Vasily Ivanovich Surikov Morning of the Streltsy execution. 1881 Oil on canvas. 218 × 379 cm State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Surikov was born and raised in Krasnoyarsk, in a family belonging to ancient Cossack families who, with Ermak, conquered Siberia. In these harsh lands, where people are accustomed to relying only on themselves, there are still ancient customs and Old Believer canons. The innate ability for constant struggle was reflected in the color and choice of subjects of his paintings.
After graduating from the St. Petersburg Academy, he moved to Moscow, where he received a lucrative order to participate in the design of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
His memories: “... But most of all I was captivated by the Kremlin with its walls and towers. I don’t know why, but I felt in them something surprisingly close to me, as if I had known for a long time and well. As soon as it began to get dark, I... set off to wander around Moscow and increasingly towards the Kremlin walls. These walls became my favorite place to walk precisely at dusk... And then one day I was walking along Red Square, not a soul around... And suddenly the scene of the Streltsy execution flashed in my imagination, so clearly that even my heart began to beat. I felt that if I painted what I imagined, it would turn out to be an amazing picture.”
He began work on the painting in 1878, and on March 1, 1881, it was presented at the exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions.
This picture is about the change of eras.
The most important characters are not the archers and not Peter, but a girl with a red scarf on her head (the image of a new Russia emerging in the blood), who clenched her hand into a weak fist, and with the fingers of her other hand touches the shoulder of a sitting woman whose feet (a symbol of a crossroads) ) placed in different directions; and a grieving old woman, whose dark clothes determine the tragic coloring of the whole picture. (Image of Russia leaving). Continuation of the development of the image of young Russia - Peter with his associates and the pointed towers of the Kremlin. The development of the image of the former Russia - the archers fading into oblivion. This old Russia beautiful and majestic, like the churches of St. Basil's Cathedral.
A lot of research has been written about the painting, I just want to add that this painting is about the opposition between power and freemen, ice against fire, cold sovereign power against rebellious souls (the image of lit candles).
In the crowd, among the watching people crowding on the steps of the Place of Execution, Surikov captured his image. In the portrait, he most likely defines himself as a writer of everyday life who is neutral to events. His pity is on the side of the archers and the passing of antiquity, but in the picture there is no censure of the emerging new Country.
Materials used.
MORNING OF THE STRELETSKY EXECUTION
Vasily Surikov
The spring of 1881 was late. In February the sun was warm, and in March the cold struck again. But Vasily Ivanovich Surikov walked around in high spirits. What a thing! He finished a painting that he had been painting for several years... A painting that was labored through with his heart, thought out to the smallest detail... He even slept poorly at night, screaming in his sleep, tormented by visions of execution. He himself later said: “When I wrote Streltsov, I had the most terrible dreams: every night I saw executions in my dreams. There is a smell of blood all around. I was afraid of the nights. You will wake up and be happy. Look at the picture: Thank God, there is no horror in it... My picture does not depict blood, and the execution has not yet begun... Solemnity last minutes I wanted to convey, but not execution at all.”
In March, an exhibition of the Itinerants was supposed to open in St. Petersburg, and this was the first painting by V. Surikov that appeared at it. The artist V. Surikov was always fascinated by grandiose subjects that embodied the spirit of the era, which would give scope to the imagination and at the same time provide scope for broad artistic generalizations. And he was always interested in people's destinies at the wide crossroads of history.
Deservedly renowned as greatest artist, Vasily Ivanovich Surikov in the region historical painting has no equal among Russian artists. Moreover, in the whole world it is difficult to name another painter who would penetrate so deeply into the past of his people and so excitingly recreate it in the living artistic images. Sometimes he deviated from the “letter” of the historical source if this was necessary to express his intention. For example, the secretary of the Austrian embassy in Russia, Johann Georg Korb, in his “Diary of a Travel to Muscovy” described the execution of the Streltsy ( When Peter I went abroad in 1697, the archers, dissatisfied with his innovations, rebelled. Having returned, Tsar Peter ordered them to be interrogated under terrible torture. Then came merciless executions, after which the Streltsy army was gradually destroyed), which took place in October 1698 in the village of Preobrazhenskoye. V. Surikov transfers the action of his painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” to Red Square not only because he needed a specific setting, but it was not preserved in the village of Preobrazhenskoye. The event at Lobnoye Mesto against the backdrop of the ancient St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin walls, according to his plan, acquired greater historical credibility.
By V. Surikov’s own admission, the initial idea of “Streltsy” arose from impressions of Siberian life. Its special, unique way of life, the vitality of Old Testament traditions, family traditions, original, strong people- all this enriched the artist with such a treasury vivid impressions, from which he later drew his entire life. The artist himself later recalled: “They were powerful people. Strong-willed. The scope is wide in everything. And the morals were cruel. Executions and corporal punishment took place publicly in public squares.”
The history of the creation of the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” begins from the moment when V. Surikov, while traveling to St. Petersburg (in 1869), stopped in Moscow for one day. Here he first saw Red Square, the Kremlin, and ancient cathedrals. And then, through all the years of studying at the Academy of Arts, he carried this cherished plan, so that in 1878 he began to implement it. It was this year that it was made pencil sketch, on which the inscription was made by the hand of V. Surikov himself: “The first sketch of “Streltsy” in 1878.” The figures here are barely outlined, still conventional, but those main reference points on which the composition of the picture in its final form rests have already been made. The composition is divided into two parts: on the left are the archers, on the right are Peter and his entourage, and above all this rise the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral.
