Sources of Formation of the Cossack Officer in Ukraine (second half of the 16th — middle of the 17th century)

Abstract

The article clarifies the sources of the formation of Cossack officer in the second half of the 16th to the middle of the 17th centuries. It is emphasized that this cohort, as a rule, included financially well-off and educated people with the appropriate intellectual potential and level of culture. With the establishment of the military register, the senior ranks included mainly the nobility, who from a young age, in the spirit of the traditions of the time, attended the school of chivalry in Zaporozhye. It was often joined by representatives of the princely class: Zbarazhsky, Zaslavsky, Koretsky, Ruzhynsky, and Vyshnevetsky. The eldership was also replenished with descendants of boyars and peasants, who had to look for places in the social structure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The nature of occupations, ethnicity, values established in its environment contributed to the consolidation of the Cossack elite into a single social stratum. Important factors in this process were also the struggle of the Cossacks for the defense of their constitutional rights and the support of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.

Keywords

• cossack officer
• nobility
• princes
• boyars
• polish-lithuanian commonwealth
• social stratum