army.
In 1707, after vanquishing the united forces of Peter's allies - Denmark, Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Charles XII started a campaign against Moscow. Suffering from shortages of gunpowder and provision, the Swedes detoured to Ukraine in order to replenish their stocks. The tsar ignored Mazepa's appeals to defend the Hetmanate and ordered the hetman to burn the territory in the Swedes' path. Unwilling to sacrifice his realm and displeased by Peter's treatment of himself as a simple subordinate, throughout 1708 Mazepa started secret talks with the Swedish side.
The last straw in the souring relations with Tsar Peter was his refusal to commit any significant force to defend Ukraine against the Polish King Stanisław Leszczyński, an ally of Charles XII of Sweden, who threatened to attack the Cossack Hetmanate in 1708. Peter expected that king Charles of Sweden was going to attack and thought that he could spare no forces. In the opinion of Mazepa, this blatantly violated the Treaty of Pereyaslav, since Russia refused to protect Ukraine's territory and left it to fare on its own. As the Swedish and Polish armies advanced towards Ukraine, Mazepa allied with them on 28 October 1708. However, only 3,000 Cossacks followed their Hetman, with the rest remaining loyal to the Tsar.
According to William Pokhlyobkin, it was from that moment that King Charles XII of Sweden granted Mazepa the right to use the colors of the Swedish military bandera (yellow and blue) as the insignia of the Cossack detachments led by Mazepa. Later, these would be the colors of the Flag of Ukraine.
Mazepa's call to arms was further weakened by the Orthodox Clergy's allegiance to the Tsar. Learning of Mazepa's treason, the Russian army sacked and razed the Cossack Hetmanate's capital of Baturyn, killing most of the defending garrison and many common people. Peter also had the hetman expelled from the Orthodox Church by declaring an anathema on his name.
Under the influence of the Sack of Baturyn, those Cossacks who did not side with Mazepa elected a new hetman, Ivan Skoropadsky, on 11 November 1708. The fear of further reprisals and suspicion of Mazepa's newfound Swedish ally prevented most of Ukraine's population from siding with him. Surprisingly, the only significant support that he gathered came from the Zaporozhian Sich, which, though at odds with the Hetman in the past, considered him and the nobility he represented a lesser evil compared with the Tsar. Inhumane massacres by Russia followed the Sich Cossacks support of Mazepa, as Peter the Great ordered the Sich to be razed in 1709 and a decree was issued to execute any active Zaporizhian Cossack. The Russian army was ordered to tie the dead Cossacks to crosses and float them down the Dnieper River to the Black Sea.
The Swedish and Russian armies spent the first half of 1709 maneuvering for advantage in the anticipated great battle, and trying to secure the support of the local populace. Finally in June the Battle of Poltava took place. It was won by Russia and Peter the Great, putting an end to Mazepa's hopes of transferring Ukraine into the control of Sweden, which in a treaty had promised independence to Ukraine. The hetman fled with Charles XII to the fortress of Bender (Tighina), in the Ottoman Empire's vassal Moldavia, where Mazepa soon died at the age of 70.
Mazepa was buried in Galați (now Romania), but his tomb was disturbed several times and eventually lost as a result of the Sfântul Gheorghe (St. George) Church demolition in 1962.
As Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, Mazepa's style was as follows:
Mazepa's decision to abandon his allegiance to the Russian Empire was considered treason by the Russian Tsar and a violation of the Treaty of Pereyaslav. However, others argue that it was Imperial Russia who broke the treaty by not even trying to protect the Cossack homeland during busy fighting abroad while Ukrainian peasants were complaining about the conduct of local Muscovite troops. Many Cossacks had died while building Saint Petersburg, and the Tsar planned to deploy Cossack troops far from their homeland. According to Russian historian Tatiana Tairova-Yakovlava, Mazepa had little chance of remaining in power if he hadn't risen up against Peter I, as the tsar's imperial ambitions envisioned the destruction of Ukrainian Cossack autonomy. In the aftermath of the Battle of Poltava the Hetmanate was deprived of much of its independence, although it formally remained an autonomous entity. Its final demise took place in 1764, under the rule of Catherine the Great, who transformed the territory formerly ruled by hetmans of Ukrainian Cossacks into the Little Russia Governorate.
The image of a disgraceful traitor persisted throughout Russian and Soviet history. The Russian Orthodox Church anathemaised and excommunicated Mazepa for political reasons. Until 1869, his name was even added to the list of traitors publicly cursed in Russian churches during the Feast of Orthodoxy service, along with Pugachev, Razin and False Dmitry I. Later, a positive view of Mazepa was taboo in the Soviet Union and considered as a sign of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism". During the years of Perestroika, however, many historical works saw light that viewed Mazepa differently. After Ukraine's independence in 1991, Mazepa was proclaimed a national hero in Ukraine's official historiography and mainstream media, as he was the first post-Pereyaslav Treaty hetman to take a stand against the Tsar, who failed to abide by the Treaty. This view however was disputed by pro-Russian factions. Russia has repeatedly condemned Ukraine for honoring the figure of Ivan Mazepa. In an April 2009 survey by the Research & Branding Group, 30 percent of the population of Ukraine viewed Mazepa as "a man who fought for the independence of Ukraine", while 28 percent viewed him "as a turncoat who joined the enemy's ranks".
During an event in Mazepyntsi to mark the 370th birthday (20 March 2009) of Hetman Mazepa, President Viktor Yushchenko called for the myth about the alleged treason of Mazepa to be dispelled. According to Yushchenko, the hetman wanted to create an independent Ukraine, and architecture thrived in Ukraine over the years of Mazepa's rule: "Ukraine was reviving as the country of European cultural traditions". The same day, around 100 people held a protest in Simferopol against the marking of the 370th birthday of Mazepa. In May 2009 the Russian foreign ministry stated in an answer to Ukraine's preparations to mark the 300th anniversary of the battle of Poltava and plans to erect a monument to Mazepa that those were attempts at an "artificial, far-fetched confrontation with Russia".
Mazepa's portrait is found on the ₴10 (Ukrainian currency) bill.
In August 2009, a monument to the hetman, the work of the sculptor Giennadij Jerszow, was unveiled at Dytynets Park in Chernihiv. The opening was accompanied by clashes between the police and opponents of Mazepa.
After researching his genealogy in 2009, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko did not rule out that his family is connected with the family of Mazepa.
In August 2009, Yushchenko decreed the resuming of a halted construction of an Ivan Mazepa monument in Poltava. A monument to Mazepa was to be erected on Slava Square in Kyiv in 2010 to fulfill a decree of Yushchenko. In May 2010 Kyiv city civil servants stated the city was ready to establish a monument as soon as the Cabinet of Ukraine would fund this project. According to them the situation was similar to other unrealised monuments such as the "Unification Monument" and a monument to Pylyp Orlyk who in 2010 were conceived in 2002 and 2003 but still not built in 2010. The Poltava City Council on 25 February 2016 voted in favor of the monument. On 6 May 2016 President Petro Poroshenko unveiled the Mazepa monument in Poltava.
The Ivan Mazepa Street in Kyiv, which runs past the Pechersk Lavra, was partly changed to Lavrska Street in July 2010. The move was met with protests.
In Galați (Romania), Mazepa is remembered in the name of two central neighbourhoods (Mazepa I and II) and with a statue in a park on Basarabiei street.
The historical events of Mazepa's life have inspired many literary and musical works:
In 2009 the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, instituted the Cross of Ivan Mazepa as an award for cultural achievement and service.
In 2020 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave the 54th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army the honorary title of "Ivan Mazepa". In 2022 Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian Navy Ada-class corvette after Mazepa.