Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/237

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on the section of Ukraine which spreads beyond the Dnieper stood in uninterrupted connection with Muscovy. In 1667 Muscovy and Poland plotted the partitioning of the entire Ukrainian territory. The Dnieper was to be the boundary between Muscovite and Polish domination. The Ukrainians continued to resist both Muscovite and Polish treachery. Doroshenko, Hetman of Western Ukraine, was successful in repulsing both their armies. In Eastern Ukraine, Mazeppa, the elected Hetman, induced the Swedes to give their assistance, but he was not so fortunate. In the battle of Poltava the combined Ukrainian and Swedish armies were defeated by Muscovite troops. Since 1709 the history of Eastern Ukraine is one of gradual destruction of its independence. In 1764 the Hetmanian system of rule was abolished and a “Little Russian Board” was introduced in its place.

In 1775 the Zaporozhian Sitch (the Kozak organization) was forever outlawed by a treaty that still to this day remains in the Statute book of the former Russian Empire, the only reminder of a once powerful, independent, democratic state of Ukraine upon whose ruins the present great Russia has risen.

Western Ukraine underwent a long series of wars between the Poles and Ukrainians in which sometimes one ruled and sometime the other. Mazeppa’s unfortunate campaign affected the future of both Western and Eastern Ukraine so that it became a center for Russian and Polish intrigue, until it finally became partitioned by Poland, Russia and Austria-Hungary.

Thus the 19th century found a number of “governments” of Russia and the “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the place of the once independent nation of Ukraine.

A revival of Ukrainian literature, art, language and the “Uniate” religion in the Russian part of the country brought fierce persecutions during the 19th century. This national revival, however, soon spread over the whole territory includ-

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