It was sparked by an act of the Sejm (legislature) passed the same year that declared that non-Registered Cossacks were equal to ordinary peasants in their rights, and hence were subjected to enserfment.

According to a chronicle of 1864 written by Samiylo Velychko, Ostryanyn, who had just been elected Hetman, issued an address to the Ruthenian people on the eve of the campaign in March 1638.

He declared that he would "go with his army to the Ukraine in order to liberate the Orthodox people from the yoke of oppression and torment of the Polish tyranny and claim vengeance for grievances, ruin and torturous abuse... suffered by the entire Ruthenian populace, living on both sides of the Dnieper.

The second body of troops, consisting of a flotilla led by Hunia, took the river crossings in Kremenchuk, Maksymivka[disambiguation needed], Buzhyn and Chyhyryn.

The uprising forms part of the plot of the romanticized historical novel Taras Bulba, written in 1834 by Nikolai Gogol, a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.