Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Yaroslav Karpikov
[REGNUM] The symbolic end of the Time of Troubles of the early 17th century was the expulsion of the Poles, Lithuanians, and their Russian supporters from the Kremlin by the Second Militia. The events of late October (or early November) 1612 had a profound impact on the subsequent fate of Russia. But the country took a long time to recover from the consequences of the Time of Troubles. This was particularly acute in the Seversk land—on the southwestern outskirts of the state. Russia was freed from the Polish invaders, but at the cost of ceding to them part of ancient Russian lands.
What was lost in "shaky and dissolute times," our country reclaimed in both the 17th and 18th centuries. And it did. As one of Catherine the Great's manifestos stated, Russia regained " her ancient heritage... unjustly wrested from internal rebellions and foreign invasions."
But immediately after the Time of Troubles, under the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Feodorovich, it was too early to consider reclaiming what had been taken away. It was necessary to help those Russian Orthodox people who had fled to Russia, wishing to remain under Polish occupation.
THE SUBJECT OF LITHUANIA'S CLAIMS
The Seversk land (Severshchyna) developed around the Chernigov Principality and its adjacent lands in the Desna River basin. The main cities in this part of Rus' were Chernigov, Putivl, Novgorod-Seversky (now under the jurisdiction of Ukraine), and Bryansk, Rylsk, Trubchevsk (ancient Trubetsk), and Starodub (Starodub-Seversky), which are now part of Russia.
These ancient Russian lands have long been the subject of claims by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, since the 14th–15th centuries.
In the 14th century, Severshchyna became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and at the beginning of the 16th century it returned to the Russian state.
But the conquests of the times of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible were “nullified” by the Polish-Lithuanian invasion (1609–1612), which was a consequence of the collapse of the Russian state and the protracted military-political crisis of 1604–1613.
For example, Chernigov, which was recaptured from the Lithuanians at the beginning of the 16th century and returned to Russia, was destroyed in 1611 by a detachment of the Polish colonel, the Kiev under-chamberlain Samuil Gornostay.
In 1616, the Polish king issued a privilege (a charter of ownership) to the same Gornostay for the city of Chernigov and neighboring lands, which had previously been in the possession of the Russian boyar children Likharev and Shestovitsky.
Two years later, in 1618, the Polish prince Władysław, still pursuing his claim to the Moscow throne, waged war against the still extremely weak Romanov state. But even then, Russia was able to repel the Poles. The Battle of Mozhaisk, which lasted the entire summer of 1618, significantly exhausted the invading army. The assault on Moscow by the Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz was also unsuccessful.
But when Warsaw ordered the deployment of the Zaporizhian Cossacks of Hetman Petro Sahaidachny (incidentally, canonized by the schismatic "Orthodox Church of Ukraine" in 2020), the government of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich was forced to begin negotiations on unfavorable starting terms.
In December 1618, a truce was concluded in the village of Deulino, near the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius. Following the negotiations, the Poles returned the previously occupied Kozelsk, Vyazma, Meshchovsk, and Mosalsk to Russia.
But in exchange for the transfer of the cities of Starodub, Nevel, Pochep, and Roslavl to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia was also forced to cede Smolensk, Trubchevsk, Serpeisk, and Novgorod-Seversky to the aggressor.
Until there was a chance to reclaim what was ours, we had to save our own. Archival documents tell us how this—as we would say today—evacuation and repatriation took place.
Following the conclusion of the Truce of Deulino, nobles and boyar children from Novgorod-Seversky were transferred by tsarist decree to Rylsk, from the towns of Pochep and Roslavl to Bryansk, and from Chernigov to Putivl. By 1622, 30 Starodub, 70 Roslavl, and 41 Pochepetsk soldiers were serving in Bryansk.
The solution to the issue of the main source of food at that time (estates) dragged on for several years, and the problem was practically never fully resolved.
In 1621, 222 Starodub and Roslavl boyar sons were resettled from Bryansk to Alatyr (on the Sura River), and a small group to neighboring Karachev. In 1623, their families were sent to join them. Households were built for 87 of them, and they were paid in cash and grain. However, even these measures were insufficient to resolve the problems of settling the nobles and boyar sons who had lost their estates.
