Acta of Southern and Western Russia

collected and published by the Archeographic Commission, a 15–volume collection of documents on the history of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Russia from the 14th to the 17th century, in St. Petersburg, 1863–92.

The documents of this collection, which are now kept at the Central State Archives of Historical Documents, have been extracted from the Muscovite Posol’skii prikaz (Ambassadorial Office) and the Malorossiiskii prikaz (Ukrainian Office), from the state archives of the duchy of Lithuania, and from other sources. The first three volumes of the collection reprint letters of the Lithuanian grand dukes and independent Russian and Lithuanian princes, purchase charters, testaments, charters conferring property on churches and monasteries, exchange deeds, orders and statutes on the collection of state revenues and customs duties, charters of privileges to cities, and documents on the search for fugitive peasants, which form a valuable source for the study of social and economic history. The bulk of the collection, volumes 3–15, contains documents on the struggle of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples against Poland and for reunification with Russia and the joint struggle of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples against Poland, Turkey, Crimea, and Sweden after the unification of the Ukraine with Russia in 1654. There are also documents on the Livonian war (1558–83), the Smolensk war (1632–34), and the peasant war under the leadership of S. T. Razin (1670–71).