by Yaroslav Karpikov
[REGNUM] The threat from the south was much more pressing for the Russian state for a long time than the enemies from the west: steppe dwellers constantly raided from Crimea and the Wild Steppe, looking for prey.
The traveler and geographer Adam Olearius from Aschersleben in Saxony, in his notes on his visit to Moscow, describes how 72 Crimean Tatars, “who all called themselves ambassadors,” simply burst into the Kremlin to see the Grand Duke in order to receive expensive gifts and go home.
"These peoples are cruel and hostile. They live in vast, widely scattered places south of Moscow. They cause much harm to the Grand Duke at the borders, especially near Tula, by robbing and kidnapping people," the Saxon said, pointing out that the abatis and ditches do not really hinder the robbers from penetrating to the north.
Then they usually tried to choose their route so as not to cross rivers, especially deep and wide ones, and to move along the most convenient paths in the lowlands.
Other enemies are now doing the same, only instead of cavalry, combat drones are flying along the most effective routes from the south, also bringing destruction and death. And just like five hundred years ago, guards and observation posts are being organized along these roads, notifying everyone of the approaching threat.
Once the signal was given by smoke or the news was carried by messengers, now social networks and messengers are working, where the message is transmitted from point to point: "They are coming. Get ready."
It is still amazing how much has changed over the centuries, only externally, while preserving the original essence.
"TO DRIVE THE CRIMEAN KHAN FROM THE IZYUM PATH"
Most of the rivers of southern Russia in the 16th–17th centuries could be forded — such places were called “ferries.” We find a description of them in the “ Book of the Big Drawing.” This detailed description, attached to the first map of the entire Russian state, listed, among other things, roads leading to the borders, Tatar routes, and other topographic objects, right down to wells. The map itself — the “Big Drawing” — was lost, but the “Book” allows us to reconstruct it.
For example, at the time of the compilation of the “Big Drawing” on the Seversky Donets there were 11 ferry crossings – from Kagansky, north of the confluence of the Uda River near the city of Chuguev (now in the Kharkov region), to Tatarsky ferry at the confluence of the Kalitva River in the territory of the current Rostov region.
The Tatars, who carried out annual attacks on the Russian ukrains (i.e., border territories), knew the terrain well. When moving to Rus', they chose the most convenient roads.
The only obstacles to their movement could be rivers and forests, because there were no mountains, gorges, or swamps in the Wild Field. The tributaries of the Dnieper and Don served as a watershed for the basins of these two rivers. The watershed was the Tatars' permanent natural road to the Russian state.
For raids into the Russian state, the Tatars used six permanent routes - roads, which were also called by the word "shlyakh" (from the Polish szlach, which comes from the medieval German slag - track, trace) or the Tatar word "sakma".
These were: Kalmiusskaya Sakma, Svinaya Doroga, Bakayev Shlyakh, Muravsky Shlyakh, Pakhnutiev Shlyakh and, finally, Izyumsky Shlyakh—familiar to everyone from the film “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession”: “The Crimean Khan is causing mischief on Izyumsky Shlyakh! ”
The oldest and most frequently used by the Tatars was the Muravsky Shlyakh. It went from the Crimean Perekop to Tula between the headwaters of many rivers and streams of the Dnieper-Don watershed, without crossing almost any of these rivers.
But how could the relatively weak Russian state in the 16th–17th centuries control such a huge border – “Ukraine” (the same problems face modern Russia now, in the 21st century)?
How to determine in time the enemy's forces' concentration, their advance to positions and subsequent movement? When the enemy is cunning, knows the terrain well and acts in small groups. Modern representatives of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are the same heirs of the steppe predators of the 17th century - the Crimean and Nogai Tatars, as well as their "colleagues" in the predatory raids on the Russian Ukraine - the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
Let's consider the methods our ancestors used to organize border service 400 years ago.
