The name of this person is known today to every domestic schoolchild. The biography of Ivan Susanin is associated primarily with his famous feat, thanks to which the life of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was saved. Yes, we are talking about the very event that occurred with the Polish interventionists and about which each of us at least once heard in life. It is the biography of Ivan Susanin that will become the main theme of this article. As well as the difficulties associated with its restoration.
Ivan Susanin. Biography: summary
This peasant was born in the village of Derevenki. Regarding his age, the researchers did not come to a consensus. Some claim that he was 30-35 years old, while others - that he was in advanced age.
According to an unconfirmed legend, in the winter of 1612, when a significant part of the then Moscow kingdom was occupied by the forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the peasant Ivan Susanin was hired by a detachment of Polish-Lithuanian troops. He was supposed to be their guide to the village of Domnino, in which then there was still the young Russian Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. However, the peasant deceived the invaders, showing them the wrong path. He led the Poles in the opposite direction, towards the village of Isupov, and in Domnino he sent his own son-in-law with news of the impending danger (the mention of the son-in-law prompted historians to think about the mature age of the hero).
When the deception was uncovered, Ivan Susanin was brutally tortured, but the hero never betrayed the whereabouts of the young king. For this, he was chopped into small pieces, forever remaining in that forest. Here, in general, is all the information that the biography of Ivan Susanin has.
There were versions that he was a serf of the landowner Shestov. Other researchers believed that this man was not an ordinary peasant, but a village headman.
Biography of Ivan Susanin and the problems of historiography of the issue
And here it turns out that not everything is so simple. Usually, for historians, it is not particularly difficult to restore the biography of more or less well-known figures of the modern era. Things are more complicated with clarifying the details of the events of earlier eras, since, as a rule, neither documents nor material evidence in sufficient quantities have been preserved. And Ivan Susanin was not at all an important person.
Today we can restore events from the life of medieval kings and commanders, comparing them with reformist activities, military campaigns and other acts that left a mark in history. But who at the end of the sixteenth century were interested in individual peasants? For quite some time, the only document mentioning this name was a letter from Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. It referred to Ivan Susanin himself, a brief biography of this man, as well as a general description of his exploit. The paper is dated 1619 year. Then she was handed over to the relatives of the hero. There were other, later letters, but they only repeated the text of the first, without bringing anything new.
Interestingly, the heroization of the image of this peasant began only at the dawn of the 19th century. Composer Sergey Glinka, historian and writer Dmitry Bantysh-Kamensky, famous poets of that time described him in their works as a real savior of the Russian tsar and national hero.
At the same time, even the reality of Susanin’s personality was and is being questioned by a number of researchers. One of these skeptics, for example, was the Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin.
The fact is that a similar "Susaninsky" plot is also known during the war, in which Bogdan Khmelnitsky participated . Then the Ukrainian Cossack Nikita Galagan led the Polish gentry into impenetrable jungle, thus ensuring the victory of his army in the battle of Korsun in 1648. It is believed that the legend of Ivan Susanin was inspired by this particular episode.
However, from the 19th century, the unstoppable creation of the image that we know today began. Susanin began to devote poems, plays, novels and dramas. He got a place of honor in the work of famous cultural figures: Ryleyev, Polevoy, Glinka.
In 1838, at the behest of Emperor Nicholas I, the first monument to Susanin was erected in Russia. Thus, being in oblivion for two centuries after his likely feat, the peasant had already become a real national hero by the beginning of the 20th century.