The next stage of the struggle for the Novgorod princely table Yaroslav Vsevolodovich began immediately, having received information about the reign of Mikhail Chernigovsky in Novgorod. With his squad, he occupied Volok Lamsky (present-day Volokolamsk, Moscow region) - a city that, as researchers believe, was in the joint possession of Novgorod and Pereyaslavl, but he stopped there. The reason for this passive, not characteristic of Yaroslav's behavior was probably the position of his brother, the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich.
Since the death of Vsevolod the Big Nest in 1212, Yaroslav and Yuri have always been on the same side of the barricades. Together they pacified their elder brother Constantine in 1212-1214, fought together on Lipitsa in 1216, no disagreements between them were noticeable even later, when Yuri in 1218 took the Vladimir grand-ducal table by right of seniority. Perhaps the first shoots of a future conflict arose in 1224, when, after negotiations with the Novgorodians in Torzhok, Yuri proposed them as Prince Mikhail of Chernigov, but the researchers did not have any information about the disagreements between Yuri and Yaroslav at that time. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Yaroslav, after Mikhail's consent to take the Novgorod table, had good feelings for him, especially remembering that in the distant 1206 he, Yaroslav, was expelled from his first princely table in Pereyaslavl-Yuzhny by Mikhail's father, and in fact, Michael himself was put in his place.
The relationship between Yuri Vsevolodovich Vladimirsky and Mikhail Vsevolodovich Chernigovsky needs additional reflection.
These two princes met, probably no later than 1211, when Yuri was 23 years old, and Mikhail was 32, at Yuri's wedding (remember, Yuri was married to Mikhail's sister Agafya Vsevolodovna). It is not known what princely table Mikhail occupied at that time, but in the family of the Chernigov Olgovichs proper (excluding the Seversk Olgovichi), he occupied a high place, according to the ladder account, being immediately after his father and his two brothers. Mikhail's father, Vsevolod Svyatoslavich Chermny (Red), died between 1212 and 1215, the next oldest uncle, Gleb Svyatoslavich, died between 1216 and 1219, the last of his uncles, Mstislav Svyatoslavich, died in 1223 in the Battle of Kalka. Mikhail also participated in it, but he managed to escape.
Probably, since 1223, Mikhail occupied the Chernigov table, and in 1226, with the help of Yuri Vsevolodovich and his squads, Mikhail managed to defend him from the claims of Prince Oleg Kursk, who, according to the general ladder account of the Olgovichi, was older than Mikhail, but due to belonging to the seversk branch of this clan, according to the decision of the princely congress of 1205, could not lay claim to Chernigov. During this period, Yuri's rapprochement with the Olgovichi takes on a particularly visible shape: in 1227 Yuri marries his nephew Vasilko Konstantinovich to the daughter of Mikhail of Chernigov Maria, and in 1228 his other nephew Vsevolod Konstantinovich marries Oleg Kursky's daughter Marina.
Such a stable and purposeful policy of rapprochement with the clan of the most principled political opponents in recent times, it seems, may indicate a rather close and, perhaps, even friendly relationship between Yuri and Mikhail. Thus, the assumption that Mikhail went to reign in Novgorod, at least with the tacit consent of Yuri, acquires significant weight, and his attempt to take possession of the Novgorod table no longer seems like a gamble.
Mikhail could not take into account only one thing - the energy and determination of his main rival - Yaroslav Vsevolodovich. After the occupation of Volok Lamsky, Yaroslav refused to enter into any negotiations with Mikhail and returned to Pereyaslavl, from where he launched a violent political activity - he began to form a coalition against Yuri's brother. He acted openly, but quite successfully. Within a short time, he managed to win over to his side his nephews - the sons of Konstantin Vsevolodovich Vasilko, Vsevolod and Vladimir, who controlled almost a third of the great Vladimir reign - the former Rostov inheritance of their father with the second city of the principality - Rostov. Together with the Pereyaslavsky principality of Yaroslav himself, the opposition forces were approaching the forces of the Grand Duke himself, and if Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich had joined Yaroslav's coalition, which might be expected, Yuri's position, despite his grand-ducal title, would have become very difficult. A serious political crisis was brewing. Yuri understood this and in September 1229 convened a congress of princes, which was attended by all capable Yuryevichs.
We do not know how this congress went, what its participants spoke about, the main of whom were, of course, Yuri and Yaroslav, what they reproached each other with, what they threatened, what they demanded and how they argued for their demands. It is only known that at the end of the congress, Yuri reconciled with his brother and nephews, in exchange for confirmation of his seniority in the family. Judging by the subsequent events, Yaroslav also managed to insist on Yuri's refusal to support Mikhail Chernigovsky in his claims to Novgorod. Yuri realized that in his alliance with Mikhail he would not find support from his closest relatives and preferred an alliance with his brother over an alliance with his brother-in-law.
