About the appearance of the Russian border in Lapland (some results of the discussion)

In modern social and political discourse, the Arctic is treated as a region of the future, where along with active development, the process of formation of new borders will be continued. Bearing in mind the complexity and danger of any redistribution in order to maintain a stable environment in the world, it is important to understand: the momentary conjuncture should not ignore the centuries-old historical experience. However, the problem lies in the fact that some historical plots related to the Arctic border are not only not known to a wide audience, but even not clarified and not understood in the science. One of the vivid examples is the question of the appearance of the Russian frontier in Lapland, which caused different sometimes opposing positions for historians on both sides of the border, which is fraught with speculation or even falsifications in the future.

The general attitude of the Russian historiography to the Lapland problem was influenced by the idea of Shaskolsky I.P. that the demarcation of possessions in Lapland occurred on the basis of the Russian-Norwegian treaty of 1326 [1, pp. 47, 54]. Having agreed with it, Ushakov I.F. formulated a point of view according to which the Kola North together with other Novgorod possessions passed under the authority of Moscow simultaneously, in 1478 [2, v. 1, p. 43] The notion that the historical task of securing the Kola land for the Russian state was already solved, just enabled researchers to treat the "Lapland dispute" of the ХVI–ХVII as ordinary for that time territorial claim of a foreign power to Russian possessions. At the same time, for Shaskolsky I.P. and for Ushakov I.F. the problem of interpretation of the double tribute of the Lapps living on the territory of the Kola North and Finnmark (the "general district" in Lapland) remained unresolved.

Perhaps, that is why, in one of his last works, Shaskolsky I.P. (together with Vozgrin V.E. and Shrader T.A.) was forced to explain the coexistence of the Russian status of the Kola North and the double tribute of the Lapps by the fact that "here the payment of tribute did not coincide with citizenship" [3, p. 126]. A corresponding reservation is also found in works of Ushakov I.F., who, calling the Kola North the possession of Veliky Novgorod, at the same time believed that the border line, established under the 1326 treaty, divided not the possessions, but "spheres of prevailing interests" [2, v. 1, pp. 36–37].

In parallel with this, separate opinions were expressed in the literature in which the belonging of the Kola North to Russian possessions and the preservation of the double tribute of the Lapps were perceived as mutually exclusive. For example, Volkov N.N. believed that the "systematic extension" of the "spheres of influence" to the Saami refers to the ХV century, while in the border regions "the uncertainty of the border ... provokes controversy over the right to collect tribute and dispose of their lands" until the first quarter of ХIХ century. [4, p. 92]. Ustyugov N.V. shared very similar position, he wrote that "in the XVII century Kola Peninsula was a disputed land, which both the Russian state and Denmark considered to be theirs, "since" the Saami were overlaid with a double tribute "[5, p. 773].

Representatives of foreign historiography criticize Shaskolsky’s approach. In particular, the Danish historian J.H. Lindh refuses to recognize the existence of an "ancient border" between Norwegian and Novgorod possessions, arguing that the territory of Finnmark and Kola Peninsula "was unambiguously understood as a huge single community". The "ancient borders" mentioned in the 1326 treaty, in his opinion, are the external borders of the general district for the collection of tribute from the Lapps, separating it, on the one hand, from the Norwegian, and on the other hand, from the Novgorod possessions. J.H. Lind suggested that since the demarcation of the border occurred only in 1826, until this time the territories of the "Russian and Norwegian sedentary population" remained undivided [6, pp. 141–143]

So, the available different points of view are brought to two opposite positions: one of them connects the appearance of the Russian border in Lapland with the Old Russian period (1326), the other — with the New Time (1826). It should be noted that the historiography of the Lapland problem did not have time to evaluate the achievements of the source study. The array of the Russian and the Danish sources of the XVI–XVII centuries, which cover the "Lapland dispute", in the Copenhagen archive, in 1893–1897 was revealed and published by Shcherbachev U.N. 1

Bestuzhev-Ryumin K.N. formerly published "Monuments of diplomatic relations between the Moscow State and England (from 1581 to 1604)," which included the interesting correspondence of Ivan IV and Elizabeth I concerning the status of lands in Lapland2.

None of the historians who dealt with the Lapland problem, did not subject these published materials to scrupulous analysis. At the same time, it is very important to pay attention to the very methodology of the problem, since here there is such a contrast spread of positions. Without denying, of course, the need for a more thorough treatment of this topic, considering the development of the source database, the author of this article asked more general and in some way preliminary question: is it possible to find a methodological way out of the theoretical impasse in which historiography has turned out?

Background of the question

Initially, it is necessary to make a digression into the history of the problem, whose roots originate in the Novgorod era. For a long time, the vast expanses beyond the Arctic Circle, which occupied Kola and part of the Scandinavian peninsula, remained a no-man's land (terra nullius). A few tribes of Lapps (the modern name — the Saami) lived there, they were at the stage of clan relations. The population of this territory did not create its own statehood and therefore was doomed to subordination to stronger social structures from outside. Scandinavians were the first who came to know the territory of Lapland, they lived in the northern part of the fragmented Norway — in the region of Halogaland. The native of these places, the sailor Otter, who in the IX c. made a voyage around the Kola Peninsula, reported the following: "This whole country is deserted, and only in a few places terfinns3 live, which engage in hunting, fishing and catching birds" [7, Tiander K., p. 56]. Barter trade was of great importance in the economy of the inhabitants of Halogaland. Furs were particular interesting to traders, furs could be successfully sold in the markets of Europe. Since the Lapps were excellent hunters, the obvious economic usefulness of contacts between the enterprising armed elite of Northern Norway (Hofðing) and the aborigines of the European Arctic gradually led to the imposition of the last by tribute4.

