Orlik, Filipp

Orlik, Filipp 

Born 1672; died 1742. Ukrainian cossack starshina (lieutenant colonel); follower of I. S. Mazepa.

Orlik was descended from the Ukrainian szlachectwo (nobility or gentry) and owned large estates. He served in the General Host Chancellery until 1702 and was chief secretary of the host from 1702 to 1708. After the battle of Poltava in 1709, he fled to Turkey. In 1710, after Mazepa’s death, the cossack starshina (group of elders), who were then in Turkey, proclaimed Orlik hetman upon the initiative of the Swedish king Charles XII. The “articles” (treaty) signed by Orlik recognized the Ukraine’s status as a permanent Swedish protectorate. Orlik participated in a predatory campaign of the Tatars into the Ukraine in 1711. From 1714 to 1720 he lived in Sweden, receiving subsidies from the Swedish government, and then in Germany, Poland, and France. Throughout this period he sought to organize an intervention by these states in Russia; later he returned to Turkey.

REFERENCES

Kostomarov, N. I. Sobr. soch., book 6, vol. 16: Mazepa i mazepintsy. St. Petersburg, 1905.
Skal’kovskii, A. “Filipp Orlik i zaporozhtsy.” Kievskaia starina, 1882, no. 4.