Similar attempts, which were also expressed in establishing a local Uniate church and the persecution of Orthodox priests who refused to join it, were made towards the common people. Under these pressures, many of the Ruthenian nobles converted to Catholicism. Sigismund III Vasa (King Sigismund III) was a devout Catholic, as were most of the Polish nobles. Although they intended to fight any manifestation of Protestantism, they soon turned their attention to the Ruthenians, which almost all were Orthodox Christians. At the end of the 16th century, in the framework of the counter-reformation, the Jesuits have reached the area. The economic and social tension, which also led to strong hostility towards Jewish lessees, had gotten worse due to religious reasons. The nobility mercilessly brutalized the general population and especially the serfs.

The PolishвЂ“Lithuanian Commonwealth maintained strained relations with the Cossacks and tried to subordinate them to its authority while exploiting them for military usage. Southern to where the river bends, lived the Cossacks from the Zaporozhian Sich, a semi-nomadic society that maintained a routine of constant fighting with the Tatars. It was closer to the Crimea and dangerous to settlement, although some estates and cities were there and drew Jews looking for jobs. The eastern side was a somewhat wild area. Dozens of new communities were established in Ukraine, mainly on the right bank (western area) of the Dnieper. Many of the Jews were employed by the nobility as leases and estate managers. They were pushed from Poland itself under the pressure of city residents who wanted to reduce the economic competition. The great Magnates, which most of them were descendants of the local aristocracy, established vast agricultural estates and imposed strict rules on the local Ruthenian peasants.ДЄmong the settlers, there were many Jews. In the territories western to the Dnieper River, tens of thousands of people from the rest of the PolishвЂ“Lithuanian Commonwealth came to settle down. The aristocracy, which enjoyed independence and even chose the king, controlled the area that had been ruled until then by the Tatars from the Crimea. In 1569, with the establishment of the PolishвЂ“Lithuanian Commonwealth, large land tracts (of today's Ukraine) were transferred from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the rule of the Kingdom of Poland. It is estimated that all the parties - the Cossacks, the Russians, the Swedes, their allies and the Poles themselves who massacred them on suspicion of collaborating with the invaders - killed between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews in total. The number of Jews killed by the Cossack rebels in 1648 was estimated at a few thousand to 20,000 at most. According to the historian Adam Teller: 'In the Jewish collective memory, the events in the summer and autumn of 1648 define the uprising in general, and therefore the riots were known as the 1848s.' Thousands were slaughtered or died of starvation and epidemics, and many others fled, sold into slavery, or converted.

Nevertheless, the sudden destruction of many communities from the beginning of AprilвЂ“May 1648 (Iyar 1848), until the cessation of the Cossacks' progress in November of that year, is the named source. Massacre of the Jews of Poland, Belarus, and today's Ukraine occurred throughout the rebellion, which lasted for many years and during the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667) and the small northern war with the Swedish Empire that ignited them.

The Cossack riots were pogroms carried out against the Jews of modern Ukraine during the 1648 uprising of the Cossacks and serfs led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky (or the 'Hamil of Evil' as he was called by the Jews) against the PolishвЂ“Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Cossacks and jews