The artist drew inspiration not only from reality. He studied in great detail historical sources, with special attention he read the already mentioned book by I. G. Korb, from whom many characteristic details did not escape. So, for example, one of the condemned archers, approaching the scaffold, said to Tsar Peter, who was standing nearby: “Step aside, sir. I’m the one who should lie here.”
I. Korb also talks about Streltsy wives and mothers, loudly wailing and running after the condemned to the place of execution. He also mentions the lit candles that were held in the hands of those going to death, “so as not to die without light and a cross.” He also cites the following remarkable fact: out of one hundred and fifty sentenced archers, only three obeyed and asked the king for mercy ( they were given pardon). The rest went to their death unrepentantly and died with calm courage.
However, such an expressive and vivid narration by I. G. Korb served Vasily Surikov only as a canvas for the embodiment of his plan. He treated him freely, often retreating even from the factual side. So, in reality, they did not execute people by hanging on Red Square (as depicted in the painting by V. Surikov), on Red Square they cut off the heads of the archers, and this happened already in February 1699. I. Korb in his “Diary” has descriptions of both executions, but the artist combined them into one plot, changed and interpreted many of the details in his own way. And most importantly, he shifted the emphasis from the execution itself to the last minutes before the execution. V. Surikov deliberately abandoned the spectacle of the massacre, that crude effect that could obscure the true meaning of this tragedy.
True, once V. Surikov tried to write an execution. This was after I.E., who came to him. Repin said: “Why don’t you have a single executed person? You would be hanged here on the gallows, on the right plan.” “When he left,” the artist later recalled, “I wanted to try. I knew it wasn’t possible, but I wanted to know what would happen. I drew the figure of a hanged man with chalk. And just then the nanny entered the room - as soon as she saw it, she fell unconscious. Even that day, Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov stopped by: “What, do you want to ruin the picture?” So V. Surikov decisively refused to “scare” the viewer.
In the dim light of a gray morning, the silhouette of St. Basil's Cathedral darkens. On the right are the Kremlin walls, near which, guarded by soldiers, there is a road to the gallows visible nearby. Peter the Great is on horseback, implacable and firm in his decision. But his figure is pushed into the depths of the picture by V. Surikov, and the entire foreground is occupied by a crowd of people, crowded around the Execution Ground and carts with tied archers.
Wherever possible, the artist sought to find living prototypes of the heroes for his painting. At the same time, he was, of course, concerned not only with the external resemblance of the living model to actor paintings, but also internal. One of the main figures of the work is a passionate, indomitable red-bearded archer, who throughout the entire picture directs a furious gaze at Peter. I. Repin helped find a model for him, who later recalled: “Struck by the similarity of the one archer he had planned, sitting in a cart with a lit candle in his hand, I persuaded Surikov to go with me to the Vagankovskoye cemetery, where one gravedigger was a miracle type. Surikov was not disappointed: Kuzma posed for him for a long time, and Surikov, even later, with the name “Kuzma”, always lit up with feeling from his gray eyes, vulture nose and thrown back forehead.”
In the picture, this red-bearded Sagittarius seems to concentrate on himself the indignation and disobedience of the entire mass, which in others manifests itself more restrained and hidden. He is on the verge of death, but the power of life burns indomitably within him even in these last minutes. He does not pay attention to his crying wife, he is completely absorbed in the silent challenge that he poses to Tsar Peter. Clutched tightly like a knife, the candle in his hand casts reddish reflections on his dark face with huge burning eyes, a predatory nose and wide-cut nostrils. Behind him, his wife wrung her hands and bowed her head in silent grief. In the foreground is the Sagittarius’s mother: the tears have dried in her eyes, only her eyebrows are broken in pain. His feet are in stocks, his hands are tied at the elbows, but the viewer immediately sees that he is not subdued. Uncontrollable rage and anger blaze in the red-bearded man’s face, he seems to have forgotten about near death and at least now I’m ready to rush into battle again.
He walks well, he doesn’t stumble,
Which quickly looks around at all the people,
Which even here does not obey the king...
Doesn't listen to father and mother
He will not take pity on his young wife,
He doesn’t worry about his children.
The black-bearded Sagittarius also holds the candle tightly. Confidence in the rightness of his cause is clearly visible in his dark face. While waiting for death, he does not notice the sobs of his wife, who has turned pale from tears: his angry glance is also cast from under his brows to the right.
The majestic solemnity of the last minutes before death is also visible in the face of the gray-haired archer, gray from torture. In boundless despair, his daughter fell to him, on whose fair-haired, disheveled head the old man’s gnarled hand lay heavily.
The intense intensity of passions on the left side of the picture is contrasted with calm and indifference on the right side. The central place here is occupied by Peter I, whose face is turned to the red-bearded archer. With his left hand he clutches the horse's reins - as imperiously and angrily as the Sagittarius holds his candle. Tsar Peter is implacable and menacing, he looks sternly and angrily at the archers. Although even on the faces of some foreign ambassadors one can see compassion. A foreigner in a black caftan (presumably the Austrian ambassador Christopher Gvirient de Wall) looks thoughtfully at the execution. The boyar stood calmly in a long fur coat with sable trim. He is not at all concerned about the bright spots on the shirts of the suicide bombers, nor about the tragic events themselves taking place in the square...
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov was a historical painter by the very essence of his talent. History for him was something familiar, close and personally experienced. In his paintings, he does not judge or pronounce a verdict, but, as it were, calls the viewer to relive the events of the past, to think about the destinies of people and the destinies of people. “This is how harsh and sometimes cruel reality can be,” the artist tells us, “look and judge for yourself who is to blame here and who is right.”
