A great Ukrainian

Little is known about Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozky (1525-1608). Some will say that at best he was a rich magnate. Others will recall that he founded Ostroh Academy and funded the publication of the Ostroh Bible.

Although the multifaceted activities of the prince have not been duly assessed, his achievements were of great importance for Ukrainian history. His father Kostiantyn was a prominent general and held high posts in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He managed to considerably expand his possessions, primarily owing to the Grand Duke’s bounties, which the duke usually bestowed for military victories. Being fully absorbed in military affairs, he had no time to keep his estate going.

Ostrozky devoted his young years to gathering his ancestors’ lands and expanding his domain. Finally, in the mid-1570s, his enormous land holdings covered a considerable part of the territory of today’s Ukraine. He owned a third of the lands of historical Volhynia (now part of Rivne, Khmelnytsky, and Ternopil oblasts), 14 cities and large villages in the Kyiv region, 8 in the Bratslav area, 4 in Galicia, and 32 in Poland.

The prince’s annual revenues reached 10 million zlotys, a huge sum at the time. He was thus considered the wealthiest person not only in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth but all of Europe. His fortune allowed him to maintain an army numbering between 15,000 and 20,000 troops. Not all European rulers could afford an army of this size.

In many respects, Ostrozky’s court resembled that of an independent ruler. Approximately 2,000 servants, mostly young people, worked in his Dubno and Ostroh residences. This was a kind of management school for them, where they acquired useful experience. These people were later sent to serve in the home guard and chancelleries, and could be appointed estate managers or even ordained as priests.

Ostrozky attached special importance to defending his lands from Tatar forays, Ukraine’s most pressing problem in the 16th and 17th centuries. The prince personally maintained a unit of several thousand cavalrymen to fend off the Tatars. During the 1570s-1590s he often successfully repelled attacks by the Golden Horde. In defending the Ukrainian lands, Ostrozky displayed extraordinary military and diplomatic talents, and his struggle against the “non-Christians” was highly praised in the chronicles and poems of the day.

The prince also funded the construction of many towns and castles, especially in southeastern Volhynia and the Kyiv region. He helped build castles on the border of the “Dyke pole” (Wild Field) — in Bila Tserkva, Pereiaslav, and Bohuslav. This resulted in more intensive colonization by Ukrainians of what is now central Ukraine. The prince repeatedly saved Kyiv from Tatar incursions. For example, in 1578 he paid the Tatars 3,000 ducats to prevent them from sacking the city. As the Kyiv voivoda, Ostrozky did his best to revive the city and the province, which lay in ruins and were vulnerable to Tatar attacks in the 16th century. He also made a major contribution to the cultural development of the city, including the Kyivan Cave Monastery, its cultural and religious center. Several alumni of Ostrozky’s court — Yelisei Pletenetsky, Meletii Smotrytsky, Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, and others — continued their patron’s noble cause of reviving Kyiv. There are ample grounds to state that if there had been no Ostrozky, Kyiv could not have developed in the 17th century or become the spiritual capital of Ukraine, and there would have been no “Mohyla Academy Renaissance.” Unfortunately, Kyivites no longer remember this. You will not find even a modest monument to Ostrozky on the streets of our capital.

Thanks to the prince’s efforts, in the late 16th century Ukraine experienced relatively normal economic and cultural development because it was protected from Tatar attacks. These conditions led to the so-called “Ukrainian renaissance” at the turn of the 17th century, about which Mykhailo Hrushevsky and other scholars wrote extensively. It is unlikely that this renaissance could have taken place without Ostrozky.

Prince Ostrozky founded the Ostroh Academy, Eastern Europe’s first institution of higher education. It existed for approximately 60 years and produced many outstanding cultural figures: writers, teachers, scholars, and clergymen. Ostroh Academy alumni went on to found the Kyiv Brotherhood School and the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Smotrytsky published a grammar of the Old Church Slavonic language, which had a considerable impact on the development of linguistics in and outside Ukraine.

Ostrozky also supervised and funded the publication of the Ostroh Bible. This was Europe’s first critical scholarly publication of biblical books based on different texts. These kinds of publications appeared in Western Europe only in the 1590s, 10 years after the printing of the Ostroh Bible, which became a canonical text for Christians whose liturgical language was Old Church Slavonic.

Under the prince’s supervision, polemical literature, the precursor of modern Ukrainian literature, was developed in Ostroh. The prince commissioned polemical works, printed them at his own expense, and remunerated the authors.

As the protector of Orthodoxy in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ostrozky expended great efforts to develop the religious sector. As the founder of numerous churches and monasteries, he even nurtured an ambitious plan to create a patriarchate on Ukrainian soil. If this plan had been fulfilled, we would have had an independent Ukrainian church even at that time. Unfortunately, by force of certain circumstances, his plan never materialized.

Ostrozky was in fact trying to create a state that would independent in economic, political, cultural, and religious terms. Although he accepted the supremacy of the Polish-Lithuanian king, he conducted himself in an independent manner. In his letters he titled himself thus: “We, Kostiantyn, by the grace of God the Prince of Volhynia.” Only sovereign rulers could title themselves this way.

If the prince’s efforts had been continued, we would have a different state today and a more normal history, which one could “read without taking a dose of bromide.” Ukrainians should make a closer examination of the political, military, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and religious record of Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozky. It is we, not he, who need this.

Petro KRALIUK is a Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy).