Vladimir Vaskov
In historical works, with the exception of the local history essay by U.A. Snytko “Krasnogorye My Native Land,” the history of Krasnaya Gora, or rather Papova Gora (the name of this settlement until October 31, 1922), and Papovagorskaya Volost is mentioned only fragmentarily, and the period of the volost’s existence in the 17th century within the Starodubsky District of the Smolensk Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is practically not illuminated at all. Therefore, this small article must, at least partially, fill this gap.
Krasnaya Gora is an urban-type settlement, the administrative center of the Krasnogorsky District and Krasnogorsky Urban Settlement of the Bryansk Oblast of the Russian Federation. It is located on the Besyad River, 202 km west of Bryansk, and 15 km from the border with the Gomel Oblast of Belarus. The population is 5.8 thousand residents (2012).
Papova Gora is first mentioned around 1387 in the “List of Russian Cities, Distant and Close” as part of the Mstislavl Principality, although settlements in the area of the modern settlement existed at least since the Bronze Age.
Since 1359, the Mstislavl Principality, including Papova Gora with the volost, was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Mstislavl Principality was ruled from 1392 to 1431 by Prince Semyon-Lingven Alherdovich, and then by his son Yuri Lingvenevich (who ruled in 1431-1441 and 1446-1460) and his grandson Ivan Yurievich Mstislavsky (who ruled in 1460-1490) – the so-called dynasty of Lingvenevichs.
The Mstislavl Principality was divided into the Mstislavl and Mglin Districts. Papova Gora was a town in the Mstislavl District.
After the death of Ivan Yurievich, the principality was abolished. Through the marriage of Ivan Yurievich’s daughter Ulyana to Prince Mikhail Zaslavsky, the principality was restored in 1499 in a smaller size and passed to him. However, it no longer included Papova Gora and some other places that passed to the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
In 1500, the second war between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Moscow State began. Around August-September 1500, the Starodub prince Semyon Ivanovich Mozhaysky, who in 1499 had transferred from Lithuanian vassalage to Moscow along with his lands, together with the Russian army that entered the borders of Severshchina, captured Papova Gora. Thus, Papovagorskaya Volost entered the composition of the Starodub Principality.
Vladimir Vaskov
On August 28, 1501, in Grodno, Grand Duke of Lithuania Alexander granted his wife Elena a number of settlements, including the castle of Papova Gora [Edward Rudzki. Polskie królowe, Vol. 1. Institute of Press and Publishing “Novum,” 1990. p.165]. It is possible that Grand Duke Alexander hoped that after Papova Gora became the property of Princess Elena, who was the daughter of Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III, the Starodub prince would return Papova Gora to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, this did not happen. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania lost the war against the Moscow State from 1500 to 1503 and was forced to cede vast territories to Moscow, including Papova Gora with the volost.
While Papova Gora was previously within the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it now found itself on the very border of Lithuania and the Moscow State. This negatively affected the life of the volost, which now began to suffer frequent attacks.
As early as 1503, the Starodub prince Semyon Mozhaysky complained to Moscow Prince Ivan III that during Holy Week, as well as on the days of St. George and St. Nicholas, Mstislavtsy, Krychaucy, Chechersk, and Luchichane attacked Papova Gora and Starodub villages from the side of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, robbing and beating the subjects of the Starodub prince [Acts of Western Russia. Vol. I, pp. 309, 310.]. Ivan III demanded from Grand Duke of Lithuania Alexander (who also became King of Poland) that he compensate the losses to the people of the Starodub prince and punish those who robbed them, so that “evil would not be done” [Ibid. p. 310.].
After the death of Prince Semyon Ivanovich Mozhaysky in 1505, the Starodub Principality, along with Papova Gora, passed to his son Vasily Semyonovich, nicknamed Tulup. However, he ruled for a short time. After his death in 1518, the Starodub Principality passed to Moscow Grand Duke Vasily III and was abolished.
Border conflicts in this area began to occur almost continuously, which also affected Papovagorskaya Volost. Thus, the Moscow envoy to Lithuania F. Afanasyev complained in 1529 that royal people near Starodub were encroaching on Papova Gora and other volosts and villages. But border skirmishes occurred in the following years as well.
From 1534 to 1537, a war took place in these lands between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Moscow State, known as the Starodub War. Whether Papova Gora suffered greatly in this war is unknown, but Starodub was completely burned by the Lithuanian-Polish army in August 1535.
