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SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS ON THE KHMEL'NYTS'KYI UPRISING 455century, on an analysis of views and attitudes toward "national"categories among various elements of the population, and on a moreexact description of the goals of the revolt and the reaction it engendered.Special attention must be given to the relationship of religionand nationality in seventeenth-century Ukraine, since the Easternchurch was also the Ruthenian church. 48In what way does the Discourser present the rebellion as a conflictbetween peoples or national communities? He speaks about the hatredof the Ruthenian "nation" (naród ruski) against the Lachs or Poles,and about the Ruthenians' machinations against the Crown of Polanddespite their linguistic and blood ties with the Poles. He asserts thatthe present conflict is but one more uprising, takes comfort in theearlier victories of the Poles, and decries the flaws in the Ruthenians'character and their cultural backwardness. In describing their envy ofthe Lachs who had settled in their lands, he says that the Ruthenianswanted to drive the Lachs out. The revolt may give birth to a Ruthenianprincipality, he fears, but if the Cossacks are destroyed, the Rus'will never again raise a hand against the Kingdom of Poland. In sum,the Discourser undoubtedly depicts the conflict as a "national" confrontationof Ruthenians and Poles. But to understand his view of this"national" element, we must first understand his perception of who thetwo peoples were.In noting the events of the six centuries that elapsed between thereign of Volodimer the Great and the outbreak of the Khmel'nyts'kyiuprising, the "Discourse" reflects the changing nature of the Ruthenians.At the beginning the Rus', Ruthenians, or "Ruthenian nation"are presented as a people of the Slavic tongue 49 who under PrinceVolodimer had accepted Christianity from the Greeks and subsequentlywere involved in numerous campaigns against their neighbors,the Poles. These Ruthenians had their own polity, with Kiev as thecapital, lived as a compact population having its own language, and,after the conversion, professed a common "Ruthenian faith." In sum,48I have discussed some of the aspects of this problem in "Ukrainian-PolishRelations in the Seventeenth Century: The Role of National Consciousness andNational Conflict in the Khmelnytsky Movement," in Peter Potichnyj, ed., Polandand Ukraine: Past and Present (Toronto, 1980), pp. 58-82.49He does not say specifically that the Ruthenians are Slavs, but this is implicit inhis statement that the Ruthenians and Poles had one language and the sameancestors (line 17). His arguments that two peoples of common language anddescent should not be enemies can be studied as an early statement of Slavophilism.For a discussion dealing with both Sarmatism and Slavophilism, see Ulewicz,Sarmacja.