The Uglich case is the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. The riddle of Tsarevich Dmitry: astrologers answer questions unknown to historians

Disputes about mysterious death Tsarevich Dmitry does not subside to this day. By official version the boy carelessly wounded himself in the neck with a knife. But, according to rumors, Tsarevich Dmitry was villainously stabbed to death by people sent by. Thus, the death of Tsarevich Dmitry turned from a personal drama into a historical tragedy. This version still has a significant influence on historiography.

What really happened in the courtyard of the Uglich Kremlin on a sunny day on May 15 four hundred years ago?

1584 - Tsarevich Dmitry and his mother Maria Naga, the sixth or seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible, left for Uglich. Their marriage, according to the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church, could not be considered legal and, as a result, Dmitry, to whom Tsar Ivan IV allocated appanage principality with the capital in Uglich, as an illegitimate one, he should be called not a prince, but an appanage Uglich prince. But he still went down in history as “the young Tsarevich Dmitry.” He was the only hope of the Nagih clan for exaltation.

From the age of 6–7 he began to feel like a future sovereign. The boy was marked by a family trait - cruelty and unbridled character. He often ordered the courtyard people to sculpt figures of people from snow and carve figures of people from wood and assigned them the names of Moscow boyars, and then cut off their limbs and heads, saying: “With this I will do so and so when I become king, and with this - like that." In Russian history there was already an example of a royal child, gifted and passionate, who was raised in a similar way. Over time, this child grew into a king.

Tragic events took place on Saturday, when the inhabitants of the Kremlin were preparing for lunch. The Tsarevich, as always at this time, played “poke” with the boys with a knife. The person throwing the knife from a certain distance had to get into a circle outlined on the ground. It was Dmitry's turn. And at this time the unexpected happened. Everyone rushed to the courtyard. Maria Nagaya snatched the body of the already dead prince from the hands of Arina Tuchkova. The queen, distraught with grief, pointing to Volokhova, under whose supervision Dmitry was during the game, began to lament that it was her Osip and the son of Bityagovsky and Mikita Kachalov who killed Tsarevich Dmitry.

They rang the bell. Excited people were already crowding around. Many came running with clubs and knives. Bityagovsky, who jumped out straight from the dinner table, tried to calm people down, rejecting accusations of his involvement in the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. However, both in our time and in those times, “crowd psychology”, fueled by the Nagimi brothers, played a role.

A.S. Pushkin once astutely remarked: “The people, like children, require entertainment and action. The people demand strong sensations; for them, executions are a spectacle. Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, shaken by dramatic magic.” Clerk Mikhail Bityagovsky, who was sent by Godunov to supervise Tsarevich Dmitry, and his assistants Nikita Kachalov and Danila Tretyakov were immediately torn to pieces by excited people. In front of Maria Nagaya, the children Danila Bityagovsky and Osip Volokhov, who were playing with Dmitry, were killed.

An investigative commission headed by Metropolitan Gelasius of Sark and Podoinsk was sent to Uglich, and in fact it was led by Vasily Shuisky, an insidious and intelligent opponent of Boris Godunov. Historians write that the commission investigated the case “hot on its heels.”

From a forensic point of view, this is not entirely true. A hot pursuit investigation is considered when it was carried out within the first 24 hours after the incident. Shuisky’s commission arrived in Uglich only on May 19, that is, on the fourth day after the incident. From the point of view of modern criminology, death under so-called “unexplained circumstances” suggests the possibility of murder or an accident. The "Search" - the investigative case of Shuisky - has reached our time. It should be noted that the investigation was carried out quite professionally. As expected, several versions were worked out. In Rus' at all times they knew how to conduct “search” cases.

It was established that at the time of the tragedy, all the killed servicemen were not at the scene of Tsarevich Dmitry’s death. Clerks and clerks conducted confrontations and interrogated witnesses in detail. The stories of the boys watching the game were given special significance. After all, children are easily suggestible and during interrogations, with well-posed questions, they can give evidence “necessary” for the investigation.

As the analysis of the records of the investigative case confirms, during the inquiry there was no psychological pressure exerted on the children by adults. The boys told about what happened like this: “... the prince was playing poke with a knife with them in the backyard, and an illness came upon him - an epileptic illness - and attacked the knife.” The adults confirmed: “...yes, at that time, as it was beating, he pricked himself with a knife and that’s why he died.”

The commission, having examined the testimony of witnesses, came to the unequivocal conclusion that an accident occurred during an attack of epilepsy. After studying all the documents, on June 2, 1591, the “Consecrated Cathedral” and the boyar Duma announced to the people: “Tsarevich Dmitry’s death was caused by God’s judgment.”

Now the participants in the riot in Uglich suffered a cruel reprisal: the brothers Mikhail, Andrey and Grigory Nagy were imprisoned in prisons in distant cities, and the prince’s mother Maria Nagy was tonsured a nun and exiled to a remote monastery. Many townspeople were also punished. The fate of the Uglich bell, which announced the “murder” of Tsarevich Dmitry, became comparable to a human one: he was deprived of one “ear” and “exiled” under strong guard to distant Tobolsk.

Considering the difficult political situation of those times, some skeptics still say to this day: “Couldn’t Boris Godunov’s trusted people insert certain sheets of evidence in his favor into the search file?” Scientific research conducted today has confirmed the absolute authenticity of the “Search”.

And yet, publications continue to appear about the deliberate murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. Even many of the eminent scientists continue to assert that the names of the real perpetrators of the murder, apparently, will never be known. Perhaps these were mercenaries, whom no one knew in Uglich; they could easily enter the territory of the Kremlin, since it was practically unguarded. Having committed a crime, the criminals left the territory of the palace and, on horseback, left the city. The versions of these scientists are based on the balance of political forces of those times.

They believe that the death of Tsarevich Dmitry was primarily beneficial to Vasily Shuisky. But 13 years after the tragedy, Shuisky recognizes the impostor False Dmitry as the “murdered prince,” and 2 years after that, “called out” to the kingdom, he announced to the people in his letters that Dmitry “died truly and was buried in Uglich.” The role of Dmitry's mother Maria Nagoya was also quite unsightly. Brought from the monastery for a face-to-face meeting, she also recognizes her son in False Dmitry, hastily inventing a fairy tale about the supposedly “replaced Dmitry” during an attack, and that then the “replacement” child died.

