Станаўленне мсціслаўскага рубяжа ВКЛ у XVI-XVIII стст

ENThe article is devoted to the history of the formation of the state border of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Russian Empire along the territory of the Mstislavl province during the 16th-18th centuries. The Mstislav frontier consisted of five sections: the Mstislavl-Smolensk, Mstislavl-Roslav, Krichev-Roslavl, Krichev-Bryansk and Krichev-Starodub borders. The first to begin to form, after the war in 1500-3, were the Krichev-Starodub and Krichev-Bryansk borders, but the process of their formation continued for a long time. As a result of the war in 1512-22 the Mstislavl-Smolensk, Mstislavl-Roslavl and Krichev-Roslavl borders were formed, which practically without any changes existed up until the first partition of Poland. The most complicated was the formation of the boundary adjacent to the Krichev estate in the Mstislavl province. The Krichev-Starodub border was finally formed after the war in 1534-7, whereas the process of forming the Krichev-Bryansk boarder, which began after the war in 1500-3, in fact did not end until after the border demarcation in 1637. Although at the end of the war in 1654-67 the border of the Mstislavl province remained officially unchanged, in fact in the early 1680s there appeared problems because of the lands located on the left bank of the Sozh, which were claimed by the Cossacks. As a result of diplomatic efforts – the Truce of Andrusovo of 1667, the Eternal Peace of 1686 – Poland managed to defend these lands and the Mstislavl border remained in its territory before the first partition, although slight changes were recorded along the whole border in the mid-18th century.