The Zaporozhian or Zaporizhian Sich was a semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Zaporozhian Cossacks that existed between the 16th and 18th centuries. For the latter part of that period, it was an autonomous stratocratic state within the Cossack Hetmanate. The lands of Zaporozhian Sich were centred around the Great Meadow region of Ukraine, spanning the lower Dnieper river. In different periods the area came under the sovereignty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate (itself a vassal of the Ottoman Empire), the Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy), and the Russian Empire.
The establishment of the Zaporozhian Sich was an important factor in the defense of Ukraine and Russia from Crimean-Nogai raids. Simultaneously, the Cossack raids originating from it caused similar destabilising effects in the region. In 1650, its total population consisted of 100,000. In 1657–1687, the Zaporizhian Sich was practically independent, possessing its own administration and armed forces consisting of 12,000–20,000 Cossacks. It was reliant on population growth, mainly consisting of Ukrainian refugees from devastated lands.
In 1775, shortly after Russia annexed the territories ceded to it by the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), Catherine the Great disbanded the Sich. She incorporated its territory into the Russian province of Novorossiya.
The term Zaporozhian Sich can also refer metonymically and informally to the whole military-administrative organisation of the Zaporozhian Cossack host.
Name The name Zaporizhzhia refers to the military and political organization of the Cossacks and to the location of their autonomous territory 'beyond the rapids' () of the Dnieper River. The Dnieper rapids were a major portage on the north–south Dnieper trade route. The term sich is a noun related to the East Slavic verb sich (сѣчь), meaning 'to chop' or 'cut'; it may have been associated with the usual wood sharp-spiked stockades around Cossack settlements.
The full, official name of the polity centred around the Sich was the Free Lands of the Lower Zaporozhian Host (), where host is a name for a large army or other military congregation.
The Sich was located in the region around the Great Meadow (Velykyi Luh) in today's south-eastern Ukraine, which was flooded by the Kakhovka Reservoir from the construction of the Kakhovka Dam in 1956 until its destruction in 2023. The area was also known under the historical term Wild Fields.
History A possible precursor of the Zaporozhian Sich was a fortification (sich) built on the Tomakivka island the Tomakivka Sich, in the middle of the Dnieper in the present-day Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. However, there is no direct evidence about the exact time of the existence of Tomakivka Sich, whereas indirect data suggest that at the time of Tomakivka Sich there was no Zaporozhian Sich yet.Томаківська Січ, by Гурбик А.О., in: Історія українського козацтва: нариси у 2 т.\ Редкол: Смолій (відп. Ред) та інші. – Київ.: Вид.дім "Києво-Могилянська академія", 2006р, Т.1.
The history of the Zaporozhian Sich spans six time-periods:
the emergence of the Sich (construction of Khortytsia Castle, 1550s) (1471–1583) as part of the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown by inclusion in the Kiev Voivodeship (1583–1657) the struggle against the Rzeczpospolita (the Polish-Lithuanian state), the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean Khanate for the independence of the Ukrainian part of the Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth) (1657–1686) the struggle with the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire for the unique identity of the Cossacks (1686–1709) the standoff with the Russian government during its attempts to cancel the self-governing of the Sich, and its fall (1734–1775) the formation of the Danubian Sich outside the Russian Empire and finding ways to return home (1775–1828)
Formation
The Zaporozhian Sich emerged as a method of defence by Slavic colonists against the frequent and devastating raids of Crimean Tatars, who captured and enslaved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles to supply the Crimean slave trade in operations called "the harvesting of the steppe". The Ukrainians created a self-defence force, the Cossacks, to stop the Tatars, and built sichs, fortified camps that were later united to form a central fortress, the Zaporozhian Sich.
The location of the Sich, just beyond the Dnieper rapids was a key factor for the development and organisation of the early Cossack movement. The nine different rapids on this long part of the river made navigation upstream (towards Kyiv) by boat practically impossible, as the boats had to be left or slowly portaged across. Sailing downstream, while easier, was also dangerous and required intimate knowledge of the area. This protected the areas north of the rapids from Ottoman expansion whilst also limiting the ability of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to fully control the area south of them.
Despite the steppe south of the rapids being largely flat and suitable for the nomadic Tatars, the immediate area of the Sich was difficult to traverse, largely due to being dominated by a large wetland known as the Great Meadow (). Littered with hundreds of small islands, marshes and woods, the Great Meadow also provided the Zaporozhians with plentiful pasture, game and honey. This made it an attractive and defensible outpost for access to the surrounding Wild Fields.
In the 1550s, prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky built Khortytsia Castle at a location only known as "Little Khortytsia Island"; it is disputed whether this was "the first Zaporozhian Sich" or not. He placed a Cossack garrison there; Crimean Tatar forces destroyed the fortress in 1558. The Tomakivka Sich was built on a now-inundated island to the south, near the modern city of Marhanets; the Tatars also razed that sich in 1593. A third sich soon followed, the Bazavluk Sich, which survived until 1638, when it was destroyed by a Polish expeditionary force suppressing a Cossack uprising. These settlements, founded during the 16th century, were already complex enough to constitute an early proto-state.