According to one of the available versions, Dmitry was killed on the orders of Boris Godunov, while the killers deliberately gave the prince a sharp knife in his hands during the game and patiently waited for the prince to impale himself on him during an attack of epilepsy. The implausibility of such a situation is obvious.

The story of the death of Tsarevich Dmitry and the great Russian writer A. Chekhov did not pass by. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine, he was going to defend his dissertation on the topic: “Medical practice in Russia” and in this dissertation he wanted to use medical data to approach the solution to the historical solution to the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. Studying the data on the boy’s death, Chekhov wrote with regret that forensic medicine was completely absent from the study.

The Tsarevich suffered from a “black illness”, a “falling disease” - severe epilepsy, accompanied by unexpectedly occurring frequent, prolonged seizures. Nowadays, medicine views epilepsy as a neuropsychiatric disease, in some cases leading to personality disintegration. History knows many examples of epilepsy in famous people: , F. Dostoevsky, V. Gog, G. Flaubert... All of them, suffering from “epileptic illness,” retained intellectual and creative potential. But these examples only confirm the exception to the rule.

This disease has been known since ancient times. Already in the 4th century, treatment of epilepsy was divided into dietary, surgical and pharmacological. Dietary methods recommended rubbing the patient’s body with wine vinegar and olive oil, and prohibited the consumption of certain types of fish, meat and game; surgical - bloodletting, cutting various parts body, craniotomy; pharmacological - the use of herbs, decoctions. Constant prayers and fasting, and wearing amulets were also recommended. Cauterization of the scalp in the occipital region was considered extremely effective. But all these remedies were of little help.

And, of course, the prince was doomed - a boy with a torn psyche, crippled by a bad upbringing. If you look at Dmitry with ordinary human eyes without a “historical” background, then on the fateful day, May 15, he went out into the yard, exhausted by a severe attack, where his peers were waiting for him.

His last attack before his death lasted continuously for two days. He bit the hands of mothers and nannies who tried to hold their bodies arching in convulsions.

In medical practice, there have been cases of epileptic seizures, when the patient is caught in an attack in the most unexpected place. Often, epileptics cause themselves quite severe injuries when hitting the ground and surrounding objects. All this seems to confirm the version of an accident, or the version of a “murder without a killer.” But medical practice has never recorded a case of death similar to the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. It turns out that medical statistics, if not reject, then seem to cast doubt on the version of “murder without a killer,” as well as the version about an accident during an epileptic attack.

What is the real reason for the death of Tsarevich Dmitry?

The observant A. Chekhov could not help but be interested in the question: could Dmitry inflict a fatal stab wound in the neck with his own hand? Here is what he wrote about this to the publisher Suvorin: “You can read about epilepsy in any textbook on nervous diseases, and also (for a researcher this is necessary) in the relevant department of forensic medicine. But you are not a specialist; you will not understand the medical chaos. I’ll take a piece of paper and briefly sketch out everything you need and explain it as best I can. The boy could have killed himself.”

Well, what does the forensic medical examination of our time tell us about such cases? Can the victim hurt himself with his hand?

Of course it can. Modern forensic medical practice knows many cases of deaths in epileptics who were holding piercing or cutting objects in their hands at the time of an attack. For this reason, the Labor Protection Regulation prohibits persons suffering from epilepsy from working in industries associated with mechanized labor. Could death have occurred as quickly as in the case of Tsarevich Dmitry with a knife wound on the neck?

Medicine answers this question positively: death occurs from an air embolism of the heart, that is, from air entering its right ventricle, due to injuries to the vessels of the neck. An amount of air from 20 to 100 ml can cause death in a wounded person. And when even a relatively small amount of air quickly enters the vascular bed, death usually occurs immediately, which is what happened, apparently, to Tsarevich Dmitry.

Historiography still does not have information that allows us to assert the involvement of Boris Godunov or Vasily Shuisky in the death of Tsarevich Dmitry.

And numerous facts of forensic medicine and data from expert practice suggest that he could have died when the vessels of his neck were damaged by a knife he was holding in his hand during an epileptic fit.

Considering the confirmed modern scientific research the reliability of the materials carefully carried out after the tragedy of the “Search” in Uglich and the possibility of inflicting lethal injections on oneself, in cases of epilepsy, which is confirmed modern practice According to the forensic medical examination, the death of Ivan the Terrible's son, Tsarevich Dmitry, should be interpreted as an accident.

Uglich case - the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry

Freedom is a luxury that not everyone can afford.

Otto von Bismarck

The Uglich case is the name of a set of events that were aimed at studying the mysterious circumstances that accompanied one of the significant events of that era - the death of one of the sons of Ivan the Terrible - the young Tsarevich Dmitry. This name of the case is due to the place where the tragedy occurred on May 15, 1591 - the city of Uglich. There are several versions of the death of the prince, but before considering them, it is necessary to understand what events in Rus' preceded this mysterious case.

Prerequisites

After the death of the Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, who united the Russian lands, his son Fedor began to rule the country. In addition, Tsarevich Dmitry, who was the son of Ivan 4 from his last marriage to Maria Nagaya, had significant rights to the Russian throne. Fyodor, immediately after his father’s death, sent his wife and young son as far as possible from the capital of the state - to Uglich. Formally, Dmitry was allocated a separate inheritance, where the prince ruled, but in practice, real power in the inheritance was concentrated in the hands of officials who came from Moscow. Thus, by special order of the tsar and his associates, clerk Mikhail Bityagovsky was sent to Uglich. His task was simple - to keep an eye on Dmitry.

Relations between Uglich and Moscow were hostile. There are references to the fact that in Moscow it was forbidden to mention the name of Dmitry Ivanovich. Maria Nagaya openly expressed her dissatisfaction with the fact that her family was excommunicated from Moscow. We see a tense relationship between Fedor and Dmitry, due to the fact that each of them had rights to the throne. But soon both brothers were killed, and Tsar Boris came to power.

