Æóðíàë Viche 2006 ¹24

¹24, 2006

Destiny and fame of Pereyasliv

Hetman capitals, cossak capitals… How many of them were there, where and when did they emerge? These questions would seem to be almost scholastic. But there is one snag! The historian still haven’t generally accepted, scientifically approved answers to them.

So, Pereyasliv… Exactly with the story about it we’ll begin the series of publications dedicated to formation and consolidation of the Ukrainian state system, characteristic features of the creation of our nation, formation of political centers and cossack centers, mechanisms of legislative activities, executive and judicial authorities.

Land Rover Discovery 3 became the reliable partner of the project of “Viche”. Ahead there are hundred kilometers that will be overcome through highways, old cossack roads, and maybe even country roads. In the places, where an echo is still felt from the swift flight of battle arrows, Land Rover Discovery 3 is perceived as a guest from the distant future.

Our route passes ways, paths and mythological indirections from one city to another, from one village to another. Imagine that two cossack hundred armies rush at full speed. In actual fact that is Land Rover Discovery 3, which covers kilometers diligently: he one has 197 horse forces. The pendant works smoothly - usual pot-holes on roads are imperceptible. Seven passengers enjoy conveniences in a comfortable salon (the third row has two comfortable seats). Everybody can use various pockets, niches or glass-holders. Have you understood the hint? The boot is transformed into a flat surface, if the seats in the second and the third rows are put together: it can be used even as a bed. It is really royal or hetman super-convenience, isn’t it?

So, the reader will be guided by the rubric “Through hetman capitals and cossack ways” from one historical epoch to another, from the grey past to the present, and especially to the crossings, where the past and the present can hardly be demarcated. After all, Land Rover Discovery 3 is the embodiment of trips and adventures and... a real hetman stable, however it is a true cross-country vehicle packed with the technological innovations, created for distant journeys, unexpected turnings and steep turns. In a word everything is almost as in history: what did it prepare for us, what is there round the corner?

Why do we begin with Pereyasliv? Because this city was a powerful center of the Ukrainian state formation, the center of attraction for different political forces, it carried in itself the powerful charge of historical inheritance, as it became already well-known in 907 year. At the beginning of the tenth century Pereyasliv principality acquired considerable political weight. Left Dnipro bank (below the Desna river mouth), Myroms’k and Rostov-Suzdals’k acres belonged to it. The first Pereyasliv (since 1054 year), and afterwards the great Kyiv prince (1078–93) Vsevolod Yaroslavych struggled against Polovtsu and Turks, made add-ins to the famous collection of the legal norms “Russian truth”, founded the Kyyevo-Vydubyts’kyi monastery...

Within years and years the Peryasliv regiment had been glorified, and the city itself had become hetman’s favorite shelter, the crossing of liberation competitions of people, embodiment of fight for mace, and after all the sickly nerve of the Ukrainian history.

Secret of the seventeenth century: why didn’t hetman proclaim the independence?

Gradual, really creeping, steady in everything”reunion” had begun already during Khmelnyts’kyi life: tsar and Moscow officials began to violate at first separate, and then all points of the durably written agreement.

General-ataman of the Ukrainian cossacks Bohdan Sushyns’kyi explains it in the following way: “The hetman was not psychologically ready to that a day can come, when he becomes the ruler of an independent country, not feeling royal, tsar's, sultan, khan’s or some other’s “caress”.”
Prominent modern prose writer, author of historical novel “I am, Bohdan”, Pavlo Zahrebel’nyi is distant from having a single meaning conclusions:

– How was Bohdan depicted? The leader, with mace, on the horse, the state husband, the look sees the light of the centuries, that is so indeed. He was glorified for it by Skovoroda and Shevchenko, and then Shevchenko regretted that he, seeing the light, hadn’t managed to see and foresee everything. And who was able to do it and when?

Writers could not hold out on that eminence towered by Bohdan due to force and majesty of his thought… Khmelnyts’kyi for me – is a great unique personality, and at the same time some unknown force unraveled by nobody yet, as though the greatest accumulation of national genius in everything: in mind, endowments, riotous conduct, extravagancy of nature, in universalism of character.

Bums stumbled across the sabre,
and Kuchma, Zasukha and Petrenko handed it over
to the museum

Recently we had the possibility to see the attributes of hetman power and Khmelnyts’kyi’s personal things, which earlier had been out of museum displays. The personal sabre of commander, presented to Bohdan Khmelnyts’kyi by the Polish king Yan Kazimir, came into special notice. Could the hetman really know that in 2002, on the eve of election campaign in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, his stolen sabre that had been searched for the whole decade, would have been returned to Pereyasliv?!

And the wife of that time President of Ukraine Lyudmyla Kuchma, mister Zasucha who was the head of Kyiv regional administration at that time, and candidate deputy mister Petrenko presented Bohdan Khmelnyts’kyi sabre. Everybody remembers well when the Shevchenko Street, where the historical museum is located, had been repaired the day before their arrival. The respected guests handed over a relict solemnly and told that these were Kyiv bums who had stumbled across the sabre (it looked unattractive) in basement of one house in Podil. But the search of two maces failed!
– No acts concerning the handing over were made. It was handed from hands to hands, – the keeper of funds of museum Larysa Oleksiyivna Hodlina remembers. – Imagine, there had been no saber for ten years, and suddenly it appears at a main keeper, and I am enriching the exposition with such invaluable exhibit according to the act! Isn’t it strange? I tugged at mister Zasukha’s sleeve, imploring to give the corresponding documents. And I got xerocopy of the newspaper article about the find and certificate that told that expert estimation was conducted and the conclusion was made: “This sabre can be the cossack weapon of ÕV²² century.” And that’s all! That day the representatives of our criminal search visited the museum, as in fact the case had not been settled during a decade. It turned out that they knew nothing about the find!

Maces are searched by Interpol

And two maces… It is almost impossible to sell them at international auctions: rarities are searched with the help of Interpol. So, they are, obviously, kept in private collection.

Mykola SLAVYNS’KYI, Svitlana HOROBETS’