Centuries ago, Ukrainian Cossack leader Ivan Mazepa founded multiple settlements in modern Russia’s Kursk region. Now they’re within miles of the front line.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is well into its third week. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as of August 19, Ukrainian troops controlled 92 settlements across a territory of 1,250 square kilometers, or 483 square miles (though these figures haven’t been independently verified). Suddenly within close proximity of the conflict zone are the villages of Ivanovskoe, Stepanovka, and Mazepovka, all of which were built in the early 18th century and named after their founder: Hetman Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa, an influential Ukrainian statesman and military leader. Meduza tells the story of Mazepa’s estates.

The area where Russia’s Kursk region meets Ukraine’s Sumy region is an ancient frontier. To the north is the Bryansk Forest, the legendary home of the Russian folk poem character Nightingale the Robber. To the south is the steppe where nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic peoples such as the Pechenegs and Polovtsy, and later the Crimean Tatars, lived for centuries.

To the northwest lies the Ukrainian city of Novhorod-Siverskyi, where Prince Igor Svyatoslavich began his 1185 campaign against the Polovtsy immortalized in the Old East Slavic epic poem The Tale of Igor's Campaign. The Muravsky Trail ran through this area, following the watershed between the Dnipro and Don rivers; it was along this path that Crimean Tatars launched raids on the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, capturing thousands of people to be sold in the slave market in Kaffa (modern-day Feodosia).

In the 16th–17th centuries, this area was the site of numerous wars between the Tsardom of Russia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with cities regularly coming under siege and frequently changing hands. In the early 17th century, during the Time of Troubles, it was here that False Dmitry I, pretender to the Russian throne, began his victorious march to Moscow.

In the second half of the 17th century, this region was where the Tsardom of Russia bordered the Cossack Hetmanate, a semi-autonomous state to which modern Ukraine can trace its lineage.

Ivan Mazepa became the hetman, or leader, of the Cossack Hetmanate in 1687. But Moscow dictated the Hetmanate’s foreign policy, senior personnel appointments, and land governance; Mazepa had good relations with Prince Vasily Golitsyn, who effectively ruled Russia, and later with Peter I (also known as Peter the Great).

While he was still a senior officer, Mazepa, like many other members of the Cossack military elite, acquired his own small estates within Moscow’s borders, and after becoming hetman, he purchased more land in the Rylsky, Putivlsky, and Sevsky districts. By 1708, his estates on the territory of modern Russia’s Kursk region encompassed about 40 square kilometers (15 square miles) and included more than 30 villages and settlements, which had a joint population of nearly 30,000 people. Mazepa’s rights to these extensive holdings were confirmed by several charters issued by Peter I.

In the late 19th century, Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Plokhynsky reconstructed the history of Mazepa’s Kursk estates in his article “Hetman Mazepa as a Great Russian landowner.” Many of the settlements named in Mazepa’s property listings appear in war reports from recent years: Korenevo, Snagost, Krupets, Oleshnya, Ivnitsa, Sheptukhovka. The Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) are currently fighting for control of Korenevo, while Oleshnya and part of Snagost are already under Ukrainian control.

The center of these estates was Ivanovskoe, where Mazepa built a manor. The village also contained three churches, two public bathhouses, 10 shops (trading was held every Sunday), seven taverns, and a school.

Mazepa mainly bought undeveloped land and used various financial incentives to attract settlers, many of whom were serfs fleeing from nearby landowners and Old Believers escaping persecution in central Russia. Due to the runaway serfs, Mazepa often had conflicts with his neighbors, which sometimes led to mutual raids and bloodshed. Such incidents were common both in the Tsardom of Russia and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Administrative documents from the time separate Mazepa’s peasants into two groups: “Russian people” (Russkie lyudi, in Russian), referring to natives of the Tsardom of Russia, and “Cherkases,” a Russian word for Cossacks commonly used to refer to Ukrainians at the time. “Russian” and “Cherkas” households were mixed on Mazepa’s estates, with “Russian” ones predominating in the northern part and “Cherkas” ones in the southern part.

These lands remained in Mazepa’s possession for less than 10 years, but they began to thrive economically, with residents cultivating fields and opening orchards, mills, and apiaries. However, in the fall of 1709, Peter the Great learned that Mazepa had sided with the Swedish king, Charles XII, in the Great Northern War and immediately sent 25,000 troops led by Alexander Menshikov to the Hetmanate’s capital, Baturyn. The Russian forces stormed and burned the city, killing its entire population (between 10,000 and 15,000 people).

Mazepa and Menshikov had been at odds even before the hetman’s defection. There were rumors that Menshikov aspired to either become hetman himself or to rule over eastern Ukraine. This never came to pass, but he did take over Mazepa’s former estates, which remained in his possession until his own exile to Siberia in 1727.

After Sweden’s defeat in the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Mazepa and Charles XII fled to Bender (in modern-day Moldova), which was then under the control of the Ottoman sultan, and died soon after.

In the decades that followed, Mazepa’s former estates were repeatedly passed from one owner to another until the early 19th century, when they ended up in the hands of Prince Ivan Baryatinsky, who built a lavish new manor in Ivanovskoe called Maryino.

During the Soviet era, Maryino housed a sanatorium for the Communist Party’s Central Committee; today it serves as a sanatorium for members of Vladimir Putin’s administrative directorate. Mazepa’s residence in Ivanovskoe are officially designated as a federal architectural monument, but in reality, it lies in neglected ruins. As of August 21, 2024, Ukrainian troops were approximately 14 kilometers (less than nine miles) from the estate.

Story by Artem Efimov, translation by Sam Breazeale

Cover image: Ukrainian National Museum