Starodub regiment

Starodubsky regiment was the most extensive of all ten regiments of Little Russia . Its structure included the okrugs of two ancient centers of the Seversky land - Starodub and Novgorod-Seversky , each of which during the period of feudal fragmentation was the center of an independent principality. After the formation of the Russian and Lithuanian states, the Seversky land located on their borderland took over the claim of both states. The wars between Moscow and Lithuania were fought mainly for the possession of Seversky land.

The one and a half century dependence of the Seversky land on Lithuania did not eradicate the primordially Orthodox faith in its population. When the catholicized Lithuania wanted to catholicize the people of Seversky land, the latter so actively opposed this that Moscow was able to take advantage of this to achieve the secession of Lithuania from Lithuania without any war and annex it to the Russian state.

After its connection with Poland, Lithuania throughout the whole XVI century. made efforts to win back Seversky land. However, all the efforts of the Polish-Lithuanian state remained unsuccessful until the beginning of the 17th century , when the Russian state, exhausted by the Time of Troubles , had to yield to the neighboring claim to Severshchina. In 1618 , according to the Deulin ceasefire , then approved in 1634 by the Polyanovsky Treaty , Seversky land was ceded to Lithuania .

As part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , Starodubschina belonged to the Smolensk Voivodeship , although it was not geographically related to its main part.

Having seized the Starodubsky region, Poland again made an attempt to establish the Catholic faith here, which caused additional discontent of the local population. Therefore, the Cossack army of Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1648 was not difficult to expel the newly-born Polish lords and their minions from here. After several years of difficult armed confrontation with the Commonwealth , the Cossacks were forced to turn to the Russian state with a request to accept the Little Russian Cossacks into its composition.

The administrative structure of Little Russia at that time was very uncertain. After the Zbor agreement , in 1649 , “registers of the entire Zaporizhzhya Army” were compiled, divided into regiments, and on the left side of the Dnieper are shown divided into hundreds of regiments: Pereyaslavsky, Kropivensky, Mirgorodsky, Poltava, Prilutsky, Nezhinsky and Chernigovsky. This division of the Cossack army into regiments, compiled hastily, then formed the basis of the administrative structure of Little Russia, when, together with the expulsion of the Poles, the order of internal control arranged by them collapsed, and the need arose to replace it with a new one. What was needed was a device of any order for the internal management of the whole region, without which the local population could not do. It required a power that would take over the civilian administration of the region. For lack of it, the very colonel who was in charge of the regiment, which included the population of the same area, was at the head of the civil administration of a particular area. Thus, the regiment began to express not only a military , but also a civilian unit, and Little Russia was divided civilly into several districts, which became known as regiments . Each such regiment was divided, in turn, into units which, borrowing their name also from the military division of the regiment, began to be called hundreds . Colonels and centurions united both military and civilian power in their hands, and the latter included, in addition to administrative, the judicial power. In this form of civil administration, Little Russia became part of the Russian state in 1654 ^[1]

In 1654, the Starodubshchina became part of the Nezhinsky regiment as an autonomous territory, which was led by a penal colonel . Having come to power in 1663 , Ivan Bryukhovetsky carried out administrative reform aimed at easing the huge Nezhinsky regiment, which was dominated by supporters of his political opponent, Nezhinsky Colonel Vasily Zolotarenko . Among other things, he was allocated a separate administrative unit from the Nezhinsky regiment - Starodubsky regiment .

In 1668 , Peter Doroshenko , who occupied the Left Bank and drove the Bryukhovetsky south, created the Novgorod-Seversky regiment , which included the Novgorod-Severskaya and Sheptakovskaya hundreds, from hundreds of Nezhinsky and Starodubsky regiments. But at the beginning of 1669 , the new left-bank hetman Demyan Mnogoshinniy abolished the Novgorod-Seversky regiment and restored the previous administrative division.

In 1696 , the Kiev governor, Prince Baryatinsky, received a letter from the Old-Dubu resident of Suslov, in which he wrote: "The initial people are now all Poles in the Little Russian army . Under Obidovsky , Mazepa’s nephew, there are no Cossack servants. The Cossacks have a great complaint against hetmans , colonels and the centurions , that in order to eradicate the old Cossacks, their previous liberties took them all away, turned them into citizenship, they all took the lands on their own. The hetman keeps in his mercy and charity only hunting regiments , company companions and hearty ones , hoping for their loyalty and in these regiments there is not a single person of a natural Cossack, all Poles ...

- S. M. Soloviev - “History of Russia”, t. XIV. M 1962, Prince VII, pp. 597-598

In Little Russia , with the implementation of the judicial reform of 1763, the settled regiments were divided according to court cases into Powers . Starodubsky regiment, was divided into two povets ^[2] - Starodubsky and Pogarsky. In each district, a zemstvo court was established (district zemstvo court), which was in the district town ^[2] .

By decree of Catherine II , in 1782 the territory of the former Starodubsky regiment became part of the newly formed Novgorod-Seversky governorate , and since 1802 it has made up the northern part of the Chernigov province ( Novgorod-Seversky , Starodubsky , Mglinsky , Surazhsky and Novozybkovsky districts ).

From the Cossacks of the Starodubshchina in 1783, a regiment of the Russian army was formed - the Starodubovsky 34th Dragoon Regiment ^[3] (from 1908 it was renamed the 12th Dragoon Regiment) ^[4] .

In 1919, most of the territory of the former Starodubsky regiment became part of the RSFSR and now belongs to the Bryansk region (Russian Federation).

The Starodub regiment was located in the middle reaches of the Desna River , including the tributary of the latter, Sudost , in the headwaters of Again , in the middle reaches of Iput and Besed . All this space was covered with almost continuous forests, a significant part of which in its original form was preserved even by the beginning of the 18th century . The settlement was carried out mainly in the direction from the southeast to northwest.

Large land in the regiment was owned by Kiev-Pechersk Lavra . After the church reform of Patriarch Nikon in the late 1660s. On the territory of the Starodub regiment, about two dozen settlements of old Believers migrants arose.

A number of cities of the Starodub regiment were granted Magdeburg law : Starodub , Pochep , Pogar , Mglin , Novgorod-Seversky .

Starodubsky regiment was the largest supplier of hemp , hemp oil , honey , and wax to the foreign market in Little Russia.

Initially, the Starodubsky regiment consisted of 10 hundreds (regiment Starodubskaya, Novgorod-Severskaya, Sheptakovskaya, Pogarskaya, Pochepskaya, Mglinskaya, Drokovskaya, Popovogorskaya, Bobovitskaya and Topalskaya), later the hundredth division changed.

In 1763 , two judicial districts — Starodubsky and Pogarsky — were created on the territory of the regiment, and in 1766 , three commissariats — Starodubsky, Topalsky, and Novgorod-Seversky. According to the audit of 1764, the regiment had 12 hundred, 7050 elected Cossacks, 18107 assistants and 147629 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealths.

By the time the regiment was disbanded ( 1781 ), it consisted of the following hundreds: two regiments Starodubsky , two Pochepsky , Novomestskaya , Topalskaya , Mglinskaya , Baklanskaya , Pogarskaya , Novgorodskaya (Novgorod-Severskaya) and Sheptakovskaya . At this moment, in the Starodubsky regiment there were 4 cities , 3 towns and 1,118 other settlements.

• The personal decree of Catherine II on the establishment of Novgorod-Seversky governorship
• The Starodub Cossack Regiment in modern Russia