At the same time, a similar advance in the direction of the Kola Peninsula begins also from Old Novgorod. The trade works as the same motivation. Rybina E.A. notes that "Novgorod carried out links between Rus, Western Europe, Byzantium and the Muslim East" [8, p. 4]. The Novgorod market, like in northern Norway, was also intermediary, and therefore it constantly needed the import of new goods. Novgorod boyars organize an expedition to the north for the preparation of furs, fish, lard, walrus tusk. In the XI century the Novgorodians reached the White Sea, and a century later they reached the Kola Peninsula. Like the Scandinavians, together with traders and industrialists, the representatives of the Novgorod authorities (according to the chronicler, the "Tersky tributary") came here, and no later than 1216 overlaid the Lapps with tribute5. The advance of Novgorodians deep into Lapland, to the west, inevitably pushed them against the Scandinavians (in Russia they were called "murmans"). So, the Lapland question arose in relations between Novgorod and Norway.

The first attempt to resolve it, undertaken by Novgorod and Norway, led to a compromise, which was expressed not only in establishing a strictly defined amount of tribute (no more than five squirrel pelts from each Lapp-hunter) for both sides, but, in fact, to the creation of a common Norwegian-Novgorod district, including Finnmark and the Kola North. All the Lapps that lived in this territory, from that time paid tribute to two states: Norway and Novgorod. These conditions were fixed in the Russian-Norwegian treaty, which came down to us in the form of the Runic (demarcate) Charter, which has no date of creation. Researchers put forward various dates of the Runic Charter. Thus, Butkov P.G. considered the turn of the IX–X centuries as the time of its creation, Karamzin N.M. — the turn of the 10th–11th centuries, Shaskolsky I.P. — 1251, Munch P. — 1326, Schlesser A. — the ХV century. [1, Shaskol'skii I.P., pp. 38–61].

Large spaces along the banks of the northern rivers along the southern and western coasts of the White Sea, having become part of the possessions of Veliky Novgorod, have become a kind of springboard for Russian statehood for the subsequent breakthrough in the polar regions and the Arctic. Unlike the already divided and conflicting South, the North at that time was still a relatively quiet area and the direction of the least resistance. However, in course of time, on drawing near the Arctic Ocean, the Russian colonization was to meet not only with the growing resistance of the natural environment, but also with the western world, which also penetrated into the northern latitudes by continental and sea routes.

Double tribute in Lapland was caused by a lack of strength of both sides to resolve the issue in their favor: after all, neither the Norwegian nor the Novgorod permanent settlements on the territory of the region did not exist for a long time, the strength of the competitors were approximately equal. An attempt to break the balance was made at the beginning of the ХIV century, when the pressure of Novgorod intensified towards the Norwegian lands, and the Russians, along with the Karelians and the Saami, made constant raids on Finnmark. In 1323, such an integrated detachment, having penetrated in Halogaland by ships, burned Bearkey, the estate of the ruler of Norway Erling's son Vidkun [1, Shaskolsky I.P., p. 40]. The Norwegian authorities, unwilling to lose their geographically justified presence in the western part of the district, took retaliatory measures. On the one hand, the military fortification of Vardehus (the Russians called it "Vargav") was built there, and on the other hand, the church launched its activities to associate the pagan Lapps with Catholicism6.

In 1326, a new treaty was concluded between Novgorod and Norway, which indicates a change in Novgorod's policy. Novgorod, without claiming to Finnmark any more, agrees to maintain the status quo with the restoration of the "old" ("ancient") borders of the district. The restored compromise from time to time continued to be violated because of individual conflicts. Thus, for example, the chronicle recorded the “murman” attack on the Korelsky churchyard in Varzuga in 1419.7 The evidence about the activities of the Novgorod governor Valita on the Murmansk coast came in legends, he defended these lands from the Scandinavian raids allegedly in the second half of the XV century. [2, Ushakov I.F., vol.3, pp. 281–288; 9, Popov A.I., pp. 133– 135]. The reality of the existence of this man is proved by the fact that the creation of a fortress — "Valitov site" is associated with his name. This fortress, according to the "Big Drawing Book", was on the island near the shore, between the mouths of the rivers Vorjema and Rodenga situated in Western Murman8. With the erection of the first Norwegian and first Novgorod fortresses in Lapland, each of which designated the sphere of influence of their country, the process of crystallization of the Lapland border started, which was intended to turn semi-free lands into possessions. Sooner or later, this line had to manifest itself somewhere in the gap between Vardehus and Vorjema.

Tributariness and state state sovereignties

During the XIV-XV centuries both in Scandinavia and the Russian plain, the complicated political processes took place, during which Norway became part of the Danish state, and Novgorod land was included in the Moscow principality. Accordingly, the owners of the general district of the collection of tribute from the Lapps also were replaced: the district turned from the Novgorod-Norwegian into the Russian-Danish. The general Russian-Danish space, where a double tribute from the Lapps was gathered, covered almost the whole of the Kola Peninsula and

Finnmark, which were connected through a narrow coastal strip at the north of Lapland. The area between the lake Inari and the sea coast was a kind of open corridor for migration to both sides of the collectors of the tribute of the Danish and Russian states. The fate of this corridor was solved in the XVI–ХVII centuries. The specificity of this space was the absence of ordinary state borders in it. The border from the point of view of its functional purpose is designed to "protect" something. The state border "protects" the possessions. The territories of Lapland, if needed in demarcation, primarily with the goal of differentiating the taxable areas of individual states. But since there was no need for it, the very existence of a state border on a sparsely populated territory with a homogeneous ethnic composition was hardly necessary. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about the demarcation of possessions in Lapland before the creation separate taxable areas by the states in this region.