Evidently, since that time, during wedding ceremonies in Starodubshchina, “Lithuanians” began to be called the matchmakers who came to take the bride from her parents. Thus, M. Kosich in his book “Lithuanians-Belarusians of the Chernigov Province, Their Life and Songs” provides a text of a wedding song recorded in 1891: “Lithuania has come, We will have a battle, We will be warriors, We will not give away the bride.”
In the late 1530s, Papovagorskaya Volost formed the Papovagorsk District (povet).
At the end of 1618, Severshchina (including Papova Gora) according to the Deulinsky Truce passed to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This period of the history of Papovagorskaya Volost is very superficially covered in the works of historians (and so few), so it is necessary to dwell on it in more detail.
On April 13, 1619, Prince Vladislav issued a universal decree, according to which “the settlement of Papova Gora with the volost” comes under his jurisdiction.
On April 15, 1619, King Sigismund III, by his universal decree, handed over all the castles captured from Moscow, including Papova Gora, to the jurisdiction of Prince Vladislav.
In 1620, a garrison appeared in Papova Gora, and a church was built.
In 1621, the Smolensk Sejm sent the first deputies to the Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Smolensk Voivodeship is an administrative-territorial unit in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and after the Union of Lublin in 1569 – in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It existed with interruptions from 1508 to 1514 and from 1613 to 1667. The area is about 53 thousand square kilometers. The center of the voivodeship was in the city of Smolensk. To the north and east, the voivodeship bordered the Russian State, to the south – with the Seversk land (from 1635 – the Chernigov Voivodeship of Poland) and the Mstislavl Voivodeship, to the west – with the Vitebsk Voivodeship.
In 1625, the Starodubsky District of the Smolensk Voivodeship was established, which included the former Papovagorsk District.
In 1626, the first district sejm of the nobility took place in Starodub.
As a model for the administration of the Smolensk Voivodeship and the neighboring Chernigov region, the model of governance of Livonia was taken, which had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1561, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The basis of the internal organization of Livonia was the feudal system.
Krasnogorsky District of Bryansk Oblast
Feudal estates were granted by the king, usually for military service merits. The holding of such an estate was associated with a number of restrictions. The king retained the status of the supreme owner of feudal holdings. The right to dispose of the land (to lease, sell, exchange) could be exercised by the feudal lords only with the king’s consent. The privileges for feudal holdings left the king with a monopoly on the industrial use of forest resources and minerals, and the production of saltpeter. Feudal lords had the right to cut trees in the forests for the construction of houses and their heating, to hunt, to organize the collection of mushrooms, berries, etc. The king, as the supreme owner of feudal holdings, had the right to confiscate these holdings in case of treason, condemnation to infamy, disposal of lands without his permission, or failure to fulfill military duty.
The allocation of feudal holdings in Severshchina was first carried out by royal commissioners in the second half of 1620.
In 1634, Vladislav, who became King Vladislav IV in 1632, granted a group of his soldiers feudal estates in Papovagorskaya Volost.
On May 20, in the camp in Syamlyov, between Vyazma and Dorogobuzh, 100 voloks of land for military merits were granted to Martin Piesherzewski [Most likely, the surname is distorted, as it is not found in archival documents anymore.].
On June 2, on the eve of the signing of the Polyanov Peace Agreement between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moscow Tsardom, for military merits, Lieutenant Stefan Charnetsky received 200 voloks of land [Acts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Archive of the so-called Bernardine in Lviv, Vol. X, Main stock in the bookstore Seyfartha and Czajkowskiego, 1884, p. 231.]. Along with him, 100 voloks of land were granted to Jan Semashko, Adam Belski, Adam Rudnitsky, and Wojciech Krupski [Ibid. p. 232.]. These grants were likely explained by the fact that throughout 1634 the army experienced a significant shortage of financial resources and had no money to pay the soldiers. Therefore, Vladislav decided to pay off certain deserving soldiers with land grants.
On October 6 of the same year, King Vladislav, being in Lviv, granted Andrei Skuzhevsky one volok of arable land in Papova Gora [Ibid. p. 234.]. And three weeks later – on October 25, Vladislav IV granted Skuzhevsky another 80 voloks of land in Papovagorskaya Volost [Ibid. p. 237.].
Around 1635, the lands in Papovagorskaya Volost were granted to the Orthodox Bishop of Mstislavl, Orsha, and Mogilev.
