The Koliivshchyna (; ) was a major haidamaky rebellion that broke out in Right-bank Ukraine in June 1768, caused by money (Dutch ducats coined in Saint Petersburg) sent by Russia to Ukraine to pay for the locals fighting the Bar Confederation , the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the treatment of Eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians by the Bar Confederation and the threat of serfdom and by hostility to the Polonized local Ruthenian nobility and to ethnic Poles by the Cossacks and the peasants. The uprising was accompanied by pogroms against both real and imagined supporters of the Bar Confederation, particularly ethnic Poles, Jews, Roman Catholics, and especially Byzantine Catholic priests and lairy. This culminated in the massacre of Uman. The number of victims is estimated from 100,000 to 200,000, because many communities of national minorities (such as Old Believers, Armenians, Muslims and Greeks) completely disappeared in the areas devastated by the uprising.
Etymology
The origin of the word is not certain. Taras Shevchenko, whose grandfather and villagers participated in the uprising, wrote a poem, Haydamaky, in which Kolii is the name of a knife that is blessed in a church and used by special people in villages in Ukraine (Ruthenia) villages to kill animals humanely, according to the local understanding of animal rights. The blessing of knives had occurred two or three weeks before the uprising as a rule and so the members and supporters of the Bar Confederation and its regular military forces fled to the Ottoman Empire before the uprising. However, some fortresses such as Uman and Lysianka were still occupied by the members of the Bar Confederation. The secret was shared by millions of people and so different national minorities were accused of atrocities towards animals and retreated to the fortresses as well. The poem is the best description though it considers village drinkings after massacres as part of the uprising. It explains that Ukrainians, apart from professional Kolii, never killed even chicken and other animals before the uprising, and the bloodletting led to drinking as the most continuous part of the uprising. The Kolii are similar to Rezniks and may be the heritage of the Khazar-Russian kaganate (Kievan Rus) in Ukraine. Kolii have never been present among Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, Muslims, Armenians, Romanians or even Greeks in spite of their Orthodoxy and their life together with Ukrainians. Shevchenko emphasized that it was the first uprising for animal rights worldwide, and the rebels wanted to clean Ukraine of bad animals (especially Old Believers, (Muscovites), Armenians, Greeks, Muslims etc., who tortured poor good real animals killing them without Kolii. Ukrainian Poles often used meat from animals slaughtered by Kolii, and Jews used meat slaughtered by rezniks in a way very similar to Kolii and so Maksym Zalizniak solemnly rejected any plans to massacre Jews or Poles and explained the massacre as the excess of the executors.
The term could be an adaptation of the Polish words "kolej", "kolejno", "po kolei", which implies "służba kolejna" (patrolling service), designating Cossack militia in the service of aristocrats. That etymology is suggested by Polish historians such as Władysław Andrzej Serczyk and Volodymyr Shcherbyna, who did not read the poem of Schevcenko about the uprising.
Events
The rebellion was simultaneous to the Confederation of Bar, which originated in an adjacent region in the city of Bar (historical Podolia) and was a de facto civil war in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Bar Confederation declared not only the Orthodox faith but the Uniate church pro-Russian ones. Later, the Polish government and Roman Catholic church accused both Eastern Churches of responsibility on the Uman massacre and the uprising because Russia defended the political rights of believers of both churches. Though almost all pupils of the Uman Uniate seminary had died in the massacre, they were accused of the fall of the city by the Polish government.