From the book 100 great paintings author Ionina NadezhdaTHE BOYARINE MOROZOVA Vasily Surikov The history of the creation of this painting is the richest in materials that tell about the mysteries of Vasily Surikov’s artistic work. Almost all stages of her compositional search have been preserved, recorded in various sketches - from the most
From the book Emotional Primer from Ah to Ah-Yay-Yay author Strelkova Lyudmila PetrovnaTHE MORNING IS WISER OF THE EVENING The morning has come, which, as you know, is wiser than the evening. Dasha woke up and immediately became worried: “Where is Natalie?” Natalie was sleeping peacefully and, of course, her eyes were closed. Dasha sat her down, Natalie’s blue eyes opened and looked lifelessly at the girl.
From book Everyday life Russian estate of the 19th century author Okhlyabinin Sergey Dmitrievich From the book Everyday Life of the Nobility of Pushkin's Time. Signs and superstitions. author Lavrentieva Elena VladimirovnaMorning of the landowner. Morning of the landowner. A. G. Venetsianov. 1823
From the book Candy wrappers author Genis Alexander Alexandrovich From the book Watching the Japanese. Hidden rules of behavior author Kovalchuk Yulia Stanislavovna From the book Year of the Ox - MMIX author Romanov Roman Romanovich From the book History of Russian painting in the 19th century author Benoit Alexander NikolaevichMoonlight Morning Chapter 18 “Unlucky Visitors” is somewhat different from neighboring chapters in the structure of action. Firstly, the events of one day are described twice: first from the point of view of Uncle Berlioz, then we see the same period of time through the eyes of the barman Sokov. Other
From the book Passionary Russia author Mironov Georgy EfimovichXXXIII. V. I. Surikov Here, at the turn of our modern era, we will have to talk about one of the most amazing Russian artists - about Surikov, despite the fact that he was a student of the Academy and is still a member of traveling exhibitions. We have to talk about him
From the book Life and Manners of Tsarist Russia author Anishkin V. G. From the book 100 famous artists XIX-XX centuries author Rudycheva Irina AnatolyevnaExecutions As we know, only eight days have passed since the death of his beloved wife Anastasia, and Ivan has already decided on a new marriage. From that time on, fun began in the palace. At first the king was amused with jokes and conversations, then feasts began, they said that wine makes the heart happy,
From the book Slavic Encyclopedia author Artemov Vladislav VladimirovichThe horses of the Streltsy power Sophia, being under the protection of the strong walls of the monastery, where service people gathered from everywhere, was no longer afraid of the Streltsy. She demanded that the archers send to her twenty elected people from each regiment. The archers were already frightened, and in their
From book silver Age. Portrait gallery cultural heroes of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. Volume 3. S-Y author Fokin Pavel EvgenievichSURIKOV VASILY IVANOVICH (born January 12, 1848 – died March 6, 1916) Outstanding Russian painter, master historical genre. Academician and professor of painting. Winner of awards: silver and gold medals of the Academy of Arts; Order of Anna on the neck for painting the “Ecumenical Councils” in
Portrait of the artist in the interior of his paintings. Vasily Ivanovich Surikov Vasily Ivanovich Surikov was born in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on January 12, 1848 into a Cossack family. In his paintings, permeated with a national color of rare beauty, there is that true knowledge of everyday life and
The story of one painting. "The morning of the Streltsy execution." V.I. Surikov.
HOW THE CONCEPT FOR THE PICTURE CAME UP
During this period of his life, Surikov moved to live from St. Petersburg to Moscow. About personal impressions, Surikov wrote: “Something strange began with me here, in Moscow. First of all, I felt more comfortable here than in St. Petersburg.
As soon as it began to get dark, I... set off to wander around Moscow and increasingly towards the Kremlin walls. These walls became my favorite place to walk at dusk. And then one day I was walking along Red Square, not a soul around...
And suddenly the scene of the Streltsy execution flashed in my imagination, so clearly that even my heart began to beat. I felt that if I painted what I imagined, it would turn out to be an amazing picture.”
PERSONAL LIFE
Over the years of working on the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution,” huge changes took place in Surikov’s life. He managed to get married, and two daughters were born into the family - Olga and Elena. His wife Elizaveta Augustovna Share was French on her father’s side, and on her mother’s side she was a relative of the Decembrist Svistunov. They met in St. Petersburg at the Church of St. Catherine on Nevsky Prospekt, where they came to listen to organ music.
Portrait of E.A. Surikova, the artist’s wife
“Everyone talked about her as an angel,” recalled her daughter Olga Konchalovskaya. Contemporaries emphasized that she, like her husband, avoided social events and felt awkward in big society. She lived in the interests of her husband and managed to create home comfort for him. Family happiness was overshadowed only by the poor health of the young wife.
Self-portrait1879
The wedding took place on January 25, 1878 in the Vladimir Church in St. Petersburg. On the groom's side, only the Kuznetsov and Chistyakov family were present. Surikov was afraid of his mother’s reaction to the news of his marriage to a French woman and did not inform his family in Krasnoyarsk about the wedding.
The young people settled in Moscow. The painter plunged into work on the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution.” For several years Surikov did not write anything extraneous. The captivating idea of the picture completely filled all his thoughts.
SAGITTARIUS
This was the name given to the first representatives of the regular troops in Russia. In 1550, the pishchalnik militias were replaced by the Streltsy army, initially consisting of 3 thousand people. In 1632, the total number of archers was 33,775 people, and by the beginning of the 1680s it had increased to 55 thousand.
IN last decades In the 17th century, Moscow archers became active participants in the political processes taking place in the country, and more than once resisted the actions of the government with arms in hand (uprising of 1682, riot of 1698). This, ultimately, determined the decision of Peter I to liquidate the Streltsy army.
RIOT OF 1698.
