Pavlo Teteria

Who was Pavlo Teteria?

Pavlo Teteria was Hetman of Right-bank Ukraine. Before his hetmancy he served in a number of high positions under Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and Ivan Vyhovsky.

When the Khmelnytsky Uprising broke out he served as a regimental secretary of Pereyaslav; shortly afterwards he was appointed the deputy of the general secretary. Later he assumed the post of the Pereyaslav colonel, while still continuing to act as deputy general secretary. He was one of the Ukrainian delegates that were sent to conduct the Treaty of Pereyaslav.

Teteria participated in the negotiations aimed at uniting Ukraine back into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When a civil war between Right-bank Cossacks and Left-bank Cossacks broke out, he openly supported pro-Polish policies, and was elected Hetman in the Right-bank Ukraine in 1663.

He participated with the Poles in a campaign into Left-Bank Ukraine, but in 1665 he abdicated because of political and social unrests in Right-bank. Teteria fled to Poland, but eventually came into conflict with the Polish nobility and left for Turkey, where he died plotting an invasion of Poland.