New Books from CIUS Press…

Union of Hadiach (1658)

Published thanks to a research and publication grant from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Hadiatska uniia 1658 roku is a Ukrainian-language collection of articles by prominent historians from Ukraine, Poland, North America, and Russia devoted to a pivotal event in the history of Cossack Ukraine—the Union of Hadiach (1658). The collection appeared on the occasion of the 350^th anniversary of that event.

The Hadiach Agreement of 1658 was a direct geopolitical and ideological response to the Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654, for it proposed a  different model of political interaction in Eastern Europe. Hadiach represented an effort on the part of the Cossack elite to legitimise the Cossack state as the sovereign Grand Duchy of Rus’ in a political union with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the post-Pereiaslav world of the late 1650s, the rapprochement between the Hetman State and the Commonwealth radically undermined the geopolitical and territorial gains made by the Tsardom of Muscovy between 1654 and 1656. Although the Hadiach Agreement was substantially curtailed by the Warsaw Diet in 1659, it remained a formidable obstacle to Muscovite expansion. Had it been successfully realised, it would have opened new geopolitical prospects for Eastern Europe as a whole. The failure to implement the Union of Hadiach created new opportunities for Muscovy to develop into a regional superpower. Nevertheless, the ideas set forth in the Hadiach Agreement continued to inspire proponents of Ukrainian statehood and Ukrainian-Polish reconciliation for generations to come. For present-day historians, the various subtexts of the agreement constitute a valuable source for the study of the ideological mindset of the Ukrainian Cossacks, as well as of the Ukrainian, Polish, and Lithuanian nobility of the mid-seventeenth century.

Apart from events directly associated with the Union of Hadiach, the collection explores developments preceding the union, as well as its legacy in the Ukrainian and Polish intellectual traditions. Hadiatska uniia 1658 roku consists of four thematic parts, each examining a particular set of issues associated with the union, its geopolitical context, and its long-term consequences—ideological, geopolitical, and intellectual. Part 1, “The Hadiach Agreement of 1658 Texts,” contains the original Polish documents of the agreement and their translations into contemporary Ukrainian. Following these is a textual analysis by Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva (St. Petersburg, Russia).

Part 2, “On the Way to Hadiach,” explores international relations in East-Central Europe in the 1650s–60s, as well as historical precedents relating to the Union of Hadiach. Viktor Brekhunenko (Kyiv) discusses Cossack-Polish agreements of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Dariusz Koodziejczyk (Warsaw) indicates the Turkish alternative in the foreign policy of the Cossack leaders, while Viktor Horobets (Kyiv) considers the place of the Hadiach Agreement in the structure of international relations in East-Central Europe.

Part 3, “The Memorable Agglomeration and Reactions to It by the Elites of Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania,” is devoted to various perceptions of Hadiach that emerged among the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Cossack elites. Petro Kulakovsky (Ostroh) describes the Cossack mission to the Polish Diet of 1659 that was supposed to ratify the Hadiach Agreement. Tomasz Kpa (Toru) deals with religious issues in the agreement. Piotr Kroll (Warsaw) writes about the attitudes of the Polish nobility toward this Ukrainian-Polish agreement, while Krzysztof Kossarzecki (Warsaw) analyzes the attitude of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Hadiach Union. Zenon Kohut (Edmonton) writes about the concept of the fatherland in Ukrainian political culture of the 1650s and 1660s. Taras Chukhlib (Kyiv) traces the role of Hadiach in the political ideas of Hetman Petro Doroshenko in the 1660s–70s.

Finally, Part 4, “Hadiach 1658 in the Ukrainian and Polish Intellectual Traditions,” sheds light on the ideological and intellectual legacy of the Hadiach Agreement in Ukrainian and Polish political traditions and historiography. Thus, Yurii Mytsyk (Kyiv) explores the assessment of the Hadiach Agreement in early modern Ukrainian chronicles. Serhii Plokhii (Cambridge, Mass.) considers the role of Hadiach as a myth in Ukrainian historiography and political thought. Konrad Bobiatyski (Warsaw) elucidates the changing image of the Hadiach Union in Polish historiography of the last 150 years.

Even a cursory glance at the table of contents of this book shows that Hadiatska uniia 1658 roku provides us with the most comprehensive picture to date of this vitally important event in early modern Ukrainian history. A major achievement of international historiography of Cossack Ukraine, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in Ukrainian history.

A hardcover edition of the book can be purchased for $39.95 (plus taxes and shipping).

Ukrainian Baroque Drama and Theater

Supported by a generous grant from Dr. Michael Dashchuk of Toronto, the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research and CIUS Press have prepared and published a new monograph on an important but insufficiently studied aspect of Ukrainian culture: the history of Ukrainian baroque drama and theater. Paulina Lewin’s Ukrainian Drama and Theater in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is the first general English-language history of that subject, and it appears as the third volume in the Peter Jacyk Centre’s monograph series.

Written and performed during a time of political upheaval and fierce religious polemics, early modern Ukrainian plays both entertained and educated their audiences, helping to shape a national and religious identity. This rich body of serious, mostly religious dramas and comic intermedia was remarkable for the originality with which it elaborated on and transformed the models of European Renaissance and Baroque theater.

Relying on her thorough knowledge of the primary sources and cultural legacies of early modern Ukraine, Russia, and Poland, Lewin analyses how drama and theater functioned in Ukrainian society in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Having carefully studied the extant dramatic texts and handbooks of rhetoric and poetics, she elucidates the deeper structures of meaning in the dramas and reconstructs the techniques and atmosphere of their contemporary performances.

Paulina Lewin is a leading authority on Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian literature and theater of the Baroque period. A former senior lecturer at Warsaw University, research associate of the Institute for Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and associate professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kracow, after immigrating to the United States she lectured at Harvard University and was a research associate of its Ukrainian Research Institute.

Ukrainian Drama and Theater is available in a paperback edition for $24.95 and in hardcover for $49.95 (plus taxes and shipping) Outside Canada, prices are in U.S. Dollars

CIUS Press orders may be placed via the secure on-line ordering system of CIUS Press at http://www.utoronto.ca/cius/publications/books or by contacting CIUS Press, 4-30 Pembina Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2H8; tel. (780) 492-2973; e-mail: cius@ualberta.ca.