The Struggle for National Sovereignty and International Status of the Ukrainian Cossack State (Second Half of the XVII–XVIII centuries)

Abstract

The question of the qualification of the status of Ukraine-Hetmanate remains relevant, because it was not regulated legally and was considered by contemporaries only in the political sphere, which led to different points of view on this issue in historical and legal science. To establish the legal status of Ukraine at the end of the XVII — beginning of the XVIII century possibly on the basis of Ukrainian-Russian and Russian-Polish agreements, actually existing Ukrainian-Russian relations and, in particular, studying the institution of the hetman — the head of state and the main bearer of state sovereignty. This is the purpose of this study. Scholars consider Ukrainian-Russian agreements or contract articles of the second half of the XVII century as a kind of constitutional acts, sources of state law of Ukraine, which on the basis of Cossack legal customs regulated relations between Ukraine and Russia, as well as legally enshrined the «rights and freedoms» of the Cossacks, military-administrative system, partially determined the activities of public authorities and administration. But, as it is well known, the Ukrainian-Russian agreements did not directly indicate the status of the Ukrainian state, but legally affirmed the basic state and legal institutions of Ukraine and, consequently, its sovereignty, which actually existed on the basis of Cossack customary law. These agreements were in the nature of a bilateral international legal act, where the Zaporozhian Army and the Moscow Kingdom acted as parties to the treaty process, which was accompanied by the coordination of positions inherent in international legal relations, taking into account the needs and interests of the parties, establishing their rights and responsibilities. But the parties were not equal contractors of the treaty, because the Zaporozhian Army provided a draft agreement, and the tsarist government amended it and ratified it in the form of «awards». The Russian authorities saw Ukraine as an integral part of their own state and tried to incorporate its territory. The hetman and most of the Cossack officers believed that the Zaporozhian Army retained state sovereignty and was under the protectorate of Russia. Only the events of 1708–1709 forced the Ukrainian political elite (except for I. Mazepa’s followers) to recognize the autonomous legal position of the Zaporozhian Army within Russia. The article highlights the main directions in the activities of the Hetman’s administration to establish the sovereignty of the Ukrainian government in domestic and foreign policy during the second half of the XVII–XVIII centuries.