The Ukrainian Cossack leader Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa (ca. 1644-1709) is considered a traitor by Russian historians, a great patriot by Ukrainian historians.

Neither the place nor the date of the birth of Ivan Mazepa can be given with certainty, but there is evidence that he was born a Polish subject in what is now the Ukraine and that his parents were landed gentry of the Eastern Orthodox faith. He received an excellent education and then went into the service of the Polish king John Casimir as a courtier. Soon, however, he became involved in a scandal, was dismissed from the royal court, and was forced to return to his home. There, his amorous misconduct provoked a jealous husband into having him bound naked to the back of an unreined horse and exposed to the uncertainty of rescue. When extricated from that misadventure, he left for the eastern Ukraine...