The Koliivshchyna (, ) was a major haidamaky rebellion that broke out in Right-bank Ukraine in June 1768, caused by money (Dutch ducats coined in Saint Petersburg) sent by Russia to Ukraine to pay for the locals fighting the Bar Confederation , the dissatisfaction of the peasants with the treatment of Eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians by the Bar Confederation and the threat of serfdom and the opposition to the nobility and the Poles by the Cossacks and the peasants. The uprising was accompanied by violence against the members and supporters of the Bar Confederation, Poles, Jews and Roman Catholics and especially Uniate clergymen and culminated in the massacre of Uman. The number of victims is estimated from 100,000 to 200,000, because many communities of national minorities (such as Old Believers, Armenians, Moslems and Greeks) completely disappeared in the area of the uprising. Etymology The origin of the word is not certain. Taras Shevchenko, whose grandfather and villagers participated in the uprising, wrote a poem, Haydamaky, in which Kolii is the name of a knife that is blessed in a church and used by special people in villiages in Ukraine (Ruthenia) villages to kill animals humanely, according to the local understanding of animal rights. The blessing of knives had occurred two or three weeks before the uprising as a rule and so the members and supporters of the Bar Confederation and its regular military forces fled to the Ottoman Empire before the uprising. However, some fortresses such as Umanl and Lysianka were still occupied by the members of the Bar Confederation. The secret was shared by millions of people and so different national minorities were accused of atrocities towards animals ans retreated to the fortresses as well. The poem is the best description though it considers village drinkings after massacres as part of the uprising. It explains that Ukrainians, apart from professional Kolii, never killed even chicken and other animals before the uprising, and the bloodletting led to drinking as the most continuous part of the uprising. The Kolii are similar to Rezniks and may be the heritage of the Khazar-Russian kaganate (Kievan Rus) in Ukraine. Kolii have never been present among Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, Moslems, Armenians, Romanians or even Greeks in spite of their Orthodoxy and their life together with Ukrainians. Shevchenko emphasized that iit was the first uprising for animal rights worldwide, and the rebels wanted to