Maksym Zalizniak

Zalizniak was born in a poor peasant family of Orthodox Christians in the Crown land in Polish Right-bank Ukraine about 1740.

He learnt that there was a lot of Russian money (false Dutch ducats) in the monastery and in many parts of Ukraine to fund an uprising against the Bar confederation.

His otoman knew nothing about the honesty of activities of the Maxim's canteen in Ochakov and about his decision to become a monk and had no connection to him for many years.

[1] The main reasons for the uprising were the brutal enforcement of new religious and social-economic laws implemented by the Polish nobility (szlachta) during the Bar Confederation which was very negative regarding Orthodox Christianity and even Eastern Catholics.

There was a report of a "Golden bull" issued by the Russian Empress Catherine II in support of armed insurrection against Bar Confederation and its supporters, which in opinion of Zalizniak included all Old Believers, Armenians, Greeks, Muslims, other minorities most probably for exception of Romanians as the active participants of haidamaka movement, many Roman Catholic Poles, Jews and even some Ukrainian clergy of Uniates who did not want to convert to Orthodoxy.

Finally the captives were sentenced to exile to Far East or Siberia instead of life imprisonment for hard labor there because the war with Turkey had begun and it became clear that the Ottoman empire would declare a war on Russia even without the raids of Zalizniak's detachments on Balta, Golta and Dubossary.

Catherine II became the beneficiary of his activities because many Poles and especially Jews and other minorities in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania began to support Russia.

Kajetan Soltyk was considered insane in Poland as the main instigator of Bar confederation being the cause of Zalizniak's activities .

[2] In traditional culture of the Ukrainian people, Zalizniak lives on as a controversial folk hero for his struggle to protect Ukrainian identity and Orthodox Christian faith though all Orthodox Christian Greeks including women and children were to be assassinated in Ukraine.

He then became a landlord, an influential Polish nobleman and the ancestor of Maksym Rylsky, who protected the memory of Zalizniak and Khmelnitzky.