In March 1698, 175 archers from 4 archery regiments that participated in the Azov campaigns of Peter I of 1695-1696 appeared in Moscow, urgently summoned by Princess Sofia Alekseevna. Sofya Alekseevna claimed that Peter I was not her brother, which means that during his 2-year departure to Europe a substitution occurred.
An attempt by the Moscow authorities to arrest their petitioners for conspiracy in Moscow failed. The Sagittarius took refuge in the settlements and established contact with Princess Sofia Alekseevna, who was imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent.
On June 6, the archers removed their commanders, elected 4 electors in each regiment and headed towards Moscow. The rebels (2,200 people) intended to enthrone Princess Sophia or, in case of her refusal, V.V. Golitsyn, who was in exile.
The government sent Preobrazhensky, Semenovsky, Lefortovo and Butyrsky regiments (about 4,000 people) and noble cavalry against the archers. On June 14, after a review on the Khodynka River, the regiments set out from Moscow. On June 17, ahead of the archers, A.I. Repnin occupied the New Jerusalem (Resurrection) Monastery. On June 18, 40 versts west of Moscow, the rebels were defeated.
EXECUTIONS OF SAGITTARIUS
On June 22 and 28, by order of Shein, 56 “leaders” of the riot were hanged, and on July 2, another 74 “fugitives” to Moscow were hanged. 140 people were whipped and exiled, 1965 people were sent to cities and monasteries.
Peter I, who urgently returned from abroad on August 25, 1698, headed a new investigation (the “great search”). In Moscow, executions began on October 10, 1698.
In total, about 2,000 archers were executed, 601 (mostly minors) were whipped, branded and exiled. Peter I personally cut off the heads of five archers.
The investigation and executions continued until 1707. At the end of the XVII - early XVIII V. 16 Streltsy regiments that did not participate in the uprising were disbanded, and the Streltsy with their families were expelled from Moscow to other cities and registered as posads.
These events were depicted on famous painting Vasily Surikov “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, which was written in 1881.
ABOUT THE PICTURE 
Surikov depicts the moment when a group of archers, taken to Red Square (to Lobnoye Mesto), awaits execution. They all react differently to their impending death.
Central storyline painting and its main emotional core is the opposition of the archers to royal tyranny. The most symbolic image is the red-bearded soldier. His hands are tied, his legs are chained in stocks, but his irreconcilable gaze, burning with hatred, shoots across the entire space of the picture, colliding with the angry and equally irreconcilable gaze of Peter. 
The architectural design of the canvas is very important. The lonely tower of the Kremlin corresponds to the lonely figure of the Tsar; the second, nearby tower, unites the crowd of observers, boyars and foreigners into one whole; the even formation of soldiers exactly repeats the line of the Kremlin wall. The artist deliberately moved all the structures towards the Execution Place, using compositional technique bringing plans together and creating the effect of a huge crowd. The cathedral continues and crowns this crowd of people, but the central tent of the Church of the Intercession seems to not fit into the space: it is “cut off” by the upper edge of the picture and symbolizes the image of Rus', beheaded by Peter I. 
In his hands he is clutching a candle with a rising tongue of flame. If you look closely, you will see that the manner of holding it resembles a knife.
He fixed a hawk's gaze, full of hatred and malice, on Peter, not paying any attention to the mother mourning her disobedient son. 
Tsar Peter and his entourage are opposed to the entire Streltsy mass. He is sitting on a horse. His gaze is angry and merciless. He is motionless, like a statue on a pedestal. The figure of Peter is somewhat conventional. 
According to the artist’s plan, Peter is the personification new Russia, an autocrat, inexorable and merciless in exterminating everything that hinders the development of the country. He gave the order, and the soldiers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, without hesitation, lead the convicted archers to execution. 
The black-bearded Sagittarius, wearing a red caftan draped over his shoulders, is in a state of gloomy stupor. A Sagittarius with a shock of gray hair, wearing a white shirt, consoles his sobbing daughter buried in his lap, gives the Transfiguration soldier a candle and courageously waits for the inevitable. 
Sagittarius's wife. Sketch. 
At a distance from him, the archer stood upright on the cart, defiantly turned his back to Peter and said goodbye to the people according to Russian custom - with a bow to the ground. One archer is already being led to execution. 
Saying goodbye to his baby son and his wife, screaming frantically with grief, broke his strength: his legs gave way, his head fell on his chest, his arms dangled; the caftan and hat are thrown into the mud, the candle that has fallen from the hands, burning out, is barely smoldering. None of the archers ask for mercy. 
Closest to the viewer (in the center of the picture) are two old women and a girl in a red scarf, sitting on the ground. They appeal to compassion, beg for help. But nothing can stop the upcoming execution; the movement of history is inexorable.
The artist brings the people - the main character in history - to the foreground of the painting. 
The foreigners depicted on the right are calmly watching what is happening for now, but then they will describe in horror how the Russian autocrat personally acted as an executioner. Peter personally cut off the heads of five rebels and one clergyman who blessed the rebellion with an ax, and executed more than eighty archers with a sword.
The tsar also forced his boyars, who did not know how to handle an ax, to participate in the brutal reprisal and caused unbearable torment to the condemned by their actions. Surikov read about all this in the diary of the secretary of the Austrian embassy, Korb, an eyewitness to the events.
But there are no bloody scenes in the picture itself: the artist wanted to convey the greatness of the last minutes, and not the execution itself. Only the many red details of clothing, as well as the crimson silhouette of the Intercession Cathedral, towering above the body of convicted archers and their families, remind the viewer of how much blood was shed on that tragic morning.
