Nashchokin, Grigory Afanasevich

Gregory Nashchokin came from the noble family of the Nashchokins .

On April 23, 1580, Tsar Ivan Vasilievich sent him as an envoy to Lithuania and ordered him to hand over a letter to Stefan Batory urging him not to require the sending of the Moscow embassy, ​​as this would be contrary to ancient customs. However, in case of emergency, G. Nashchokin had to agree to send authorized persons and ask for their travel “dangerous” letters. In May of the same 1580, Nashchokin informed the tsar that Stefan Batory was in Vilna , that according to various "Ukrainians" he had a lot of troops and that it was not known where he would go to war. G. A. Nashchokin returned to Moscow on July 1, and at the end of the month authorized princes Sitsky and clerk Pivov were sent to Lithuania for negotiations ^[1] .

The painting " Stefan Bathory near Pskov "
(artist Jan Matejko )
Nashchokin half-sat to the right of the kneeling lord of Polotsk Cyprian, in a rich, embroidered gold vestment, on a golden platter offering bread to the king, apparently symbolizing a request for mercy and peace

In 1581, at the seventh wedding of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and Maria Fyodorovna Naga, Nashchokin was supposed to “keep forty sables than to smell the emperor on the spot” ^[1] .

In 1588, he was a bailiff at the Tsaregrad Patriarch Jeremiah II , who arrived in Moscow on June 13 ^[1] .

In 1592, Grigory Afanasevich Nashchokin traveled to Constantinople to negotiate with the Turkish Sultan to strengthen peaceful relations with Crimea. Nashchokin should have told the Sultan that the Russian tsar did not send an envoy to him for a long time, that the Lithuanian-Polish king didn’t pass through Lithuania, and it’s also dangerous to go through the Don , since Lithuanian Cossacks live there and are at the same time hostile to the Moscow Tsar with the Don Cossacks. . Upon arrival in Constantinople, Nashchokin was ordered to enter into secret relations with Patriarch Jeremiah and with Ternovsky Metropolitan Dionysius, who had come to Moscow shortly before. The metropolitan promised Tsar Theodore Ioannovich “to serve and work in all sorts of business ”, taking advantage of the fact that his relative Ivan Grek is a close man at the court of the Sultan; as a result, the king ordered Nashchokin to take his salary to Ivan the Greek and send it secretly. If the patriarch and the metropolitan confirm their desire to serve the tsar and begin to request a list with the sovereign’s letter to the Sultan, in order to know what kind of service they would be required, Nashchokin should secretly send them a list with the sovereign’s letter ^[1] .

When Grigory Nashchokin was sent to Constantinople, he was presented with a royal certificate in the name of the Don Cossacks ; the king persuaded them to live peacefully with the Azovites and to release the captured Turks and Circassians , for which he would grant them his great salary. When Nashchokin announced this to them, as well as the tsar’s command to give him escort and leave the son of boyar Khrushchov to protect the sovereign Ukrainians from the arrival of military people in the Don, the Cossacks expressed their readiness to conduct Nashchokin as ordered, but refused to extradite prisoners if they were not sent for them from Moscow "payback", and did not want to serve the Tsar with Khrushchov. They expressed Nashchokin and their resentment that the tsar addressed in a letter first to the "high" atamans and Cossacks, and then to them, "lower", and he did not name the best atamans by name. Nashchokin brought to the Cossacks a sovereign salary - various cloth, saltpeter, sulfur, lead, 200 quarters of crackers, 30 quarters of cereals and oatmeal. He wanted to distribute cloth according to royal orders, but the Cossacks said that they would divide by themselves. Since many Cossacks were at sea at that time, those who spoke with Nashchokin postponed the decision on peace with the Azovites until their comrades returned from the sea. On June 11, when all the Cossacks were assembled, about 600 Cossacks and chieftains came to the tent of Nashchokin; they were armed with sabers and “hand-guns” and demanded that Nashchokin show them the sovereign command. Nashchokin did not give a punishment, referring to the fact that it writes about many cases; if the Cossacks intend to plunder the sovereign's treasury, he added, then he would not voluntarily surrender it. “And they made a lot of noise,” Nashchokin wrote in his report to the tsar, “and they took the ample nitrate and your supply, sovereign, strongly; Yes, in our camp they took the Don Ataman Vishatu Vasiliev, who was sent with us from Moscow, and having beaten his "flies", they put him in the water in front of our tent. " Cossacks did this with Vasiliev for persuading them to extradite captives ^[1] .

