by Denis Davydov and Mikhail Kucherov
[REGNUM] February became a truly fateful month in the relations between the Muscovite state and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1667, after many years of war and division of territory, the Truce of Andrusovo was concluded, establishing the border between the states and laying the foundation for the "Eternal Peace".
Negotiations on its terms began almost 20 years later, in 1686, when a large embassy arrived in Moscow, headed by the Polish voivode Krzysztof Grzymultowski and the Lithuanian chancellor Marcian Oginski.
The need not to fight, but to negotiate was dictated by the international situation: aggressive Sweden was pressing from the north, and mighty Turkey was stretching out its hands to Europe in the south. Therefore, the previously unsolvable question was somehow resolved: the ownership of the "God-saved city of Kyiv", the mother of Russian cities, and control over the Zaporizhian Sich.
The truce was concluded for 13 years, which was considered to be a sufficient period to discuss all the important issues.
But already at this stage, thanks to his dexterity and ability to gain the trust of the Poles, the leader of the negotiations, Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin, a man from a family of humble Pskov nobles who became a prominent diplomat of that era, was able to negotiate Kiev for two years.
Although no one wanted to return it later for obvious reasons: the place where Rus was baptized had to belong to Rus. The city had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1362, and after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin in 1569, it fell under the rule of the Polish kings. The emerging alliance opened a window of opportunity for Moscow.
So the private issue of Kyiv was resolved within the framework of the global problem of uniting the efforts of Russia and European powers, which has happened in history more than once or twice.
DIPLOMATIC SUCCESS
In truth, Ordin-Nashchokin was a Polonophile and consistently advocated the conclusion of a Russian-Polish union, for which he was ready to give the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth not only all of Russia’s conquests in Lithuania, but also the Little Russian cities, leaving only Smolensk for Russia.
The far-sighted diplomat, who was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs (that is, head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz) following the negotiations in Andrusovo, considered it more important to conclude an alliance to counter the Turks and Crimean Tatars and to gain access to the Baltic Sea by punishing Sweden, which is what ultimately happened.
However, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich strictly forbade him to squander state lands. “You do not rely on God, but on your great, glorious, variable, fickle mind,” the sovereign wrote, so the chief negotiator patiently overcame obstacles on the way to concluding peace. He persistently convinced his counterparts of the need to make concessions - suffice it to say that 37 ambassadorial congresses, or, in modern language, rounds of negotiations, took place in Andrusovo
Meanwhile, they had before their eyes a living example of Ordin-Nashchokin being right: on the right bank of the Dnieper, Hetman Petro Doroshenko was in full swing, having decided to stake on Turkey. In December 1666, together with the Crimean Tatars, he dashingly defeated the crown army in the Battle of Brailov. Returning to Chigirin, the Hetman began the siege of the Polish garrison of the castle, and in February 1667, just during the negotiations in Andrusovo, he besieged Bila Tserkva.
So the border was drawn along the Dnieper, Kyiv became the Russian "bridgehead", and subsequently the border with Poland ran along the Irpen River, and they agreed to govern the Zaporizhian Sich together. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich returned the north-eastern part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania conquered by Russia - Vitebsk region, Polotsk, and also Livonia - to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And Ordin-Nashchokin won universal honor and respect, expanding the activities of the Ambassadorial Prikaz as never before: for the first time in the history of Russia, he organized international mail, did much to develop duty-free trade with Western neighbors. The diplomat consistently promoted the idea of creating a fleet: on his initiative, the first Russian sailing ship, the Oryol, was built, assembled according to the Western European model, and Ordin's foreign policy strategy would then be picked up by the son of his sovereign, Peter I.
Meanwhile, the Poles themselves were looking for an opportunity to form an alliance with Russia against the Porte: they wanted Moscow to join the coalition of Christian empires. So they gave up on Kyiv – although they did not forget to present a hefty bill for it later.
The northern enemy, who had already launched a large-scale invasion of Poland (and had not allowed the Russians to break through to the Baltic Sea), was not to be touched for now. In the south, the growing appetite for conquest of the Ottoman Empire, which was striving for expansion, was fully felt. So, having finally made peace, Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth concluded an agreement in 1672, according to which the first party was obliged to send Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks and detachments of vassal nomadic peoples to help Poland in the event of an attack by Turkey or the Crimean Khanate.
