Harvard professor Serhii Plokhy on the image of Ukrainian Cossacks

Ukrainians have made strides to reclaim the Cossacks as part of their heritage, says Serhii Plokhiy, a Ukrainian history professor at Harvard University.

In an exclusive interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Plokhy said that Cossacks are increasingly associated with Ukraine. 

“Today, the term ‘Cossack’ has a more positive connotation in the West, linked to the ideals of the fight for freedom,” the Zaporizhzhia region native said. 

“We [Ukraine] have indeed returned to the Western maps of the world, and this began with the emergence of the Cossacks,” said Plokhy, who also is an author of numerous books on Ukraine and head of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

He noted that while the word “Cossack” in the U.S. is becoming more neutral, it has historically carried negative connotations. 

“In the West, Cossacks were sometimes compared to pirates – an element that exists outside the jurisdiction of the state,” the historian said.

A significant distinction between Ukrainian Cossacks and pirates, or even Russian and Don Cossacks, is that the Ukrainian Cossacks established a quasi-democratic state, he added.

“All of these groups began with a military, primitive democracy that included an elected leader,” Plokhy said. “However, only the Ukrainian Cossacks successfully transformed this into the creation of a state.” 

The Cossack elite began to be associated with institutions like the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The Cossack elite also funded churches around Kyiv, and the last hetman, Kyrylo Rozumovskyi, served as the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

“This presents a completely different image of the Cossack compared to figures like Ivan Pidkova,” the historian said, referring to the 16th-century Cossack Otaman leader, who is known for his fierce and bold nature. 

Despite this, in Western consciousness, Cossacks have often been perceived primarily as a Russian phenomenon. 

“Through the works of [writer Lev] Tolstoy and Hohol [known globally as Nikolai Gogol due to Russia’s appropriation of Ukrainian culture – ed.], thanks to Russian literature, there remains a certain ambiguity in the West: are Cossacks solely a Ukrainian phenomenon, or a Russian one, or something broader?” Plokhy said.

He emphasized that the uniqueness of Ukrainian Cossacks lies in their ability to adapt over time and create an elite that laid the groundwork for the creation of a modern Ukrainian state.

To learn more about how Ukrainians have sought to reclaim the Cossacks and the “curse of the frontier” for Ukraine, read the full article at the link.