The attempt of Sychenkova E.V to determine the general Norwegian-Novgorod district of charging tribute in Lapland as a condominium [10, p. 52]. After all, the latter provides not only common ownership, but also joint management of the territory by two or more states [11, Baburin S.N., pp. 51-53]. Lapland's experience of joint collection of tribute did not provide for joint management, on the contrary, it was accompanied by competition between the district's owners, which eventually led to the division of zones of influence, the actual disintegration of the district into two parts — the western and the eastern.

The desire to reconcile the double tribute of the Lapps with the attribution of the Kola North to the state possessions of the Russian state loses its force when analyzing the political orientation of the aboriginal population living within it. There was no unified position to determine the jurisdiction among the Lapps of the Kola North. This is evident from the addressee's choice of Lapps to send complaints in connection with harassment imposed by tribute collectors; whom the Lapps considered a legitimate authority to resolve the disputed situation.

In 1595, a wave of disturbances swept in the Eastern Lapland due to the actions of the Danish lodged Joseph Mortenson. While the Paz Lapps sent their petition to the Russian Tsar Fedor Ivanovich, the Kildin, Nototzero and Maselga Lapps — to the Danish King Christian IV9. At the same time, this fact can hardly testify to the existence of a strict division of the territory of the Kola North into the Danish and Moscow zones. The absence of a permanent frontier in the north of Lapland informed all the emerging images of the border of a certain mobility, which, according to modern researchers, is an inevitable given in the process of turning a frontier into a border zone. In particular, as noted by Zeleneva I.V., moving borders generated "spatial blurring of the geopolitical self-awareness of the population" [16, pp. 79-83].

The situation had to look even more difficult in the place where the Russian-Danish district rested on the territory where tribute from the Lapps was collected jointly by Rus and Sweden. The peculiar "buffer zone" separating the Russian-Danish Lapland from the Russian-Swedish one, began at a distance of about 100 kilometers from the sea shore to the south, near the lake Inari. The Lapps living in the Inari ("Inadrsky") churchyard paid tribute to three states: Denmark, Sweden and the Russian state10. The contact of two different taxation zones, with the participation of Denmark and Sweden competing with each other, formed the basis for the appearance of a frontier, which in the Russian sources was referred to as the "svitsky" one 11. The time of the appearance of this frontier obviously goes back to Orekhovetsky Treaty in 1323 [6, Lind J.H., p. 135]. With the absence of a strict demarcation line, the attempts to clarify and correct it were continued until the end of the ХVIII century, but after Finland joined Russia in 1809, this frontier lost the status of a state border12.

In any case, the practice of collecting tribute in Lapland does not allow to determine the citizenship of the Lapps unequivocally, which makes it questionable to classify the territory of the Kola Peninsula as undivided possession of one of the countries, as well as the desire to present the entry of the Kola Polar region into the Moscow State among other Novgorod possessions as soon as Novgorod lost its independence. The opinion of Shaskolsky I.P. and Ushakov I.F., who attributed the appearance of the Russian frontier in Lapland to the Old Russian period, thus cannot be accepted without criticism.

The Kola North, like the whole Lapland, until the beginning of the XVII century, apparently, should be reckoned to the territories with undetermined status [11, Baburin S.N., p. 294]. Lapland was a frontier, which in modern literature means a separate political and geographical area that closes the space of a settled or developed territory and which is located outside the unified space of political entity [12, Zeleneva I.V., p. 80]. The undeveloped lands in the south, east and north were that irritant that constantly stimulated the territorial growth of the Russian state and contributed to its transformation into the empire. The events that took place around Lapland in the ХVI–ХVII centuries were not yet considered in the context of determining the status of Moscow's policy.

At the same time, there is every reason to consider it as a strategy for securing the Kola Peninsula for the Moscow State. The Lappish problem peculiarly reflected the processes of territorial growth of the Moscow state, the forming of its perimeter, the strengthening of power and ambitions of the central government, the constant need for defense and security. Even before subjection of Novgorod, Moscow princes who sent bands for hunting birds for prince hunting to the Kola Peninsula, considered the Tersk side as their sphere of influence, demanding that Novgorod people do not go there [13, Platonov S.F., p. 1]. After the accession of Novgorod, the Far North was increasingly entering the sphere of Moscow's policy. Already at the end of the ХV century the Northern sea communications were first used by the center as an alternative to the Baltic ones. In 1494 the Russian diplomat Dmitry Zaitsev, returning from Denmark, for the first time passed by sea around Scandinavia across the White Sea to the mouth of the Northern Dvina. Vlasius (Vlas Ignatov, Ignatiev), translator from Latin and German, accompanied one of the Russian embassies to the Danish king by sea in Scandinavia in 1493-1494, 1499-1500. [14, Lukin Yu.F., p. 234]. In 1496 the Moscow diplomat Grigory Istoma was sent by Ivan III to Denmark for negotiations. Since the Russian-Swedish war that was taking place on the shores of the Gulf of Finland made the shorter and more traditional route through the Baltic Sea unsafe, he chose for his journey a roundabout route through the North. At first Istoma G. reached the mouth of the Northern Dvina, then he went by sea to Trondheim, along the White, Barents and Norwegian Seas, circling the Kola and Scandinavian peninsulas, then his journey was continued by land [15, Shaskolsky I.P.]

