Ivan Susanin

Susanin, Ivan 

Died 1613. Hero of the Russian liberation struggle against Polish invaders in the early 17th century.

Susanin was a peasant from the village of Dereven’ki, near the village of Domnino, Kostroma District. In the winter of 1612–13, he was forced by a detachment of Polish noblemen to lead them to Domnino, a Romanov estate, where the newly elected tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was residing at the time. Susanin deliberately led the Poles astray in a dense, swampy forest, an act for which he was later tortured to death.

Susanin’s heroic deed has been preserved in folklore and fiction and is the subject of M. I. Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin. A monument to Susanin was erected in the city of Kostroma.