Zboriv, Treaty of

Zboriv, Treaty of [Зборівський договір; Zborivs’kyj dohovir]. A pact between Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Poland, signed on 18 August 1649 near Zboriv. Besides Khmelnytsky, the Ukrainian side was represented by Ivan Vyhovsky, and the Polish side was represented by Adam Kysil, Jerzy Ossoliński, J. Radziwiłł, and Władysław Dominik Zasławski. The central provisions of the pact were the Polish king's affirmation of all Cossack rights and freedoms; the increase of the Cossack register (see Registered Cossacks) to 40,000, with the provision that peasants who participated in the war but were not accepted into the register were to return to the estates of their landlords (that provision engendered considerable disappointment and the flight of many peasants to Slobidska Ukraine); the transfer of Bratslav voivodeship, Chernihiv voivodeship, and Kyiv voivodeship to the Cossack administration headed by Khmelnytsky; denial of access to those territories for Polish armies; and the filling of all official positions by Ukrainian Orthodox noblemen, who were elevated to equal status with Catholics. The question of the abolition of the church union (see Church Union of Berestia), as well as the question of the return of all rights and assets of the Orthodox church, was to be submitted to the Polish Diet for debate. The Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv (see Kyiv metropoly) was to be granted a seat in the Polish Senate. In accordance with an agreement in the treaty the register of the entire Zaporozhian Host was accepted by Jan II Casimir Vasa and written down on 16 October 1649. (The register was published in 1874 by Osyp Bodiansky in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh.) Although the Zboriv Treaty was ratified by the Diet in January 1650, Poland never complied with it.

Arkadii Zhukovsky

 [This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]