Хмяльніччына і землі Беларусі

ENThe Cossack wars in the Polish Commonwealth in the mid-17t h century have long been in the focus of historiographic disputes, and to write objectively about the events of those years was not an easy task for a historian. As we know, the Soviet historiographic tradition treated Khmelnitsky's Cossacks as the liberators of the Belarasians and Ukrainians 'oppressed by Polish feudal lords'. Since the latter half of the 1990s this old (Soviet!) version of treating Khmelnitsky's revolt as a national liberation war has returned directively in Belarusian historiography. The examination of the sources, however, may allow us to present it in a different way. The results of the study of documents, including the chancellery diary of the Lithuanian field hetman Janusz Radziwiłł for the years 1648-1651, demonstrate that the events in Belarus happened differently than they did in Ukrainę, and the attitude of the Belarusian population (especially in towns) towards the Cossack uprising differed greatly from the stance taken by the Ukrainian population. These fmdings do not allow us at all to speak about the 'national liberation' character of this war.