If we analyze all known and introduced sources that characterize the policy of the Moscow state in relation to Lapland until the fall of double tribute [16, Fedorov P.V., pp. 457-463], is it possible to imagine the Lapland strategy as a process subject to changes? What kind of periodization is possible here?

The first stage: the beginning of development (1517-1573).

Within the framework of the first stage (1517-1573 gg.), the Moscow authorities tried to achieve the effect of establishing constructive cooperation with the Lapps. Already in 1517, Vasily III warned the Russian collectors of a tribute on the inadmissibility of arbitrariness in Lapland [3, Vozgrin V.E., p. 134]. In 1526 Vasily III instructed the Novgorod archbishop Makariy to send clergy to the Far North to perform the rite of Orthodox baptism of the Lapps13. This was preceded by a great missionary work. A wide field of activity was opened for the preachers of Orthodoxy (Trifon, Theodorit, etc.) in Lapland, but within the Kola North, since the Lapps living in Finnmark had already been influenced by Catholicism. The church in Norway, however, experienced a decline at that time, caused by the Reformation14, and this released Orthodoxy from a Western rival. The activity of the Orthodox missionaries in the eastern part of the Russian-Danish district, in general, was also successful due to their flexible tactics.

Acting near the rivers of Kola and Tuloma, Feodorit, referring to the number of so-called "non-possessors", relied on the study of the Sami language, translations of the Bible. But the model of the monastery proposed by him did not pretend to the economic development of the region. After being materially weak, the monastery of Feodorit fell apart, and his monks went to the river Pechenga, to Trifon. Trifon, on the contrary, following the Joseph’s tactics, built his missionary activity with the help of "talks about the purchases" and the involvement of Lapps in trade and economic relations. Therefore, unlike Feodorit, he was engaged in the enlargement of his monastery with the help of his disciples: he acquired land, developed the economy, and at the same time received the support of Ivan the Terrible [2, Ushakov I.F., v. 1, pp. 58-60; v. 2, pp. 211214, 296-300]. The foundation of the Pechenga Monastery in the middle of the ХVI century had great importance for the establishment of Orthodoxy and the Russian statehood in the most controversial, northwestern region of the Kola North, directly bordering with Finnmark. One of the most important consequences of the creation of the local monasteries — in Kandalaksha, Pechenga, etc. — was the Russian monastic land ownership15. Bearing in mind that the Lapps still paid a double tribute, this measure clearly indicated Moscow's unwillingness to preserve the district of joint ownership and to consider the interests of its co-owner — Denmark. The monastic patrimonies, apparently, were called upon to temporarily replace the structures of governance of the Moscow state that did not exist in the uninhabited lands.

The events of Moscow were reinforced by the Russian colonization, which reached the Murmansk coast during this period. The positions of the Russian state in these remote regions begin to be institutionalized in the emerging fishing and trading activities. This led not only to the creation of seasonal Russian settlements on the shore, but also to the emergence of international bargaining with foreigners.

The latter had great importance for the Russian state, because the country at that time did not have a convenient port for international trade. And Kola became this port in the 1570-80s, located near the Murmansk coast [17, Shaskolsky I.P.]. Every year merchants from Western European countries, inland regions of Russia and local residents gathered for bargaining there. The increased commercial value of Kola stimulated its growth: if in 1565 it had only 3 peasant households, in 1574 — 44, then by the beginning of the 80s. of the ХVI century — already 71 households [2, Ushakov I.F., v. 1, pp. 74-79].

The second stage: identification (1573-1583)

The previous success allowed the Moscow authorities to pursue a more rigid policy towards Lapland at the second stage (1573-1583), which, first of all, was expressed by the formulation and proclamation of the position of the Russian center about ownership rights for Murman. In July 1582, in answering letter to the Queen Elizabeth I, replying to her question: "Are those parishes under his province or not?" Ivan the Terrible categorically calls Kola and Pechenga his "original patrimonial lands."

Drawing attention to the fact that Denmark threatens the security of the British merchants trading in the North, he unsuccessfully asks Elizabeth for military assistance by ships16. In July 1582, Ivan IV in his letter to Frederick II declared his position rather harshly: if "henceforth your people come to our sea shelters in Kola and Kolmogory with robbery and start the German guests to rob", then "you will stay with us till the end and crush the kiss of the cross, and we shall stand for it and protect our marine piers”17. In 1573, the government sent a scribe Vasily Agalin to the Kola North to carry out the registration of the population, which resulted in the prepared scribe book18. Sadikov P.A. quite reasonably associated the visit of Agalin V. with the "Lapland dispute", citing the notes of the Dutch merchant Simon van Salingen in support [18, p. 205]. The foreigner reported that in 1573 the "Russian boyars or ambassadors" arrived in Lapland "to investigate local conditions and establish a border with the Kingdom of Norway", they "inspected Lapland" and established the border along Paz River [19, Filippov A.M., p. 303]. These measures, however, did not lead to a settlement of the problem, becoming only the initial link in the long chain of the border negotiations. Moscow continued to develop monastic land ownership. The Center practices the transfer of land holdings in the Kola North to large and well-known monasteries located for hundred kilometers from here: for example, the Trinity of St. Sergius and the Kirill-Belozersky19. The landed estates occasionally complained along with the Lapps. So, for example, in 1581, the Lapps of the Pechenga and Motovka churchyard were handed over to the Pechenga monastery by the tsar's letter of grant [2, Ushakov I.F., vol. 1, p. 61].

Foreign subjects felt the activation of the Moscow presence in the eastern part of the Russian-Danish district. For example, the English traveler William Barrow on June 23, 1576, during interrogation, regarding belonging of the Lapland lands, informed the British government: "The mighty sovereign tsar of Russia is the supreme ruler of the country of the Lapps"20.

