Kosynsky, Kryshtof [Kosyns'kyj, Kryštof], ?–1593. (Portrait: Kryshtof Kosynsky.) Ukrainian nobleman from Podlachia, hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1586) and then of the registered Cossacks in the early 1590s. Kosynsky was the leader of the first large-scale uprising of the Ukrainian peasantry and Cossacks against the Polish nobility, in 1591–3. He was killed in May 1593 during the siege of Cherkasy.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]


Encyclopedia of Ukraine