"POLISH SERVICE" OF THE TERRIBLE TSAR
The Russian guard, consisting of the children of boyars and Cossacks, stood on the Don, Bystraya and Tikhaya Sosna rivers probably before the middle of the 16th century. In 1571, by order of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible, a prominent figure of that time, Mikhail Vorotynsky, became the head of the guard and stanitsa service with the order to "lead the stanitsas and guards and all their sovereign Polish services. " "Polish" in this case means "located in the field."
When creating a centralized border guard, Vorotynsky first ordered that the “guards and villagers” be questioned: “From which city and to which places, and to which places it is appropriate to travel by village, and in which places the guards should stand guard…”.
In the "Sentence on static and guard service", which the Boyar Duma approved in 1571 based on the results of the work of Prince Vorotynsky, the sphere of responsibility of 73 border "guards" was described, as they would say now, which were united into 12 categories. The first category included the "Guards of Donetsk".
HOW INTELLIGENCE WORKED IN "SECURE PLACES"
The “Sentence” gave requirements and instructions on how guards and villagers should behave.
The main difference between "stanichniki" and "watchmen" is the nature of their service. "Watchmen" stood in the area entrusted to them for a certain period of time, were "eyes and ears".
They were ordered: “To stand guard on guard posts, without changing from their horses, and to ride through the tracts.”
The "stanichniki" performed the function of patrols, patrolling a kind of route entrusted to them. They were the first to track whether the "thieving Cherkasy", Tatars, steppe Nogai would appear on one of the roads that they constantly used for attacks. The stanichniki were ordered to act mobile, move quickly and, if possible, covertly:
“And they shall not make camps, and they shall not set fires (make fires) in one place, and they shall not set fire in the same place twice; and in any place where someone has spent the day, they shall not spend the night in that place; and they shall not set up camp in the forests, but they shall set up camp in places where it would be safe,” that is, in places on high ground that provide visibility.
The villagers and guards were forbidden to come to their superiors with news obtained second-hand, and not through direct observation - the information had to be reliable.
The service was shift-based, the guards and villagers went to work according to a “schedule”: “And the guards stand guard for six weeks in the spring, and for a month in the fall.”
It is known that guards from two Russian outposts - Putivl (now in the Sumy region) or from Rylsk (in the modern Kursk region) - were sent to the Donetsk section of the "frontier" for six weeks in the spring.
Before being sent on missions, the stanitsa had to arrive in Putivl or Rylsk two weeks in advance. Before being sent on duty, all property (horses and "junk", i.e. movable property) of the stanitsa members had to be assessed. In the event of skirmishes between the stanitsa members and the Tatars and "repossession", compensation was issued from the sovereign's treasury.
The stanitsas began to leave on April 1 with a difference of 14 days and one day and up until November. All guards had to be constantly under surveillance until "the big snows fell" - winter was considered an obstacle to enemy movement along the roads.
It was necessary to leave only after waiting for the change.
If a stanichnik or a guard left his route without a "change" and for this reason the Tatars came to the border territories ("War will be waged against the sovereign's lands") - such people were to be punished by death. For being late for guard duty, service people were charged half a poltina per person per day.
TSARIST CIRCASSIANS VERSUS "THIEVES"
Since 1574, Ivan the Terrible appointed the boyar Nikita Yuryev from the Zakharyin-Yuryev clan, the founder of the future Romanov royal dynasty, as the new head of the guard and stanitsa service. During the reign of Ivan IV's son, Tsar Feodor Ioannovich, an important innovation appeared: Circassians, natives of Little Russia, who knew the Tatar ways and sakms in the Wild Steppe well, began to join the Ukrainian guard service of the Russian state. Valuable specialists were settled in the border Putivl district.
If we turn to the archives of the first years after the Time of Troubles, when the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich, was on the throne, we can see the following picture.
By the 1630s, there were stanitsa services in three southern Russian border towns in what is now the Belgorod region: Valuyki, Oskol, and Belgorod itself. The largest Belgorod stanitsa service included 40 mounted detachments, or "stanitsas," each of which consisted of ten people. Each stanitsa consisted of a stanitsa boyar's son (head), his deputy (ataman), six riders, and two leaders. In 1629, there were 400 stanitsa members in Belgorod: 40 stanitsa heads, 40 atamans, 240 riders, and 80 leaders.