A COSSACK WITH THE CALL SIGN BORZOI
Among the mass migrations of service people ("city corporations") from cities occupied by the Poles and Lithuanians, there are also some astonishing stories worthy of film adaptation. On May 11, 1625, the voivode Alexander Nagoy wrote from Bryansk to Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich in Moscow.
The letter reported the departure of the Cossack Vasily ("Vaska") Borzoy from Starodub to the Tsar's name. For his departure, Borzoy was given one and a half rubles in Moscow.
A short extract, apparently from the lost “interrogatory speeches” of the Starodub native Cossack Vasily Borzov, describes his wanderings.
Thus, Borzoi reported that the Starodub town Cossacks went out " in the Tsar's name " in 1623. Vasily Borzoi himself was in Lithuania, in the town of Petrakov, when the Cossacks left Starodub. When the Lithuanians learned that the Starodub Cossacks had defected to the Russian state, they seized Vasily Borzoi, shackled him, and sent him to prison in Starodub.
In Starodub, Vasily Borzoy “... and from that place to this place he sat in prison, and he bowed to the Starodub captain so that he would be released from prison on bail, and the captain ordered him to be released on bail that he would live in Starodub... ”.
Borzoy was released from prison on the condition that he promise not to flee to the Russian state. But Vasily, "...remembering the peasant (Christian) faith..." fled from Starodub to the tsar. It was decided to grant him a " household position " in Karachev, along with all the previously released Starodub residents.
THE IDEOLOGICAL ANCESTORS OF COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF SYRSKY
But not all Starodub residents joined the Russian state. Some remained, preferring to preserve their homes and lands rather than serve the Orthodox Tsar in Moscow.
In 1620, Polish commissioners arrived in Starodub “ for the ordination of castles,” as well as for “ taking the northern castles away from Moscow, as well as for the revision of rights ” (confirmation of the rights to the land of the remaining Russian service people).
As a result of this commission's work in Starodubsky District, two charters (privileges) issued by the Poles to the Russian boyar children Rubtsov (Rubtsov) and Borzdny (Borzdy), confirming their rights to their estates, have survived. The wording emphasized in each of these privileges is also curious: "...not wishing to defect to the Moscow side after the establishment of a truce with Moscow."
That is, the Russian boyar children wished to remain in Polish service after 1618 entirely voluntarily (doesn't this remind one of the current commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the ethnic Great Russian Alexander Syrsky, who remained in Ukraine after 1991?).
According to archival documents, the largest number of boyar children who did not join the Russian state after 1648 were in Starodub – 44 people.
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS AGAINST VIGUND TRUBETSKOY
According to various estimates, no more than 10 people remained in Pochep and about 25 people in Trubchevsk. Local service landowners made up the so-called "court of the Trubetskoy princes."
Prince Yuri Nikitich Trubetskoy, an active supporter of False Dmitry I and False Dmitry II, and then of the Polish prince Vladislav IV, settled in Trubchevsk. He later converted to Catholicism and took the name Yuri Vigund Hieronymus.
But even someone as seemingly a traitor to all things Russian as we now perceive Prince Yuri Nikitich Trubetskoy, he turned out to be a man devoted to the cause of the Russian state. On March 8, 1631, Andrei Baikov, along with his entire family and servants, departed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for Bryansk in the name of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich.
During interrogation, the native told the following about himself:
" He served his son, Prince Dmitry Timofeevich Trubetskoy, and lived in Moscow. His wife and children lived in Trubchevsk district. Before the cities were given over to the Poles, he traveled from Moscow to Trubchevsk to see his wife and children. And when a truce was concluded with Lithuania, he remained in Trubchevsk.
"And he served in Lithuania with Prince Yuri Trubetskoy... And now, four weeks ago, he took his wife and children with him and left Trubchevsk to the Tsar's name. And the Lithuanians pursued him and, in the pursuit, they cut down Andrei's left hand with a sabre, and he arrived in Bryansk wounded."
But there's more to come.
