If Khmelnitsky was really the architect of Ukrainian conscious independence, then it was Mazepa and his followers who definitely cast away all hope of continuing the old ambiguous situation. It would have been one thing to have done this in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was quite different to undertake it in the eighteenth against such a Tsar as Peter. Mazepa’s only hope was to lay a broad foundation for his movement, to prepare a real basis for a national revolt. This was not in the spirit of the man; it was not practical in the face of the agents of Peter and of the murmuring and dissensions that still lingered on among many of the Kozaks. As a result, Mazepa became a really romantic figure, risking everything on what was almost certainly a lost cause, which only a miracle could have turned into victory. Yet that miracle was near at many moments and it was another tragedy of the Ukrainian people that they were not able to grasp the right moment, make the right moves and bring themselves to final independence. The fall of Mazepa marks the end of the Kozak wars and of the political significance of the Kozak Host. It marks within the Russian Empire the ending of a phase of history, turbulent but romantic and heroic to the last degree. It marks also the passing of the Ukrainian movement from a purely military enterprise to the modern political and economic struggle that it was to be in the future. At the same time the followers of Mazepa began to raise the Ukrainian question in the chancelleries and thought of Western Europe. CHAPTER EIGHT _THE SPREAD OF KIEVAN CULTURE IN MOSCOW_ At the very moment when Moscow was pursuing its consistent policy of reducing Ukraine to the level of a Muscovite province, it was falling just as steadily under the influence of Kievan culture. The monks and scholars of Kiev flowed in a steady stream to the northeastern capital and prepared the way for the transformations that were to be brought to their full fruition by Peter the Great in the early part of the eighteenth century. It is not too much to say that every scholar or literary man of Moscow during the eighteenth century was of Ukrainian origin or had been largely trained in the Academy of Kiev. The reason is not far to seek. During the period of subjection to the Tatars, the culture of Moscow and the general mode of life came under a marked oriental influence. After the liberation of the country, conditions changed little, despite the marriage of Tsar Ivan III with Sophia Paleolog of the royal house of Byzantium. Now and then there might be some slight influence from the west brought in, as was the case when an Italian architect was employed to remodel the Kremlin, but such cases were relatively rare and for all practical purposes there was little interchange of goods or ideas with Europe.