The political crisis was overcome without the use of force and even without attempts to demonstrate it solely through negotiations and mutual concessions, which can be considered a great achievement for Russia at that time.
Having untied his hands in the rear and depriving Mikhail of Yuri's support, Yaroslav returned to Novgorod affairs.
And the situation in Novgorod was the saddest way for Mikhail Chernigovsky.
1229 turned out to be as poor in harvest as the previous one, the famine in Novgorod continued. Mikhail himself, leaving his son Rostislav in Novgorod, retired to his Chernigov and from there tried to make peace with the Pereyaslavl prince, who did not want any reconciliation. Only by involving the Smolensk prince and the Kiev metropolitan in the negotiations as an intermediary, Mikhail managed, in the end, to achieve reconciliation with Yaroslav, but he completely released the situation in Novgorod out of control.
In Novgorod, in the period 1229 - 1230. the internal policy of the mayor of Vnezd Vodovik and the tysyatskiy Boris Nyogochevich gave rise to a serious outflow of "vyatyh people" to the "lower lands", to Pereyaslavl to Yaroslav. Representatives of noble boyar families, fearing reprisals by the opponents of the "Suzdal party", began to leave the city en masse with their families, court and squads, joining Yaroslav Vsevolodovich. Their relatives who remained in the city regularly served as a channel for receiving and transmitting information from Novgorod and back. The food situation did not change for the better, no measures on the part of the current Novgorod prince were taken to improve it, the discontent of the "simple child" grew.
By the end of 1229, the situation became even more aggravated. The "Suzdal party" in Novgorod was headed by a very capable politician Stepan Tverdislavich, the son of the same Tverdislav Mikhalkich, who in 1218 - 1220. led the opposition to the Smolensk Rostislavich on the Novgorod table, acting in favor of Yaroslav.
The clashes between the supporters of Stepan Tverdislavich and Vnezd Vodovik took on the character of an undeclared war, when in the middle of the night armed men could break into any house, kill the owner, and set the house on fire. A constant danger also emanated from the veche, which, following its leaders or simply the voice of self-interest and rage, could sentence any politician to death and immediately carry out this sentence simply in order to plunder his estate and profit from food.
In September 1230 frost unexpectedly struck and destroyed the entire already meager harvest. A pestilence began in the city, people were dying in the streets. 3030 people were buried in the mass grave alone on Prusskaya Street in Novgorod. Cases of cannibalism were recorded. The prince, who was in Chernigov, did not take any measures to provide the city with food, in fact, having withdrawn from Novgorod affairs.
In such a situation, the young prince Rostislav Mikhailovich, who remained in Novgorod instead of his father, lost his nerves, and he fled to Torzhok. Together with him, the leaders of the anti-Suzdal party left the city, mayor Vnezd Vodovik and tysyatskiy Boris Negochevich with their most active supporters. It happened on December 8, 1230, and already on December 9 another uprising arose in Novgorod. The courtyards of the escaped community leaders were plundered, and one of Vodovik's supporters, the former mayor, Semyon Borisovich, was killed. At the veche a new mayor was elected, Stepan Tverdislavich became him, Mikita Petrilovich, also a supporter of the "Suzdal party", was appointed to the post of tysyatsky.
The first thing that the new leaders of the community did was send ambassadors to Prince Rostislav in Torzhok with the calculation of his father's wines in front of Novgorod, ending it with the words “go away, and we will provide ourselves with a prince”. Having received such a message from the Novgorodians, Rostislav, Vnezd Vodovik and Boris Negochevich immediately went from Torzhok to Chernigov under the protection of Mikhail Vsevolodovich, while the Novgorodians once again, for the fourth time, summoned Yaroslav Vsevolodovich to reign.
On December 30, 1230, Yaroslav, who recently celebrated the birth of his fifth son, named by him outside the tradition of princely naming as Yaroslav (in the Rurik family it was not customary to call sons by the father's name, if at the time of birth he was alive), was already in Novgorod and took the oath to reign. This was the fourth and last reign of Yaroslav in Novgorod. In 1236 he will betray Novgorod to the eldest of the remaining sons, Alexander, and in the future, only his descendants will become princes of Novgorod. However, then, at the beginning of 1231, Yaroslav, like Mikhail, was not eager to remain in hungry Novgorod. Despite the fact that political passions subsided in him, the hunger grew stronger. By the end of winter, two more mass graves were covered with corpses, that is, the number of victims of famine approached 10,000 people. There was no one to help, because, according to the expression of the chronicle, "Behold, grief was not alone in our land, but in all the regions of Russia, except for Kyev alone."
