1. Ivan Mazepa played an important role in the Battle of Poltava, where after learning that Tsar Peter I intended to relieve him as acting hetman of Zaporozhian Host and to replace him with Alexander Menshikov, he defected from his army and sided with King Charles XII of Sweden.
Ivan Mazepa's mother was Maryna Mokievska, and his father was Stefan Adam Mazepa.
Stefan Ivan Mazepa served as a Cossack Ataman of Bila Tserkva.
Ivan Mazepa led to Pasek's arrest and had him brought before the king, who was staying in Grodno at the time.
Ivan Mazepa was certainly still at the royal court in 1665, probably until the abdication of John II Casimir in 1668.
From 1669 to 1673 Ivan Mazepa served under Petro Doroshenko as a squadron commander in the Hetman Guard, particularly during Doroshenko's 1672 campaign in Halychyna, and as a chancellor on diplomatic missions to Poland, Crimea, and the Ottoman Empire.
From 1677 to 1678 Ivan Mazepa participated in the Chyhyryn campaigns during which Yuri Khmelnytsky, with the support from the Ottoman Empire, tried to regain power in Ukraine.
The young, educated Ivan Mazepa quickly rose through the Cossack ranks, and from 1682 to 1686 he served as an Aide-de-Camp General.
In 1687 Ivan Mazepa accused Samoylovych of conspiring to secede from Russia, secured his ouster, and was elected the Hetman of Left-bank Ukraine in Kolomak, with the support of Vasily Galitzine.
In 1689 Ivan Mazepa supported the deposition of Tsarevna Sophia, who had served as de-facto regent of Tsar Peter I, which helped him ingratiate himself with the monarch, who valued the wide experience and education of the much older hetman.
In words of a Russian historian, Ivan Mazepa "was like a father to Peter I in a sense".
Ivan Mazepa founded schools and printing houses, and expanded the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, the primary educational institution of Ukraine at the time.
In many regards Ivan Mazepa greatly contributed to the establishment of the Russian Empire by supporting the policies of Peter I and providing the monarch with people needed to bring his reformist ideas into life.
Himself a highly educated person who could speak both Latin and German, Ivan Mazepa established his court in a Western manner, reflecting the influence of Baroque art and literature on Ukrainian lands during that period.
In 1700, as the Russian Empire entered the Great Northern War against the Swedish Empire, Ivan Mazepa, despite having concerns about the Tsar's adventurous foreign policies, supported Peter I with troops and resources.
Ivan Mazepa convinced Russian Tsar Peter I to allow him to intervene, which he successfully did, taking over major portions of Right-bank Ukraine, while Poland was weakened by an invasion of Swedish king Charles XII.
Unwilling to sacrifice his realm and displeased by Peter's treatment of himself as a simple subordinate, throughout 1708 Ivan Mazepa started secret talks with the Swedish side.
Ivan Mazepa's call to arms was further weakened by the Orthodox Clergy's allegiance to the Tsar.
The hetman fled with Charles XII to the fortress of Bender, in the Ottoman Empire's vassal Moldavia, where Ivan Mazepa soon died at the age of 70.
Ivan Mazepa was buried in Galati, but his tomb was disturbed several times and eventually lost as a result of the Sfantul Gheorghe Church demolition in 1962.
Until 1869, his name was even added to the list of traitors publicly cursed in Russian churches during the Feast of Orthodoxy service, along with Pugachev, Razin and False Dmitry I Later, a positive view of Mazepa was taboo in the Soviet Union and considered as a sign of "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism".
In Galati, Ivan Mazepa is remembered in the name of two central neighbourhoods and with a statue in a park on Basarabiei street.
The historical events of Ivan Mazepa's life have inspired many literary and musical works:.