ROYAL LETTERS ON THE DON AS A SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF RELATIONS OF THE DON KAZAKOV AND THE SMALL NOGAIS AT THE END OF THE 16TH – THE FIRST HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURIES

The relevance of the presented article lies in the fact that based on the analysis of the royal letters sent to the Don Cossacks in the XVI – XVII centuries, it is possible to determine the main directions of the foreign policy of the Moscow state on the southern border, which it tried to implement through the Don Cossacks, as well as to determine the role of the Cossacks themselves in relations with the little Nogai – one of the main opponents of Moscow, along with Turks and Crimean Tatars in the North-Eastern Azov region. The main source in our study was the letters of the Russian tsars, published back in 1864. the editor of the "Don military vedomosti" I.P. Pryanishnikov. As a result of the application of historical-comparative and historical-typological methods, we concluded that for the Moscow state, issues related to building relationships with the Kaziev ulus (The Little Nogai Horde) through the use of Don Cossacks, if not paramount, then, in any case, played a far from the last role in foreign policy in the southern direction in the XVI– XVII centuries. The measurement method was used by us when calculating quantitative information about the main actors of international relations contained in the certificates sent from Moscow to the Don, which we compared to determine the main and secondary partners of Russia in the southern direction. In the context of studying the relationship of the Don Cossacks with the Little Nogai Horde, these letters are studied for the first time.