Kalinsky, Timofey Vasilievich

He came from the noble family of Orsha Povet , the Vitebsk Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , perhaps had a blood relationship with the ancient Kalinsky family from Ovruchchina .

He studied at the Kiev Theological Academy , where he converted to Orthodoxy . He began his service in the Russian Empire as a regimental clerk in July 1771 in Starodub (now the Bryansk region ).

In 1776-1781 he held civilian posts in the Novorossiysk province . Since 1782 he served in Novgorod-Seversky ; and after the liquidation of Novgorod-Seversky governorate, he moved to serve in the new provincial center in Chernigov .

Since 1805 - deputy of the Chernigov nobility, since 1808 - adviser to the Poltava provincial leader M. Miloradovich .

In 1778-1782 he painted about 30 large watercolors , in which he depicted representatives of various layers of the Little Russian population in their characteristic costumes. These drawings were kept in the Society of Russian History and Antiquities in Moscow. Their reproductions were published in 1847 in the publication of A. Rigelman “Chronicle narrative of Little Russia and its people and Cossacks in general, as far as and from which people they have their origin, and for what occasions they now live in their places, such as: Cherkassky or Little Russian and Zaporozhye, and from them already Don and from these Yaitsky, which are now Ural, Grebensky, Siberian, Volga, Tersky, Nekrasovsky and other Cossacks, as well as Sloboda regiments. "

T. Kalinsky was one of the leaders of Cossack nationalism , a champion of Hetman autonomy, one of the leaders of the movement for recognizing Ukrainian Cossack ranks as equivalent to Russian imperial ranks. He argued that since the sixteenth century the Cossack foreman had the status of a gentry and had more rights than the Russian nobility . Since not only the foreman, but the entire Cossacks was considered by him as a “knightly order with a noble status”, which corresponded to the Russian nobility. Kalinsky equated the Cossack centurions with the Moscow governors , and the general foreman - the Duma boyars , the hetman was actually a sovereign , and his rank, in his opinion, corresponded to the field marshal .

Author of an unpublished treatise, “Opinion on Little Russian ranks and their advantages, as well as on the analysis of their evidence about the nobility in their ranks and their ranks for inclusion in the genealogy of the noble book and in which part” (1805) and “Notes in the Little Russian nobility” (1808), where he cited historical and legal arguments in favor of the thesis that the status of the Ukrainian Cossacks, as a whole, and the Cossack foreman in particular, is higher than the status of the Russian nobility.

Illustrations by T. Kalinsky from the Chronicle Narrative of Little Russia and its People and Cossacks ... by A. Rigelman

• Kalinsky Timofiy Vasilovich (Ukrainian)