Soon this happened - the army of Sultan Mehmed IV crossed the Danube and destroyed the fortress city of Kamianets-Podilskyi, brutally killing or taking its inhabitants into slavery. The Poles were terribly frightened and concluded the Buchach Peace Treaty with the Ottoman Empire that same year, giving them Podolia and pledging to pay 22,000 chervonets annually - although four years later the latter condition was cancelled. It somehow immediately became clear that a weakened Poland would no longer be able to give a worthy rebuff, and the Turks clearly had their eye on Left-Bank Ukraine.
NEW VECTOR
In view of the circumstances that had opened up, the Russians decided to act against the Ottomans for the first time. The war lasted a long time - until 1681, when, as a result of the Treaty of Bakhchisarai in Istanbul, Kyiv and the Left Bank were recognized as Russia's and they finally abandoned campaigns in these lands. Which also soon became an argument regarding the belonging of the ancient capital to Rus'.
It is interesting that it was at that time that embassies began to emerge - with the beginning of the war with Turkey, the Muscovite kingdom and Poland sent permanent representatives to each other, who were called residents. Although the effectiveness of their work seemed dubious: for example, representatives of the Lithuanian opposition in Poland accused the resident in Moscow Pavel Svidersky of being unable to reach an agreement, claiming that he supplied the king with "many fables" because of which "strange lampoons" about Russia were spread throughout Europe. So the experiment was considered unsuccessful, and both sides recalled the residents.
Meanwhile, the Turks were developing their success where they had failed: in 1684, the Treaty of Vasvar between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire expired, so they decided not to wait. In 1683, a huge army, according to various estimates, up to 300 thousand people, entered Austria, immediately rushing to Vienna and laying siege to it. The combined efforts of the troops of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria and Swabia under the general command of the Polish king and Grand Duke of Lithuania Jan III Sobieski managed to fight back.
Incidentally, according to legend, the famous crescent-shaped Viennese croissant appeared from that time. The Orthodox nobleman from Galicia, Yuriy-Franz Kulchitsky, an expert in the Turkish language and customs, who worked as an Austrian diplomatic courier and translator in Istanbul, played an important role in the victory, passing through the enemy camp with messages. For this, he received many favors - and, at his own request, all the coffee found among the Turks.
Kulchitsky promoted the new drink by opening the first coffee shop in Vienna, and the bagels were offered to be eaten to symbolically defeat the enemy. A century and a half later, the French began baking them from puff pastry, and this is how croissants appeared.
However, the Porte did not go anywhere, and Moscow began to be even more actively inclined towards a military alliance, where an additional incentive was precisely the preparation for signing the "Eternal Peace" with Poland. Although intelligence reported that with it, everything was far from simple.
A certain Andrei Kallistratov, a native of the Polish lands, interrogated in the Hetman's chancery, recalled a conversation between King Jan III and a Venetian resident, which he allegedly overheard by chance:
"I trust in God that I will bring Moscow [to] the Turkish war, for that reason great ambassadors have been sent to Moscow. And when the Turkish is enraged at Moscow, I will also strive to establish peace with the Turks, and I will turn the war against the Moscow kingdom. In what way will I be able to conveniently take Zadnepriye and other places, and I will not hold them in any other way, only I will attract them to the Roman Unes, so that they never look back at Moscow, and then everything will be possible to fix."
Nevertheless, negotiations continued, ending on May 6, 1686: the final version of the treaty was signed by Krzysztof Grzymultowski and the head of the Ambassadorial Office, Prince Vasily Golitsyn.
The results of the Andrusovo Truce were finally confirmed. Russia retained all the conquered territories - this was one of the key conditions for entering the war with Turkey. And the border line established by the agreement existed unchanged until the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772.
At the same time, the Poles agreed not to accept back the inhabitants of the territories that had been ceded to Russia, including the Smolensk gentry: after 1654, many Smolensk residents remained in the service of the Russian tsar and converted to Orthodoxy.
Kyiv greeted the news joyfully, and after the Truce of Andrusovo, the local clergy took an active pro-Moscow position: the northern neighbor was the best guarantor that the rights of the Orthodox would be respected. Although the Poles still stood for the city to the last in the negotiations, and the Russians did not get it for free, having paid compensation of 146 thousand rubles, more than 10% of the state budget. Well, Russia finally joined the anti-Turkish league, and already in 1687 and 1689 Vasily Golitsyn made two campaigns against the Crimean Khanate.
The signing of the “Eternal Peace” completed the “unification of a torn people” – this is how the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Innokenty Gizel, called this process, which began with the Pereyaslav Rada.
It took Moscow more than 20 years of diplomatic efforts to secure the “mother of Russian cities,” but the time was well spent.