Ukrainians, Cossacks, Mazepists

Abstract

This review's title is deliberately at variance with Andreas Kappeler's 2003 article on the position of Ukrainians in the ethnic hierarchy of the Russian Empire. This informal order in Russia, as in other premodern multiethnic empires, was based on criteria of political loyalty, estate, and social and cultural affiliation. The stratification of Ukrainians made it possible to attribute them to different categories: khokhly, mostly peasants; malorossy, Russian-speaking Ukrainians loyal to the Romanov dynasty; or Mazepists (mazepintsy), those forging Ukrainian cultural and national identity. Kappeler noted that all these categories were interwoven, and the position of Ukrainians in the Russian Empire was therefore extremely complex. 1