The Project of Polish-Russian Union in Geliash Pelgrimowsky’s Diaries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of Geliash Pelgrimowsky’s rhymed diary, which is considered quite an uncommon source of information about the history of the embassy of Lew Sapieha to Moscow in 1600. At the end of the 16th century, due to the complicated foreign policy situation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the ideas of Polish-Moscow union were reborn. The chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who had previously shown himself as a prominent supporter of the interstate association, was chosen as the head of the Polish-Lithuanian embassy. The project of union represented by Lew Sapieha in Moscow was firmly rejected by Boris Godunov because of the substantial infringement of Russian interests in the terms of agreement. Traditionally, in order to reconstruct the history of diplomatic mission of Lew Sapieha, researchers resort to a wide range of sources: official diaries, embassy books, diplomatic documentation, etc. However, the status of one source — the historical poem “Poselstwo i krótkie spisanie rozprawy z Moskwą” by Geliash Pelgrimowsky, which was dedicated to the history of this embassy — hasn’t been defined for a long time. The text of “Poselstwo…” is based entirely on documentary sources, and the author himself was an eyewitness of the described events. Nevertheless, Pelgrimovsky’s text is very tendentious. The author of the paper comes to the conclusion that the chronology and facts in the “rhymed diary” were considerably distorted by Pelgrimowsky to reflect the propagandistic nature of his work. The text of his poem cannot be used as a reliable basis for the reconstruction of the history of the embassy of Lew Sapieha to Moscow.