Haidamaka

The haidamakas, also haidamaky or haidamaks (singular haidamaka, Ukrainian: Гайдамаки, Haidamaky) were according to this exonym, known from 1737 as pro-Ukrainian (Cossack) paramilitary bands in the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Terminology

The Romanian word haidamac (strong no-good man), may originate from the dialectical Turkish word haydamak (to drive, with the meaning of "to herd [animals]").

Other more ancient exonyms of the same haidamaks include levenetz and deineka. Equivalents of haidamaka include opryshok in Ukrainian Galicia, and hajduk in the Balkans. Hajduk is also used in Polish language. The first people to use the term "Haidamaki" to refer to themselves fought in Ustim Karmaluk's uprising of the early 1830s.

Because of the massacres of Jews, Jesuits, Uniates, and Polish nobility, the Polish language term Hajdamactwo became a pejorative label for Ukrainians as a whole. However, Ukrainian folklore and literature generally (with some notable exceptions) treat the actions of the Haidamaki positively. Haidamaky (1841), an epic poem by Taras Shevchenko, treats its subjects both sympathetically and critically.