Mazepa had been hetman for only two years, when Peter succeeded in forcing his half-sister Sophia out of power, making her take refuge in a convent. He immediately removed Prince Golitsyn from all of his important posts, that same man who had been the patron of Mazepa and had placed him in the hetmanship. Then Peter began his policy of reforms. This is not the place to describe his transformation of old Moscow into the modern Russia, but it can well be seen that Ukraine and the Kozak Host, already stripped of most of the rights guaranteed by Tsar Alexis, would not escape his centralizing tendencies. Mazepa, although he was closely associated with Golitsyn, profited by the latter’s downfall. He succeeded in winning and holding the confidence of Peter, who willingly took from the Golitsyn estates and returned to Mazepa the money that he had paid Golitsyn for his election, and the generous Tsar gave him a good slice of the Golitsyn fortune as a mark of favor. This fortune together with the income of the Kozak Host allowed the new hetman to start an unparalleled period of monumental building in Ukraine. Thus, for example, he remodelled in Baroque architecture the old Church of St. Sophia in Kiev. He constructed the Cathedral of St. Nicholas and the Church of the Epiphany. He surrounded the Monastery of the Caves with an elaborate wall. In everything that he touched Mazepa showed the influence of the contemporary art of the West and his hetmanship marked the flowering of Ukrainian Baroque architecture. He had many motives for this. In the first place, he could feel the desire of Peter for the elimination of the old forms of Muscovite art and life. His liberal expenditure of funds for a westernizing purpose could not fail to increase the certainty of the Tsar that he was not interested in the maintenance of the old form of life. It appealed to large elements of the Ukrainian population, and Mazepa used his liberal support of the Orthodox Church to prove that he had no Polonizing tendencies and that he was not, as his enemies charged again and again, a mere servant of the Poles, for this was the favorite charge against the hetmans and could rouse against him both the suspicions of the Tsar and the ill will of the Ukrainian population, Kozak and non-Kozak alike.