СОЦІАЛЬНО-ЕКОНОМІЧНІ ПРИЧИНИ АНТИЄВРЕЙСЬКИХ ДІЙ ПІД ЧАС ХМЕЛЬНИЧЧИНИ В УКРАЇНІ1

Abstract

The article examines the socio-economic preconditions of anti-Jewish attitudes in Ukraine on the eve and during the initial phase of the war waged by the Zaporozhian Host under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnytsky against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, traditionally known as the Khmelnytsky Uprising (Khmelnychchyna). Particular attention is devoted to the functioning of the manorial-serf (folwark) economy, the system of leasing royal and private estates, the propination monopoly, tax farming, commercial agency, and other forms of economic activity in which a considerable proportion of the Jewish population served as economic intermediaries between Polish landowners and the Ukrainian population. A separate section examines the economic mechanisms of the leaseholding system, which concentrated administrative and managerial functions in the hands of leaseholders regardless of their ethnic origin. At the same time, the study demonstrates that Jewish agents, leaseholders, tavern keepers, and tax farmers most often acted as the direct representatives of the manorial administration with whom the local population interacted. This contributed to the personalization of social grievances and to the extension of collective responsibility to the Jewish community as a whole. The article reassesses established historiographical interpretations of the causes of anti-Jewish violence during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Particular attention is paid to the interpretations advanced by Jewish and Israeli scholars, who have linked the tragedy of the Jewish population not only to religious intolerance but also to the socio-economic role played by part of the Jewish community within the economic system of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Special emphasis is also placed on the institution of propination. The study demonstrates that the production and sale of alcoholic beverages constituted an integral component of the manorial economy, while the leasing of production and retail rights generated additional sources of social tension between leaseholders and the local population. Documentary evidence further shows that tavern keeping and the leasing of inns were practiced not only by Jews but also by members of the Ukrainian Orthodox population, calling into question the longstanding historiographical stereotype that regarded these activities as exclusively Jewish occupations. The article concludes that the principal preconditions for anti-Jewish attitudes in mid-seventeenth-century Ukraine lay primarily in the socio-economic structure of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, within which certain groups of the Jewish population fulfilled the role of economic intermediaries between landowners and the dependent population. It argues that it was the structural position of Jewish leaseholders within the system of estate administration, rather than their ethnic or religious identity, that contributed to the formation of their negative image among segments of the Cossack and peasant population. The study therefore substantiates the need to interpret the Khmelnytsky Uprising as a complex, multifactorial phenomenon in which socio-economic factors constituted the principal foundation of the conflict, while religious, ethnic, and political motives functioned as interconnected rather than exclusive causes of its development.