Haidamaks

Haidamaks 

(from Turkish haydamak, to attack), participants in the popular liberation struggle in the Right-bank Ukraine, directed chiefly against national and religious oppression. The movement arose in the second decade of the 18th century in Volynia and western Podolia and then spread to other parts of the Ukraine. Its ranks were made up of peasants, poor Zaporozh’e cossacks, agricultural laborers, and artisans. Its members included not only Ukrainians but also Byelorussians, Poles, Moldavians, Russian Old Believers, soldiers, and Don cossacks. The haidamaks also enjoyed the support of peasants and cossacks in the Left-bank Ukraine, which was under Russian administration. As a result of this the tsarist regime participated in the suppression of haidamak revolts. In 1734, 1750, and 1768 the movement grew into huge popular uprisings. The most significant one was that of 1768, the so-called Koliivshchina. During the Civil War of 1918-20, Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists, hoping to exploit popular traditions, called themselves haidamaks.

REFERENCES

Huslystyi, K. Koliivshchyna. Kiev, 1947.
Lola, O. Haidamats’kyi rukh na Ukraini 20-60 rr. XVIII st. Kiev, 1965.

K. G. GUSLISTYI