Gaidamak rebellion (1750)

Juliusz Kossak “Camp of Haidamaks”

The Gaidamak uprising of 1750 - the rebellion of the Haidamaks against the feudal oppression of the Commonwealth in Right-Bank Ukraine .

After the defeat by the Polish forces of the Haidamak uprising of 1734, the Haidamaks did not stop the armed struggle. Their small detachments ravaged and burned small towns, towns and gentry estates, robbing and killing their owners, Catholics and Jewish tenants.

In 1742 - 1743, the chieftain Kuzma Garkush with his detachment acted in the vicinity of Lisyanka. In 1747, small detachments led by Gapon, Koscienko, Wart and Khariton Kanyakhin broke through from Kiev to the territory of the Kiev Voivodeship , which was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , and they began to rob the magnate and gentry estates. The towns of Gostomel and Chernobyl were taken. Other Haidamak detachments entered Polish possessions from the steppe and devastated the Vinnitsa region . In 1749, a detachment of Haidamaks appeared under the command of Ataman Ivan Beard in the Bila Tserkva region. Some of the local Cossacks who were in Polish service joined the rebels. They attacked Fastov , took the castle and ravaged the place. Another detachment led by Blakitenko ravaged the gentry estates on the Ros River. In the southern part of the Kiev Voivodeship , a Haidamak detachment operated under the leadership of the atamans Nevenchenny, Berkut and Sereda.

In the spring of 1750, another Gaidam uprising began on the Right-Bank Ukraine . Several guard squads entered the territory of the Commonwealth from the steppes and the Kiev district. The regular Polish army, formed to protect the southern possessions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the raids of the Haidamaks, was not fully prepared to repel the enemy. According to the Polish command, more than 1,000 Haidamaks joined the border voivodships. Ukrainian peasants sympathized and supported the Haidamaks. After the appearance of the first guard squads, the crown regiment of Ozhga sent the station wagon to the gentry, urging her to collect and arm the outland Cossacks to fight the guidams. Two weeks later, Ozhga sent out a second station wagon, in which he proposed to the gentry to arm their serfs, but warned the gentry that many of the peasants were connected with the Haidamaks. The crown regiment ordered the gentry to arrest and deliver to the military court all the peasants suspected of having links with the Haidamaks.

During the appearance of the Haidamaks on the territory of Ukrainian voivodships, local serf peasants began to switch to their side in large numbers, others supplied the rebels with food, covered the rebelled Haidamaks and served as guides to the rebels.

Having increased their numbers due to runaway peasants, the Haidamaks began to act bolder and more decisively. The Gaidamak detachments, which broke into the territory of the Kiev province from the Tyasmin River, "gathered in a large number of horse and foot soldiers" attacked the town of Moshny , which belonged to the great Lithuanian hetman Mikhail Radziwill Rybonka . The rebels took the place and killed Jews in it, then during the day they stormed the city castle. From there, the haidamaks rushed to the Bila Tserkva , the strongest of the Polish fortresses in the Kiev region . The Chigirinsky elder was devastated, from where the local governor fled with the garrison. A small detachment of Martyn Tesley, separated from the main forces of the Haidamaks, raided the town of Volodarka twice, summer and autumn, ravaging it.

At the same time, other Haidamak detachments entered the territory of the Bratslav Voivodeship through the Sinyuhu River. The rebels captured and burned the city of Uman , where they destroyed the Catholic Church, killed many priests, gentry and Jews. Then the Haidamaks ravaged the Granovs and moved to Vinnitsa , the capital of the province. At night, the Haidamaks broke into the city castle, destroyed the documents stored in the city office, and robbed Jewish merchants who tried to find refuge in Vinnitsa . From the Bratslav region, the Haidamaks broke into the Podolsk Voivodeship , where they captured the city of Letichev . In it, the rebels ravaged the Dominican monastery and seized the rich property of the local gentry. In August, a detachment of Haidamaks led by Alexei Pismenny took and devastated the city of Fastov on the border of Kiev Polesie .

In Polesie, the Haidamak detachments, which arrived from the steppes, joined with the small detachments that left the Kiev district during spring and summer. The Gaidamak detachments that came from the Kiev district were formed from peasants belonging to Kiev monasteries. One of such detachments, under the command of the chieftain Ivan Podolyaki, took the Radomyshl castle and ravaged Kiev , ovruchky and Mozyr Polesye within a few months. Other units operated along the entire river valley. Pripyat, where the gentry estates were ravaged and robbed. Gaydamaki robbed the monastery of cisterns in Kimbarovka, near Mazyr , and devastated the estates of the Pinsk Jesuit College, penetrating the left bank of Pripyat. The gentry in Polesie , who had previously felt safe, was in a panic. In October 1750, large detachments of government forces and the local police were sent to Polesie to combat the Haidamaks.

Thus, in 1750 large Haidamak detachments operated in the Kiev , Bratslav, and Podolsk voivodships of the Commonwealth . Local noblemen did not receive income from their estates, from which the peasants either went to the Haidamaks or called for their help. “ The condition of our voivodship is deplorable ,” the Kiev nobles said in a letter to the great crown hetman, Jozef Potocki , from whom they asked for help, “ it is devoid of any protection and help, while the willfulness of the Haidamaks, breaking into our voivodship from beyond the Russian border, is constantly increasing ; they devastate the country, shed innocent blood and do not spare the sacred temples. Let the hetman become our consul, our Hector! "

Ataman of the rebel detachments in 1750 were Mikhail Sukhoi, Prokop Taran, Pavel Machula, Olexa Lyakh, Martin Teslya, Ivan Vovk, Alexey Maistrenko, Pavlenko, Dubin, Vasily Maleshko.

Polish regular troops could not cope with the rebels. Thus, a detachment of gaydamak (320 men) led by Mikhail Sukhoi defeated a large Polish detachment, of which 50 people were killed and about 100 were injured, while the rest fled.

The Russian government was afraid of the spread of the Gaidamak rebellion from Polish possessions to the Left-Bank Ukraine (Hetman) . Back in 1737, on the orders of Field Marshal Chrysophor Minich, military outposts were set up along the Polish-Russian border in Ukraine, which should not have allowed detachments of the Haidamaks and Zaporizhzhya Cossacks into Russian territory. The main outposts were in Vyshgorod , Kremenchug , Krylov , Oryol and Arkhangelogorod fortresses.

In 1750, the Governor-General of Kiev, General-General-General Mikhail Ivanovich Leontyev , received the first reports of gaydamak speeches on the right bank of the Dnieper, sent reinforcements to all border outposts. One and a half thousand dragoons were sent to Kremenchug alone. On December 20, 1750, the hetman of Left-Bank Ukraine Cyril Razumovsky notified the Cossack elders that the rebels were " repairing the lies and rosorennies in the near-coastal areas." And against them in the back of the city with the Great and Little and Great Dates of the Command ".

Russian troops operated in Right-Bank Ukraine since the summer of 1750 . Near the town of Stayki , near Kanev , 150 Russians attacked a smaller detachment of Haidamaks led by Alexei Maistrenko (75 people) and defeated him.

Together, the Russian and Polish troops crushed the Haidamak uprising in Right-Bank Ukraine . The main reason for the defeat was the lack of a unified command among the rebels and poor armament. Small and spontaneously created Haidamak detachments, which had their own chieftains and acted independently, could not stand up against the regular army.

Despite the suppression of the uprising, in the following years small Gaidam demonstrations took place: in 1754 in the Zhitomir region, in 1757 - Nemirova and Uman , in 1761 - Lisyanka , in 1764 - Vinnitsa .