Who created the myth of ‘Polish oppression’?
film with Polish subtitles
For a long time, the nobility occupied a place in Ukrainian historical memory as an alien social group – Polish, Catholic and set in opposition to the local population and the Cossacks. This image was largely reinforced by Soviet historiography, which presented the history of the Ukrainian lands within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth primarily as a story of Polish domination, social oppression and Polonisation.
Yet a significant proportion of the nobility living in the territories of present-day Ukraine descended from local Ruthenian families, some of whose genealogies reached back to the times of Kyivan Rus’. The Ostrogski, Korecki, Zbaraski and Wiśniowiecki families formed part of the local political and social elite, helping to shape the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth while actively defending their own rights.
In a new documentary film supported by the Mieroszewski Centre, Ukrainian historian Natalia Starchenko and Polish historian and diplomat Henryk Litwin challenge some of the most important Ukrainian and Soviet myths surrounding the nobility. The interviews were filmed in, among other places, Korets, Zbarazh and Warsaw.
The film shows, among other things, that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was not simply a ‘Polish state’ in which Ruthenians remained passive subjects of somebody else’s politics. The Ruthenian nobility participated in political life, negotiated their rights and defended the Ruthenian language, Orthodox Christianity and local traditions. Their identity was far more complex than contemporary national categories might suggest.
The Union of Brest is also presented from a different perspective – not merely as an instrument of Catholicisation, but as an attempt to resolve a religious crisis and restore Christian unity, which at the same time led to new tensions and a profound conflict between the Uniates and the Orthodox.
One of the film’s most interesting themes is the Khmelnytsky Uprising, traditionally presented in Ukraine as a war of national liberation fought by Ukrainians against Poles. The film shows that the conflict also had characteristics of a civil war: the Cossacks were opposed by members of the Ruthenian nobility, who regarded the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as their own state. A striking example is Jeremi Wiśniowiecki – an opponent of Khmelnytsky, but at the same time a representative of an old Ruthenian family who cannot simply be placed within today’s division between ‘Poles’ and ‘Ukrainians’.
The film therefore encourages us to view the history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth not as the story of two nations locked in an age-old conflict, but as part of a shared and far more complex heritage.
The film features:
- Prof. Natalia Starchenko (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine),
- Prof. Henryk Litwin (Centre for East European Studies, University of Warsaw).
We invite you to watch it.