Ivan Skoropadsky
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Ivan Skoropadsky (Ukrainian: Іван Скоропадський) (reigned 1708–1722) was a Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and the successor to the famous Hetman Ivan Mazepa.
Born into a noble Cossack family in Uman, Ukraine in 1646, Skoropadsky was educated in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In 1675 he joined Cossack military service under Hetman Ivan Samoylovych and distinguished himself in Russo-Turkish War of 1676-1681 and once again in the Crimean expedition against the Turks in 1688.
Ivan Skoropadsky was briefly an ambassador representing Cossack Hetmanate in negotiations with the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. During the Great Northern War Skoropadsky was a Cossack colonel of the Russian Starodub regiment and after Swedish army crossed into Ukraine in 1708 he refused to join Ivan Mazepa who decided to switch sides and fight against Russia. Only about 3,000 Cossacks followed Mazepa, while others remained loyal to the tsar. This was partly because of Orthodox clergymen's agitation for the tsar.
Those Cossacks who did not side with Mazepa elected a new Hetman, Ivan Skoropadsky, on November 11, 1708. The fear of other reprisals and suspicion of Mazepa's newfound Swedish ally Charles XII prevented most of Ukraine's population from siding with the rebels.
Ivan Skoropadsky moved the capital of the Cossack Hetmanate from Baturyn razed to the ground by the Russian army to the town of Hlukhiv. During his reign he advocated greater autonomy for the Hetmanate and greater rights for the Cossack nobility, often resisting Peter the Great's policy of incorporation of the Hetmanate lands into the Russian Empire. Nonetheless, Skoropadsky was careful to avoid open confrontation and remained loyal to the union with Russia.
In 1718 his daughter married to Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy (prominent Russian statesman) and Ivan Skoropadsky was granted numerous estates in the Ukraine becoming its largest land-owner. His great-grandson Pavlo Skoropadsky would briefly rule Ukraine 200 years later.
