Left-bank Ukraine

• 1. Introduction

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  Left-bank Ukraine takes its name from a river, yet the name itself is far younger than the land it describes. The region lies in north-central and central Ukraine, on the eastern side of the Dnieper River. Before anyone used that label, the same ground had belonged to khanates, empires and kingdoms. Three questions run through its story. Who first spoke of a left bank as a political place, and why did a riverbank need a name at all? How did a land once tied to Poland and Lithuania come to answer to Russian rulers? And what became of the Cossack autonomy that its leaders briefly enjoyed?

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• 2. Shape On The Map

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  The Dnieper River marks the western edge of Left-bank Ukraine, and the word left here means the eastern bank. Today the region covers the oblasts of Chernihiv and Poltava, the eastern parts of Kyiv and Cherkasy, and the western part of Sumy. Around it sit several other historic regions. Right-bank Ukraine lies to the southwest and Zaporizhzhia to the southeast. Sloboda Ukraine borders it to the east, while Polesia and White Ruthenia lie to the north. Its largest cities are Chernihiv, Poltava and Kremenchuk, along with the eastern part of Kyiv. That last detail shows that the river, rather than any city limit, drew the dividing line.

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• 3. Layers Of Rulers

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  Since the Middle Ages, the land has been counted among the territories of the Khazar Khanate, Kievan Rus', the Mongol Empire and the Golden Horde. It later belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. Those last two powers eventually joined as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth held the area until the middle of the 17th century.

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• 4. Treaties And Oaths

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  In 1654, the Treaty of Pereyaslav tentatively placed the region under Russian control. Local Cossack leaders swore allegiance to the Russian monarchy, and in exchange they received military protection. The arrangement did not settle the matter on its own. The Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 reaffirmed Russian sovereignty over the area. Then came the Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686, which was agreed between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia. The two states that had once competed for the land were the ones who finally put the terms on paper.

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• 5. A Name Is Coined

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  The phrase left-bank Ukraine first appeared in 1663, during a contest over who should lead the Cossacks. Ivan Bryukhovetsky was elected hetman of Ukraine in opposition to a rival named Pavlo Teteria. Bryukhovetsky is the first known hetman of the left-bank area, which at that time lay under Russian influence. The label therefore began as a description of whose authority reached where, with the Dnieper serving as the visible boundary.

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• 6. Autonomy Withdrawn

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  Under Russian rule, the left bank at first kept a measure of self-government as the Cossack Hetmanate. That status continued within the Tsardom, which became Imperial Russia in 1721. The autonomy did not last. It was slowly taken away across the eighteenth century, a period that also saw the destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich. The name, coined around a disputed hetman election, outlived the self-rule that once gave it meaning.

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