Pavlo Polubotok (born around 1660,
died on 29 December 1724), was a Cossack political and military
leader and Acting Hetman of the Left-bank
Ukraine between 1722 and 1724.
#Pavlo_Polubotok
was born around 1660 in Borzna (according to another
version, at his family's khutor-farm Polubotivka, today part of Shramkivka) into a rich
Cossack family and as a young man served under his relative Hetman Ivan Samoylovych.
In 1706 he
became polkovnyk (colonel)
of Chernihiv regiment and during the Great Northern War remained loyal to the Russians and fought against Ivan Mazepa. Pavel
Polubotok was seen by many as a possible replacement for the disgraced Hetman,
but the Russian Tsar Peter the Great distrusted Polubotok and supported Ivan Skoropadsky, who became the
next Hetman. Nonetheless, Polubotok's loyalty was rewarded when wealthy estates
throughout Ukraine were given to him.
In 1722, after
the death of Skoropadsky, Pavlo Polubotok was named as his temporary
replacement. As Hetman, Polubotok supported greater autonomy for Cossack Hetmante within the Russian Empire and
defended the old privileges of the Cossack nobility.
He wrote numerous
petitions to Peter the Great asking him to re-instate the former way of
electing the Hetman by the starshyna. In 1723 Alexander Rumyantsev was sent to Ukraine to investigate Polubotok. Within several months
Polubotok was arrested, implicated in secret dealing with Pylyp Orlyk and
accused of treason. The Hetman was incarcerated in the Petropavlovsk
fortress and died there less than a year later on 29
December 1724.
Historians are
divided on Polubotok's legacy. Soviet historians saw him as a greedy man who
concentrated on overt class interests. Some modern Ukrainians consider him as a
martyr and a hero of the Ukrainian struggle for independence.
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