Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
acknowledged the authority of the Kingdom of Moscow. The Epic Songs, and "The Old Kazák, Ilya of Murom," originated there. Kazák and fugitive serf came to be, practically, synonymous terms.
The term "kazák" is ancient,—and the most rational of the explanations of it is, that of old, among the Turks, it was applied to a mounted warrior, lightly armed,—and somehow inferior as a soldier. In the Polovetzk Dictionary of the year 1303 the word is written "kozak." Among the Tatárs, with whom the Ukraina was compelled to live in such close contact, on such close terms of enmity, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, "kozak" has the meaning of a fine man, an independent military adventurer—again of low grade (the Turks and Tatárs belong to the same Ural-Altaic stock, along with the Hungarians and the Finns),—with shades of meaning indicating a vagabond, a partisan, a homeless roamer, a nomad. Altogether, it seems to describe the kazák of the early periods very thoroughly. With the status of the kazák as an agriculturist, with a fixed home, a soldier of the Russian Army, and with the divisions into kazáks of the Don, the Ural, the Terek, the Kuban and so forth, and the conditions of his service, it is not necessary here to deal.
The one appellation which is lost in the present divisions is precisely the historic one of the Zaporozhtzi. Zaporozhe, the domain of the kazáks of our story, is somewhat difficult to delimit (without entering into too much detail) on the present map of Russia. A large slice—practically all of the present Government of Tauris (not counting the Crimea), starting from the lagoon of Ochakov at the southwest point, bounded on the south by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and, in a curving line, northeast, east, south again, by the Dnyeper, the Konskaya and the Berda rivers—was the territory of the Nogai Tatárs. Zaporozhe lay to the west, north and east of this Tatár territory. Beginning with Ochakov, at the western point of the Dnyeper lagoon, Zaporozhe was enclosed on the west by the river Bug and the Siniukha, curving northeast just above Novomirgorod and to a point just above Kremenchug on the Dnyeper; southeast along the Dnyeper, to the mouth of the Orel; northeast, following the Orel but some distance to the north of it, and with a long point northeast to about Borki (northeast of Poltava); thence southeast, to a point about at Bakhmat on the Northern Don; then slightly southwest to Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, where it again joins the Territory of the Nogai Tatárs. The Territory of the Kazáks of the Don was its eastern neighbour; but there was no real differentiation between the Don Kazáks and those of Zaporozhe. It was not uncommon for men of either camp to go to the other and dwell there, unquestioned, perfectly welcome, like members of the organisation, at pleasure, returning home when affairs or inclination called.
The actual origin of the Kazáks of Zaporozhe and its date, cannot be determined. In all probability, their pioneers were the men who, loving a free life, followed the calling of fishermen on the lower Dnyeper, and hunted wild animals on the surrounding steppe of the region, known as Nízovya—the lowlands—near the Black Sea. In course of time they organised, to repel the raids of the Turks, Tatárs and Poles. In short, they were the result of the eternal conflict between the settled, agricultural life, and the nomadic free-booter life of the plains.
The Falls or Rapids from which the actors in Gogol's story derived their name, Zaporozhtzi—the Kazáks of "Beyond the Rapids"—begin about ten miles below Yekaterinoslav (Katherine's Glory), on the Dnyeper, the worst of them, about half a mile in length, bearing the suggestive title of "Nenasýtetz," the Insatiable. In the tract below the Insatiable was situated the famous capital of Zaporozhe, the Syech—or, in the soft, Little Russian variant of Russia, the Sicha. Syech or Sicha means, simply, a cutting or clearing in the forest. Obviously, that was precisely the origin of the name. As there existed, at different times, at least eight Syechs (possibly ten), it is not surprising that the location of the capital should appear to the reader decidedly indefinite.
