Sevsk

Sevsk stands on the Sev in the eastern part of the Severian lands. First mentioned in 1146, it was a town of the Chernihiv region before passing to Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Its fortified position later made it an important stronghold of the Russian southwestern frontier.

Under Ivan IV the Kremlin was strengthened and Cossack guards settled nearby. The town withstood a Polish siege in 1634 during the Smolensk War, and in the later seventeenth century service communities, including streltsy, expanded around it. A local mint produced silver coins for Ukrainian lands under Russian rule. As the frontier moved south and west in the eighteenth century, Sevsk's military role diminished; it became a provincial administrative centre and was replanned with regular streets.