Pylyp Orlyk

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Pylyp Orlyk (Пилип Орлик) (11 October, 1672; 26 May, 1742) was a Zaporozhian Cossack starshina, diplomat, secretary and close associate of Ivan Mazepa.

Biography

Pylyp Orlyk was born in the village of Kosuta, Ashmyany county, Vileyka district of modern day Belarus, in a family of Czech origin. He received an education in the famous Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. After the Battle of Poltava in 1709, he escaped together with Charles XII of Sweden to Ottoman Turkey and was declared by the Swedish king to be the Ukrainian Hetman in exile. In 1711, together with Crimean Tatars and a small group of Cossacks, Orlyk carried out an unsuccessful raid into Ukraine. Between 1714 and 1720, he lived in Sweden, Germany, Poland and France and tried to organize an alliance against Russia. After 1720, he returned to Turkey and allegedly converted to Islam. Orlyk wrote numerous proclamations and essays about Ukraine including the 1710 Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk.

Mark Mazower, in his history of Salonica, says (p. 107): "After years fighting against the Muscovite tsars, Orlyk fled first to Sweden, and then passed through central Europe to the relative safety of the Ottoman lands. On 2 November 1722… the fifty-year-old Orlyk was ordered by the Porte to Salonica. There this cultivated and warm-hearted man spent no less than twelve years in exile, watching the twists and turns of European politics from the sidelines while his impoverished wife remained in Cracow and his eight children were dispersed throughout Europe. Only in March 1734 was he released, thanks to French intervention, and allowed to move north; still trying to organize an uprising in the Ukraine, he died in poverty nine years later. Orlyk's misfortune has proved to be the historian's gain, for from the day of his arrival he kept a diary which offers a unique insight into the eighteenth-century city… His urgent scrawl gives access not only to his voluminous political correspondence, most of which — in Latin, French, Polish and Ukrainian — was duly copied into his journals, but also to the rigours of daily life in his place of exile. The misbehaviour of his loutish servants, the local fare, his bag after a day's shooting in the plains, stories told him by tailors, interpreters and bodyguards enliven its pages. Jesuits, consuls, doctors, spies and the Turkish judges and governors who ran the city all encountered the busy exile. Most of the time, he lived well, considering his predicament..."

References

• Mark Mazower, Salonica: City of Ghosts (Vintage Books, 2004)
• Jean-Benoit Scherer, Annales de la Petite-Russie, ou Histoire des Cosaques-Saporogues et des Cosaques de l'Ukraine (Adamant Media Corporation, 2001)

External links

• Minsk honors Ukrainian hetman, born in Belarus
• Taras Chuhlib, The Belarusian roots of hetman Pylyp Orlyk, Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), October 28 – November 3, 2006, in Russian and in Ukrainian

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Last updated on Wednesday February 06, 2008 at 14:49:08 PST (GMT -0800)
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