The essence of the Uglich case

On May 15, 1591, Dmitry was found dead with his throat cut. There were no witnesses to this murder. A remarkable fact is that the residents of Uglich killed Mikhail Botyagovsky and all his relatives without trial. As we remember, this was exactly the man who was sent from Moscow to “look after” the young prince. The mother of the murdered man also openly said that this was the work of people who came from Moscow.

The news of Dmitry's murder was very loud. The people were alarmed by the brazen murder of a member of the royal family, who had every reason to be the Russian Tsar. As a result, Boris Godunov was forced to create a special commission, which was sent to Uglich in order to understand the details of the case on the spot and make its decision on Uglich case. The commission included:

1. Vasily Shuisky
2. Okolnichy Andrey Kleshin
3. Deacon Elizar Danilovtch
4. Metropolitan of Krutitsky

As a result of their activities, the following picture of the case was formed. Tsarevich Dmitry was playing on the street with a knife. Suddenly he had an epileptic fit and fell, cutting his throat with a knife. The murder of Botyagovsky was attributed to the fact that he tried to calm the city by calling the residents to order. Instead, the maddened crowd simply tore him apart.

Consequences of the death of Tsarevich Dmitry

The results of the commission's work were reported to the king. This report especially emphasized the fact of the accidental death of the prince, as well as the arbitrariness of his family and townspeople over those whom they blamed for this death. It was precisely this that all the Nagi, as well as the active instigators of the massacre, were accused of. As a result, the Uglich affair ended with Dmitry’s mother, Maria, being tonsured a nun, and she went to a monastery under the name of Martha. All her relatives were exiled, and the most active participants in the arbitrariness over Moscow officials were killed.

The Uglich case had great consequences for the country. Firstly, there was only one person left in the country with rights to the throne - Tsar Fedor. Secondly, the murder of Dmitry led to a wave of rumors that he could not have been killed and was miraculously saved. As a result of this, a false Dmitry appeared in the country. Thirdly, he was one of the last Rurik kings.

Popular rumor attributed the murder of Dmitry to Boris Godunov. When Fedor died mysteriously in 1598 and, in the absence of another contender for the throne, the tsar praised Godunov, these rumors only intensified.

Holy Righteous Tsarevich DIMITRY OF UGLICH (†1591)

Tsarevich Dmitry. Painting by M. V. Nesterov, 1899

The Holy Right-Believing Tsarevich Dimitri is the son of Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible and his seventh wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna Nagaya. He was the last representative of the Moscow line of the Rurikovich house. According to the custom of that time, the prince was given two names: Uar, after the name of St. Huara, on his birthday (October 21) and Demetrius (October 26) - on the day of his baptism.

After the death of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, his eldest son, the Christ-loving Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, ascended the throne. However, the actual ruler of the Russian state was his brother-in-law, the power-hungry boyar Boris Godunov. The good Theodore Ioannovich was completely immersed in spiritual life, and Boris did everything he wanted; foreign courts sent gifts to Godunov on a par with the tsar. Meanwhile, Boris knew that everyone in the state, starting with Tsar Theodore, recognized Demetrius as the heir to the throne and his name was remembered in churches. Boris Godunov began to act against the prince as against his personal enemy, wanting to get rid of the rightful heir to the Russian throne.

For this, Boris decided to remove the prince from the Moscow royal court. Together with his mother, the widowed queen Maria Feodorovna, and her relatives, Tsarevich Dimitri was sent to his appanage city of Uglich.

Ancient Uglich was “great and populous” at that time. According to the Uglich chronicles, it had 150 churches, including three cathedrals, and twelve monasteries. The total population was forty thousand. On the right bank of the Volga stood the Kremlin, surrounded by a strong wall with towers, where the future tsar was to live. Fate, however, decreed otherwise.

Trying to avoid dangerous bloodshed, Boris Godunov first tried to slander the young heir to the throne by spreading false rumors through his followers about the alleged illegitimacy of the prince (referring to the fact that the Orthodox Church considers only three consecutive marriages legal), and by forbidding the mention of his name during services.

Then he spread a new fiction that Demetrius had inherited the cruel temper and severity of Ivan the Terrible. Since these actions did not bring what they wanted, the insidious Boris decided to destroy the prince. An attempt to poison Dimitri with the help of Vasilisa Volokhova, Dimitri Ioannovich’s nurse, was unsuccessful: the deadly potion did not harm him.

Then, having decided on an obvious crime, Boris began to look for the killers. And he found it in the person of clerk Mikhail Bityagovsky, his son Danila and nephew Nikita Kachalov. They also bribed the Tsarevich's mother Vasilisa Volokhova and her son Osip.

On the morning of May 15, 1591, the mother took the prince for a walk. The nurse, driven by some vague premonition, did not want to let him in. But the mother resolutely took the hand and led the prince out onto the porch. His killers were already waiting there. Osip Volokhov took him by the hand and asked: “Is this your new necklace, sir?” He answered in a quiet voice: “This is an old necklace.” Volokhov stabbed him in the neck, but did not take his larynx. The nurse, seeing the death of the sovereign, fell on him and began to scream. Danilko Volokhov threw the knife, ran away, and his accomplices, Danilko Bityagovsky and Mikitka Kachalov, beat the nurse to a pulp. The prince was slaughtered like a virgin lamb and thrown from the porch.

At the sight of this terrible crime, the sexton of the cathedral church, locked in the bell tower, sounded the alarm, calling the people. People who came running from all over the city avenged the innocent blood of the eight-year-old boy Demetrius, arbitrarily dealing with the cruel conspirators.

The murder of the Tsarevich was reported to Moscow, and the Tsar himself wanted to go to Uglich to investigate, but Godunov kept him under various pretexts. Boris Godunov sent his people, led by Prince V.I. Shuisky, to Uglich for trial and managed to convince the tsar that he younger brother, while playing “poke”, was captured by an epilepsy attack and during it he accidentally stumbled upon a knife.