In “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” (and then in the film “Boyaryna Morozova”) Surikov made excellent use of colors and forms folk art Ancient Rus'. Before this, none of the Russian artists delved with such grateful love into the treasury of Russian folk art.
The artist deliberately changed the time of execution of the archers. It is known that the autumn executions of 1698 took place in the village of Preobrazhenskoye. The execution in Moscow took place in the winter in February 1699, and the picture shows not a winter, but an autumn landscape. 
The artist made a lot of preparatory sketches from nature for the painting. Thus, the Sagittarius with a black beard is based on his uncle Stepan Torgoshin; the gray-haired archer is an exile who lived in a settlement in Krasnoyarsk; red-bearded Sagittarius with an eagle look - gravedigger Vagankovskoe cemetery(according to the artist, Kuzma “was an angry, rebellious type”). Painted arches and carts, archer clothes, women's dresses and scarves - all this was previously worked out in sketches. 
All architectural buildings are symbolic. The Kremlin tower reflects the figure of Peter, alone in this crowd, the nearby tower becomes symbolic for the figures of onlookers, boyars and foreign guests. The soldiers, stretched out in a clear line, stand like the wall of the Kremlin.
St. Basil's Cathedral seems to unite a huge crowd of people, and the dome of the temple Holy Mother of God cut off at the top of the picture. It is noteworthy that critics consider it a symbol of decapitated Rus'. Ten other domes become a symbol of lit candles, one of which once inspired Surikov.
FEATURES OF THE PICTURE
The number 7 is symbolic for the picture: 7 candles are burning, 7 archers who will be executed, 7 chapters of St. Basil's Cathedral. The candle that fell into the mud is also symbolic - this is the soul trampled by Peter.
Tsar Peter was not as cruel and fanatical as Surikov wrote him. It is reliably known that when the morning of the execution arrived, he offered each of the 150 archers a pardon, but with further exile.
Only three of them understood the value of life and peace of mind of their loved ones, and the king gave it to them. The rest walked to the scaffold, proudly raising their heads and looking with rage at young Peter.
There is one more moment in “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” - it is beautiful with a special deadly beauty. The canvas is full of bright outfits, Streltsy costumes and Kremlin towers. This is like a reflection of the fact that even after the death of many people, others will live on, passing on stories about Peter and the Streltsy from generation to generation. 
All of Surikov’s work is characterized by an amazing concern for those who come to look at his paintings: “All I had in mind was not to disturb the viewer, so that there would be peace in everything...” he said about his “Streltsy”. Despite the horror of the historical event being conveyed, the artist tried to depict the tragedy human destinies as discreetly as possible.
No outward pretentious showmanship or theatricality, no raised axes, raised hands to the sky, bloody clothes, gallows and severed heads. Only the deep drama of nationwide grief.
You don’t want to turn away from this picture with a shudder; on the contrary, looking at it, you become more and more immersed in the details, empathize with its characters, acutely understanding the cruelty of that time.
The painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” was exhibited at the Ninth Traveling Exhibition in March 1881. Even before its opening, Ilya Repin wrote to Pavel Tretyakov:
“Surikov’s painting makes an irresistible, deep impression on everyone. Everyone unanimously expressed their readiness to give her the most the best place; It’s written on everyone’s faces that she is our pride at this exhibition... Today she is already framed and finally installed... What a perspective, how far Peter has come! A mighty picture!”
Tretyakov immediately acquired this ingenious historical work for his collection, paying the master eight thousand rubles.
SPECIAL PROJECTS
January 24 marks the 170th anniversary of the birth of artist Vasily Surikov. “The Table” remembers the founder of Russian historical painting and a real time traveler, whose childhood and youth passed in the 17th century
A woman's howl and cry stood over Red Square when carts with prisoners appeared from the Preobrazhenskaya Soldiers' Settlement.
Finally, the carts with the convicts reached Lobny Hill, where the wives and children rushed to the exhausted archers, shackled in chains and stocks, having miraculously made their way through the cordon. At this point a real fight began, with avid wailing, hair being pulled out and people rolling on the ground.
– Stop it immediately! – General Buturlin, who commanded the execution, winced with disgust.
And immediately the burly Preobrazhensky soldiers jumped up to the carts. Pushing away the sobbing women and children with their boots, they busily pulled the first archer in the stocks off the cart: it’s time, brother, your hour has come. Since the man condemned to execution in these stocks could not take even a step, the soldiers grabbed him by the arms and quickly dragged him to the gallows lined up near the Kremlin wall.
“Hug the kids for me,” Sagittarius Vasily Torgoshin quickly whispered in his wife’s ear. - Sons Stepushka and Kolenka, daughter Marfushka, and bow deeply to your father and mother. And strictly bow to Father John. Tell him that the centurion Vasily, son of Ivanov, asked for forgiveness for not stopping the Antichrist, for not protecting the Orthodox faith from desecration...
Vasily suddenly stopped short when he saw the one about whom there was so much talk in Moscow terrible rumors, – the Antichrist impostor. The tsar, with a shaved face in the German style and an absurd mustache, sat on a spotted mare literally ten steps away from him and in some strange stupor looked at the centurion shackled in shackles.
“Eh, if only I had the right arquebus and a lead bullet at hand,” the centurion suddenly thought, “otherwise the matter would have been decided...”
But he only fixed a response glance at Emperor Peter, full of rage and hatred: remember, Tsar, this look. Remember until your very last breath: not us, but our descendants will take revenge on you! Not for you, but for your seed...
Vasily Surikov’s painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution,” first presented to the public on March 1, 1881 at the opening of the IX exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions in St. Petersburg, produced the effect of a bomb exploding.
Alexandra Botkina, daughter of Pavel Tretyakov, recalled:
- Nobody started like that. He didn’t sway, didn’t try it on, and this work struck like thunder...
