Hetman Sahaydachniy
Hetman is the title of the senior commanders in State and public institutions. But some are unconvinced of the connexion between Hetman and Hauptmann (head man). Of course the word Hetman was unknown to the old Slavonic language. To expect to find it there would be about as reasonable as to look for the word "torpedo" in Anglo-Saxon. The dignity of Hetman did not exist till long after Slavonic had ceased to be a living tongue. Its occurrence in most of the modern Slavonic dialects certainly points to a comparatively modern but not necessarily a German origin.
But where then did this interesting changeling come from? At all events, there is much more to be said for its Ruthenian than its German origin; and if Ruthenian, Otaman would be the original form (Zhelkovsky: Malorusko-nimetsky Slovar), and both Ataman and Hetman derivatives. Indeed, Zdanowicz (Sloumik jezyka pohkiego) expressly, and Dal (Tolkovy Slovar zhivago Velikoruskago yazuika) by implication, derive Ataman-Hetman from the Ruthenian language. Nevertheless, it is dangerous to dogmatize on so recondite a matter. Hetman and Ataman are distinct words, existing side by side in the Russian, Ruthenian, and Polish vocabularies. The Polish Hetman is sometimes even used in contradistinction to the Ruthenian Atamdn by Polish scholars. The Bohemian Heytman differs from both, and may even perhaps actually have a German origin.
The title of the Costaek chieftain (whether Otamdn, Atamdii, or Hetman) has no necessary connexion with the German Hauptmann; and may be a case of accidental resemblance which have so often proved very mischievous to science by luring too confiding philologists away from solid facts into the quagmires of fanciful speculation. Where the Ruthenians got the word from is a still more obscure question. A Tatar prototype seems to be more probable than a Lithuanian, on historical grounds.
Sagaidachny, by his victories over the Polish forces, restored to Little Russia her civil and ecclesiastical rights. Born into a Ukraine Szlachta family in 1570, Petro Konashevych Sahaidachny grew up in the village of Kulchyntsi, Galicia. As a child, he attended school at the Ostroh Academy, learning the Slavic language. Sahaidachny later moved to Lviv and then Kiev to become a tutor.
In 1601, after traveling to the Sich, Sahaidachny was named the Koshovyi Otaman of the Zaporozhian Host. Under his control, the host partake in campaigns against the rival Tatars and Turks. After joining the Anti-Turkish Holy League, Sahaidachny, in his efforts to gain strength in Ukraine, agreed to aid the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in his war with Russia, providing him with 20,000 Cossacks. At the time, Sahaidachny was fighting the Turks, Tatars, and Russia. These victories strengthened the Cossack order and captured the attention of European rulers; Petro Konashevych Sahaidachny was promoted to Zaporizia Sich Hetman.
The first printery in Russia was started in the old capital of Purple Russia, in Lvov (Lemberg), where the first Russian grammar was published in 1591. Later there came from the ranks of the Carpatho-Russians such a prominent leader as that famous hetman of the Dneiper Cossacks, Peter Konashevich Sagaidachny. Together with the Metropolitan, Peter Mohila, who founded the Kiev Academy, which became the sole center of education for all Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries, i.e., for Moscow and Petrograd as well, he received his education in the school of the Lvov Stavropigian Brotherhood. Eastern Galicia (ancient Purple Russia) and Carpatho-Russia in general gave Russia some of her most prominent public-spirited men in that period.
Being zealous for the promotion of learning among the clergy, Theophanes established, in the name of the patriarch of Constantinople, the Brotherhood of the Epiphany as a Stauropegia, that is, to depend immediately upon the (Ecumenical Lord, and gave them his benediction for the institution of a school in it for the Greeko-Slavonic and the Latin-Polish languages, and united to it the Brotherhood of Mercy, a house for the reception of strangers, which was converted into an academical Inn for poor scholars. Sagaidachny, the hetman of the Cossacks beyond the Falls, disposed of all his property in favor of this new house, and himself ended there in prayera life of military exploits.
When by the long stay of the patriarch in Kieff the orthodox had begun gradually to hold up their heads again, the reverend clergy and the nobility being assembled, with the hetman, from the neighbouring towns, on the festival of the Assumption, entreated Theophanes to give them at length a head to their Church, and pastors, of which Little Russia had been so long deprived. On March 20, 1622, Sahaidachny died in Kiev due to wounds he suffered in battle; he was buried in the Bratsky Monastery of Kiev, leaving his assets to the brotherhood schools in Kiev and Lviv for church causes. On January 18, 1654, Khmelnytsky signed a unilateral oath of loyalty to the tsar of Russia, formerly Muscovy.
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