Former Russian Citizens in the Socio-Political Landscape of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1618-1654

The study is devoted to the problem of emigration of the Russian service class representatives to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after signing the armistice of Deulin (1619) between Moscow kingdom and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the beginning of the Russian Polish war in 1654. The geographical scope of the work is the territory of Smolensk Voivodeship, which became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the signing of the Deulin peace. The subject of the research interest are the representatives of the Russian service nobility, who committed a “treason”, and remained on their land plots after the transfer of the Smolensk region to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, the first research issue of the work is to identify the practices of integration of Russian defectors into the Polish-Lithuanian gentry, as well as the role of denunciations in the Russian political culture in the first half of the XVII century. The main research question is to reveal the factors that contributed to the preservation / non-preservation of loyal relations on the Russian-Lithuanian border in the period 1618-1654. The work is made within social history framework, in line with sociological and biographical approaches. Using the prosopographic method of research, the composition and quantitative ratio of Russian defectors and representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility within the szlachta of the Smolensk Voivodeship, as well as the socio-political situation of Russian emigrants in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were revealed. The first chapter of the work is devoted to the problem of committing the “treason” on the Russian-Lithuanian border in the period after the Time of Troubles, as well as to the practices of informing (telling news) in the construction of loyal relations. The second chapter is devoted to the problem of integration of former Russian subjects into the Polish-Lithuanian gentry (szlachta).