Zolotarenko, Ivan

Zolotarenko, Ivan, b ?, d 15 November 1655 in Staryi Bykhau, Belarus. Cossack leader. He served as colonel of Nizhyn regiment (1652–5), and in 1654 he led an army of 20,000 Cossacks to Smolensk to join with a Muscovite army led by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in a campaign to wrest Belarus from Polish control. Most of Lithuania fell to the Muscovites, and Zolotarenko occupied southern Belarus (1654–5), where he established a Cossack administration. His doing so put him in direct conflict with Moscow, which had designs on the territory, and he was killed during a siege of Staryi Bykhau.

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