This result of the investigation led to severe punishment of Nagikh and the Uglich people as guilty of rebellion and arbitrariness. The Queen Mother, accused of lack of supervision over the prince, was exiled to the remote, meager monastery of St. Nicholas on Voskhe, on the other side of the White Lake, and tonsured into monasticism with the name of Martha. Her brothers were exiled to different places for imprisonment; the inhabitants of Uglich were some executed, some exiled to a settlement in Pelym, and many had their tongues cut. Subsequently, by order of Vasily Shuisky, the bell, which served as an alarm, had its tongue cut off (as a person), and he, along with the Uglich rebels, became the first exiles in the newly annexed To the Russian state Siberia. Only in late XIX century, the disgraced bell was returned to Uglich. Currently it hangs in the Church of Tsarevich Demetrius “On the Blood”.

A children's cemetery arose around the prince's grave and the chapel erected over it.

However, fifteen years after the murder of the Tsarevich, already being the Tsar, Shuisky testified in front of all of Russia that “Tsarevich Dimitri Ioannovich, out of the envy of Boris Godunov, slaughtered himself like a sheep without malice.” The motivation for this was the desire, in the words of Tsar Vasily Shuisky, “to stop the lips of lies and blind the eyes of unbelievers who say that the living one will escape (the prince) from the murderous hands,” in view of the appearance of an impostor who declared himself the true Tsarevich Dimitri. A special commission was sent to Uglich under the leadership of Metropolitan Philaret of Rostov. When they opened the prince’s coffin, an “extraordinary incense” spread throughout the cathedral, and then they found that “in his left hand the prince was holding a towel embroidered with gold, and in the other - nuts,” and in this form he suffered death. 3 July 1606 g . he was canonized. The holy relics were solemnly transferred and placed in the Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin - the family grand-ducal and royal tomb, "in the chapel of John the Baptist, where his father and brothers were."

Cancer of Tsarevich Dimitry of Uglich in the Arkhangelsk Cathedral of the Kremlin

Immediately after the death of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, rumors appeared that Tsarevich Dmitry was alive. During the reign of Boris Godunov, these rumors intensified, and by the end of his reign in 1604, everyone was talking about the supposedly living prince. They told each other that the wrong child had allegedly been stabbed to death in Uglich, and that the real Tsarevich Dmitry was now marching as an army from Lithuania to take the royal throne that was rightfully due to him. The Time of Troubles has begun. The name of Tsarevich Dmitry, which became a symbol of the “right”, “legitimate” tsar, was adopted by several impostors, one of whom reigned in Moscow.

In 1603, False Dmitry I (a poor and humble Galician nobleman Yuri Bogdanovich Otrepiev, who became a monk in one of the Russian monasteries and took the name Gregory as a monk) appeared in Poland, posing as the miraculously saved Dmitry. In June 1605, False Dmitry ascended the throne and for a year officially reigned as “Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich”; unprepossessing in appearance, he was by no means a stupid person, had a lively mind, knew how to speak well, and in the Boyar Duma easily resolved the most difficult issues; Dowager Queen Maria Nagaya recognized him as her son, but as soon as he was killed on May 17 (27), 1606, she abandoned him and declared that her son undoubtedly died in Uglich.

In 1606, False Dmitry II (Tushinsky thief) appeared, and in 1608, False Dmitry III (Pskov thief, Sidorka) appeared in Pskov.

With the end of the Time of Troubles, the government of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov returned to the official version of the government of Vasily Shuisky: Dmitry died in 1591 at the hands of Godunov’s mercenaries. It was also recognized as official and Russian Orthodox Church. This version was described in “History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin. A.S. also adhered to it at one time. Pushkin. In his drama "Boris Godunov" he made Tsar Boris suffer from remorse for crime committed. And for 13 years in a row, the king dreams of a child killed on his orders, and the holy fool throws terrible words in his face: “... Order them to be slaughtered, just as you stabbed the little prince...”.

Saint Demetrius of Rostov compiled a life and a description of miraculous healings through the prayers of Saint Tsarevich Demetrius, from which it is clear that those with sick eyes were especially often healed.

During Patriotic War In 1812, the holy relics of the blessed Tsarevich Demetrius were saved from desecration by the priest of the Moscow Ascension convent John Veniaminov, who took them out of the Archangel Cathedral under his clothes and hid them in the altar, on the choir of the second tier of the cathedral church in the Ascension Monastery. After the expulsion of the French, the holy relics were solemnly transferred to their original place - to the Archangel Cathedral.

Since the 18th century, the image of Tsarevich Dimitri has been placed on the coat of arms of Uglich, and since 1999 on the flag of the city. The “Church of Demetrius on the Blood” was also built, erected on the site of his murder.

In 1997, the Order of the Holy Blessed Tsarevich Demetrius was established. It is awarded to individuals who have made a significant contribution to the care and protection of suffering children: the disabled, orphans and street children. The order is a cross with rays made of pure silver with gilding, in the middle of which in a medallion there is an image of Tsarevich Demetrius with the inscription “For works of mercy.” Every year in Uglich on May 28th it is held Orthodox holiday Day of Tsarevich Dimitri.

By blessing His Holiness Patriarch Moscow and All Rus' Kirill “Day of Tsarevich Dimitri” acquired the status of an All-Russian Orthodox children's holiday in 2011.

Troparion, tone 4:
You stained the royal diadem with your blood, God-wise martyr, you took the cross in your hand by the scepter, you appeared victorious and offered an immaculate sacrifice to the Lady for yourself: for as a gentle lamb, you were slain from a slave. And now, rejoicing, you stand Holy Trinity, praying for the power of your relatives to be godly and for your Russian sons to be saved.

Kontakion, tone 8:
Today there is joy in the most glorious memory of your faithful, for you have vegetated and brought beautiful fruit to Christ; In the same way, even after your murder, your body was preserved incorruptible, sufferingly stained with blood. Noble and holy Demetrius, keep your fatherland and your city unharmed, for this is your affirmation.

In October 1582, Ivan the Terrible had a son, Dmitry, who had the fate of becoming the last offspring (male line) of the royal Rurik dynasty. According to accepted historiography, Dmitry lived for eight years, but his name hung as a curse over the Russian state for another 22 years.

