On December 16, 1764, the Governing Senate and the Empress heard a report from Senators Prince Shakhovsky, General-in-Chief Panin, and Privy Councilor Olsufiev “On the establishment of a special province comprising all the Sloboda regiments and on the collection of taxes for the maintenance and establishment of the Sloboda light troops.”
Below the report, Empress Catherine II wrote in her own hand: “Prepare the manifesto for signing.” The resolution of the Governing Senate read: “Let it be so.” Thus, effective December 16, the administration of the Sloboda Regiments was abolished and replaced by a separate Provincial Chancellery. Evdokim Shcherbinin was appointed governor “for the time being.”
It is important to note that the abolition of the old order in the lands of Sloboda Ukraine was not limited to the manifesto of July 28, 1765, alone. For example, on February 28, 1765, the Senate adopted a decree “On the Establishment of a Commission for the Transformation of the Sloboda Regiments into a Separate Province.” On March 3, the Military Commission’s report “On the Establishment of Five Field Hussar Regiments from the Sloboda Regiments; on Their Recruitment and Maintenance” was approved. On May 20, the Senate issued a supreme resolution on the report by Shakhovsky, Panin, and Olsufiev “On the Organization of the Newly Established Sloboda Province.” And on July 6, an extremely interesting document appeared: “Instructions for the Sloboda Province to the Governor and the Provincial and Regional Offices.”
It was not until July 28 that Empress Catherine issued her manifesto “On the Establishment of a Proper Civil Administration in the Sloboda Regiments and on the Maintenance of Provincial and Regional Offices.” Thus, Sloboda Ukraine became one of the provinces of the Russian Empire, with its administrative center in Kharkiv. The extortion of taxes by local leaders from the local population was replaced by official taxation—the “poll tax.” I would like to remind you that the nobility and the clergy were exempt from paying it. Cossack military ranks were replaced by standard cavalry ranks used throughout the army. Regimental officers were granted Russian nobility (the higher rank being hereditary, the lower personal) and all the rights of the nobility. The regimental and centurial forms of civil administration were formally abolished. It is also worth noting that the government had previously attempted to reform the lands of Sloboda Ukraine in the 1730s; however, only the reform of 1765 was comprehensive and decisive. The manifesto itself, in particular, stated:
Dmytro Bahalii, a well-known historian from Kharkiv, provided a very accurate description of the years following the reform:
Sloboda Ukraine was undergoing a transitional phase in its history: the old Cossack-military way of life was gradually being replaced by a civilian one. New government institutions weakened the influence of local ones, but they themselves did not have time to adapt to an environment whose forms were foreign to them. Bureaucratic procedures, the complexity of legal norms, and the written handling of cases left the hope of impunity to the stronger and bolder.
Naturally, not everyone viewed the new political structure of Sloboda Ukraine in the same light.
For example, in 1888, the journal *Kyivska Starina* published an extremely interesting study by Ivan Vasilyevich Telichenko, “The Protest of the Sloboda Elders and Cossacks Against the Reform of 1765,” based on archival documents. That same year, this work was published in Kyiv as a small 26-page book. In it, the author candidly writes:
The account of protests by the senior officers and the population presented here describes what were, in essence, rather modest expressions of discontent.
Among the local elite, opposition to the reforms became apparent even during the preparatory phase and manifested itself in the dispatch of delegates to St. Petersburg with a request to maintain the status quo; among the general population, discontent surfaced after the reforms, during the collection and distribution of the new tax, and manifested itself in a stubborn refusal to pay the aforementioned tax. The instigator of the unrest and agitation among the Sloboda elders was Colonel Fyodor Fomich Krasnokutsky of Izyum.
In his letters from St. Petersburg, he called on the Izyum elders to show harmony and unity, and also implored them to immediately select representatives from the regiments and the local population and send them to St. Petersburg — to work toward preserving the old Cossack rights and privileges. As a result, those who distributed these letters were arrested as political criminals. Krasnokutsky himself was found guilty of illegal correspondence that incited the people to unrest and hindered “the establishment of institutions in the sloboda regiments.” The colonel was placed under guard.
Here is what Filaret (Gumilevsky) writes about him in his “Historical and Statistical Description of the Kharkiv Diocese”:
There was Fyodor Fomich Krasnokutsky, an intelligent, energetic man, though at times unbridled in his impulses toward autocracy; for his harsh criticism of the new (governor’s) administration, he was sent to Kazan, stripped of his rank and property; and although he was later returned to Sloboda Ukraine at the request of his wife—an energetic Cossack woman— he died shortly thereafter without having been reinstated to his former rank.
There are also many interesting things to be found in the *Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire*. For example, on December 25, 1767, a manifesto was issued titled “On Taking Precautions Against Malicious People Seeking to Disturb Prosperity, Peace, and Tranquility.” At the very beginning of the document, there is a description of pre-reform Sloboda Ukraine:
We found this people troubled by internal strife and, under the pretext of military service, burdened by excessive—and often unlawful—taxes. As for justice in that province, it was, as is well known, such that the powerful and wealthy oppressed the poor and voiceless… We concluded that all the disorder in that province stemmed from its former system of government…
It goes on to explain that it was precisely for these reasons that the Sloboda-Ukrainian Governorate was established, and it lists the benefits that this brought. And then the most interesting part begins.
Nevertheless, there were certain malicious and ungrateful individuals who dared to misrepresent to the common people these decrees of Ours—which are beneficial to the entire nation and the State—as was recently the case here in Moscow, where a certain man, a former resident of the town of Okhtyrka, nicknamed Yagotinet, tried in every way to dissuade people from showing the proper respect and obedience due to the government; for this, as he had already been punished in the past for similar offenses, We have ordered him to be exiled to Nerchinsk. And so We have deemed it appropriate to publish this in the Sloboda-Ukrainian Governorate for the general public’s information, so that everyone may guard against such malicious individuals who, for their own dissolute and petty gain, seek to to disrupt the general well-being, peace, and tranquility now established through harmful and perverse rumors, striving to overthrow these beneficial institutions of Ours in the Sloboda-Ukrainian Governorate.
As we can see, not all of our ancestors viewed the disbandment of the Cossack regiments as entirely positive. And there were, after all, some sentiments of protest—albeit weak ones—in Sloboda Ukraine.
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