the First is going to get married and, examining the line of brides, chooses Maria Khlopova. The girl does not like the queen mother. At her instigation, doctors conclude that «Maria Khlopova is fragile to the royal joy.» Other doctors come to a different conclusion, however, the last word is for the nun. Some time later, with the assistance of his father, who returned from Polish captivity, Mikhail almost marries Khlopova, but his mother’s influence outweighs. In the end, the tsar enters into an alliance with Evdokia Streshneva, the confidante of one of the boyars who came to the bride. The marriage is happy, except for the fact that, even with royal care, six out of ten children die before reaching adulthood (the usual statistics of that time).
In 1636 Michael declares war on Poland. Russian troops besiege Smolensk. The governors return to Moscow with 8 thousand soldiers, the initial number being 32 thousand. The state of affairs remains. The only plus is that the King of Poland, Vladislav, renounces his claims to the Russian throne.
In 1645, Mikhail’s son, Alexei Mikhailovich (Quietest), became tsar. During his reign, the reunification of Ukraine and Russia, the Copper and Salt riots and the church schism took place. The church council of 1666 supports the reform of the high priest Nikon, anathematizes the Old Believers and, regardless of all that, condemns the patriarch to imprisonment in a monastery. Open resistance to the new religious charter lasted until the capture of the Solovetsky monastery by the troops in 1676. In 1654, in connection with the annexation of Ukraine, a new Russian-Polish war began. The combined troops of Buturlin and Khmelnitsky are making progress. They are already fighting on the territory of ethnic Poland and Lithuania. The entry into the war of a strong player, Sweden, which snatched Warsaw and Krakow from the hands of Russia, forces the parties to the conflict to sign the Vilna truce. Nevertheless, there is an interesting prospect for the election of Alexei Mikhailovich to the Polish throne.
Ukraine then, both in colloquial speech and in all official documents, is called Little Russia, or the Hetmanate. The agreement between the Russian tsar and the Cossacks is drawn up in the «Belarusian language». Muscovite Rus at that time was called «White». Later, the toponym shifts to the West and denotes present-day Belarus.
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky (1595—1657)
In 1658 the war continues, but without the deceased Bohdan Khmelnitsky.
The former secretary, Ivan Vyhovsky, who himself became the «hetman of the Grand Duchy of Russia», carries out mass repressions among the Cossacks and concludes a separate agreement with the Commonwealth. According to its clauses, the Hetmanate becomes a federal unit of Poland. In the same year, Vyhovsky cracked down on the Cossack foreman, who was trying to find out where the tsarist money allocated for the maintenance of the Zaporozhye army went.
In 1659, Vygovsky succeeded in attracting the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray the Fourth with a 30,000-strong army as an allies. Together they defeat the Russian detachment of A. Trubetskoy, which is besieging Konotop. Loss of seven for seven thousand. In Ukraine, more and more uprisings break out against Vyhovsky. The next hetman is the 18-year-old son of Bohdan Khmelnitsky. Yuri is not the successor of his father’s work, speaking, in general, against the unification of the lands. The offspring of Khmelnytsky is a henchman of the Poles, Ottomans, and does not pursue an independent policy. Realizing that the hetmanship is not for him, he becomes a monk, gets to the Tatars, Turks, who in the end deprive him of his head.
In the fall of 1663, the Polish army, plus the Crimean Tatars and detachments of the Principality of Lithuania, led by King Jan Kazimierz, made the last major operation. With heavy fighting, it occupies a dozen cities. The initiative is waking up in the Russian commanders. Competently leading the troops, they perform deceptive maneuvers, block the enemy garrisons, and raid the rear. The Polish-Lithuanian army retreats, losing three quarters of its strength. In 1666, the right-bank hetman Petro Doroshenko, who declared himself a vassal of the Turkish sultan, revolted against Poland. Thirty thousand Crimean Tatars come to the aid of his fifteen thousand Cossacks. The turmoil lasts for five years. Poland is restoring the state of affairs, but it is completely exhausting its strength. In the end, on January 30, 1667, the Andrusov armistice was signed between Russia and Poland. Rzeczpospolita recognizes the annexation of the Left-Bank Ukraine, Smolensk, the Chernigov Voivodeship, a number of small towns, preserves the Right-Bank Ukraine and Belarus. Russia is not yet in a position to retain some of its large territorial acquisitions.
Hetman Petro Doroshenko (1627—1698)
…In the summer of 1672 Poland was attacked by the Ottoman Empire. By this time, the Turks and their vassal Doroshenko already owned the entire Right-Bank Little Russia. There is Islamization, the alteration of churches in the mosque, the recruitment of boys to janissaries, girls, again boys to harems, and the like. Fearing the invasion of the warriors of the Port on the Left Bank Ukraine, and not wanting to humiliate the Christian world, Russia enters the war with Turkey. Relations with Poland immediately warmed up. Cossacks and Cossacks (usually, Zaporozhye Cossacks are called through the vowel «O») are invited to attack the Crimean Tatar and Turkish possessions from the sea. Russia is trying to form a European coalition and even become its head. She does not succeed in this, but at least this attempt itself is evaluated favorably by the Western community. The fighting is covered in detail by the European press.
Poland is losing the war and officially gives the Right-Bank Ukraine to the Ottomans. Alexei Mikhailovich considers this a reason for extending the power of the crown to the whole of Little Russia, in the event of a victory over the mighty Port, of course. Events are not developing quite the way the Russians want them to. They are fighting the Turks and Crimean Tatars. Those intensify the repression against the population. The population falls away from the Ottomans and is immediately given over to the well-functioning Polish administration. A significant part of the inhabitants flees to the Russian Left-Bank Ukraine. The city of Chigirin occupies a special place in Ukraine at that time. It is the unofficial capital of the Hetmanate, a large Cossack camp and covers the strategic crossing of the Dnieper. The Russian-Ukrainian army captures the city, forces Doroshenko to swear allegiance to the Russian Tsar and withstands, intermittently, two Turkish sieges. The second of them (1678) shows the lack of experienced gunners, while the Ottoman guns shoot almost without a miss. Four Turkish guns are «super heavy». It takes 32 buffaloes to transport each. The ratio of forces in people is 1:10. The Turks are losing 30 thousand fighters from the 120-thousand army. The Russian-Ukrainian coalition is losing 15 thousand of the original 65 thousand. In the end, Romodanovsky’s troops, having formed in a huge square, retreat to the Dnieper and are evacuated to the Left-Bank Ukraine.
The war is reaching a dead end. Right-bank Ukraine, in any case, is arranged according to the Polish model. It is difficult to win back and keep it without an alliance with Poland. The Poles themselves, as a condition of the alliance, require huge sums to support their troops. In the end, according to the Bakhchisarai Peace Treaty (1680), the Port recognizes the entry of the Left-Bank Ukraine and Kiev into Russia. Right-bank Little Russia is now ruled by a Turkish vassal, the Moldovan ruler Gheorghe Duca. The Zaporizhzhya Sich becomes independent from Moscow. As before, Russia pays a semblance of tribute to the Crimean Khan.
In 1676, having declared the fifteen-year-old Fedor (mother – Maria Miloslavskaya) heir, the tsar died of a heart attack. Fyodor the Third reigns happily, but not for long, five years, leaving no heirs. It is not he, and not his brother Ivan the Fifth, who becomes the great emperor, but Peter the First, born in marriage with his second wife Natalia Naryshkina.
The Naryshkin clan declares that, dying, Tsar Fyodor personally handed over the scepter to Peter.
