2.1a - Dad Tangent - Catherine the Great and the Disappearing Hetmanate

In this Dad Tangent, we zoom in on the empress with big ideas and even bigger land grabs – Catherine the Great. While she’s often remembered for art collections and Enlightenment vibes, in Ukraine, her legacy hits a little differently. We’ll break down how Catherine quietly erased the Ukrainian Hetmanate, why she saw the Cossack leaders as both useful and dangerous, and how the Russian Empire expanded at the expense of Ukrainian autonomy.

Was it strategy? Was it control? Was it an imperial mic drop? You decide – but either way, the Hetmans were here one year… and gone the next.

History gets a little sneaky in this one. Let’s untangle it together!