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov. The morning of the Streltsy execution. 1881
Like thunder struck - that's even putting it mildly
On the same day - March 1, 1881 - on the embankment of the Catherine Canal in St. Petersburg, Emperor Alexander II, who by that time had already survived several attempts on his life, was killed by a bomb explosion. The arrest of terrorists from the “People's Will” organization was a real shock for society: the killers of the sovereign were not malicious freemasons and not agents of foreign powers, not infidel Jews or sectarians - no, THEIR OWN people raised their hands on the Tsar’s life - noble children, “golden youth” ”, who knew no need for anything.
And every time after another terrorist attack, disputes broke out in high society salons: how is this possible?!
The direct killer of the sovereign emperor, student Ignatius Grinevitsky, was a family nobleman from the Minsk province, while another participant in the regicide, Nikolai Rysakov, who threw the first bomb at the royal carriage, was the son of the manager of a state sawmill in the Novgorod province. The rest of the terrorists were also representatives of the noble class, and Sofya Perovskaya was actually a countess, the daughter of the governor of St. Petersburg and a member of the council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The only exception is the leader of Narodnaya Volya himself, Andrei Zhelyabov, who comes from a family of wealthy serfs engaged in trade.
And this was not an isolated incident.
Before this - back in 1866 - the case of the small landed nobleman Dmitry Karakozov, who shot the Tsar at Summer Garden(an interesting detail: the sovereign was saved by the poor peasant Osip Komisarov, who pushed away the killer’s hand).
The case of the noblewoman and terrorist Vera Zasulich, who in the spring of 1878 fired a revolver at the St. Petersburg mayor Fyodor Fedorovich Trepov, thundered throughout Russia, for which she was acquitted by a jury.
Zasulich's shot was followed by a number of other public assassinations - for example, the murder of the chief of gendarmes, Adjutant General Nikolai Mezentsov, which was committed by the nobleman Kravchinsky, or the murder of the Kharkov governor, Major General Prince Dmitry Kropotkin, by the way, the cousin of the revolutionary anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who approved the murder brother
And every time after another terrorist attack, disputes broke out in high society salons: how is this possible?!
Why did those from whom this could least be expected—representatives of the privileged class—become enemies of the state order?
What were they missing?
And suddenly no one famous artist not only hit this painful nerve of Russian life, but also showed with all ruthlessness what was afraid to talk about: that there is no and never has been this ostentatious unity of the people around the monarchy. That the discord in the Russian state did not arise yesterday, that these are just episodes of something smoldering for centuries civil war between the government and the people - the consequences of an unabated religious split, which have not been healed to this day.
It is not surprising that a few days later the whole capital was already whispering about the picture of the Siberian rebel and prophet Surikov, who allegedly called for the overthrow of all the Romanovs.
Repin wrote to Tretyakov in delight: “Surikov’s painting makes an irresistible, deep impression on everyone. Everyone unanimously expressed their readiness to give her the best place; It’s written on everyone’s faces that she is our pride at this exhibition... A mighty picture! Well, they’ll write to you about her... It was decided to immediately offer Surikov a member of our partnership.”
Soon rumors reached the courtiers, and it was rumored that in early April Alexander III himself, by the way, a passionate admirer of painting and chairman of the Society for Mutual Aid and Charity of Russian Artists in Paris, incognito visited the mansion of Prince Yusupov on Nevsky Prospekt, where paintings by the Wanderers were exhibited .
144 people were hanged on Red Square
The Emperor stood for a long time near Surikov’s painting, thoughtfully biting his mustache.
– Will you order it to be removed, Your Majesty? – one of the dignitaries timidly asked.
- No, why... Is the painting for sale?
- Already sold, Your Majesty. Merchant Tretyakov for the needs of his own gallery in Moscow.
- Okay, let it hang.
And the sovereign, slowly turning around, walked towards the exit.
Of course, in reality everything happened differently than what Surikov portrayed.
On that day, Emperor Peter the Great executed not seven archers, as is written in the picture, but 230 convicts.
The next day the executions continued. And 144 people were hanged on Red Square.
“And others were hanged throughout Zemlyanoy Town at all the gates on both sides,” wrote Russian diplomat Ivan Zhelyabuzhsky. - Also with White City outside the city, at all the gates on both sides: logs were pierced through the battlements of the city walls and the ends of those logs... were released outside the city and archers were hung on those ends. And others were hanged on the Maiden Field in front of the monastery and petitions were stuck into their hands.”
The petitions, apparently, were addressed to Princess Sophia, who was imprisoned at that time in the Novodevichy Convent; Tsar Peter deliberately forced Sophia to watch the painful death of her supporters.
In total, as chroniclers report, over 2 thousand people were executed in Moscow in those days.
But the centurion himself Vasily Torgoshin survived in that meat grinder. He, like many other archers, was simply beaten to a pulp with a whip and sent into exile - to distant Siberia.
Krasnoyarsk
Near Krasnoyarsk, on the banks of the Yenisei River, he founded the village of Torgoshino, and his sons and grandsons, who became Siberian Cossacks, took up the coachman trade, transporting tea from the Chinese border from Irkutsk to Tomsk.
It was in this village that Praskovya Fedorovna Torgoshina was born, the future mother of the artist who adored living in this bearish corner.
“The family was rich,” Surikov said many years later. – an old house I remember. The yard was paved. Our yards are paved with hewn logs. There the very air seemed ancient. Both the icons are old and the costumes. And my cousins are girls just like in the epics they sing about the twelve sisters. The girls had a special beauty: ancient, Russian...
