An unknown letter of the Suceava Metropolitan Dositheus on the dissolution of the marriage of the hetman of the right-bank Cossacks Stefan Kunitsky (1683)

This is a publication of the letter of the Suceava Metropolitan Dositheus, apparently written in November, 1683. It was adressed to the leader of the Right-Bank Cossacks, Stefan Kunitsky. After being appointed hetman of the Cossacks by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, he organized an invasion of Moldavia and a raid on the territory of the Budzhak horde in the autumn or winter of 1683. In the letter, Dositheus gave his permission to Kunitsky to divorce his wife, Elena, who was much older than him, and, accordingly, allowed a second marriage. Elena was the widow of G. Lesnitsky, an influential Cossack foreman of the 1650–1660s, and the marriage with her undoubtedly helped Kunitsky in raising his social status: he was part of the entourage of the Right-Bank hetman P. D. Doroshenko, later became a Cossack colonel under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and finally managed to get the hetman title from the Polish king. The published document is a unique source that characterizes not only the political aspect of the Cossack-Moldovan relations in 1683, but also sheds light on the little-studied problem of career strategies and personal interests of individual representatives of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the era of Ruina (1660–1680s), for the implementation of which they used their military and political successes.