Cossack rebellions
Subtitle: social turmoil in the sixteenth-century Ukraine
By: Linda Gordon.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 1983
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 289
Subjects: Cossacks -- History; Zaporozhians -- History; Ukraine -- History -- 1340-1648; Poland -- History -- Elective monarchy, 1572-1763
Description: The Ukrainian Cossacks were a complex and tenacious group, influential far beyond their numbers. This book offers an admiring, critical, and close examination of the unique cossack phenomenon. It reveals the sources of their surprising power by looking at them in action, in their sixteenth-century uprisings. The interpretation is organized around three themes, offering resolutions of three apparent contradictions in cossack activity: first, how the cossacks could act simultaneously as individualist mercenaries and yet also lead a collective, class-conscious social rebellion; second, how they could be simultaneously traditionalist and yet also provide leadership for the developing modern Ukrainian nationalism; and third, how the cossacks could be simultaneously unique, quintessentially Ukrainian, and yet form a part of a worldwide response to economic transformations that drew Eastern Europe into a position as exploited agricultural provider for Western Europe.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 265-284.
Includes index.