Krasnoyarsk
It is interesting that his uncle, Stepan Fedorovich Torgoshin, posed for Surikov’s portrait of centurion Vasily Torgoshin.
The artist’s father, Ivan Vasilyevich Surikov, was the son of the ataman of the Yenisei Cossack regiment.
Maximilian Voloshin, who was commissioned to write a monograph about Surikov for the Knebel publishing house, wrote: “His ancestors came to Siberia together with Ermak. His family obviously comes from the Don, where the Surikov Cossacks still survive in the Verkhne-Yagirskaya and Kundryuchinskaya villages. From there they went to conquer Siberia and are mentioned as the founders of Krasnoyarsk in 1622.
“After they drowned Ermak in the Irtysh,” he said, “they went up the Yenisei, founded Yeniseisk, and then the Krasnoyarsk Ostrogi - that’s what we called places fortified with a palisade.
“Our mountains are entirely made of precious stones– porphyry, jasper. Yenisei is clean, cold, fast"
Unfolding documents and books, he proudly read aloud the history of the Krasnoyarsk rebellion, when the Cossacks brought down the tsarist governor Durnovo, whom they disliked, down the Yenisei, and at the mention of each Cossack name he interrupted himself, exclaiming:
- These are all my relatives... We are the thieves... And I studied with the Many Sinners - these are the descendants of the Hetman!
And then he began to talk:
– In Siberia the people are different from those in Russia: free, brave. And what a region we have. Western Siberia is flat, and beyond the Yenisei we already have mountains: taiga to the south, and pink-red clayey hills to the north. And Krasnoyarsk - hence the name; They say about us: “Krasnoyarsk people are big at heart.” Our mountains are entirely made of precious stones - porphyry, jasper. The Yenisei is clean, cold, fast. You throw a log into the water, and God knows where it will already be carried away. When we were boys, we did a lot of things while swimming. I dived under rafts: you dive, and you are carried by the water below. I remember once I surfaced ahead of time: I was dragged under the beams. The beams were slippery, they carried quickly, only the sky flashed through the gap - blue. However, it came out...
Krasnoyarsk
Vasily Surikov grew up in the village of Sukhoi Buzim, 60 versts from Krasnoyarsk, where his father, an official, mediocre from the provincial chancellery - transferred to serve in the district excise department. Vasily was the middle son. The family also had an older sister, Katya, and a younger brother, Sasha.
“I was free to live in Buzimovo,” Surikov recalled. - The country was unknown. After all, in Krasnoyarsk, until the railway, no one knew what was beyond the mountains. Torgoshino was under the mountain. And no one knew what was behind the mountain. It was still twenty miles away from Svishchovo. I had relatives in Svishchovo. And beyond Svishtovo there are five hundred miles of forest all the way to the Chinese border. And there are plenty of bears. Until the fifties of the nineteenth century, everything was full: rivers with fish, forests with game, land with gold. What fish there were! Sturgeon and sterlet fathoms deep. I remember when they were brought in, they were standing at the door like soldiers. Or maybe I was little that they seemed so huge... And Buzimovo was to the north. From Krasnoyarsk it takes a whole day to travel by horse. The windows there are still made of mica, songs that you won’t hear in the city. And Maslenitsa festivities and Christoslav celebrations. Since then, I have retained the cult of my ancestors. My brother still gives memorials to all the dead. On Forgiveness Sunday, we came to our mother to ask for forgiveness on our knees. At Christmas, the Christians came. Icons were rubbed with linseed oil, and silver vestments were rubbed with chalk.
“I remember when I was very little, I would draw on morocco chairs and get dirty.”
Vasily Surikov spoke about the beginning of his passion for painting as follows:
– I started drawing since childhood. I remember when I was very little, I would draw on morocco chairs and get dirty. Of my uncles, only one painted - Khozyainov (Khozyainov Ivan Mikhailovich - a local icon painter). The main thing is that I loved beauty. There is beauty in everything. Since childhood, I have looked at faces, how the eyes are placed, how the facial features are composed. I was six years old, I remember, I was drawing Peter the Great from a black engraving. And the colors are my own: the uniform is blue, and the lapels are lingonberries...
I. E. Repin. Portrait of the artist V. I. Surikov
In 1858, the parents sent their son to the first grade of the Krasnoyarsk district school, where he young talent drawing teacher Nikolai Vasilyevich Grebnev drew his attention.
– Grebnev took me with him and watercolor paints forced him to draw the city on top of the hill. He told me about Bryullov. About Aivazovsky, as he writes about water, it’s just like life; how he knows the shapes of clouds...
After the district school, Surikov entered the fourth grade of the gymnasium, but due to the cramped situation of the family - then his father died in Buzimov - he had to leave the gymnasium. Vasily entered the service of the provincial government as a scribe. The work was completely uninteresting - all day long I had to rewrite some papers, reports, memos. At Easter I worked part-time, painting Easter eggs for three rubles per hundred.
A few years later, he begged his mother to let him go to St. Petersburg to study at the Academy of Arts, about which he had heard so much from Grebnev. Governor Pavel Nikolaevich Zamyatnin promised his patronage upon admission, and the mayor of Krasnoyarsk Pyotr Ivanovich Kuznetsov promised him assistance on the road.
However, Surikov failed the entrance exams - he did not pass the drawing “in plaster”
– Kuznetsov sent fish to St. Petersburg as a gift to the ministers. I went with the convoy. They were transporting huge fish: I sat on top of the cart on a large sturgeon. I was cold in my sheepskin coat. I was completely numb. In the evening, when you arrive, while you are still warming up; They'll give me vodka. Then, on the way, I bought myself a dokha.