Russian people often have the feeling that their Motherland is under some kind of spell. “Everything is different with us - not like normal people.” At the turn of the 16th-17th centuries in Rus' they were sure that they knew the root of all troubles - the curse of the innocently murdered Tsarevich Dmitry was to blame.

Alarm in Uglich

For Tsarevich Dmitry, youngest son Ivan the Terrible (from his last marriage with Maria Naga, who, by the way, was never recognized by the church), it all ended on May 25, 1591, in the city of Uglich, where he, in the status of appanage prince of Uglich, was in honorable exile. At noon, Dmitry Ioannovich threw knives with other children who were part of his retinue. In the materials of the investigation into the death of Dmitry, there is evidence of one youth who played with the prince: “... the prince was playing poke with a knife with them in the backyard, and an illness came upon him - an epileptic illness - and attacked the knife.” In fact, this testimony became the main argument for investigators to classify Dmitry Ioannovich’s death as an accident. However, the residents of Uglich would hardly be convinced by the investigation’s arguments. Russian people have always trusted signs more than the logical conclusions of “people”. And there was a sign... And what a sign! Almost immediately after the heart of the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible stopped, the alarm sounded over Uglich. The bell of the local Spassky Cathedral was ringing. And everything would be fine, only the bell would ring by itself - without a bell ringer. This is the story of the legend, which the people of Uglich for several generations considered to be reality and a fatal sign. When residents learned about the death of the heir, a riot began. The Uglich residents destroyed the Prikaznaya hut, killed the sovereign clerk with his family and several other suspects. Boris Godunov, who actually ruled the state under the nominal Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, hastily sent archers to Uglich to suppress the rebellion. Not only the rebels suffered, but also the bell: it was torn from the bell tower, its “tongue” was pulled out, its “ear” was cut off and it was publicly punished in the main square with 12 lashes. And then he, along with other rebels, was sent into exile to Tobolsk. The then Tobolsk governor, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, ordered the corn-eared bell to be locked in the official hut, with the inscription “first exiled inanimate from Uglich” written on it. However, the massacre of the bell did not rid the authorities of the curse - everything was just beginning.

The end of the Rurik dynasty

After the news of the death of the prince spread throughout the Russian Land, rumors spread among the people that boyar Boris Godunov had a hand in the “accident.” But there were brave souls who suspected the then Tsar, Fyodor Ioannovich, the older half-brother of the deceased Tsarevich, of the “conspiracy.” And there were reasons for this.

40 days after the death of Ivan the Terrible, Fedor, the heir to the Moscow throne, began to actively prepare for his coronation. By his order, a week before the crowning, the widow-Tsarina Maria and her son Dmitry Ioannovich were sent to Uglich - “to reign.” The fact that the last wife of Tsar John IV and the prince were not invited to the coronation was a terrible humiliation for the latter. However, Fyodor did not stop there: for example, the maintenance of the prince’s court was sometimes reduced several times a year. Just a few months after the beginning of his reign, he ordered the clergy to remove the traditional mention of the name of Tsarevich Dmitry during services. The formal basis was that Dmitry Ioannovich was born in his sixth marriage and, according to church rules, was considered illegitimate. However, everyone understood that this was just an excuse. The ban on mentioning the prince during divine services was perceived by his court as a wish for death. There were rumors among the people about failed attempts on Dmitry's life. Thus, the Briton Fletcher, while in Moscow in 1588–1589, wrote down that his nurse died from poison intended for Dmitry.

Six months after the death of Dmitry, the wife of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, Irina Godunova, became pregnant. Everyone was waiting for the heir to the throne. Moreover, according to legend, the birth of a boy was predicted by numerous court magicians, healers and healers. But in May 1592, the queen gave birth to a girl. There were rumors among the people that Princess Theodosia, as her parents named their daughter, was born exactly a year after Dmitry’s death - on May 25, and royal family delayed the official announcement by almost a month. But this was not the worst sign: the girl lived only a few months and died the same year. And here they began to talk about Dmitry’s curse. After the death of his daughter, the king changed; he finally lost interest in his royal duties, and spent months in monasteries. People said that Fyodor was making amends for his guilt before the murdered prince. In the winter of 1598, Fyodor Ioannovich died without leaving an heir. The Rurik dynasty died with him.

Great Hunger

The death of the last sovereign from the Rurik dynasty opened the way to the kingdom of Boris Godunov, who was actually the ruler of the country even when Fyodor Ioannovich was alive. By that time, Godunov had gained a popular reputation as the “killer of the prince,” but this did not bother him much. Through cunning manipulations, he was nevertheless elected king, and almost immediately began with reforms. In two short years, he carried out more changes in the country than previous kings had done in the entire 16th century. And when Godunov already seemed to have won the people’s love, a catastrophe struck - from unprecedented climatic cataclysms, the Great Famine came to Rus', which lasted for three whole years. The historian Karamzin wrote that people “like cattle plucked grass and ate it; the dead were found to have hay in their mouths. Horse meat seemed like a delicacy: they ate dogs, cats, bitches, and all sorts of unclean things. People became worse than animals: they left their families and wives so as not to share the last piece with them. They not only robbed and killed for a loaf of bread, but also devoured each other... Human meat was sold in pies in the markets! Mothers gnawed at the corpses of their babies!..” In Moscow alone, more than 120,000 people died of hunger; Numerous gangs of robbers operated throughout the country. Not a trace remained of the people's love for the elected tsar that had been born - the people again talked about the curse of Tsarevich Dmitry and about the “damned Boriska”.

The end of the Godunov dynasty

1604 finally brought good harvest. It seemed that the troubles were over. It was the calm before the storm - in the fall of 1604, Godunov was informed that the army of Tsarevich Dmitry, who miraculously escaped from the hands of Godunov’s murderers in Uglich back in 1591, was moving from Poland to Moscow. “The Slave Tsar,” as Boris Godunov was popularly called, probably realized that Dmitry’s curse was now embodied in an impostor. However, Emperor Boris was not destined to meet face to face with False Dmitry: he died suddenly in April 1605, a couple of months before the triumphant entry of the “saved Dmitry” into Moscow. There were rumors that the desperate “damned king” had committed suicide by poisoning. But Dmitry’s curse also spread to Godunov’s son, Fyodor, who became king, who was strangled along with his own mother shortly before False Dmitry entered the Kremlin. They said that this was one of the main conditions of the “prince” for triumphant return to the capital.

