The Zaporozhian Sich

The Zaporozhian Sich (1552—1775) was a unique military-political order of Ukrainian Cossacks at the Dnipro Rapids that for over two centuries balanced between the Ottoman Empire, Crimea, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Moscow. Its first stronghold on Mala Khortytsia was founded in 1552 by Prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky. In the seventeenth century the Sich became a Cossack republic with an elected kosh otaman and its own customary law, producing Sahaidachny, Khmelnytsky and Sirko. In 1775, after conquering Crimea, Catherine II ordered the Sich destroyed — kosh otaman Kalnyshevsky was imprisoned at the Solovki Monastery.