The city was saved, oddly enough, by the Germans. With the opening of navigation, German merchants came to Novgorod, brought grain and flour. What kind of “Germans” they were and where they came from, the chronicle does not indicate, limiting itself to the general definition “from overseas”. Some researchers believe that these were merchants from Gotland or from Lübeck. One way or another, these same merchants saved the city from extinction, laying the foundation for a series of successful years for Novgorod. It can be stated that in the spring of 1231 a series of political and economic crises in Novgorod was finally overcome.
After his hasty departure from Novgorod at the beginning of 1231, Yaroslav, as usual, did not stay idle. He wanted once and for all to put an end to the disputes about the ownership of Novgorod, at least in relation to the Olgovichi clan and personally to Mikhail Chernigovsky. Yaroslav was gathering an army to attack Chernigov. Sources are silent about whether Yaroslav took the Novgorod regiments with him in January, or summoned them from Novgorod later (more likely the second), however, by the fall of 1231 he had an impressive army at his fingertips, which included the Novgorod and Pereyaslavl squads, and also the squads of his nephews, the sons of Konstantin Vsevolodovich - allies in the coalition of 1229 against Yuri Vsevolodovich. All these forces were aimed at the Chernigov principality.
There is information about the participation of the troops of the Grand Duke in this campaign, but their role needs to be clarified. Indeed, Yuri's squads in this campaign were passive and finished the campaign before the others. According to some researchers, Yuri walked separately from Yaroslav and with his presence restrained his brother from particularly decisive actions. Other researchers believe that, in fact, the purpose of the joint campaign of Yuri and Yaroslav was not causing maximum damage to the Chernigov principality, but a demonstration of Yuri's political reorientation from an alliance with Mikhail to an alliance with his own clan - brothers and nephews, a kind of demonstration of unity and strength. Yuri showed his readiness to side with Yaroslav against Mikhail and, making sure that the latter correctly understood the hint and was not going to enter into an armed confrontation with Yaroslav, he took his squads home.
One way or another, the joint campaign of Yuri and Yaroslav to the Chernigov volost took place. Mikhail did not go to an open clash, hiding in the south of his principality, the troops of Yaroslav (namely, he, and not Yuri, the chronicle considers the leader of the campaign) ravaged the Serensk volost of the Chernigov principality, and the city of Serensk itself (present-day Serensk village of Meshchovsky district of Kaluga obl.) demonstratively burned, after taking all residents out of its borders.
Burning of Serensk. Facial annalistic set.
This "special" attitude Serensk deserved, apparently, because it was the domain of Mikhail. Having plundered the northern regions of the Chernigov principality (besides Serensk, Mosalsk also suffered), and without trying to delve further into the unprotected Chernigov land, Yaroslav returned to his patrimony. Mikhail, on the other hand, realizing that he had lost the fight for Novgorod completely (the hint of what forces he would have to face if this fight continued was too transparent), shifted the vector of his efforts to the south and actively joined the fight first for Galich, which after death of Mstislav Udatny in 1228 again became the object of numerous claims of various contenders, and then for Kiev. In subsequent years, this struggle took away all his strength and he simply did not have the opportunity to return to Novgorod affairs.
It remains only to tell about the fate of the former Novgorod mayor Vnezd Vodovik and Boris Negochevich with their supporters, who took refuge after their flight from Novgorod and Torzhok at the end of 1230 in Chernigov, under the patronage of Mikhail Vsevolodovich.
Venezd Vodovik died a natural death in Chernigov in winter 1231. The place of the leader of the Novgorod opposition was taken by Boris Negochevich, which is why later his supporters were called "Borisov's child" in the annals. Apparently, it was a fairly strong military detachment, which included several dozen or even hundreds of well-armed professional soldiers. Having received Mikhail Chernigovsky's refusal to further participate in the struggle for the Novgorod table, the "Borisov child" persuaded Prince Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich Trubchevsky to make an attempt to seize Novgorod, convincing him that Yaroslav's power there was fragile, and that it was enough for them to appear under the walls of the city for him to open them a gate. However, as the detachment approached Novgorod, Svyatoslav began to receive reliable information about the actual state of affairs in this city and, realizing the hopelessness of his enterprise, left the conspirators. Perhaps Svyatoslav's refusal to try to reign in Novgorod was preceded by some kind of military clash with the Novgorod guard detachments, during which the conspirators lost their wagon train, in which their families were also, because, subsequently, conducting negotiations with Novgorodians and Yaroslav, they asked to return them to them " wives and goods ".
Having lost the prince in their detachment, the "Borisov child" made a march to Pskov, where they were admitted without a fight. Having arrested in Pskov a certain Vyacheslav, a supporter of Yaroslav, who possibly performed some ambassadorial functions, Boris Negochevich decided to use for his own purposes the contradictions between Novgorod and Pskov, which once (in 1228) almost led to an armed clash between these cities. The capture of Pskov by the "Borisov child" took place in the spring of 1232.
