Materials from French archives about Ivan Mazepa in 1708: from the deconstruction of Ilko Borshchak's hoaxes to new findings

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2026.162.1

Abstract

Background. Ivan Mazepa and his era are one of the key topics of Ukrainian historical discourse. Thanks to the introduction of new sources into scientific circulation over the past decades, some progress has been achieved in the study of the figure of the hetman. The vast majority of these sources come from foreign archives, mostly Russian and Swedish. A number of unique testimonies have also been deposited in the archives of France, mainly authored by diplomats of Louis XIV in Poland and Sweden. Published in the 20th century, they added colorful touches to the overall picture of Mazepa's military and diplomatic activity during the Northern War and, especially, such a stage of it as the campaign of King Charles XII against Tsar Peter I in 1707–1709. The main contribution to the discovery and publication of these materials was made by Ukrainian emigration figures Ilko Borschak and Teodor Mackiv. In his 1988 source-study work “Hetman Ivan Mazepa in Western European Sources 1687–1709,” Mackiv followed in the footsteps of Borschak’s archival research, who almost never cited documents in the original language and indicated unclear source data. After studying the archival materials of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mackiv was unable to confirm the authenticity of some of the testimonies given by Borschak in 1928 in his work "Sweden and French Diplomacy."

The purpose of my research is to report on the results of the verification of Borschak's source base based on archival materials of French diplomacy papers out during 2019–2025. The main tasks are to prove the fake nature of part of Borschak's narrative, and also to publish and analyze by comparison with published documents the evidence that he and Mackiv had not used and that I had found from the manuscript collection of the French National Library.

Methods. The article is written in the genre of documentary deconstruction and is built on a comparative approach.

Results. The mystified nature of the testimonies published by Borschak regarding the results of Mazepa's negotiations with the King of Poland Stanisław Leszczyński has been proven. A comparison has been made of the draft memorandum of Leszczyński to his representative to the Swedish King Charles XII, Stanisław Potocki (September 18, 1708), discovered by me in the French National Library, with the instruction of Leszczyński to Potocki under the same date published in 1909 by the Imperial Russian Military Historical Society. In the fragment concerning Mazepa, the falsification of the document by Russian publishers, who sought to conceal Mazepa's secret intention to throw off the Moscow yoke from himself and the entire Cossack Ukraine, has been revealed. The fragment on Mazepa reveals the falsification of the document by Russian publishers, who sought to conceal Mazepa's secret intention to throw off the Moscow yoke from himself and the entire Cossack Ukraine. The negative impact of the falsified Russian publication on historiography is also shown, and the evolution of historians' approaches to the issue of Mazepa's contractual relations with Leszczynsky and Charles XII is analyzed.

Conclusions. The fake nature of part of the source base of Borschak's historical work is proven. Two new testimonies about Mazepa are introduced into scientific bypass. The greater reliability of documents created by the main active persons (in this case, Leszczynski) at the time of the events (September 1708) is shown in accordance with later narrative sources, which were mostly used by historians. The considerable importance of studying foreign archives in obtaining Mazepa is confirmed.