special order of kish otaman. The kettledrum sticks were kept in the kurin with the assigned dovbysh. Sometimes, part of kleidony was considered a great silver inkwell (kalamar), an attribute of a military scribe (pysar) of the Zaporozhian Host. Similar kleinods had the officership of the Cossack Hetmanate, cossacks of Kuban, Danube, and other cossack societies. Upon the destruction of the Sich and liquidation of Ukrainian Cossacks the kleinody were gathered and given away for storage in Hermitage and Transfiguration Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Kremlin Armoury in Moscow as well as other places of storage. By the end of 19th century the Hermitage stored 17 kurin banners and one khoruhva, the Transfiguration Cathedral contained 20 kurin banners, three bunchuks, one silver bulawa, and one silver gold-covered baton. Today the fate of those national treasures of Ukrainian people is unknown. After the February Revolution in 1917 the Russian Provisional Government adopted the decisions of returning them to Ukraine, however, due to the events of the October Revolution of the same year the decision was not executed. With the proclamation of independence, the Ukrainian government has raised the issue of returning the national cultural valuables before the leadership of Russia; no specific agreements have ever been reached, however. Alliance with Russia After the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654, the Zaporozhian Host became a suzerainty under the protection of the tsar of Russia, although for a considerable period of time it enjoyed nearly complete autonomy. After the death of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1657, his successor Ivan Vyhovsky initiated a turn towards Poland, alarmed by the growing Russian interference in the affairs of the Hetmanate. An attempt was made to return to the three-constituent Commonwealth of nations with the Zaporozhian cossacks joining the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by signing the Treaty of Hadiach (1658). The treaty was ratified by the Sejm but was rejected at the Hermanivka Rada by the Cossack rank and file, who would not accept a union with Catholic Poland, which they perceived as an oppressor of Orthodox Christianity. The angered cossacks executed Polkovniks Prokip Vereshchaka and Stepan Sulyma, Vyhovsky's associates at the Sejm, and Vyhovsky himself narrowly escaped death. The Zaporozhians maintained a largely separate government from the Hetmanate. The Zaporozhians elected their own leaders, known as Kosh otaman, for one-year terms. In this period, friction between the cossacks of the Hetmanate and the Zaporozhians escalated. The Cossacks had fought in the