The Bykasov Family in the Context of Political Investigation (Siberia, Late 16th Century)

Abstract

This study of “words and deeds” as a type of crime began over a hundred years ago. This well-known formula proceeded from the public obligation of the population to protect the sovereign and their family from any evil intentions. This phenomenon began to develop on Russian soil as early as the mid-fifteenth century and is present in a wide range of documents: secured or affirmed deeds; the sovereign’s grants to Siberian foreigners; letters of commendation with a golden seal, issued to those who lived in the recently annexed territories with a predominantly non-Orthodox population, as well as territorial entities that were formally part of the Muscovite State; state oaths. It is believed that the cases of the sovereign’s “words and deeds” have been preserved since the seventeenth century, their mentions known since earlier times. However, the lists found in the materials of the Siberian Prikaz from the mandate letters of 1599 to the Tobolsk voivode stolnik S. F. Saburov about the investigation of the accusation of “words and deeds” of the Tobolsk children of the boyars Bykasov suggests that such materials from the sixteenth century are yet to be studied. However, to detect them, it is necessary to significantly expand the range of documents under consideration and not be limited, as before, only to the materials of the Razryad Prikaz. The materials analysed are the remains of the most ancient case identified on charges of sovereign’s “words and deeds”. The Bykasov family mentioned in it, served as the sovereign’s grooms in the tsar’s stables at least from the early sixteenth century. Andrei Timofeevich Bykasov was involved in the case of the Shuysky princes in 1586, for which all his relatives were exiled to Siberian cities. At the end of the Time of Troubles, A. T. Bykasov became a stable officer of the Stable Prikaz, which compensated him and his brothers for the trials that they had had to go through.