Boretskii Family

a family of Novgorod boyars. In the 15th century they owned 714 villages with 1,458 peasant households in the Bezhetsk, Derevskaia, and Obonega piatinas (Novgorod territorial administrative units) in Zavoloch’e. In 1471, Marfa Boretskaia, widow of the posadnik (a high elected official of Novgorod) Isaak An-dreevich Boretskii, and her son Dmitrii Isaakovich, the incumbent posadnik of Novgorod, headed a party of Novgorod boyars hostile to Muscovy, who conducted negotiations to transfer their allegiance to Casimir IV, grand duke of Lithuania. In the battle on the Shelon’ River (1471) between the Muscovy host and the Novgorod militia headed by Dmitrii Boretskii, the Novgorodians were defeated and Dmitrii was captured and executed. Marfa Boretskaia and her son Fedor continued their anti-Moscow activity. After the annexation of Novgorod to Muscovy (1478), Marfa Boretskaia, upon the order of Great Prince Ivan III, was arrested and exiled to Muscovy with her grandson Vasilii Fedorovich (Fedor Boretskii having died) and all her property was confiscated.