On October 20, 1639, in Warsaw, Vladislav allowed the nobleman Troyanovsky to transfer the rights to 100 voloks in Papovagorskaya Volost in favor of Eliyash Akhramovsky [Ibid. p. 247.].
The most famous of the aforementioned owners of Papovagorsk estates was undoubtedly Lieutenant Stefan Charnetsky, who later became the Crown Field Hetman and a national hero of Poland, whose name is mentioned in the Polish national anthem.
In addition to his 200 voloks, Stefan Charnetsky acquired another 300 voloks from Krzysztof Gembitsky, who also had an estate in Papovagorskaya Volost. As a result, Charnetsky owned a rather large estate of 500 voloks and entered the circle of wealthy individuals. He owned the village of Kuznyatsy (the modern village of Antonovka in the Krasnogorsky District), the tract of Vyzhniye Borki, and lands near the Panebyl River (the right tributary of the Kharmynka River).
Polish historian Zdzisław Spieralski writes that shortly after this, possibly in the same 1634 or in the following years of 1635-1636, Stefan Charnetsky exchanged estates with his elder brother Stanislav. Stanislav married Barbara Lukavskaya, resigned from military service, and moved to the Starodubsky District, where he became the Starodub sword-bearer. And Stefan received the family estate located in southern Poland, although he had to pay for this to his remaining relatives. [Zdzislaw Spieralski. Stefan Czarniecki, 1604-1665. Publishing House of the Ministry of National Defense, 1974. p. 35, 44.]
However, historical sources say that Stefan Charnetsky continued to own Kuznyatsy and 150 voloks of land, because on June 18, 1642, in Warsaw, Vladislav IV signed a permit for Stefan Charnetsky to transfer the village of Kuznyatsy on the Brześć River (Brześć). It is evident that this refers to the Besyad River. The king allowed Stefan Charnetsky “to renounce his feudal perpetual right to a certain royal property in the Starodub District, which is located in the tract of Papova Gora, namely the village called Kuznyatsy (Kuźniec) with one and a half hundred voloks and on half of the old Kuznyatsy wasteland on the Brześć River (Besyad – V.V.) with the Vyzhniye Borki tract and the Panebyl stream, and to transfer and convey it to Matvey Vorbek-Letov [Matvey Vorbek-Letov – royal chamber doctor, Lutheran. He was a treasury nobleman. The privilege for treasury nobility and yurgelt was issued on February 12, 1636, in Elbląg. This position was held by M. Vorbek-Letov until January 9, 1647, when the king approved the consensus for the transfer of rights to the estate from M. V. Letov to his son Krzysztof Vorbek-Letov, royal secretary.], his wife and children and male descendants, so that they could receive income” [Maciej Vorbek-Lettow. Treasury of memory; memoirs of the doctor of King Władysław IV. Ed.: Ewa Galos and Franciszek Mincer under the scientific editorship of Władysław Czapliński. Wrocław, National Ossoliński Institute, 1968. p. 155, 156.].
On June 28, 1642, Charnetsky transferred his estate to Vorbek-Letov.
On March 12, 1643, Stefan Charnetsky issued a cession letter (a letter of transfer of rights to his estate) to Matvey Vorbek-Letov for “the village of Kuznyatsy with one and a half hundred voloks and on half of the old Kuznyatsy wasteland on the Brześć River with the Vyzhniye Borki tract along the Panebyl stream, as the old Kuznyatsy border goes, with groves, forests, pastures, meadows, with beech trees, with honey tribute, surroundings, and others.”
One of those who affixed his seal to this document and signed it (as a witness) was the Starodub scribe Zbignev Stravinsky. King Vladislav signed this document on March 23, 1643.
Krasnaya Gora (Papova Gora)
Earlier, on June 24, 1634, in Vilnius, King Vladislav IV granted Matvey Vorbek-Letov a privilege for feudal ownership of the villages of Velykaye and Maloye Udzebna:
“To Matvey Vorbek-Letov, his wife and children and male descendants born in lawful marriage, the king grants a certain royal property (good) in the Smolensk Voivodeship, which lies in the Starodub Starostwo, namely in Papova Gora, sized at 300 voloks, called Velykaye and Maloye Udzebna, which lie within one border (constitute an indivisible estate). With all villages, wastelands, arable and non-arable lands, with settled and unsettled subjects, with their obligations, forests, groves, fields, meadows, with beech trees, with honey tribute, rivers, streams, lakes, with ponds, fishing and hunting, with beaver hunts and others.”