Struggle for independence
The Zaporozhian Cossacks became included in the Kiev Voivodeship from 1583 to 1657, which was part of the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland. They resented Polish rule, however. One of the reasons being religious differences, as the cossacks were Eastern Orthodox Christians whereas the Poles were mostly Catholics. They thus engaged in a long struggle for independence from surrounding powers, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (I Rzechpospolita), the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Tsardom of Russia, later the Russian Empire. The Sich became the centre of Cossack life, governed by the Sich Rada alongside its Kish otaman (sometimes called a hetman from German Hauptmann).
In 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky captured the Mykytyn Sich at Mykytyn Rih, near the current city of Nikopol, Ukraine. From there the Khmelnytsky Uprising began against the I Rzechpospolita that led to the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate (1648–1764).
After the Pereiaslav Agreement with the Tsar in 1654, the Zaporozhian Host was split into the Hetmanate, with its capital at Chyhyryn, and the more autonomous region of Zaporizhzhia, which continued to be centred on the Sich. During this period, the Sich changed location several times but was generally located in the Great Meadow. The Chortomlyk Sich was built at the mouth of the Chortomlyk River in 1652. In 1667 the Truce of Andrusovo made the Sich a condominium ruled jointly by Russia and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
During the reign of Peter the Great, Cossacks were used to construct canals and fortification lines in northern Russia. An estimated 20–30 thousand were sent each year. Hard labour led to a high mortality rate among builders, and only an estimated 40% of Cossacks returned home.
In advance to the Battle of Poltava in 1709, the Chortomlyk Sich (sometimes referred to as the "Old Sich" (Stara Sich)) was destroyed and Baturyn, the capital of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, was razed. Another sich was built at the mouth of the Kamianka river, the Kamianka Sich, but was destroyed in 1711 by the Russian government. The Cossacks then fled to the Crimean Khanate to avoid persecution and founded the Oleshky Sich in 1711 (today the city of Oleshky). In 1734, they were allowed to return to the Russian Empire. Suffering from discrimination in the Khanate, Cossacks accepted the offer to return and built another Sich close to the former Chortomlyk Sich, referred to as the Nova Sich.
According to the 1756 Zaporozhian Sich register, only 12,758 of whom were Cossack lived across the Sich territories, a low figure due to frequent raids by Crimean Tatars Реестр Запорожского Войска 1756 годаРеєстр козаків 1756 рокуАрхів Коша Нової Запорозької Січі : корпус документів 1734–1775. Т. 5: Реєстр Війська Запорозького Низового 1756 року (2008). The population in the steppes numbered around 52,000 in the year 1768.
Fear of the independence of the Sich resulted in the Russian administration abolishing the Hetmanate in 1764. The Cossack officer class was incorporated into the Russian nobility (Dvoryanstvo). However, rank and file Cossacks were reduced to peasant status, including a substantial portion of the old Zaporozhians. Tension rose after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, when the need for a southern frontier ended after the annexation of the Crimea. The Imperial colonisation of Novorossiya (New Russia) with Serbs and Romanians created further conflict. After the end of the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire for possession of the Black Sea and Crimean steppes, Russia no longer needed the Zaporozhian Cossacks for protection of the border region. Russia finally destroyed the Zaporozhian Sich through military force in 1775.
Destruction and aftermath
In May 1775, Russian General Peter Tekeli received orders to occupy and destroy the Zaporozhian Sich from Grigory Potemkin, who had been formally admitted into Cossackdom a few years earlier. Potemkin was given direct orders from Catherine the Great. On 5 June 1775, Tekeli surrounded the Sich with artillery and infantry. He postponed the assault and even allowed visits while the head of the Host, Petro Kalnyshevsky, decided how to react to the Russian ultimatum. The Zaporozhians chose to surrender. The Sich was officially disbanded by the 3 August 1775 manifesto of Catherine, "On the Liquidation of Zaporozhian Sich and Annexation thereof to Novorossiya Governorate", and the Sich was razed to the ground.
Some of the Cossack officer class, the starshyna, became hereditary Russian nobility and obtained huge lands despite their previous attempts to relocate the Sich to North America or Australia. Under the guidance of a starshyna named Lyakh, a conspiracy was formed among a group of fifty Cossacks to pretend to go fishing on the Inhul next to the Southern Buh in the Ottoman provinces and to obtain fifty passports for the expedition. The pretext was enough to allow about 5000 Zaporozhians to flee, some travelling to the Danube Delta, where they formed a new Danubian Sich as a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. Others moved to Hungary to form a Sich there as a protectorate of the Austrian Empire. According to folklore, some moved to Malta, because Kosh otamans and other senior members of the starshyna considered themselves a kind of Maltese chivalry.