The strengthening of the Russian influence in the territory of the common district caused resistance from the Danish side. After the beginning of the 1580-s, when Denmark begins to consider military power as the tool of the struggle for the Lapland lands, the Lapland issue has turned into a serious international problem. The Danish King Frederick II, realizing his claims to the eastern Lapland as part of the common possessions with Moscow, he decided to collect tribute from foreign merchant ships going to Murman.

Since this measure provoked opposition from the traders, the king makes more severe step, ordering his subordinates to seize the ships coming to Murman and foreign ships from Murman, and to do it even in the Kola Bay "for Kola belongs to Norway as much as to Russia"21. The Danish squadron, which controlled the coast of Murman in 1582, looted goods from overseas merchants for the sum of 50,000 rubles 22. Frederick II soon orders his collectors sent to the Kola North to collect tribute not only from the Lapps, but also "from the Russians, Karelians ... monasteries, villages and all the lodged Lapland", suggesting, however, to refrain from violence23.

Thus, by the beginning of the 1580-s, the Danish authorities already clearly expressed their claims to the entire Kola Peninsula. At the same time, if the actions of the Danish squadron off the coast of Murman were very successful, then the Danish government's desire to impose a tribute to the Russian population was essentially ineffectual24.

The government of Ivan IV in 1582-1583, as countermeasures, introduces the provincial administration and builds a prison in Kola. According to the scribe book by Alai Mikhalkov, in 1608 the Kola prison was a strengthening of the quadrangular form, which had 6 towers. According to Ushakov I.F., the total length of the walls around the prison was 510 meters, the fenced area was 1.6 hectares [20, p. 8].

The Kola voivodes became the conductors of the policy of Moscow. It is known that the first Kola voivoda boyar Averky Ivanovich Palitsyn introduced the Russian customs duty on Murman. Sudimantov M.F. who replaced him, was engaged in the construction of the Kola prison.

The voivodas represented the Russian state on the far northern outskirts, and therefore the government sought to appoint the representatives of noble families, sometimes boyar and princely to this sovereign’s post. In the XVI-XVII centuries for example, Kola voivodas were the princes Vasilchikov G.B., Obolensky F.T., Scherbatov I.O., Shakhovskoy S.I., Chertensky I.G., boyars Blagovo S.F., Godunov I.A., Khitrovo V.O., Buturlin A.V., Nashchokin A.T. and others. Office of voivode extended to the territory, which included the entire Kola Peninsula (without Tersk coast) and the border strip from the Barents Sea to northern Karelia. As the Kola voivoda Sudimantov M.F. witnessed in 1584, his power extends not to the whole Lapland, but only to five Russian villages (districts), incl. Keret, Kandalaks (Kandalaksha), Pora-Guba (Porya Guba), Kaudu and Kola25. The term "Kola County" for designating this territory took shape somewhat later, in the ХVII century.

The Tersk coast, despite its geographical affiliation to the Kola Peninsula, did not obey Kola, but was part of the Dvina county with its center in Kholmogory (on the opposite shore of the White Sea). Such a spatial structure, obviously, pursued the goal of separating the disputed, border area from the rest of the territory where Moscow's sovereignty was not questioned.

The military-administrative measures taken by Ivan IV to strengthen the Russian positions on Murman proved to be effective. For the next three decades, Denmark did not dare to blackmail the Moscow state with local military attacks on the Lapland coast.

The jerk of the Russian state to the coast of the Barents Sea which happened in the last years of the reign of Ivan IV, apparently, was connected with Moscow's foreign policy strategy in the Livonian War. Although the main struggle unfolded in the Baltics, Kola could be seen by Ivan IV as Russia's emergency exit to Western Europe.

The increased interest of the first Russian tsar to the distant Lapland, not found in the state history of Russia, either before or long after it, was indeed phenomenal. The kind of identification of the Kola North that took place within the framework of the state strategy of the ХVI century became possible mainly due to the fact that "by the middle of the ХVI century the autonomy of individual state subsystems was sharply decreased, a rigid hierarchy of the state structure was lined up with a political and innovative center in Moscow "[12, Zeleneva I.V, p. 58], and the latitudinal strategy associated with the conquest of Siberia, did not have time yet to absorb the meridional searches that were actual since the first centuries of the Russian history. The lack of access of the Moscow kingdom to the Baltic and Black Seas, with the continued desire for territorial growth (and in fact in all directions) and the sudden awareness of the obstacles that stood in the way of this movement, "squeezed" Moscow into the relatively free North.

The third stage: the crisis (1584-1591)

The general atmosphere after the heavy Livonian war, the death of Ivan the Terrible and the political transformations connected with it, contributed to the fact that at the third stage (1584-1591) the Moscow government decided to weaken its positions on Murman.

The slowness of the situation was first felt by the Kola voivoda Sudimantov M.F., who in 1584 extremely evasively informed the Danish-Norwegian envoys of the true reasons for the construction of the Kola prison: he said that he was put up for protection allegedly from the sea brigands. Sudimantov M.F. departed from some questions, referring to the lack of instructions from the central authorities26.

The subsequent actions of the Moscow government entered into a contrast contradiction with the political genesis that was observed on Murman since the beginning of the ХVI century. On the one hand, after the international bargaining was transferred from the severe shores of the Murmansk coast (the "needy place") to the newly founded city of Arkhangelsk in 1585, Murman lost the importance of the Russian "window to Europe". Kola was permitted to trade with foreigners only with products of local crafts. On the other hand, all the riflemen were withdrawn from Kola, the place became unarmed [2, Ushakov I.F., vol. 1, p. 90].

