Cultural Activity
Despite the upheaval and devastation brought on by the 1648 revolt and the Ruin, cultural activity in Ukraine continued to develop and to reach broader segments of the population. As the Christian Arab Paul of Aleppo, who traveled through Ukraine on his way to Moscow, wrote in 1655, "Even villagers in Ukraine can read and write ... and village priests consider it their duty to instruct orphans and not let them run in the streets like vagabonds." Teachers, trained in the brotherhood schools and hired by village communes, were numerous, and the wandering graduates of the
Kiev Academy (bakalaryj frequently served as tutors for the well-to-do. Higher education, even in the worst of times, was available in the Kiev Academy or its affiliates in Vinnytsia and, later, Hoshcha in Volhynia. hi the forty years since Mohyla's reforms, the academy developed a rigorous twelve-year course of study that emphasized, at various stages, the mastery of Latin, Greek, and Church Slavonic, rhetorical and oratorical skills, and (for the most advanced) philosophy and theology. Astronomy, geography, and mathematics were also taught, reflecting a growing interest in the natural sciences.
Most of the academy's students were the sons of the Cossack starshyna or rich burghers; although not infrequently the sons of simple Cossacks and even peasants also gained access. The old practice of sending youths to West European universities also continued, and even under Russian overlordship, Left-Bank Ukrainians maintained close contact with European and particularly with Polish culture. This openness of Ukrainians to foreigners and their ways was also noted by Paul of Aleppo, who stated that the Ukrainians "were all friendly and did not treat us as strangers," while in Russia he felt "as if my heart was padlocked and all my thoughts repressed, for no one is able to feel free and joyous in Muscovy."
The faculty of the Kiev Academy, which included such luminaries as the famous ecclesiastical leader and writer Lazar Baranovych, the German-born polymath Inokentii Gizel, and the fiery polemicist Ianokii Galiatovsky, constituted impressive cultural elite that was famous throughout the Orthodox world. Many of their works were widely read, notably Gizel's Synopsis, which dealt with early Ukrainian and Russian history and was permeated with a protsarist spirit. In the 150 years following its appearance in 1674, the work was published in twenty editions. By and large, the Kievan scholastics, who were all churchmen, still perceived the central issues of life in religious terms. Anti-Catholic and anti-Greek Catholic themes predominated in their works and a favorite political idee-fixe of theirs, reflected in Galiatovsky's 'The Swan," was the formation of a union of all Orthodox Slavs, led by the tsar, to combat the hated Muslims.
They wrote in a florid, baroque style and used the artificial Church Slavonic language, which was far removed from the spoken Ukrainian of the day. Among these intellectuals, it was considered bad form to write in the language of the "commoners." In contrast, the works of secular authors tended to use the vernacular and dealt with more concrete topics. For example, the "Eye-Witness Chronicle," which was probably written by the Cossack official Roman Rakushka-Romanovsky, concentrated on the events of the period 1648-57. Books were not lacking in late 17th -century
Ukraine. Despite the ravages of war, the land had 13 printing presses, of which 9 were Ukrainian, 3 Polish, and 1 Jewish. The most active Ukrainian presses were in Kiev, Novhorod-Siversky, and Chernihiv. Of the 20 books that the Novhorod-Siversky press put out, 15 were by Ukrainian authors; and in 1679 alone, the press published over 3000 copies of various textbooks for elementary schools.
Initially, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine benefited from the 1648 uprising. Khmelnytsky repeatedly stressed that the defense of Orthodoxy was a major goal of the revolt and both he and his successors were quite generous in providing the church with land and privileges. In fact, the grants they bestowed upon it were so great that the church acquired 17% of all the arable land in Ukraine, thereby becoming a major economic force. Its political position, however, suffered a setback.
Under the rule of the early hetmans, the metropolitans of Kiev (such as Sylvester Kosiv and Dionysii Balaban) had almost complete freedom of action. The Cossack leadership did not interfere in ecclesiastical affairs and the clergy and church peasants constituted an almost autonomous segment of Ukrainian society. Even in relations with the tsars and the kings of Poland, where there were still many Orthodox, the Kyivan metropolitans pursued their own policies. But eventually the question arose of who should exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Ukrainian church. It was occasioned by Metropolitan Balaban's decision in 1658 to follow Hetman I.Vyhovsky over to the Polish side. In the view of Moscow, for the spiritual head of the Ukrainian Orthodox to be based on the territory of its Polish archenemies was unacceptable. Therefore, the tsar appointed Lazar Baranovych, archbishop of Chernihiv, as the "temporary" metropolitan of the Left Bank, thereby splitting the Orthodox hierarchy in two. Furthermore, the Russians applied pressure to have the Ukrainian church removed from the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople and placed under the patriarch of Moscow.
At first, the Ukrainian clergy on the Left Bank was vehemently opposed to being subordinated to the Muscovite church, which it regarded as being culturally inferior. But by 1686, after decades of careful and tactful persuasion, the Left-Bank clergy capitulated and the newly elected metropolitan, Prince Gedeon Sviatopolk-Chetvertynsky, agreed to place his church under the patriarch of Moscow. Hetman Samoilovych, the Cossack starshyna, the lower clergy, and the brotherhoods accepted this decision without protest. Meanwhile, the Orthodox church on the Right Bank was exposed to extreme Polish pressure and - as such important dioceses as Lviv, Peremyshl, and Lutsk went over to the Greek Catholics - it entered into a state of decline.