Pavel Polubotok

Born circa 1660; died Dec. 18 (29), 1723, in St. Petersburg. Ukrainian military leader.

Polubotok was a colonel of the Chernigov Regiment from 1706 to 1722. He was appointed hetman of the Left-bank Ukraine and served from 1722 to 1723. At the time of the treachery of I. Mazepa in 1708, Polubotok was one of four colonels who remained faithful to Peter I. Polubotok, who was the richest feudal lord of the Left-bank Ukraine, favored the restoration of the position of hetman and the dissolution of the Malorossiiskaia Kollegiia (Little Russian Collegium). He was called to St. Petersburg, questioned in the Privy Chancellery, and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he died. Prerevolutionary bourgeois historians idealized Polubotok and attempted to represent him as a champion of popular interests.