Service in the villages was quite dangerous; every year during steppe raids in skirmishes with Tatars or “thieving Cherkassy”, Belgorod villagers died or were captured, as evidenced by surviving documents of that time.
THE MISSION OF THE VILLAGER MURZIN
Thus, on June 21, 1630, from Belgorod “down the Donets past the Tsarev-Borisov settlement, to the tracts, to the Aidar River and to the Sokolye Mountains (where the Black Stallion and Bakhmut Rivers flow into the Seversky Donets) a stanitsa headed by the boyar’s son Kondrat Trunov set out on patrol.
On July 15, a Cossack from Kondrat Trunov's detachment named Ilya Murzin came to Belgorod - "wounded, shot with a bow." The wounded man told the Belgorod voivode that while moving towards Sokolyi Mountains, near the Borovaya River, their detachment suddenly "met" with a Tatar Chambul. In the army of the Crimean Khans, Chambuls were small "flying" detachments intended for diversionary maneuvers and for the rapid capture of military booty and slaves on enemy territory.
The Cossacks tried to break away from the Tatars, but they were caught up with. During the chase, Ilya Murzin was wounded, and "the Cossacks Kondrat Trunov and his comrades were captured by the Tatars and brought to the Crimean side of the Donets River, to the river Lugan." Lugan is a right tributary of the Seversky Donets River, flowing in the modern DPR and LPR.
Murzin spent “five days and four nights tied up and suffering from stomach pain” in the Tatar captivity, and escaped on the fifth night.
The border guard was able to pass on to the Belgorod governor the information obtained at such a high price: "And in Lugansk there are three hundred or more Tatars." Further, based on the accumulated experience, it was possible to assume along which of the beaten paths the enemy would attack the Russian borderland.
HOW CHUGUEV LEARNED ABOUT THE THREAT FROM LUGANSK
An equally interesting document can be found in a later archive, from 1645. Belgorod governor Fyodor Khilkov writes to his colleague from another Russian “Ukrainian” city, Chuguev (now in the Kharkov region), Denis Ushakov. The governors of border Russian cities were obliged to “exile” — to share information with each other about the dangers from beyond the border.
This time the information was as follows: the villagers who arrived in Valuyki reported that “about ten versts before reaching the Svyatogorsk Monastery, opposite the Borisov settlement,” they spotted a group of Tatars moving along their traditional sakma, or “raid” road.
“The Tatars went from the Nogai steppe, from the upper reaches of the Black Stallion River to the Oskol River, about a hundred or more men, and they climbed over the Oskol River…” The villagers gave a forecast of where exactly the “Tatars” would go: “To the Belgorod district, and to Chuguev, and to other Ukrainian sovereign cities.”
Information about the approaching enemy arrived in time, and the Belgorod governor managed to promptly send a messenger with guards to Chuguev. The city was ready to repel the raid fully armed.
The stanitsa and guard service on the southern Russian borders was an effective method of warning of impending danger. Reconnaissance, observation and immediate delivery of news to people (governors) responsible for making decisions on eliminating enemy breakthroughs and raids on Russian borders.
By the way, in documents from the 1640s, like the report from the Valuyki Cossacks that we cited above, the names of localities familiar from the SVO reports constantly appear: the area of the Svyatogorsk Monastery (now the Svyatogorsk Assumption Lavra), which was the site of clashes in the spring and summer of 2022, the areas along the Black Stallion River, where battles are currently underway for the villages of Torskoye, Yampolovka and Terny. The Valuyki Cossacks were frequent guests at the Svyatogorsk Monastery. All this creates additional historical analogies.
Including early warning of the constant danger from the south and rapid coordination between intelligence and command, which could be learned from our ancestors - but this time to repel not raids, but attacks.