Upon learning of the arrival of the "Borisov child" in Pskov, Yaroslav, who was at that time in Pereyaslavl (at about this time his sixth son was born, named Konstantin, in honor of his uncle Konstantin Vsevolodovich), immediately rushed to Novgorod and took energetic measures to return Pskov into the political orbit of Novgorod. The complexity of the situation was that the armed coercion of the Pskovites to peace was extremely undesirable. The shed blood did not unite, but rather would separate the two cities, which, of course, would only play into the hands of external political opponents of Novgorod. Therefore, Yaroslav began to act slowly and thoughtfully. His first demand to the people of Pskov was very easy: "My husband (meaning Vyacheslav, detained by the" Borisov child "), let him go, and then show the way away from where you came from. The Pskovites, in response, offered the prince an exchange of the mayor for "wives and goods" of "Boris's child". Yaroslav refused, but did not conclude peace with the Pskovites and did not organize a campaign against them, but simply took Pskov into a trade blockade.
The summer of 1232 passed in a silent confrontation between Novgorod and Pskov, but by winter the Pskovites, suffering from the "sanctions" imposed on them by Yaroslav, decided to fulfill his relatively mild demand and released the captured Vyacheslav as a gesture of goodwill, without any conditions. In response, Yaroslav also demonstrated his gentleness towards the Pskovites and released the families of the "Borisova chadi" to Pskov, also without additional conditions. However, he did not remove trade restrictions from Pskov. Only by the winter of 1233 did the Pskovians finally lose faith in the political possibilities of Boris Nyogochevich, decided to recognize Yaroslav as their sovereign ("you are our prince") and asked him to reign his eldest son Fyodor. Yaroslav accepted the citizenship of the Pskovites, but instead of his son he gave them his brother-in-law, Yuri Mstislavich, one of the sons of Mstislav Udatny, as princes. Boris Negochevich was forced to retire, as before from Novgorod, Torzhok and Chernigov, now from Pskov.
The choice of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich in favor of Yuri Mstislavich, as the prince of Pskov, was probably not accidental. Until recently, the brother of Mstislav Udatny, Prince Vladimir Mstislavich, who enjoyed great authority in Pskov, ruled in Pskov. After his death, his son Yaroslav claimed the Pskov table, however, the people of Pskov did not like his ardent affection for German relatives (his own sister was married to Theodoric von Buxgewden, a relative of the first Riga bishop), so from Pskov he was "shown the way." Yaroslav settled in Livonia with his crusader relatives, but continued to consider Pskov his hereditary possession and, even being outside the borders of Russia, hatched plans to return to the Pskov table. Returning the Pskov reign to the Rostislavichs, the family of Mstislav the Brave, the grandfather of both Yuri Mstislavovich and Yaroslav Vladimirovich, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, apparently, wanted to neutralize the latter's claims to this table.
Expelled from Pskov, Boris Negochevich and his comrades went not to the Russian borders, but to the Germans in Bear's Head (German Odenpe, modern Otepää, Estonia), where he met with Yaroslav Vladimirovich and, apparently, having found a common language with him, entered his service …
In the spring of 1233 Yaroslav Vladimirovich with the "Borisov child" captured Izborsk with the help of the Germans in exile. Apparently, the participation of the German detachment in this action was a private initiative of one of Yaroslav's German relatives. However, the invaders clearly had few forces, since the Pskov squad managed to recapture Izborsk almost immediately and even without the help of the Novgorodians. In battle, Yaroslav Vladimirovich was captured, and a certain German knight, whom the Russian chronicle calls Daniel, died. Perhaps it was this Daniel, apparently well known to the chronicler, who commanded the German detachment in this event.
The captive Yaroslav the Pskovites handed over to Yaroslav Vsevolodovich as a sign of loyal feelings, after which he was transported to Pereyaslavl, where he awaited ransom for his release, which followed only in 1235.
We no longer hear about the "Borisov child"; it is no longer mentioned in the sources. In the heat of the political struggle, Boris Negochevich entered the slippery path of cooperation with the enemies of his principality, becoming, in the eyes of both Novgorodians and Pskovites, a traitor, a “betrayer”. Where and when he and his supporters ended their days is unknown.
Thus, by the end of 1233, a completely stable internal political situation had developed in the northern part of Russia: all internal conflicts in the Novgorod and Vladimir lands were settled, which made it possible for both Yuri and Yaroslav to turn their energies to solving foreign policy problems. According to the established tradition, Yuri took up the solution of controversial issues with the Volga Bulgaria, expanding the borders of Russia to the east, and Yaroslav spent most of his time in Novgorod, trying to resist the Catholic expansion in this region.
