ABSTRACT
Kiev and the eastern Ukraine came to Russia after the Cossack hetman, Bogdan Khmelnitskii, hard pressed by the Poles, placed himself under Moscow's protection in 1654. The empress made generous gifts of Ukrainian lands to Russian nobles who worked their estates with Russian serfs. The Cossack horsemen were formed into units of the Russian army, while their officers acquired the status and privileges of Russian nobles. The Ukrainian National Party, attracted those in the Revolutionaty Ukrainian Party (RUP) right wing who thought socialism insufficiently national and inimical to specifically Ukrainian interests. They were proved correct when the RUP's extreme leftists joined the Russian Social Democrats. The Poles had a long history of a once powerful state whose very existence Russia had terminated between 1772 and 1795 with Prussian and Austrian connivance. Continued pressure was to be brought on the Russian authorities to restore to the Polish people their autonomy, their language, their political and civil liberties.
