Ivan Susanin was a Russian national hero and martyr of the early-17th-century Time of Troubles. According to the popular legend, Polish troops seeking to kill Tsar Mikhail hired Susanin as a guide. Susanin persuaded them to take a secret path through the Russian forests, and neither they nor Susanin were ever heard from again.
Ivan Susanin (Konstantin Makovsky, 1914)
A 19th-century Russian painting representing Susanin's last minutes
Death of Ivan Susanin, by Mikhail Scotti, 1851.
The Time of Troubles, also known as Smuta, was a period of political crisis in Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I, the last of the House of Rurik, and ended in 1613 with the accession of Michael I of the House of Romanov.
Konstantin Makovsky's Appeal of Minin (1896) depicts Kuzma Minin against the background of the church of St. John the Baptist appealing to the people of Nizhny Novgorod to raise a militia against the Polish invaders and Sigismund III Vasa.
Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885), depicting the accidental killing of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich by his father Ivan the Terrible; it made Feodor I heir to the Russian throne.
Palace in Uglich, where Tsarevich Dmitry lived and died
Sergey Ivanov's In the Time of Troubles (1886)