The reorientation of trade from Murman to the Northern Dvina did not solve the Lapland problem. The Western factor continued to exert its influence in Lapland, regardless of the will of the tsar. In the last quarter of the ХVI century Sweden, which was in hostile relations with both Russia and Denmark, sought to incorporate Lapland into its sphere of influence. The Swedish King Johan III approved the plan for its capture. In 1589 the Swedes together with the Finns ravaged many villages on the Kola Peninsula, they also completely destroyed Kandalaksha and Pechenga Monastery. During the attack on Kola in 1589, the city, left without riflemen, organized the defense independently, by the forces of local residents. Fedor Ivanovich freed the citizens for three years from all duties in return27 .

With the preservation of the Russian positions in Kola, populated by Orthodox subjects, the situation beyond its borders was poorly controlled. When the Danish-Norwegian envoys offered the Kola voivoda Sudimantov M.F. to meet in Vaida-Guba, he refused, offering Kola as meeting place, referring to the fact that in Vaida-Guba "royal people should not quarrel with the Russian people at the merchant place" 28.

Using the change in the balance of power, Denmark in 1591 sharply increased the size of the collected tribute from the eastern Lapps. The analysis of published by A.I. Andreev and I.N. Ulyanov "Paintings of churchyards of Lapps" 1623–1624 shows that if in the 1580s. the Danish collectors were to collect tribute from the Orthodox churchyards of eastern Lapland at a rate of about 400 three-kopeck coins annually, which was 6 times less than what the Russian collectors planned to collect in the same churchyards (about 2500), but since 1591 the sum of the Danish tribute came up to the sum of the Russian tribute, and even exceeded it. The proportionality of the sovereign and royal tribute, collected in the churchyards of Tersk and the upper Lapps after 1591 is confirmed by the parish book of the Novgorod quarter of 1620/21. In accordance with it, the sum of the first was 80 rubles 14 three-kopeck coins (or 2678 three-kopeck coins), the sum of the second — 78 rubles 18 three-kopeck coins (or 2615)29.

Denmark's contribution policy in the territory of eastern Lapland from 1591 clearly indicated the transformation of tribute into a tool of political pressure on Moscow.

The fourth stage: the emergence of the border (1591–1623).

The Moscow government tried not only to regain lost ground in the Kola North, but also to successfully solve the Lapland problem at the fourth stage (1591–1623).

In the early 90-s of the ХVI century all the merchants30 again got the right to trade in Kola, but the fall in the importance of this settlement as a major shopping center became inevitable. Arkhangelsk, being a freezing port, situated further from Western Europe, benefited from Kola by its proximity to the center and safer living conditions. The mechanism of "attaching" merchants to Arkhangelsk was the liquidation of trade monopolies, which only the British used for a while on the Dvina. Along with them It was possible to see the Danes, the Dutch and the French in Arkhangelsk at that time [21, Kizevetter A.A., p. 171].

But Kola was strengthened administratively: the riflemen returned there, and the Pechenga monastery destroyed by the Swedes in 1589, was transferred there [22, Korolkov N.F, pp. 30–32]. This helped to repulse the second assault of the Swedes on Kola in summer of 1591. The number of the Swedish army reached 1200 people at that time. During the battle, near the walls of the prison the enemy lost 215 people killed and wounded [2, Ushakov I.F., vol.1, pp. 90– 92]. In 1595, after years of wars between Russia and Sweden, the Treaty of Tyvza was concluded, according to which, among other conditions, Sweden abandoned its claim to the Kola Peninsula. But Denmark still had it, despite the fact that it was involved in the struggle with Sweden for influence in the Baltic and for the right to collect the tribute from the Lapps in Finnmark. But such difficult conditions of rivalry forced the new Danish King Christian IV, who replaced his deceased father Frederick II in 1588, to abandon military pressure on Russia, choosing to negotiate as a way of solving the "Lapland dispute".

In lengthy letters to each other, each party tried to prove its rights to Lapland. The Danish side cited the example of the Murmansk Sea, which washed the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula. On the grounds that the Russians called the Norwegians as “Murmans”, the ownership of the sea and of the whole Lapland to Norway was proved31. In turn, the Russian side refuted these arguments by saying that "Lapland is old and part of our fatherland in Novgorod land, it was taken during the war... by a Karelian ruler named Valit”32. The confessional affiliation of the local population was included in the system of Moscow's evidence: it was indicated that Orthodox Lapps live in eastern Lapland, here is the Pechenga monastery and the church of Boris and Gleb33.

The Russian ambassadors did everything in their power to emphasize that since the Lappish issue arose only a few years ago and had not disturbed anyone before, it is most likely that it is far-fetched and does not have any serious grounds: "But neither great-grandfather of your sovereign nor grandfather in the previous years about Lapland did not say anything and did not plead for it"34.

When the Danish side offered to turn to the works of historians (Samson Grammatik, etc.), in order to use the arguments of the era of the first treaties of Norway and Novgorod, the position of the Russian authorities was announced: "There is nothing to prove the belonging of Lapland to Norway by historians. Historians write a lot, but do not always convey the truth. The testimonies of living people are of far greater significance "[23, Forsten G., p. 287]. It was planned to hold border congresses In Kola for the settlement of the territorial issue in 1595 and 1597, but each time they broke down: as the Russian ambassadors did not come or the Danish ones 35 .

