Zaporozhian Sich

Origins

From the 15th century runaway peasants, adventurers and townsmen gathered on the steppe frontier as Cossacks, fishing, hunting and fighting the Tatars. Around 1552 Prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky built a fort on the island of Mala Khortytsia, often seen as the first Sich. Later Siches were built at several sites beyond the rapids, out of reach of royal officials.

Rule and society

The Sich was a male military community governed by a general assembly, the rada, which elected the kish otaman and other officers. Cossacks were Orthodox and lived in barracks by units called kurins. They raided Ottoman and Crimean coasts in light boats, served the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for pay and often rebelled against it. Bohdan Khmelnytsky's uprising began there in 1648.

Decline and legacy

Peter I destroyed the Sich in 1709 because its Cossacks joined Mazepa. A new Sich was allowed in 1734, but in 1775 Catherine II's army surrounded and abolished it, exiling the last otaman Petro Kalnyshevsky. Its Cossacks dispersed to the Danube Sich and later the Black Sea Cossack Host.