The end of the people's trust

Historians still argue whether the “tsar was not real.” However, we will probably never know about this. Now we can only say that Dmitry never managed to revive the Rurikovichs. And again the end of spring became fatal: on May 27, the boyars under the leadership of Vasily Shuisky staged a cunning conspiracy, during which False Dmitry was killed. They announced to the people that the king, whom they had recently idolized, was an impostor, and they staged a public posthumous humiliation. This absurd moment completely undermined people's trust in the authorities. Simple people they did not believe the boyars and bitterly mourned Dmitry. Soon after the murder of the impostor, at the beginning of summer, terrible frosts struck, which destroyed all the crops. Rumors spread throughout Moscow about the curse that the boyars had brought upon the Russian Land by killing the legitimate sovereign. The cemetery at the Serpukhov Gate of the capital, where the impostor was buried, became a place of pilgrimage for many Muscovites. Many testimonies have appeared about the "appearances" of the resurrected king in different ends Moscow, and some even claimed to have received a blessing from him. Frightened by popular unrest and a new cult of the martyr, the authorities dug up the corpse of the “thief,” loaded his ashes into a cannon and fired in the direction of Poland. False Dmitry's wife Marina Mnishek recalled when her husband's body was dragged through the Kremlin gates, the wind tore the shields from the gates, and installed them unharmed in the same order in the middle of the roads.

The end of the Shuiskys

The new tsar was Vasily Shuisky, the man who in 1598 initiated an investigation into the death of Tsarevich Dmitry in Uglich. The man who concluded that the death of Dmitry Ioannovich was an accident, having put an end to False Dmitry and receiving royal power, suddenly admitted that the investigation in Uglich had evidence of the violent death of the prince and direct involvement in the murder of Boris Godunov. By saying this, Shuisky killed two birds with one stone: he discredited his personal enemy Godunov, even if he was already dead, and at the same time proved that False Dmitry, who was killed during the conspiracy, was an impostor. Vasily Shuisky even decided to reinforce the latter with the canonization of Tsarevich Dmitry. A special commission headed by Metropolitan Philaret of Rostov was sent to Uglich, which opened the grave of the prince and allegedly discovered the incorruptible body of a child in the coffin, which exuded a fragrance. The relics were solemnly brought to the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin: a rumor spread throughout Moscow that the boy’s remains were miraculous, and the people went to Saint Dmitry for healing. However, the cult did not last long: there were several cases of death from touching the relics. Rumors spread throughout the capital about false relics and Dmitry's curse. The crayfish with the remains had to be placed out of sight in a reliquary. And very soon several more Dmitri Ioannovichs appeared in Rus', and the Shuisky dynasty, the Suzdal branch of the Rurikovichs, who for two centuries were the main rivals of the Danilovich branch for the Moscow throne, was interrupted by the first tsar. Vasily ended his life in Polish captivity: in the country towards which, on his orders, the ashes of False Dmitry I were once shot.

The Last Curse

The Troubles in Rus' ended only in 1613 - with the establishment of the new Romanov dynasty. But did Dmitry’s curse dry up along with this? The 300-year history of the dynasty says otherwise. Patriarch Filaret (in the world Fyodor Nikitich Romanov), the father of the first “Romanov” Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, was in the thick of the “passion for Dmitry.” In 1605, he, imprisoned by Boris Godunov in the monastery, was freed as a “relative” by False Dmitry I. After Shuisky’s accession, it was Philaret who brought “ miraculous relics” prince from Uglich to Moscow and propagated the cult of St. Dmitry of Uglitsky - in order to convince, at the instigation of Shuisky, that the False Dmitry who had once saved him was an impostor. And then, standing in opposition to Tsar Vasily, he became the “nominated patriarch” in the Tushino camp of False Dmitry II.

Filaret can be considered the first of the Romanov dynasty: under Tsar Mikhail, he bore the title “Great Sovereign” and was actually the head of state. The Romanov reign began with the Time of Troubles and the Time of Troubles ended. Moreover, for the second time in Russian history, the royal dynasty was interrupted by the murder of the prince. There is a legend that Paul I locked in a casket for a hundred years the prediction of Elder Abel concerning the fate of the dynasty. It is possible that the name of Dmitry Ioannovich appeared there...

The first period of unrest: the struggle for the Moscow throne

End of the dynasty

The initial fact and immediate cause of the unrest was the end of the royal dynasty. This cessation was accomplished by the death of three sons of Ivan the Terrible: Ivan, Fedor and Dmitry. The eldest of them, Ivan, was already an adult and married when he was killed by his father. In character he was quite similar to his father, participated in all his affairs and fun and, they say, showed the same cruelty that distinguished Ivan the Terrible. Ivan studied literature and was well-read person. There is his literary work “The Life of Anthony of Siysk”. (However, it should be noted that this “Life” is simply a revision of its original edition, which belonged to a certain monk Jonah. It was written according to the then existing rhetorical template and has no special literary merits.) It is not known why he and his father had a quarrel, in which the son received such a strong blow from his father with a rod that he died from it (in 1582). After the death of Ivan the Terrible himself, two sons remained alive: Fyodor and, another child, Tsarevich Dmitry, born in the seventh marriage of Ivan the Terrible to Maria Naga.