In 1598 Boris Godunov put forward the claims for the Danish side not only on the Kola Peninsula, but also on part of Finmark. The people close to tsar replied to the Danish ambassadors that the border must pass along the river Ivgei, "there are thousands of miles from our ruler to Kola prison", so the stronghold of Denmark, the city of Vargav, "is situated at Lapland, our ruler’s fatherland", so that the tsar "ordered to ruin this city". At the same time, with the establishment of the border, the tsar’s close associates offered to abolish the double tribute of the Lapps36. The change in the tactics of the Russian authorities led to a change in Danish tactics. In 1599 the squadron of Christian IV arrived in Kola, where the king appealed to the local inhabitants with the proposal to accept the Danish citizenship, but they refused [2, Ushakov I.F., v.1, p. 95].

In 1601 a strong famine began in Russia. Bearing in mind that the eastern neighbor had the acute shortage of resources, Christian IV decided to bribe Boris Godunov, offering him 50 thousand thalers for Lapland, but the Russian tsar refused, and also refused from Christian IV offer to divide Lapland in such a way that the most valuable, northern, coastal part of it, where the trade developed, moved to Denmark, and the southern part — to Moscovy37.

But even then, the Danish court did not lose hope and continued to weave intrigues. Christian IV decided to become relatives with Boris Godunov, offering to marry his brother Hans to the daughter of the Russian Tsar Ksenia. By this marriage, the king wanted, first, to obtain the Kola Peninsula, which the bride could receive as a dowry. Belonging to "a great, though not paramount boyars" [24, Klyuchevsky V.O., p. 22], Boris Godunov liked the idea of dynastic marriage. Hans came to Russia, but the matter did not come to negotiations, because he suddenly died. [23, Forsten G., pp. 288–295].

Meanwhile, in Lapland the events developed according to the following scenario: "And from the year 110 the Vargav people of the sovereign tributaries to Konchansky lapland ... did not allow to go. And from the year 110 the Kola voivodes did not allow collectors of tribute of the Danish king to go to Lapland"38.

Thus, the double tribute of the Lapps which occurred for centuries at the most part of the territory of Lapland was abolished in 1602. The tribute paid by the eastern Lapps to the Danish kingdom, from now on, began to flow into the Moscow treasury39.

Under the conditions of the coming civil disturbances in Russia, Boris Godunov could no longer continue the Lapland dispute with Christian IV, the king's attention was focused on domestic politics. The continued pressure from Denmark still forced the government of Boris Godunov to declare a concession: in early 1603 it withdrew its claims to Finnmark, proposing to draw a border just to the west of the Pechenga monastery. At the same time, the area where the Orthodox Church of Boris and Gleb was located, had to be transferred to Denmark. The tsar entrusted more detailed consideration of this issue to his ambassadors, they went to negotiations with the Danish ambassadors to Kola. But the border congress did not lead to constructive solutions 40 [23, Forsten G., pp. 297–298], for which B. Godunov hoped apparently, wanting to maintain the status quo in Lapland until the establishment of political stability in the center. Rapid change of positions and compliance of the Moscow government showed that the fixed border in Lapland did not yet appear by the beginning of the ХVII.

By the end of the civil disturbances, when the Swedish intervention began in Russia, its consequences were felt in the North. In 1611, the Swedes attacked the Kola prison, but they could not take it, which forced the Swedish government to again abandon claims to the Kola Peninsula.

In 1611 Sweden begins the Kalmar War with Denmark, but Sweden also loses it, refusing claims to Finnmark. This, in turn, unleashed Denmark's hands. Taking advantage of foreign policy circumstances, Denmark succeeded in renewing the double tribute of Lapps for one year. In December 1611, the Kola voivoda M.E. Vikentiev let the Danish collector go to the eastern Lapland, and the tribute was collected from the Lapps. Meanwhile, the Danish authorities refused to let the Russian collector come into their possession. In 1613, the Kola voivoda V.T. Zhemchuzhnikov who replaced M.E. Vikentyev, refused to let the tribute collector from Denmark come41, after which the double tribute of the Lapps collapsed finally. Thus, the general Russian-Danish district ceased to exist.

The Lapps living in the Kola North became the subjects of the Moscow state, which is clearly shown in the "Painting of churchyards of Lapps." At the same time, our calculations do not confirm the point of view of Derzhavin V.L., who, having studied the same source inattentively, maintains that the double tribute was persisted in eastern Lapland until 1624 [25, p. 117]. In fact, the "Painting" says that the royal tribute gathered in 10 of the 14 Orthodox churchyards since 1613 already went to the tsarist treasury: "and from the year 121 till 132 the tsarist tribute ... is …there for the sovereign." The receipt of the royal tribute in favor of the Moscow treasury is also recorded by the parish book of the Novgorod quarter of 1620/21: "From Tersk and the upper Lapland, from the baptized Lapps, the Danish king’s tribute is gathered for the sovereign"42. Only the Lapps living the northwestern outskirts of the Kola North, from the Pazretsky and Nyavdemsky churchyards, continued to pay a tribute to the Danish kingdom and the Moscow state "with great need" in 1624. The Lapps of the Motovsky and Pechenga churchyards, which were in the possession of the Pechenga monastery, were in a special situation. If the first ceased to pay tribute to the Danes already in 1602 (without renewal in 1612), the second retained his obligations to the royal treasury also in 162443.

In response to the elimination of double tribute, Christian IV once again intensified the struggle for the eastern Lapland, and this time threatening Russia with the use of force. After Russia actually refused to negotiate, the Danish squadron in 1621–1623 started robbery attacks off the coast of Murman. The reason for this was the so-called "Clement Bloom case".

