The book, based on extensive archival material from the collections of Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow) and Ukraine (Kyiv), attempts to rethink the events that took place on the Right Bank of Ukraine in the mid-eighteenth century and eventually led to the Koliyivshchyna (Haidamak uprising in 1768), provoked the Russian-Turkish war, the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the redrawing of the political map of Europe. This was followed by the liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich and the autonomy of the Ukrainian Hetmanate. The Koliyivshchyna became a watershed between the traditional ideals that were becoming a thing of the past and the new reality of geopolitics in the late eighteenth century. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ukrainian Hetmanate, and the Ottoman Empire were only a shadow of their former power. The world had changed, and the Haidamaks were still living under the old great illusions.

Hardcover, 256 pages