In the first time after the death of Ivan the Terrible, some unrest, unknown to us, occurred, which ended in the exile of the boyar Belsky and the removal of Maria Naga with Tsarevich Dmitry to Uglich. Fedor became king. Foreign ambassadors Fletcher and Sapega paint us quite definite features of Fedor. The king was short in stature, with a swollen face and an unsteady gait, and, moreover, he was constantly smiling. Sapega, having seen the king during the audience, says that he received from him the impression of complete dementia. They say that Fyodor loved to ring in the bell tower, for which he also received the nickname of a bell-ringer from his father, but at the same time he loved to amuse himself with jesters and baiting bears. His mood was always religious, and this religiosity was manifested in strict adherence to external rituals. He avoided the concerns of the state and handed them over to the hands of his fellow boyars. At the beginning of his reign, Boris Godunov and Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuryev were especially prominent among the boyars. This went on until 1585, when Nikita Romanovich was suddenly struck by paralysis and died. Power was concentrated in the hands of Boris Godunov, but he had to fight against strong opponents - the princes Mstislavsky and Shuisky. This struggle sometimes took on a very harsh character and ended in the complete triumph of Godunov. Mstislavsky was tonsured, and the Shuiskys and many relatives were exiled.

While all this was happening in Moscow, Maria Nagaya with her son and her relatives continued to live in Uglich in honorable exile. It is clear how she and all the Nagiye should have treated the boyars who were in power, and Godunov, as the most influential of them. The wife of Ivan the Terrible was naked, she enjoyed his sympathy and general honor, and suddenly she, the queen, was sent to a distant inheritance - Uglich and kept under constant supervision.

Palace in Uglich, where Tsarevich Dmitry and his mother Maria Nagaya lived

Bityagovsky was such a government overseer in Uglich. The Nagys could not treat Bityagovsky well, seeing in him an agent from those who sent them into exile. We know very little about the mood of the Nagikhs, but if you think about some of the evidence about Dmitry, you can see what strong hatred this family had for the boyars who ruled and were close to Fedor; There were, of course, many rumors about Dmitry in Moscow. By the way, according to these rumors, foreigners (Fletcher, Bussov) report that Dmitry is similar in character to his father: he is cruel and loves to watch the torture of animals. Next to this description, Bussov reports the story that Dmitry once made stuffed animals out of snow, called them by the names of the noblest Moscow nobles, then knocked off their heads with a saber, saying that he would do the same with his enemies - the boyars. And the Russian writer Abraham Palitsyn writes that they often reported to Moscow about Dmitry that he was hostile and absurd towards the boyars close to his brother and especially towards Boris Godunov. Palitsyn explains the prince’s mood by saying that he was “embarrassed by his neighbors.” And indeed, if the boy expressed such thoughts, then it is obvious that he himself could not invent them, but they were inspired by those around him. It is also clear that the anger of the Nagikhs should have been directed not at Fedor, but at Boris Godunov, as the main ruler. It is also clear that the boyars, hearing about the mood of Dmitry, who was considered the heir to the throne, could fear that the adult Dmitry would remind them of the times of his father, and could wish for his death, as foreigners say. Thus, few testimonies from contemporaries clearly reveal to us the mutual relations between Uglich and Moscow. In Uglich they hate the Moscow boyars, and in Moscow they receive denunciations from Uglich and are afraid of the Nagikhs. Remembering this hidden enmity and the existence of rumors about Dmitry, we can explain to ourselves, as a very possible gossip, the rumor that circulated long before the murder of Dmitry - about the poison given to Dmitry by Godunov's supporters; It was as if this poison had no effect.

On May 15, 1591, Tsarevich Dmitry was found in the courtyard of his Uglich choir with his throat cut. The people, summoned by the church alarm, found Queen Maria and her brothers Nagikh over the body of their son. The queen beat the prince's mother Vasilisa Volokhova and shouted that the murder was the work of clerk Bityagovsky. He was not in the yard at that time; Hearing the alarm bell, he also ran here, but barely had time to arrive when they rushed at him and killed him. His son Danila and nephew Nikita Kachalov were immediately killed. Together with them they beat some townspeople and Volokhova’s son Osip. Two days later, another “foolish wife” was killed, allegedly spoiling the prince. On May 17, they learned about this event in Moscow and sent a commission of inquiry to Uglich, consisting of the following persons: Prince V. Shuisky, okolnichy Andrei Kleshnin, clerk Vyluzgin and Krutitsky Metropolitan Gelasius. Their investigative file (it was published in the Collection of State. Gram. and Dog., vol. II) found out: 1) that the prince stabbed himself to death in a fit of epileptic illness while he was playing “poke” with a knife (like the current pile) together with their peers, small residents, and 2) that the Naked, without any reason, incited the people to the needless murder of innocent persons. According to the report of the investigative commission, the case was submitted to the judgment of the patriarch and other clergy. They accused Nagikh and the “Uglitsky men”, but the final trial was handed over to the hands of secular authorities. Queen Maria was exiled to a distant monastery on Vyksa (near Cherepovets) and was tonsured there. The Nagikh brothers were sent to different cities. Those responsible for the disorder in Uglich were executed and exiled to Pelym, where a whole settlement was supposedly formed from the Uglich people; Uglich, according to legend, was completely deserted.

Despite the fact that the government denied the murder and recognized the Tsarevich’s death as an accidental suicide, a rumor spread in society that Tsarevich Dmitry was killed by adherents of Boris (Godunov) on Boris’s instructions. This rumor, first recorded by some foreigners, is then transmitted in the form of an indisputable fact, and in our writing there are special legends about the murder of Dmitry; they began to be compiled during the time of Vasily Shuisky, not earlier than the moment when Dmitry’s canonization was carried out and his relics were transferred in 1606 from Uglich to Moscow. There are several types of these legends, and they all have the same features: they tell about the murder very plausibly and at the same time contain historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Then, each edition of these legends differs from the others not only in the way it is presented, but also in various details, often mutually exclusive. The most common type is a separate legend included in the general chronicle. This legend tells that at first Boris tried to poison Dmitry, but seeing that God did not allow the poison to work, he began to look through his friend Kleshnin for people who would agree to kill the prince. At first this was proposed to Chepchugov and Zagryazhsky, but they refused. Only Bityagovsky agreed. The murder itself, according to this legend, happened in this way: when Bityagovsky’s accomplice, Volokhov’s mother, treacherously took the prince out for a walk on the porch, the murderer Volokhov approached him and asked him: “Is this your new necklace, sir?” “No, it’s old,” answered the child and raised his head to show the necklace. At this time, Volokhov hit the prince in the throat with a knife, but “did not grab his larynx,” he hit him unsuccessfully. The nurse (Zhdanova), who was here, rushed to protect the child, but Bityagovsky and Kachalov beat her, and then finally stabbed the child to death. Compiled 15 or 20 years after Dmitry’s death, this legend and other stories conveyed in an extremely confused and confusing manner the rumors about the murder that were then circulating in Moscow society. Therefore, they should be looked at as if they were recorded by hearsay. These are not eyewitness accounts, but rumors, and they indisputably testify to one thing only: that Moscow society firmly believed in the violent death of the prince.