It turned out that, while living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and serving the Russian traitor prince Yuri Trubetskoy, Andrei Baikov had been secretly transmitting various information to Bryansk for all these years.
While visiting Starodub and learning important news, Andrei Baikov used a “messenger,” who was a minister of the Starodub Ascension Monastery, Senka Kozlovsky, who came to Bryansk and passed on the information obtained from Baikov to the local governor.
Baikov wasn't the only Russian informant in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Grigory Zhedenov, a servant of the Trubetskoy princes, was also a source of information.
In July 1631, he sent his serf to Bryansk with news of a possible attack by Polish-Lithuanian forces on the Russian cities of the Severshchyna region. Unlike Baikov, Zhedenov did not travel to Moscow but remained in Trubchevsk, awaiting the arrival of Russian forces (the Smolensk War of 1632–1634 would soon begin). Here we see the desire of the remaining Russian people in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to serve the Orthodox Tsar and the Russian cause.
HONORARY NAME OF A CHERNIGOV RESIDENT
But what happened to the servicemen from Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, and Starodub who joined the Russian state? As stated earlier, they were dispersed to the following cities: Sevsk, Karachev, Bryansk, Putivl, and Rylsk.
Apparently, belonging to the ancient service towns of the Seversk land was an honor, since not only the natives themselves, but also their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren call themselves “Chernigovites” and “Starodubtsy,” even if they had never been to the land of their ancestors until the beginning of the 18th century.
When the Russian state began to expand southward, towards the future Slobozhanshchina, the tsarist government remembered the landless and small landed migrants from Severshchina.
Letter from eyewitnesses of the Time of Troubles to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich
They began to populate new towns. This was the fate of some of the Starodub people who lived in Karachev and were sent by the government in 1648 to settle the town of Aleshnya (present-day Oleshnya village in the Lebedyn district of Sumy Oblast, Ukraine).
There were still living eyewitnesses of the Time of Troubles and their children who wrote to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654 from Aleshnya:
" In recent years, Sovereign, we, your serfs, migrated from the Lithuanian city of Starodub and served your father, Mikhail Fedorovich, of blessed memory... in Bryansk for six years in the Cossack cavalry. Later, Sovereign, we, your serfs, were transferred from Bryansk to Karachev, and in Karachev, Sovereign, we served you among the Cossacks for about thirty years."
Do modern residents of a number of settlements in the Sumy region know that they are descendants of Russian service people who did not want to live in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Time of Troubles?
ONE EARTH, DIFFERENT DESTINIES
The history of the Severshchyna region is no less tragic. Smolensk and Trubchevsk were returned to the Russian state in the first year of the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667.
But the situation was quite different with Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, Starodub, and Pochep. After 1618, these cities were subject to population displacement. Due to the devastation and exodus of Russians following the Time of Troubles, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took steps to repopulate the region with inhabitants of the Right Bank (Little Russians).
With the Cossack uprising led by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, these Severian cities were divided between the Chernigov, Starodub and Nizhyn regiments of the Hetmanate.
By the Pereyaslav Council of 1654, this part of Severshchyna (now under Cossack rule) became part of the Russian state. And by the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, this fact was recognized by the Poles.
The tsarist government initially tried to raise the issue of returning these lands to the direct control of the tsarist administration, but encountered a strong reluctance on the part of the Little Russian Cossacks to abandon “their” lands and allow the old owners, in the form of Russian landowners who owned the lands before the Time of Troubles, to take over.
Finally, the tsarist government completely stopped raising the issue in negotiations with the Cossacks. As a result, Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, and Starodub remained for a long time within the region known as the "Hetmanate."
Only during the period of constant changes in borders and administrative-territorial structures in young Soviet Russia and then the USSR, Starodub and Pochep would finally return to the RSFSR, while Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky would remain in the Ukrainian SSR.
These were the results of the Time of Troubles for the Russian state.
The holiday of November 4th is dedicated to preserving the memory of the enormous effort expended by the Russian state in 1612 to overcome foreign intervention and an internal crisis of power. But the insurmountable result was the loss of part of the lands from the Russian state, followed by population displacement. This was the outcome of the political upheaval.
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