[10] The rebellion of peasants was fueled by ducats paid by Maxim Zalizniak for every killed Bar Confederate and by the circulation of a fictitious proclamation of support and call to arms by Russian Empress Catherine II, the so-called "Golden Charter".

[11] Mostly based on rumours, the charter, however, had a real foundation and was connected with the Repnin sejm's decisions to give political freedoms to Uniates and Orthodox Christians.

Catherine issued a rescript in 1765 to Archimandrite Melkhisedek and made the Russian ambassador in Warsaw facilitate assertion of the rights and privileges of the Orthodox in Right-bank Ukraine.

[12] In 1764, on the territory of the Zaporozhian Host and along the southern borders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire created the New Russia Governorate in place of the previously-existing New Serbia province and intensively militarised the region.

Catholic and Uniate priests became the next victims of the hatred of the insurgent crowd.In three weeks of unbridled violence, the rebels slaughtered 20,000 people, according to numerous Polish sources.

[citation needed] The leaders of the uprising were Zaporozhian Cossacks, mainly Maksym Zalizniak, and a commander of a private militia of the owner of Uman, Ivan Gonta.

Eventually, the uprising was crushed by Russian troops, Ukrainian-registered Cossacks of Left-Bank Ukraine and the Zaporozhian Host, aided by the Polish army.

[16] On 17 May 2018 the Kyiv City Council voted to hold events marking 250 years since Koliivshchyna; the proposal was put forward by two deputies of the ultranationalist Svoboda party.