All rights reserved. Any use of the image without the permission of the author is prohibited. Copyright © 

2021, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.
 

Kyrylo Rozumovsky

(1728–1803)

​

Kyrylo Hryhorovych Rozumovsky (18 March 1728 – 3 January 1803) was the last Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host, a count, and a General Field Marshal of the Russian Empire.

He was born in the village of Lemeshi (now in the Kozelets District, Chernihiv Oblast) into the family of the Cossack Hryhorii Rozum. In the early 1740s he came under the guardianship of his elder brother Oleksii, who in 1743 sent him on an educational tour to Europe. Between 1743 and 1745 Kyrylo attended lectures in Berlin, Göttingen, Königsberg, and Strasbourg. After returning to St. Petersburg, he became a court chamberlain and was appointed President of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, a post he held for twenty years.
 

During Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s journey through Ukraine in 1744, the Cossack elite persuaded her to restore the hetmancy, which was officially announced by a special charter in 1747. In February 1750, at a Cossack council in Hlukhiv, Rozumovsky, with the Empress’s approval, was elected Hetman. That same year she issued a personal decree transferring the hetman’s capital from Hlukhiv to Baturyn; on 31 July 1750 a charter was proclaimed to Kyrylo Rozumovsky restoring the hetman’s residence. The following year he moved to the Hetmanate and immediately assigned his advisor Hryhorii Teplov to oversee the construction of buildings required for both personal and state needs.
 

As Hetman, Kyrylo sought to maintain independence in matters of the Zaporizhian Host’s internal policy. At his insistence, on 13 January 1752 a royal decree was issued prohibiting the expansion of serfdom to Ukrainians.
 

For some time the Hetman appointed regimental colonels solely by his own universals (decrees), without approval from St. Petersburg. Such autonomy caused dissatisfaction within the imperial government and encouraged increased interference in the administration of the Hetmanate. Since Rozumovsky spent most of his time at the imperial court rather than in the Cossack capital, governance of the autonomy was handled by the Hetman’s Chancellery under Hryhorii Teplov. In March 1754 Empress Elizabeth Petrovna issued a special decree forbidding the Hetman from independently appointing colonels to Ukrainian regiments, leaving him only the right, as his predecessors had, to nominate candidates for those posts. The imperial government reaffirmed the ban on independent diplomatic correspondence with foreign states and reinstated the institution of Russian advisors-ministers at the Hetman’s government. The financial affairs of the Hetmanate were placed under particularly strict oversight.
 

At the same time, in 1756 Rozumovsky managed to secure the transfer of all Hetmanate affairs from the jurisdiction of the Senate to the College of Foreign Affairs. For a brief period he also succeeded in establishing control over Kyiv and the Zaporizhian Sich.
 

From 1760 Rozumovsky resided mainly in Ukraine and pursued reforms. Between 1760 and 1763 he conducted judicial reforms, which resulted in the establishment of estate-based noble courts—zemsky, grodsky, and podkomorsky—and divided the territory of the Hetmanate into twenty judicial districts.
 

The Hetman devoted significant attention to economic matters. Seeking to curb excessive expansion of distillation (alcohol production), on 6 July 1761 he issued a universal allowing only officers and Cossacks who owned land and forest resources to engage in the trade. At the same time, Russian landlords and settlers from other regions and countries were forbidden to operate distilleries or taverns within the Hetmanate. In an effort to support Left-Bank merchants, Rozumovsky secured a ban on transporting vodka from the Right Bank to New Serbia and the Zaporizhian Host’s Free Territories, and abolished tobacco and other tax farms that restricted the regional market. To appease the Cossack elite, he helped enact prohibitions preventing peasants from relocating without written permission from their estate owner or taking their property with them.
 

Based on a project by Lubny Colonel Ivan Kuliabka, Rozumovsky implemented a reform of the Cossack army, introducing regular units and uniforms. He reorganized the artillery and instituted compulsory education for Cossack children. For many years he pursued a plan to establish a university in Baturyn, though this idea was never realized.
 

In 1762 Kyrylo, together with his elder brother Oleksii, took an active part in the palace coup that brought Catherine II to power. Shortly afterward, the Hetman convened a council of officers in Hlukhiv. Its participants drafted and approved the “Petition of the Nobility and Officers Together with the Hetman on the Restoration of Various Ancient Rights of Little Russia.” A separate supplication addressed to the Empress called for the introduction of hereditary hetmancy in Ukraine. If approved, upon Kyrylo Rozumovsky’s death the Cossack elite would elect his successor from among his sons.
 

According to Ukrainian historians, the Hlukhiv Council and the petitions advocating hereditary hetmancy triggered a negative reaction from the Empress and her entourage. Catherine II first forced Rozumovsky to submit a resignation report, and then, based on it, issued a decree on 10 November 1764 abolishing the hetmancy altogether. Administration of the Hetmanate was then transferred to the Second Little Russian Collegium headed by Count Petr Rumyantsev (Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky).
 

Following these events Rozumovsky soon withdrew entirely from public affairs. He lived for a time in St. Petersburg, later abroad, and spent the last nine years of his life in Baturyn, where he died and was buried in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in 1803.
 

References

1. Vasylchikov A.A. Semeistvo Razumovskikh, vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1880.

2. Shvydko H. “Rozumovsky Kyrylo Hryhorovych.” In: Dovidnyk z istorii Ukrainy. A–Ya. Kyiv: Geneza, 2001, pp. 662–663.

3. Putro O.I. Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky ta yoho doba (z istorii ukrainskoho derzhavotvorennia XVIII st.). Kyiv, 2008.

4. Rozumovska M. Rozumovski. Rodyna pry tsarskomu dvori. Kyiv: Tempora, 2015.

‡