Kozak/Cossack language, 1

[Natalia Pylypiuk]

On 6-Dec-08, at 1:15 PM, nataliek at ualberta.ca wrote:
> By the way, it is no longer politically correct to use the word  
> Cossack.  Kozak is now preferred.

On 8-Dec-08, at 5:46 PM, Will Ryan wrote:
> Can anyone point to a serious study of the language issues in all  
> this?.


Dear Colleagues,
The quest to distinguish Kozaks from Cossacks is perfectly natural,  
and has little to do with the desire to divorce the image from the  
*bad boy* reputation that might accompany the latter term, as someone  
suggested on this list.  I don't know of any serious Ukrainian  
historian who idealizes the social phenomenon of kozatstvo, which  
developed within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 15th-16th.  
cc and led, subsequently, to the uprising of 1648 and the  
establishment of  the Hetman state.

Current discussions whether to use one or the other term, when writing  
in English, are rather inspired by the need to differentiate the 17th  
and 18th cc phenomenon (which--along with the Orthodox redaction of  
the Neo-Latin school--contributed to the shaping of early-modern  
Ukrainian identity) from phenomena that developed later in the Russian  
empire.   It is the former--as perceived by 19th c. authors (among  
them, Taras Shevchenko and Mykola Hohol' / Nikolai Gogol),   
folklorists, historians, etc.--which helped shape the myth of Kozak /  
Cossack Ukraine for later generations of Ukrainians.

What languages did the Kozaky know/use?  This depends on the period  
and social status.  I cite only three examples:

(1) The kozak rebel Severyn Nalyvaiko, who was quartered in Warsaw in  
1597,  most probably obtained the same education as his brother,  
Dem"ian Nalyvajko, a scholar and poet in the court of prince K.  
Ostroz'kyj.  The Nalyvajkos hailed from Ternopil' region. In the  
Ostrih school, both men would have studied Church Slavonic, Greek and  
perhaps Latin. Like all members of their ethnic group, they spoke both  
their native Ruthenian (i.e., Middle Ukrainian) and Polish,  the  
language of their political environment.
On Severyn Nalyvaiko, read:
<http://www.ukrop.com/ua/encyclopaedia/100names/6122.html>
To read the poetry of Dem"ian Nalyvaiko, see Ukraïns'ka poeziia.  
Kinets' XVI - pochatok XVII st. (Kyiv, 1978). By the way, in addition  
to various heraldic poems, Dem"ian left a very moving carpe diem poem,  
"Proz'ba chytelnykova o chas."  See <http://izbornyk.org.ua/ukrpoetry/anto17.htm 
 >

(2) The kozaky serving Hetman Petro Konashevych Sahaidachnyi (1570-1622)
<http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Петро_Конашевич_Сагайдачний> would also have  
spoken Ruthenian and Polish.  The Hetman, a munificent patron of the  
confraternity school in Kyiv, enrolled his entire army in the  
confraternity.  Given his status, Sahaidachnyi would have studied  
Church Slavonic, Latin and Greek.  For a collection of verses written  
by the school rector, Kasian Sakovych, on the occasion of the hetman's  
funeral, and addressed to the entire Zaporozhian army (1622), see
<http://litopys.narod.ru/old17/old17_12.htm>

Sakovych's verses are important because they reveal his milieu's  
understanding of history (read the manner in which he situates the  
kozaky vis-a-vis Rus' and its princes) and cultural values (building  
of churches, financial support of schools, reading of classical  
authors, leading an active civic life, forging a mutually binding  
relationship between hetman and army, as well as a contractual  
relationship between kozaky and the Polish monarch--i.e., military  
service in exchange for social privileges and protection of the Rus'  
church).

(For an analysis, see my article “Golden Liberty: Kasiian  
Sakovych’s Understanding of Rhetoric and Preparation for the Civic  
Life.” States, Societies, Cultures: East and West. Essays in Honor of  
Jaroslaw Pelenski, ed. by Janusz Dizinkiewicz et al. National Academy  
of Sciences of Ukraine and others [New York, 2004] pp. 885-920.)


  [part 2 in the next e-mail]

Natalia Pylypiuk
(University of Alberta)
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