The peasants and their faithful Orthodox clergy suffered:
The Union had been accepted. For its spread, different measures were taken.
At the same time, people who staunchly supported Orthodoxy were subjected to all kinds of harassment. Church officials were pursued especially cruelly. A lot of false information was reported. In accordance to these disseminations, people were relinquished to the courts, bound in chains, dishonorably expelled from parishes. As a result, entire districts were left without priests. Integral church services, such as infant baptisms, marriages and farewells to the departed, could not take place. People were deprived of that which had always existed in their lives and the lives of their ancestors.
Many Orthodox churches were transformed to unionist churches and Catholic churches. With the flow of time, the situation grew worse and worse. Finally, the lords began to rent out Orthodox churches to the Jews. In order to conduct {
22} any services, one had to purchase a permit from the new owners, from the Jews. Rent had to be paid for everything, at often arbitrary prices.
Up until the present, the people sing wedding songs which reflect the hardships of that time. These songs can be heard at weddings held in Divin.
[Song lyrics are written here in Belarusian.]
The song asks that the fathers of the young – of the groom and of the bride – should not be upset with them for being late, that they were stuck in the church for a long time. The priest left for Lvov to pay the landlord for putting on the wedding.
In 30 years after the introduction of the union, the Russian nobility began to resemble the Polish nobility. It was ashamed to profess any faith outside of Catholicism. They began to call themselves the gentry. Only the plain population, which they called slaves, remained Russian in faith, in language, in customs. Russian landowners, having taken up a different faith, began to view the peasants not only as voiceless slaves, but also as despicable heretics. For them, they were people that deprived themselves of the opportunity to ease their bitter fate not only in life, but also after it.
The oppression of this lower class of the population has climbed to dangerous heights. In those times, peasant farms and the oppressed were terribly impoverished. The people’s morale had fallen markedly. This was observed in all of the western provinces.
Especially strong was the case here in Belarus. Here, traces of the drop in the peasants’ morale are still noticeable today. The control of the fate of our people was left under the rule of Poland.
The Cossacks, a proudly independent group, found common cause with the oppressed peasants:
Gentry have abandoned their people. Many spiritual apostates did the same. Only the Ukrainian Cossacks, and later the fraternal Russian population did not abandon the unfortunate Belarus. The Cossacks appeared in Russia in the 14
th century. Cossack is a Tatarian word, which means free man. Malorusian Cossacks belonged formerly to Poland, but were effectively free people. They fought and lived peacefully with whoever they pleased. They put on their own elections, without asking the Polish government’s permission.
The Cossacks sympathized with the oppressed peasants and others that were harassed by the Poles. This triggered in them a terrible resentment against the Polish gentry and the Jews, tenants of the churches.
Finally, the people could not stand it. Several uprisings took place against the people’s oppressors. At first these uprisings were crushed by the Poles. The organizers of the uprisings were exposed to torturous executions.
{
23} In 1648, the oppression of the people in Southwestern Russia had given rise to a new, powerful uprising. Ukrainian Cossacks armed themselves, unified and revolted against the Polish oppression.
The Poles could not stop this revolt. It ended with the accession of Ukraine to Moscow in perpetuity.
This was finalized on the so-called Pereyaslavskaya Rada in 1654. The leader of this revolt was Hetman [General] Bogdan Khmelnitsky. The exploits of this brave militant are still remembered by the people and sung about in their folk songs. People rose up from Mogilev and Minsk to Brest and Grodno under the banner of Khmelnitsky. The enslaved population stood up in defense of its Fatherland, its native lands and the Great Russia. The Polish gentry called the rich Ukraine their paradise. Therefore, this issue could only be resolved with war, with weapons in hand.
The Poles lost, but still retained control of the territory that included Divin, and the suffering of the Diviner peasants continued.
The Poles went to war, but soon understood their mistake. They were forced to accept a Peace Agreement, and to give away the Northern Russian cities; Smolensk and Kiev were ceded to Russia. But the remaining lands of Western Belarus, among them our Divin, would remain under the rule of Poland for a long time.