In winter of 1619–1620 the head of the Danish trade expedition, Clement Bloom, was detained in Kola. He traded in Pustozersk without the permission of the Russian government, in Pechora area, using false money from low-grade silver, modeled on Russian coins. Upon his return from Pustozersk, on his way back, Bloom decided to stay for the winter in Kola, although it was "not allowed by the tsar's decree to winter for the Danish Germans in the Kola prison". In Kola he acted suspiciously calling the Kola prison "our and the Danes' king common land"44. After his detention, Bloom was sent from Kola for questioning to Arkhangelsk. The Russian government, reluctant to aggravate relations with Denmark, released Bloom to freedom. The Dane, saving himself, returned to his country, leaving his property in the Russian North.

Christian IV took the episode with Bloom's arrest as a personal insult and sent a squadron of warships to Murman with a formal pretext to compensate the losses of the Danish merchant, but in reality, with the aim of taking revenge in the struggle for the Lapland lands [2, Ushakov IF, v.1 , pp. 99–101]45. In 1621–1623 the Danish fleet crushed landings and seized ships, as a result of which the serious damage was done to the economic condition of the Kola North: The Danes brought with them various goods and valuables taken on Murman for the sum of more than 50 thousand rubles46.

Against this background, Yu. Komissarov's statement that "for five centuries" the relations between Russia and Denmark "has never been aggravated by armed clashes and conflicts" seems very strange. [26, p. 93].

The Danish attack did not break the Russian positions in Lapland. After the Peace of Stolbov in 1617 with Sweden, Russia lost the most important Baltic lands together with access to the Baltic Sea. Under these conditions, the Russian government was forced to reorient its attention to the contact and trade and economic role of Arkhangelsk, Pomorye, and to strengthen the defense of the northern shores. In 1625, according to the decree of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the garrison in Kola was increased to 500 riflemen, and the number of cannons to 54 [2, Ushakov I.F., v. 1, p. 101]. This turned the Lapland problem into a serious military issue, which Denmark did not dare deal with.

Conclusion

Thus, our reasoning in the light of the presented methodology led to the conclusion that with the liquidation of the common district and the abolition of the double tribute in 1602–1613, Russia actually got a conditional border, which passed through the most western Orthodox churchyards — Nyavdemsky and Pazretsky (the Paz River area). From now on this line divided the territories of the collection of tribute, the territory of citizenship and possession. It should be said that here, for more than 400 years, there is a border, which, according to the precise observation of the Norwegian historian J.-P. Nielsen, is the oldest of the existing borders of Russia47. However, until 1826, there was no strict demarcation line or any regular protection of it on the Lapland border. In bordering churchyards (Nyavdemsky, Pazretsky, Pechenga, etc.), the Lapps continued to carry a double burden of taxes, paying tribute to Russia and Denmark and acting as a kind of international buffer mechanism.

J.H. Lind's suggestion that the territories of the "Russian and Norwegian sedentary population" remained undivided until the demarcation of the border in 1826 [6, p. 142] seems unfounded due to the fact that the concept of "division" is connected here with the concept of "demarcation", although this is not the same thing. In the conditions of the northern climate and the lack of people, the local situation was still depleted and did not require immediate measures to "color" the very line of the Lapland border. The presence of a military fortification and a large garrison in Kola, even they were far from the border strip for more than 100 km, was enough to indicate the belonging of eastern Lapland to the Russian state. The main confirmation of the arisen border was the fall of the double tribute and the division of citizenship.

This is evidenced by the tradition of the annual arrival of a collector of tribute from the Danish kingdom to Kola, which, after the abolition of double tribute, turned into a peace-loving ceremony. According to the description of the Varangian Schulz Nils Knag, at the end of the ХVII century, it looked like this: a tributor who came to Kola, referring to the Kola voivoda, said that the Danish king had instructed him to collect tribute from the "subjects of his royal majesty" in the Kola district. The voivoda answered that he did not receive any orders from the Russian tsar, and so he could not let collect the tribute. Then the treats, toasts in honor of the ruling monarchs, the exchange of gifts followed. A few days later, the foreigner was given a team of deer, and he left back to his country [27, Kaaran A., pp. 28–31]. Thus, the border line already completely determined the behavior of the Danish subject to the east of Pechenga.

Military and diplomatic success of Moscow in Lapland soon gained recognition in Western Europe. On the map of Russia, compiled in 1688 by G. Sanson, the Murmansk Sea was called the Moscow one [28, Minkin A.A., pp. 26–27].

The transformation of the Kola North from the border to the periphery of the Russian state was not a one-time act, as it is sometimes presented in historiography, but was the result of a long process. Formation of the boundary of the Russian state in Lapland was not completed in the Novgorod period. Only thanks to the nature of the strategy of the Moscow State, by 1613, it was possible to eliminate the double tribute of the Lapps and thereby to form the Lapland interstate border. This strategy included the involvement of the eastern Lapps in the Russian faith and the encouragement of the monastic colonization of the Kola North, the creation of military fortifications and the establishment of the voivodship in Kola, the provision of diplomatic pressure on Denmark and military resistance to it. These measures allowed to strengthen the authority of Muscovy in Northern Europe, to ensure the safety of Murmansk fisheries, to preserve the country's maritime communications during the temporary loss of access to the Baltic Sea.

At the same time, the existence of ongoing threat on the Murmansk coast did not allow to develop all-Russian international bargaining there and eventually led to its transfer to the mouth of the Northern Dvina.

Concluding a brief review of the history of the Lapland issue in the policy of the Moscow State, let us return to the beginning of the article and note that the first point of view about the appearance of the Russian border in Lapland in the Old Russian period, and the second point of view that connects this event with a later time (1826) should be questioned. We believe that the Russian border in Lapland appeared in the early XVII century. Further research will either confirm or disprove this position.