The Cossacks pledged to give the guides and led Nashchokin to Azov . Having released Nashchokin from Azov, the local inhabitants (as the Don Cossacks wrote to the tsar) locked 130 Don atamans and Cossacks and two interpreters in Azov; they executed one tolmak and many Cossacks, and "put another tolmak and the rest of the Cossacks to hard labor." Arriving in Constantinople, Nashchokin wrote to Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich that he had a " great torment in the reconciliation " of the Don Cossacks with the Azovites. At the beginning of Nashchokin’s stay in Constantinople, the sultan wanted to immediately expel him as a result of the denunciation of the Azov resident Usein-Chelibey that Nashchokin was sent as a spy , that Mohammedans in Astrakhan are oppressed by the Orthodox , and that Don Cossacks are so hostile that they do not allow the Azovites to leave out of the gate. It is very possible that the vizier proved to the sultan that Nashchokin was not guilty of anything, and the sultan allowed him to winter in Constantinople ^[1] .

In 1592, in a letter from Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich to the Twelfth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Murad III and Boris Godunov, to the Vizier it was specifically said:

" We do not want to listen to the emperor, the kings of Spanish and Lithuanian, the pope and the shah, who convince us to draw their sword against the head of Islam with them ."

Having exchanged courtesies with Grigory Nashchokin, the vizier said:

“The king offers us friendship. We will believe her when he agrees to give Astrakhan and Kazan to the great sultan. We are not afraid of either Europe or Asia: our army is so countless that the earth cannot lift it; it is ready to rush by dry route to the Shah, Lithuania and Caesar, and by sea to the kings of Spain and France. We praise your wisdom, if you really didn’t want to adhere to them, and the sultan did not order the khan to disturb Russia, should the tsar bring his Cossacks from the Don and destroy four new fortresses, founded by him on the banks of this river and the Terek, to block our path to Derbent: or do so, or (as I swear by God) we not only order the khan and nagay to constantly fight Russia, but we ourselves will go to Moscow with our own heads, by dry route and by sea, without fear of labor or danger, sparing neither treasury nor blood . You are peaceable; but why come into close contact with Iveria, subject to the Sultan? "

Grigory Afanasevich Nashchokin replied that Astrakhan and Kazan should not be surrendered; that there are no fortresses on the Don , and that the tsar orders the Cossacks from there to be removed; that the king sends priests to Georgia (a country that is single-faith to us), not the army, and allows the Georgians to come to the Moscow state for trade. Nashchokin ended his speech this way:

“God would have given, so that among the sovereigns, brotherly love would be affirmed forward; and now if the Crimean khan will go to the sovereigns of Ukraine, then the will of God: our sovereign is ready to fight against him, and not to guess who God will give to. It would be better to calm Krymsky, so that forward between the sovereigns fraternal love would not fall. ”

The vizier said this:

“True: when people get knocked together with people, there will be a loss on both sides, but you can’t turn it down, but we were disappointed what your Cossacks did. For such matters over ambassadors it’s disgraced: but our sovereign didn’t tell you to do anything for you, because we don’t have one in custom, and he will let you go to your sovereign as before. ”

To better clarify the misunderstandings, Nashchokin suggested that the vizier send an ambassador to the Moscow state ; the vizier barely agreed to this, since, according to Turkish tradition, foreign ambassadors are allowed to Turkey, but the ambassadors do not send ambassadors to other states ^[1] (although after the visit of the envoy Blagov to Moscow, Ibrahim-Adziy was already sent with an answer, but what news or he refused to negotiate an alliance between the countries and reduced everything to the question of the Don Cossacks) ^[2] .

