HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

184 FRANK E. SYSYNthe exclusion of Orthodox nobles from offices, but such appointmentswere determined by the king and local dietines, not by the nationalDiet. Although Władysław IV was relatively tolerant, he was influencedby powerful Catholics at court. About his successor, there couldbe no guarantee. Local dietines reflected the power relations of thelocal nobilities: as the Orthodox diminished in numbers and Catholicsbecame more and more influenced by the Counter-Reformation, thedietines were less likely to elect Orthodox candidates to offices. Butthe essential problem lay in the very practice of the nobiliary freedomthat Kysil extolled. Powerful Catholic nobles and bishops could actwith relative impunity against Orthodox institutions and commoners.Legal redress seldom resulted in restitution. Ultimately, in 1641, ashalf a century earlier, the Orthodox church needed powerful protectorsto ensure that its rights would be honored. The major differencewas that there were fewer and fewer Orthodox nobles who could fillthis need.The most difficult of the problems Kysil broached was that ofmilitary burdens. Indeed, failure to establish an adequately financedstanding army would eventually bring the Commonwealth to ruin. TheUkraine, an area that so desperately required a solution to the financialand social problems of the military, found little sympathy orunderstanding in other areas of the Commonwealth. This was tobecome even more apparent in 1648, when the nobles of Great Polandand other safe regions were initially unwilling to sacrifice their pursesor to risk their lives for the nobles of the incorporation lands.As a political statement, the votum represents an adamant assertionof regionalist sentiment. While its hyperbolic condemnation of thedeprivation of liberties was common in the nobiliary literature of thetime, its political-constitutional premises represent a particularly welldevelopedstatement of regionalism. Rus', the incorporation land, istreated as distinct from the older lands of the Crown. Sarmatian Polesand Sarmatian Ruthenians are discussed as two separate politicalnations. The incorporation charters of 1569 are discussed as a vital,fundamental constitution well rooted in the consciousness of the area'snobility.Kysil vowed that his generation and its descendants would nevercease to demand their regional rights. He was, of course, mistaken.Within a decade, the incorporation lands had been swept by a politicaland social revolt that transformed the nobility almost beyond recogni-