This belief of society or a certain part of it runs counter to the official document about the prince’s suicide. It is impossible for a historian to reconcile the official data in this case with the unanimous testimony of the legends about the murder, and he must take the side of either one or the other. For a long time now, our historians (even Shcherbatov) have taken the side of legends. Karamzin especially tried to make Boris Godunov a very picturesque “villain”. But in science there have long been voices for the fact that investigative work is fair, and not legends (Artsybashev, Pogodin, E. Belov). A detailed presentation of all the data and controversy on the issue of the prince can be found in the detailed article by A. I. Tyumenev “Revision of the news of the death of Tsar Dmitry” (in the “Journal of the Ministry of Public Education”, 1908, May and June).

Tsarevich Dmitry. Painting by M. Nesterov, 1899

In our presentation, we dwelled in such detail on the question of Dmitry’s death in order to form a definite opinion about this fact, since the view of Boris’s personality depends on the view of this event; here is the key to understanding Boris. If Boris is a murderer, then he is a villain, as Karamzin paints him; if not, then he is one of the nicest Moscow kings. Let's see to what extent we have reason to blame Boris for the death of the prince and to suspect the reliability of the official investigation. The official investigation is, of course, far from blaming Boris. In this case, foreigners accusing Boris should be in the background, as a secondary source, because they are only repeating Russian rumors about Dmitry’s case. There remains one type of sources - the legends and stories of the 17th century that we have considered. It is on them that historians hostile to Boris rely. Let's dwell on this material. Most chroniclers opposed to Boris, when speaking about him, either admit that they are writing by ear, or they praise Boris as a person. Condemning Boris as a murderer, they, firstly, do not know how to consistently convey the circumstances of Dmitry’s murder, as we saw, and, moreover, allow internal contradictions. Their stories were compiled long after the event, when Dmitry had already been canonized and when Tsar Vasily, having renounced his own investigation into Dmitry’s case, publicly blamed Boris for the murder of the prince, and it became an officially recognized fact. It was then impossible to contradict this fact. Secondly, all legends about the Troubles in general come down to a very small number of independent editions, which were extensively reworked by later compilers. One of these independent editions (the so-called “Another Legend”), which greatly influenced various compilations, came entirely from the camp of Godunov’s enemies - the Shuiskys. If we do not take into account and do not take into account the compilations, then it turns out that not all independent authors of legends are against Boris; most of them speak very sympathetically about him, but they are often simply silent about Dmitry’s death. Further, the legends hostile to Boris are so biased towards him in their reviews that they clearly slander him, and their slander against Boris is not always accepted even by his opponents, scientists; for example, Boris is credited with: the arson of Moscow in 1591, the poisoning of Tsar Feodor and his daughter Feodosia.

These tales reflect the mood of the society that created them; their slander is everyday slander, which could arise directly from everyday relationships: Boris had to act under Fyodor among boyars hostile to him (the Shuiskys and others), who hated him and at the same time feared him as an unborn force. At first they tried to destroy Boris by open struggle, but they could not; It is quite natural that they began to undermine his moral credit for the same purpose, and they succeeded better in this. It was easy to glorify Boris as a murderer. In those troubled times, even before Dmitry’s death, one could smell this death, just as Fletcher sensed it. He says that Dmitry is in danger of death “from an assassination attempt by those who have their sights set on possessing the throne in the event of the king’s childless death.” But Fletcher does not name Boris here, and his testimony can be extended to all the more noble boyars, since they too could be contenders for the throne. Bussov says that “many boyars” wanted Dmitry’s death, and most of all Boris. The naked could have the same point of view. Hating the entire boyar government of that time, they hated Boris only as its head, and Tsarina Maria, Dmitry’s mother, according to a very natural connection of ideas, in a moment of deep grief could give her son’s suicide the character of murder on the part of the government, in other words, Boris, and this accidentally abandoned The boyar environment, which was opposed to Boris, could take advantage of this idea, develop this idea and use it in Moscow society for its own purposes. Once in literature, this political slander became the common property not only of the people of the 17th century, but also of later generations, even of science.

Remembering the possibility of the origin of the charges against Boris and considering all the confusing details of the case, it must be said as a result that it is difficult and still risky to insist on the fact of Dmitry’s suicide, but at the same time it is impossible to accept the prevailing opinion about the murder of Dmitry by Boris. If we recognize this last opinion as requiring new justifications, and this is exactly what it should be considered, then it is necessary to explain the choice of Boris as king without connection with his “villainy.” As for this prevailing opinion about Boris’s guilt, for its proper confirmation, strictly speaking, three studies are needed: 1) it is necessary to prove in Dmitry’s case the impossibility of suicide and, therefore, the falsity of the investigative case. Belov, proving the authenticity of this case, investigated with medical point the possibility of suicide in epilepsy: doctors told him that such suicide was possible. As for the investigative case itself, it presents us with details that are so naive that it would have been simply impossible to fake them at that time, since it would have required too much psychological intuition, inaccessible to people of the 17th century. Further: 2) even if the impossibility of suicide were proven, then it should also be proven that the murder was timely, that in 1591 the childless death of Fedor could have been foreseen and some calculations could have been associated with it. This issue is very controversial. Yes, finally, 3) if such calculations were possible, then could Godunov be the only one to have them? Did no one, except Godunov, have an interest in Dmitry’s death and could not risk murder?

That's how many dark and insoluble questions lie in the circumstances of the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. Until all of them are resolved, until then the accusation against Boris will stand on very shaky ground, and before our court he will not be an accused, but only a suspect; There is very little evidence against him, and at the same time there are circumstances that convincingly speak in favor of this intelligent and handsome person.