Very historically interesting is the report of G. A. Nashchokin about the then state of Turkey and Greece . He wrote:

“ Now everything has changed in Turkey: the Sultan and Pasha think solely about self-interest; the first increases the treasury, but for what purpose, it is not known: it hides gold in chests and does not give a salary to the army, which, in a terrible rebellion, has recently embarked on the palace, demanding the head of a deeddar or treasurer. There is no device, no truth in the state. The Sultan robs officials, officials rob people; robbery and homicide everywhere; there is no safety for travelers on the road, nor for merchants in the trade. The land was emptied from the Persian war, violence and bribery, especially Moldavian and Voloshskaya, where rulers are constantly replaced. The Greeks are in terrible oppression: they are in poverty, not having any hope for the future ^[1] . "

Having learned that upon returning Nashchokin from Constantinople, the sultan would let his chauch go with him to rule the embassy in the Moscow state, Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich sent nobleman Ivan Vasilyevich Izmailov to the Don with a letter to the Cossacks and to prepare a meeting for Nashchokin and the chaos. Two hundred or three hundred Cossacks had to go with Izmailov to Azov, wait for the arrival of Nashchokin and the Chaush there and lead them to Ukraine "in good order, according to the old customs." The letter repeated the exhortation that the Don Cossacks reconciled with the Azovites. The king demanded that the Cossacks did not go by sea to the Turkish cities and would not repair any enthusiasm even if they would have some kind of annoyance on the part of Azov. If, due to the fault of the Cossacks, an unfriendly relationship or quarrel between Tsar Theodore Ioannovich and the Turkish Sultan occurs, then the Cossacks will be in disgrace , they will never dare to come to Moscow, and the Tsar will send a large army to the Don Rozdor, order the town to be set up there and drive the Cossacks from the Don; “To you from us and from the Turskiy Sultan, where are the abundances, will you start stealing as much as you are stealing now? The letter ended with a command to go to Kalmius to smash the Aroslanov ulus, get languages ​​and send them to Moscow to notify the intentions of the Crimean Khan . If before the arrival of Nashchokin and the Turkish chaos, the khan and tsarevichs, together with the Azov people, would not go to Moscow Ukrainians, then the Don Cossacks should go for transportation, and on roads, and to Donetsk Seversky and to hunt along with the Putivl people and with Zaporizhzhya Cherkasy, which imperial decree will arrive, against the Crimean Khan in Donets. The Cossacks, however, did not want to “show their service” at the request of the king, and Prince Volkonsky, sent to meet the Turkish envoy near Azov, informed the tsar that the Cossacks refused to give the escort, saying that they could not send anyone involuntarily, and if anyone went by hunting - they will not forbid them ^[1] .

Gregory Nashchokin was on this business trip from April 6, 1592 to October 2, 1593. For four years (1593-1597), nothing was known about his service, and in 1597 he, together with the okolnichny prince Ivan Vasilyevich Velikogagin and clerk Timofei Petrov, made ten on the city of Ryazhsk and was in charge of the distribution of cash salaries in Koshira and Meshchera ^{[1 ]} .

In 1598, when Tsar Boris Godunov went to Serpukhov against the Crimean Khan Kazygirey, Moscow was divided into sections into which governors were appointed; Timofei Ivanovich Saburov and Nashchokin were in charge of a new wooden city, from Tverskaya Street to Yauza and to the Moscow River and to the new Stone Town ^[1] .

In 1586, while Grigory Afanasevich Nashchokin was carrying out a diplomatic mission in Lithuania , the Moscow army stood on Luke the Great ; the governors in the large regiment were: Prince Vasily Dmitrievich Khilkov and another Grigory Afanasevich Nashchokin. The same names misled Karamzin , and speaking of the defeat of the Moscow army near Toropets , he put it this way: " In this hot case, the dignitary of the tsar Grigory Nashchokin used in the embassies was captured ." The following extract from the category is given in a note to this place: “ On October 1, news came to the Tsar that the governor, Prince. "Vasily Khilkov and his comrades were beaten, and they killed Governor Grigory Afanasyev Nashchokin, and they took Demensha Cheremisinov ." The exact time of Nashchokin’s death is unknown, but from the previous statement it can be seen that Grigory Afanasevich Nashchokin, who performed the diplomatic service, was still alive in 1598 ^[1] .

• History of Russian-Turkish relations

• Artsybashev N. S. "The Story of Russia", II. p. 359, 361; III
• Karamzin N. M. " History of the Russian State ", volume X.
• "Collection of State Diplomas and Treaties", II, 126-127.
• Solovyov S. M. " History of Russia from Ancient Times ", VII.