In 1563, the Russian ambassador Athanasius Nagy, who was going to the Crimea on a diplomatic mission, was given a strange order. He had to "protect it tightly" so that the khan would never attach the "scarlet nishan", that is, the red seal, to the letter with the text of the contract. If it turned out to be impossible to insist on this, the ambassador was ordered not to take a letter with such a seal, "not to do business" and immediately return to Moscow .1 What is striking is the disparity between a minor clerical formality and the unexpectedly significant consequences that its violation could entail. In the eyes of the politicians of that time, the color of the seal on a diplomatic document is sometimes more important than its content. It is so important that it outweighs all the travel costs, all the countless commemorations of the khan, his relatives and nobles, all the hardships of the long steppe journey to the terrible Crimean ruler. But this mysterious circumstance at first glance becomes quite understandable if we recall that in Russia of the XVI century, red-wax seals were attached to the royal letters of grant, and the "scarlet nishan" on the text of the treaty clothed this treaty in the form of a letter of grant, thereby declaring the free will when it was concluded only by one party - the Crimean one. In this form, treaties were concluded only between sovereign monarchs and those rulers who, at least nominally, recognized their dependence. According to the stereotypes of the charters granted, for example, the treaties of Basil III with the master of Prussia were drawn up, since the latter was considered a vassal ("goldovnik") of the German emperor 2 . And the red seal on the text of the Russian-Crimean treaty seemed completely impossible to Moscow diplomats, because in the XVI century in the Crimea they claimed the political legacy of the disintegrated Golden Horde, and the Crimean khans tried in every possible way, at least outwardly, to revive the for ... Read more