5 myths about famous Russians that we used to consider historical facts

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some myths have been around for so long that we are used to trusting them as historical facts - they are even mentioned in textbooks. When the picture of the world changes, it is worth taking a closer look at it, you can, perhaps, experience a shock. But knowing the truth is always better than legends, so here are a few myths about celebrities from the past of Russia, which it is time to leave in the past too.

Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son

Since childhood, everyone in Russia has seen a reproduction of the painting "Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son" many times, and its plot was deposited in the head as a historical one. The author of the picture really had nowhere to know that this was just gossip that arose after the sudden death of the royal heir. But modern scientists got the opportunity to study the remains of the prince and came to the conclusion: he did not die very quickly and from mercury poisoning. It is difficult to say whether the tsar's political opponents tried to eliminate him, or whether we are talking about an overdose of medicine for syphilis.

The fact is that Ivan Vasilyevich was proven to suffer from this disease - he even lost all the hair from his head and face in old age, which often happened with untreated syphilitics. All because of the addiction to participating in orgies, or rather, to the organization of these orgies. His son also often took part in them. If both father and son were ill, it is logical to assume that both of them were treated. At that time, drugs for syphilis were made on the basis of mercury. Wrong dosage calculation - and poisoning is inevitable.

Alexander Pushkin did not grow up on the tales of nanny Arina

The peasant woman Arina really raised the children of the Pushkin couple, including little Sasha. Nevertheless, it seems that she communicated with the future poet only on everyday topics - he was very surprised and made fun of his fellow students in the lyceum a little later, when it turned out that he spoke Russian with difficulty. In this lyceum, in the first experimental set, they took the children of patriotic parents, who, among other things, placed high on the Russian language - later Pushkin himself will value it very much. But if he had listened to and understood many Russian fairy tales in childhood, he would have spoken in it as a teenager much better.

In fact, for fairy tales, Pushkin, who grew up an ardent Russophile (which was the focus of the lyceum's program - they raised young men who would raise Russian culture in general), went to Nanny Arina as adults. He asked her on purpose in order to base some of his work on Russian folklore. True, there is an opinion that Pushkin considered real fairy tales to be insufficiently poetic and epic, and as a result, he took some plots from German folklore. It is difficult to guess right away which ones … In this opinion - the tale of the princess and the heroes and the tale of the goldfish.

Sergei Yesenin burst into poetry not from a peasant hut

Yesenin was indeed born into a peasant family. After graduating from a parish school, he left to conquer Moscow. His father already worked in a butcher shop - Yesenin also got a job there. He spun around in the usual environment for shop assistants, composed sensitive rhymes typical for this environment, and wore a fashionable suit. True, he soon realized that those circles that were interesting to him and were not yet available had a certain demand for nationality. Because of this request, in those years, all sorts of "elders" flourished - men in peasant clothes and with a beard, who spoke with deliberate tinkering or some other "folk" way, remembered the places of their pilgrimage and fed on what they instructed in a confused way. especially impressionable and generous inhabitants about how to live according to conscience.

Yesenin decided to go the same way, but in poetry. I bought myself velvet pants, a blouse, learned to blink shyly and got acquainted with what exactly gentlemen expect from falling into folk poetry. So he became a singer of birches and created for himself the image of a gentle mentally man - which is broken by many facts of his biography, such as physical violence against his women. Akhmatova in the poet seemed to be false from the plow, and she found himself unpleasant. However, if Yesenin was really mediocre, his poems would not have turned into popular romances (he learned a lot about romances while still a clerk - this genre was very popular with them).

Tolstoy did not try to live like a peasant

Thanks to some popular portraits of Leo Tolstoy, there was a mass conviction that he wore peasant clothes all day and, apparently, also strove to organize his entire life in a peasant way. In fact, Tolstoy put on his shirt and ports when he worked in the field or in the garden - for example, he mowed the grass.

At home, Lev Nikolayevich wore an ordinary suit, decent for his class, or modifications on the theme of folk costumes (which existed in the noble environment throughout the nineteenth century), he had secular manners, without deliberate simplification, he reserved the folk phrase in order to effectively flaunt once or twice and make a lasting impression. The food on his table was also far from peasant.

Alexander Nevsky did not drown the knights

According to legend, Nevsky tricked the Teutons onto the ice of Lake Peipsi, and under the weight of steel armor the ice broke. It may well be that in April 1242 the ice on Lake Peipsi could still be strong enough not to break after three steps of the first knightly rows, but to withstand their weight right down to the deepest water - the ice lasts longer than snow.

For starters, this tactic would be unreasonably risky for the Russian troops, whose armor also weighed a lot. A talented commander like Alexander Nevsky (and he was talented) would have chosen tactics less dependent on luck. But the most important thing is that in no old source about this battle there is such a remarkable and interesting detail for chroniclers as the sinking of knights, although it is carefully recorded how many Russians, Chudi (local Finno-Ugric tribes) and knights themselves were killed. Most likely, Prince Alexander won thanks to the successful strategy and skill and courage of his warriors, and the ice on the lake lay calmly.

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