“Servants of the Tsar”: The Polish-Lithuanian subject Szymon Romejkow and the boyar’s son Vasiliy Shalygin, the informers of Moscow before the Smolensk War (1632–1634)

Abstract

In 1632, the ceasefire expired, signed between the Moscow State and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in December 1618. Under the terms of this peace agreement, Moscow ceded to the Polish side a number of western territories, including Smolensk, Nevel, Sebezh, as well as the cities of Severia (Trubchevsk, Starodub, Chernihiv, Pochep, Novgorod- Seversky). It should be noted that in the Russian capital, preparations for the upcoming war began already in the late 1620s. In particular, this concerned the collection of data on events in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through scouts, spies and informants, some of whom acted on the territory of Severia, or rather, on the Russian-Polish borderland. The documentation of the Razryadny Prikaz of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Moscow) contains a small set of documents on the activities of two informants from Lithuania: Szymon Romejkow, a nobleman of the country, and the Russian Vasily Shalygin, a son of a boyar. The details of their recruitment to the Russian service are unknown, however, already since 1629 these people had an active correspondence with the Bryansk voivodes, reporting everything that was happening in Poland. Their information turned out to be the most relevant in 1632, when the period of “Interrex” began in the Commonwealth. It was then in Moscow that they considered it necessary to take revenge and to declare war to their neighbour ahead of schedule.