According to this permission, Vorbek-Letov was prohibited from producing saltpeter and other forest goods without the personal permission of the king. The owner of the estate had to do everything necessary to protect the castle.
On December 5, 1639, in Warsaw, Mstislavl Voivode Nikolai Abramovich renounced in favor of Matvey Vorbek-Letov his village of Lataki with 400 voloks of land in the Starodubsky District, which he owned based on feudal perpetual right. The document was signed by King Vladislav IV and the referendary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Marchian Tryzna.
On June 8, 1641, in Warsaw, King Vladislav IV granted Matvey Vorbek-Letov, under the right of perpetual feudal tenure, the wastelands of Mshichna and Laurynovskaya with the Laurynov Forest. This document annexed the aforementioned territories to the villages of Udzebna, which were already in the feudal ownership of Vorbek-Letov. The document was signed by King Vladislav and the referendary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Kazimir Pac.
On December 30, 1643, in Vilnius, King Vladislav IV again allowed Nikolai Abramovich and his wife Elizaveta from Harnasta to transfer the feudal rights to the village of Lataki with the Ragozitskaya Sloboda and the village of Ladna to Matvey Vorbek-Letov. The document was signed by Vladislav, as well as the referendary and scribe of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Franciszek Isaykovski.
On January 11, 1644, in Vilnius, a document was drawn up in which the husband and wife Abramovichs transferred the feudal rights to the villages of Lataki and Ladna to Matvey Vorbek-Letov. The document accurately described the location of these estates. Vorbek-Letov received the villages on the rights that were granted in the documents from June 24, 1634, and from March 23, 1643. The document was signed by Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Albrecht Stanisław Radziwiłł and the king’s secretary Jan Daugialo Zavisza.
On December 16, 1645, in Warsaw, the king, in exchange for the construction of bridges, maintenance of roads, and ensuring safety for those passing through, granted Vorbek-Letov the right to collect tolls on the rivers Lary, Paluzha, Prosnye, and Zubrycha. The document outlined who and how much should pay for travel on the roads and bridges across the aforementioned rivers. Clergy, nobility, horsemen, and foot soldiers were exempt from the toll. The document was signed by Vladislav IV and the referendary and scribe Stanisław Narushevich.
As a result of these royal grants, royal doctor Vorbek-Letov received “in the tract of Papova Gora” about 2,000 voloks and became the largest feudal lord of Papovagorskaya Volost. He owned the villages of Velykaye and Maloye Udzebna, Kuznyatsy, Smelch, Lataki, Mshichna. He also owned forests, buildings, and the Laurynov Forest.
The second significant owner in the volost was the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, as at the end of 1644, Orthodox Belarusian (Mogilev) Bishop Garbatsky exchanged Papova Gora with surrounding lands for the villages of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Barsuki, Pechersk, Tarasavichy, and Tsvirkovo, which were located in the Orsha District near Mogilev.
The mid-17th century is known as the “Bloody Deluge,” which richly soaked our land with blood and can only be compared in brutality and atrocities to the Civil and World War II. The “Deluge” refers to the period from 1648 to 1667, when the Khmelnytsky Uprising began, followed by the war of the Moscow State with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Even now, it is difficult to judge who was right and who was not, but the outcome was terrible: after twenty years of military actions, our lands – the Lowland (Eastern Gomel region) and Severshchina, became depopulated. No more than a third of the already sparse pre-war population remained alive.
In 1648, Khmelnytsky’s Cossacks captured Starodub, Papova Gora, and lands up to the Sog. Matvey Vorbek-Letov had established buildings in Lataki two years before this (before 1648), where potash was produced [Potash was used in glass, soap, tobacco, pharmaceutical, confectionery production, for fuel production, dyes, bleaching fabrics, washing wool, etc. The production of potash, which is made from ash, nearly led to mass deforestation. The problem was solved by French chemist-technologist Leblanc in 1789, who invented soda.].
All the produced potash was seized by the insurgents.
In 1649, control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania over Starodubshchina was restored.
But in 1651, the Cossacks again occupied Starodubshchina, and all Vorbek-Letov’s estates were again seized by the Cossacks.
Around 1660, Matvey Vorbek-Letov ceded the rights to his Papovagorsk estates to his sons Krzysztof, Zygmunt, and Alexander. The Warsaw Sejm of 1662 granted them these estates in inheritance for military merits.
