HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

REGIONALISM AND POLITICAL THOUGHT 177illustrate his arguments, Kysil described the Commonwealth as amystical body being poisoned by the putrid blood of inequity infusedinto one of its parts. His metaphor echoed the terminology of theincorporation charters, which compares the incorporation to the returnof a limb to its "body and head." 25In justifying his complaint Kysil articulated a number of tenets ofregionalism in the Ukrainian lands. That the four incorporation palatinatesand their nobilities were a regional bloc was asserted by hisinsistence that he spoke in the name of the nobility of all four. ThatKysil could do so as a delegate from the Chernihiv palatinate isevidence of the close relationship of the four palatinates based oncommon legal interests and geographic exigencies. Kysil identified thefour palatinates as Ruthenian, thereby designating them as Rus' parexcellence. 26The designation of the incorporation lands as "all fourRuthenian palatinates" drew upon the incorporation charters. Theclaim of the Polish Crown and Kingdom had been pressed on thegrounds that, in the reign of Kazimierz Jagiellończyk, "the land orprovince of Kiev as the head of the lands of Rus', Podolia andVolhynia, together with the aforesaid lands, came to the lands of theKingdom and the Crown of Poland" and that "Kiev has been and stillis the head and the major city of the land of Rus', and that the wholeland of Rus' (ruska ziemia wsżytka) has been adjoined to the Crown ofPoland among her other foremost members since times past by ourpredecessors, the Polish kings. . . ," 27 Therefore in these charters theintrinsic unity of the Ukrainian lands was affirmed and the exclusionfrom Rus' of the Belorussian lands, not included in the incorporation,was implied. Although Kysil concurred with the incorporation chartersin excluding Belorussia from "all four Ruthenian palatinates," he didnot follow them in affirming a unity of the western and easternUkrainian lands. In fact, by limiting the designation "Ruthenian" tothe incorporation lands, he excluded the Ruthenian palatinate itself, aswell as the Belz and Podolian palatinates. In short, he chose to identify25Volumina legum, 2: 753. Pelenski, "Incorporation of the Ukrainian Lands,"p. 33. I have used Professor Pelenski's English translations of the charters.26One discrepancy between the text of the votum and the description in the diaryof the Diet is the use of "Ukrainne" in the diary: Steinwehr III, fol. 82. This usagereveals the other significant development in nomenclature of the period, theconversion of Ukrainne województwa and Ukraina into a specific geographicdesignation and their extension to all the incorporation lands.27Pelenski, "Incorporation of the Ukrainian Lands," p. 34.