Hence arose the insoluble conflict between the Kozaks and non-Kozaks in the growing Ukrainian organization. Perhaps had Khmelnitsky lived longer and had the time to think through the reforms that he was introducing, he might have changed his policies or in a period of peace he might have cemented his power and accustomed the people to accept it. He had neither time nor peace. It was necessary to organize, fight, and build all at the same moment and the result became a bitter circle in which he could see his way only through a complicated scheme of diplomatic intrigue. He did not have the power to carry to success any of his plans and as a result, Ukraine and the Kozak Host were left at the mercy of either Poland or Moscow or both, depending upon the general state of their relations at any given moment. Despite this fact, his work was not lost, for he had created an attitude, even if only in theory, that would assure to thinking Ukrainians a permanency and a place in the world. Even those later thinkers who condemned his submission to Moscow recognized that it was not a mere act of union, a mere desire to change masters for the Kozaks, but that it involved a deep political philosophy which circumstances destroyed. Khmelnitsky was the real founder of the Ukrainian national movement and he came nearer to making it successful than any one between the fall of Kiev and the modern Ukrainian Republic. That was a major achievement to carry out in less than nine years of uninterrupted turmoil. In one sense he was too late. Had he played his role a half century earlier, it is very possible that he might have accomplished more. Had he been able to hand the state over to some successor with the same breadth of vision, that man might have been able to continue and stabilize his work. As it was, he became the incarnation of the Ukrainian struggle for liberty and independence, and the inspiration of many of his followers. It was an unkind fate that preserved to the world only a knowledge of his submission to the Tsar and a distorted idea, zealously fostered by the Russians, that this was his ultimate goal. He died too soon, for he had not healed the breaches that were apparent in the Kozak organization, he had not solved definitely the entire Kozak problem from a Ukrainian standpoint and it was left for lesser men to corrupt his ideas and to lead Ukraine to a new and more complete ruin, with only his example to serve as a beacon light of what Ukraine might be. CHAPTER SEVEN _THE REVOLT OF MAZEPA_