About one hundred and sixty-five miles below Yekaterinoslav, opposite Alexandrovsk, in the Dnyeper, lies the Island of Khortitza, where stood the first Syech. Originally—so the ancient Greek chronicles state—this beautiful island held a monastery inhabited by many monks. The Russians, it is said, had regarded it as a sacred place, and (before the introduction of Christianity) sacrificed there to their deities birds, and even the highly-prized dogs of the sort now known as Borzói, or Russian Wolf-hounds. Here, in the beginning of 1550, Dmitry Vishnevetzky built a fortress, and assembled kazakdom around him. Vishnevetzky was a fairly wealthy magnate, owner of several villages in southern Volhynia. Instead of following the example of the men of his day and modestly increasing and rounding out his "fortune," he devoted himself to the fashionable sport of the period on the Border Marches—fighting the Tatárs. He entered the public arena in 1540, but, not content with defensive fighting, such as was carried on by the Border Chieftains, and magnates, he made up his mind to realise, in concrete form, the idea evidently cherished by many people of that epoch, but, so far, not put into execution, and built a castle on the islands of the Dnyeper, as a bulwark against the Tatárs. This idea of Vishnevetzky to found a permanent, strongly-fortified position on an island of the Dnyeper, did not fail to exercise an influence on the existing tendency to connect the winter camps of the hunters and fishermen into a chain of small fortresses defended by stockades, which, in turn, connected with a central kosh, or camp, whose ruler was the Koshevói—the chief of the camp—on the Lowlands. But Vishnevetzky's experiment with Khortitza Castle proved that no reliance could be placed on strong walls and cannon as defences against the Turks and the Tatárs, who would find means for overcoming them. In January, 1557, the Khan of the Crimea attacked Khortitza Castle, in vain: but it was evident that some inaccessible location must be chosen; so the Sicha began to lead a nomadic life, like its inhabitants. The original kurén, which came, in the end, to signify a large barrack (and the troop which occupied it), was a small wooden shack, mounted on wheels, which enabled it to gallop after its owner, when the Sicha began its wanderings among the labyrinth of islands, shallows and bays, where the estuary of the Dnyeper ebbed and flowed. Such a Sicha could not, obviously, be made a centre all at once, and its origin, in the usual sense, must be ascribed to the ten years or so following Vishnevetzky's experiment and failure. It moved on down the Dyneper in agile bounds—and then returned, apparently, twice, to locations close to some previously occupied and abandoned.
The pathetic picture of the old Kazák gazing out across the Black Sea and mourning for his Ostap would suggest that the Syech to which Bulba returned after the defeat might have been Number Seven—the one situated at Aleshki, twelve miles from Kherson, on the salty lagoon of the Dnyeper—one of the famous "limans" in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, whose bottom-slime constitutes a famous remedy for scrofula, gout, rheumatism, nervous and cutaneous diseases. This Syech, which lasted for twenty-five years (their existence was, as a rule, rather brief), was the only one within easy riding distance of the Black Sea. But the statement that the Syech was then situated at Khortitza contradicts such a theory. That statement also proves that the "Union" alluded to was the political arrangement described in my Footnote. Another "Union" equally famous and productive of battle deserves mention under existing circumstances, although later in date by at least thirty years (presumably) than the death of Taras.
That "Union," originated by a couple of Bishops in southwest Russia, who had good cause to apprehend expulsion at the hands of the authorities of the Orthodox Greco-Russian Church, began in 1596, and consisted of a so-called union with the Roman Church. These bishops acknowledged the headship of the Pope of Rome, and stipulated not only that they were to retain their places, but that their "Uniate" Church was to retain its own language—Old Church Slavonic—and its own customs. They promised, in return (in the customary over-confident, grandiloquent style), the adhesion of the whole Russian Church to this unauthorised, secret compact. They were never able to keep the bargain, and a suggestion of the intense hatred and opposition to that hybrid church, and of the increased bitterness towards the Roman Church, is conveyed in this story.
In the course of the centuries which have followed this hybrid church has been imposed, by misrepresentation and by force, on many inhabitants of Galicia, and Orthodox Slavs along the western borderland; and the compact regarding the retention of their customs has been violated by the imposition of the newest Roman dogmas,—the infallibility of the Pope, the Immaculate Conception, and others. That "Uniate" Church is more commonly known as "the Greek Catholic Church," meaning "the Roman Church of the Greek Rite," in contradistinction to the ancient, original