Our Judge: When and why "Stepova Sich" departed

The name of the town of Sudzha is now full of news. The Kursk region is one of the hottest points in the Russian-Ukrainian war. But it is worth mentioning that in the 17th century there was a hundred Sumy Cossack Regiment in the fortress of Sudzh. What it is for the region, to whom it belonged earlier and to whom it should belong now, was exploring focus. The Defense Forces of Ukraine on the night of August 6 began a cross -border operation in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation.

Against this background, the theses about the historical and ethnicity of these territories have become increasingly in the public space of Ukraine. In fact, the south of Kursk region belongs to the historical and ethnographic region Slobozhanshchyna-or Slobid Ukraine.

According to the census of the population in 1897, 61% of the population of the town of Sudzhi called themselves Ukrainians (then the word "Littleros" was used - so called Ukrainians in the Russian Empire), and in 2020, only 1% of the population considered Ukrainian in this town in this town. The situation is similar throughout the south of Kursk region, Belgorod region and part of Voronezh. The first do not data on the settlement of these territories date back to the middle of the XVI century.

In a few decades, this land was settled by fugitives from serfdom and serfdom, which only intensified in the Moscow kingdom and the Commonwealth. And a fracture in the history of this area took place in 1638, when the organized groups arrived Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, which were defeated during the next uprising by the Poles. Since the Tatar hordes often attacked Moscow and even once burned it, these lands to settle the Cossacks was an acceptable solution to the problem.

Moreover, there was a positive experience with neighbors. Initially, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and then the Commonwealth was so done with the Zaporozhye Cossacks - for centuries earlier, as it just began to emerge. Therefore, the Polish-Lithuanian experience was copied in Moscow and created the conditions for them for arriving Zaporozhye Cossacks.

The land in this desert land was sufficient, then everyone could take it as much as it could cultivate - a striking contrast compared to what the Cossacks saw at home and what happened in Muscovy itself. So the Cossacks built such a steppe Sich. They lived in special settlements - settlements. Each Cossack settlement was built so that it was possible to take defense against uninvited guests at any time. They were united in hundreds and hundreds into regiments.

There were (except for some short periods) five Slobid Cossack regiments: Sumy, Okhtyrsky, Kharkiv, Izium and Ostrogradsky. The tsarist government gave them economic privileges and did not interfere in the internal affairs of regiments, which were formally subordinate to the Belgorod governor. In those days, the formal subordination of the monarch de facto self-governing territories was a fairly widespread practice.

While there was a threat from the steppe, the tsarist government was enough for the Cossacks to simply live in this territory. After all, it was impossible to go through the Cossack settlements - Slobozhanshchyna - so that it was impossible to conflict with the Cossacks themselves. It should be emphasized - Slobozhanshchina has never been part of the Hetmanate.

Five Slobid regiments functioned in parallel to the dramatic events that took place since the middle of the seventeenth century and became the basis of the history of Ukraine of this period. To some extent, Slobid Ukraine can be called the steppe Zaporizhzhya Sich of the Moscow version. That is, in fact it was a state in the state. The free Cossack history of Slobozhanshchina ended with the shift of the borders of the Russian Empire to the southwest.

During the eighteenth century, a number of Russian-Turkish wars took place in which Russia was won. This ended with the destruction of the Crimean Khanate and the annexation of its territories, but the Slobid regiments did not survive. In 1765, when Slobidska Ukraine ceased to be border, in St. Petersburg, a decision was made to reformat the Cossack regiments into Dragouns. That is, their status in the Russian army was unified.

At the same time, the Cossack officers received officers' titles - an effective method of the Russian Empire in the assimilation of enslaved peoples - they were taken to the ranks of the Russian nobility. Over time, the lands of the former Slobozhanshchina became a common region of the Russian Empire. In 1765, the Slobid-Ukrainian province was formed, repeatedly reformed and eventually renamed Kharkiv in 1835.

During a certain period, its military leadership managed the lands of modern deep Russia. However, over time, its area was cut and passed on to adjacent provinces. During the nineteenth century, this territory, inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians, became one of the centers of national revival. The first university in Kharkiv was opened here in Kharkiv, hence the famous representatives of the Ukrainian intellectual and creative elite.

So it is not surprising that when the Central Rada from this region was proclaimed delegates from this region in the spring of 1917 in Kyiv. Slobid Ukraine went to the UNR under the Brest Peace Treaty between the Bolsheviks and the German Empire in 1918. After the surrender of Germany and the fall of the Hetman Skoropadsky government, the Bolsheviks revived the Communist Ukraine and formed its puppet government, which began its journey on the occupation of the UNR in the same town of Sudzha.

When the UNR wars were still defeated, the Marionetic Government of the USSR (by 1936, Ukraine was called the Ukrainian SSR-the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic) officially confirmed the affiliation of the Northeast Slobozhanshchina to Communist Russia. Finally, the border line (in fact the administrative boundaries of the republics in the middle of the Soviet Union) was established in the middle of the XX century.

Interestingly, in 1919, in the correspondence between the Marionetic Government of the USSR and the Soviet government, the direct question was why the northeast of the Slobid Ukraine rejected the USSR, despite ethnic composition and economic integration with Ukraine, it was answered that everything was due to victory. The Soviet government was not confident in the defeat of the UNR and wanted to rely on the other "Ukrainian government" recognized these territories by Soviet Russia.

The history of Slobozhanshchina is a prime example of the fact that games with history are always a movement in both directions, because any historical period has its beginning and end. And if the Kremlin has adopted its propaganda narratives with the history of the nineteenth century, when the Russian state was at the peak of power, then it is always possible to find a period of history when the situation was different and the borders were not as it is profitable to remember Moscow.