However, as is known, the territory of the Starodubsky District of the Smolensk Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania found itself in the composition of Little Russia, which at that time was unofficially called Hetmanate – a Cossack state created by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, so this grant was rather symbolic, intended for the future recapture of the territory of Starodubshchina.
In 1667, a truce was signed between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moscow State, which finally ended the war.
Of Vorbek-Letov’s holdings, only Lataki remained under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but even they had to be ceded to the Hetmanate in 1686, when the “Eternal Peace” was signed, which legally cemented the seizure of Severshchina by the Moscow State.
The Hetmanate, which became a protectorate of the Moscow State, was administratively divided into regiments. In 1654, Starodubshchina entered the composition of the Nizhyn regiment as an autonomous territory, headed by a commissioned colonel.
v. Ivanovka, Krasnogorsky District of Bryansk Oblast
Coming to power in 1663, Hetman Ivan Brukhovecky carried out an administrative reform aimed at weakening the vast Nizhyn regiment, where supporters of his political opponent, Nizhyn Colonel Vasily Zolotarenko, predominated. Brukhovecky separated a separate administrative unit from the Nizhyn regiment – the Starodubsky regiment.
Within the Starodubsky regiment, which was part of the Nizhyn regiment, there existed the Papagorsk infantry hundred. However, it soon ceased to exist, as the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra gradually took over most of the villages and settlements that were part of the Papagorsk infantry and Babovitsk hundred. The Lavra formed two volosts from them with the same names.
In Lyshchitsy, Babovichi, and Papova Gora, there were lavra courtyards – complexes of economic buildings with churches, where monks lived who managed these volosts.
One of the inventories of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra describes the courtyard in Papova Gora as follows: “In that village by the Beseda River, there is a monastery courtyard with a garden, surrounded by oak fields. In one courtyard, there are two light rooms with six closets, log-built, covered with shingles, stoves with green tiles. With the courtyard, there is a light room, with a porch and three closets: an icehouse, a granary, a cellar, a bakery. In the light room, there is a stove made of white tiles, behind the bakery is a granary, a barn, a hut, next to the fence is a tower, log-built, with a loft and a tank, and on top of the loft is a bell tower; next to the tower inside the courtyard is a church, a barn with three storages, four granaries, a log-built hut with two granaries, a stable, and next to it a hut. Near this courtyard, there is a garden with a barn, surrounded by a fence; in that courtyard, there are two barns, log-built with two sheepfolds. At that courtyard near the gates, there is a barn with two granaries.”
Other villages and settlements of the Papagorsk and Babovitsk hundreds, which were not included in the list of lavra volosts and a significant part of the villages of the Drokausky hundred, were taken over by the Starodub magistrate, which created from them the Paiputska or Poleska Volost of the Polkovaya hundred. But this is already the topic of another article.
Edward Rudzki. Polskie królowe, Vol. 1. Institute of Press and Publishing “Novum,” 1990. p.165
Acts of Western Russia. Vol. I, pp. 309, 310.
Ibid. p. 310.
Most likely, the surname is distorted, as it is not found in archival documents anymore.
Akta grodzkie i ziemskie z czasów Rzeczypospolitej polskiej z Archiwum tak zwanego bernardyńskiego we Lwowie, Vol. X, Main stock in the bookstore Seyfartha and Czajkowskiego, 1884, p. 231.
Ibid. p. 232.
Ibid. p. 234.
Ibid. p. 237.
Ibid. p. 247.
Zdzislaw Spieralski. Stefan Czarniecki, 1604-1665. Publishing House of the Ministry of National Defense, 1974. p. 35, 44.
Matvey Vorbek-Letov – royal chamber doctor, Lutheran. He was a treasury nobleman. The privilege for treasury nobility and yurgelt was issued on February 12, 1636, in Elbląg. This position was held by M. Vorbek-Letov until January 9, 1647, when the king approved the consensus for the transfer of rights to the estate from M. V. Letov to his son Krzysztof Vorbek-Letov, royal secretary.
Maciej Vorbek-Lettow. Treasury of memory; memoirs of the doctor of King Władysław IV. Ed.: Ewa Galos and Franciszek Mincer under the scientific editorship of Władysław Czapliński. Wrocław, National Ossoliński Institute, 1968. p. 155, 156.
Potash was used in glass, soap, tobacco, pharmaceutical, confectionery production, for fuel production, dyes, bleaching fabrics, washing wool, etc. The production of potash, which is made from ash, nearly led to mass deforestation. The problem was solved by French chemist-technologist Leblanc in 1789, who invented soda.