The 1648 Chmielnicki massacres were primarily an assertion of Ukrainian identity

Evidence

Even when there was mass destruction, as in the Chmielnicki uprising in 1648, the violence against Jews, where between 40,000 and 100,000 Jews were murdered, was also aimed at others in what was at heart an attempt to assert Ukrainian identity in the Polish kingdom. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 505

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the theme in later chapters that mass violence claims victims beyond a single target group, complicating monocausal accounts.