The road to St. Petersburg took almost two months - first on horses with a convoy all the way to Nizhny Novgorod, then by railway all the way to the capital.
However, Surikov failed the entrance exams - he did not pass the drawing “in plaster” - that is, when artists paint some part of a plaster figure from life. But there were no “plasters” in Krasnoyarsk, and Surikov never painted them. As a result, the teachers just threw up their hands:
- Yes, for such drawings, young man, you should even be banned from walking past the academy.
But Surikov did not even think of giving up. He went to study at the St. Petersburg Drawing School, which existed with funds from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. Within a few months, he put his arm in a cast and successfully passed the entrance exam.
He graduated from the Surikov Academy five years later - and as one of the most gifted students.
For the drawing “The Good Samaritan” Surikov received a small gold medal - he later gave this painting to Kuznetsov. In the fall of 1875, Surikov participated in a competition for the Great Gold Medal, which was associated with a two-year trip abroad at the expense of the academy. A theme from four figures: “The Apostle Paul, explaining the dogmas of Christianity before Herod-Agrippa, his sister Berenice and the Roman proconsul Festus.”
Vasily Surikov. The Apostle Paul Explains the Articles of Faith
But in the end, no one was awarded the gold medal for a reason very far from art: the academy’s cash desk was empty. Conference Secretary Iseev, right hand Vice-President of the Academy, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich Romanov, committed a major embezzlement. However, there were rumors that he appropriated all the money to himself Grand Duke, although, of course, only one Iseev was put on trial.
The injustice shown to Surikov was so obvious that the Academy Council sent a petition to the Tsar to provide Surikov with funds for his business trip. But here Surikov himself decided to show his Siberian character and proudly refused the handout. Instead of a trip, Surikov asked, it would be better if he was hired to paint the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
Vasily Surikov. First Cathedral. Fresco
Surikov was entrusted with making frescoes of four Ecumenical Cathedrals, and Surikov worked on this order for more than two years.
In Moscow, Vasily Surikov met his love. One day, attracted by the sounds of the organ, the artist entered Catholic Church and met there a girl of rare beauty and with rare name- Elizaveta Share.
Elizaveta Augustovna was born in international family. Her father Auguste Charest belonged to an old French family, known since the time of the Great French Revolution, mother - small noblewoman Maria Svistunova. To marry his beloved, Auguste Charest converted to Orthodoxy and moved to St. Petersburg, where he opened a stationery store.
Vasily Surikov. Portrait of a wife
The business was not particularly profitable, but Elizaveta Augustovna’s dowry was enough for the young Surikov family with two daughters to settle in a decent apartment on Zubovsky Boulevard, where Vasily Surikov could freely engage in creativity, without burdening himself with worries about earnings and commercial orders.
And first of all, Surikov decided to write “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” - a historical canvas about the painful turn of Russia at the end of the 17th century, which was so reminiscent of the European reforms of the 19th century.
“I decided to write Streltsov when I was still traveling to St. Petersburg from Siberia,” Surikov told Maximilian Voloshin. - Then I saw the beauty of Moscow. Monuments, squares - they gave me the environment in which I could place my Siberian impressions. I looked at the monuments as if they were living people, I asked them: “You saw, you heard, you are witnesses.”
That is why the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” is so architectural. The canvas seems to be divided into two parts: on the left is a human mess of archers and ordinary people, above which rises a bush of turrets of the outlandish crystal of the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, which is on the Moat (better known as St. Basil's Cathedral) - the very embodiment of the chaotic and restless folk element.
On the right are the straight walls of the Kremlin, rows of battlements, below them are rows of gallows, and further are rows of Preobrazhensky soldiers frozen on guard in European uniforms, the very embodiment of the Europeanized state machine, replacing the old boyar order and free people.
V. I. Surikov. The morning of the Streltsy execution. Fragment
Actually, the archers were a living symbol of the “rebellious” 17th century, which began with the Time of Troubles, passed through the Church Schism and ended with the phenomenon Russian Empire. And in all these events, a significant role was played by the elite streltsy regiments - a kind of praetorian guard of the Moscow kings, participating in all court intrigues. Peter himself was afraid of these “guards” to the point of nervous trembling.
It all started in the spring of 1682, when 21-year-old Tsar Feodor III, the eldest of three sons Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The day before, his official heir, his son Ilya, also died, who had not lived in this world for even two weeks.
Sagittarius
Immediately after the royal funeral, a fierce struggle for power broke out between the boyar parties. Actually, there were two parties: the Miloslavsky clan - these are relatives of the first wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Maria Miloslavskaya, the mother of Tsar Fyodor, Princess Sophia and the young Tsarevich Ivan. The second party is the Naryshkins, relatives of the tsar’s second wife Natalya Naryshkina, the mother of the young Tsarevich Peter. And at first, the Naryshkin supporters prevailed, which is understandable, because after the tragic death of Queen Maria in 1669, the influence of the Miloslavsky clan at court was reduced to zero. At the suggestion of the Naryshkins, the boyar duma proclaimed 10-year-old Peter tsar, and his mother Natalya Kirillovna was appointed regent for the young sovereign.
However, the accession of the Naryshkins did not suit Queen Sophia, who herself had ambitions for the throne - at least as a regent for her 16-year-old brother Ivan, who was considered mentally ill at court, since the prince was more interested in spiritual life than in intrigues and the struggle for power. As a result, Princess Sophia, bribing the commanders of the Streltsy regiments, led them to the Kremlin, where the Streltsy committed a real pogrom. Several boyars from the Naryshkin clan were chopped into pieces right in the church (among the dead were Dolgorukov, Matveev, Romodanovsky, Yazykov, that is, relatives and fathers of future associates of Peter the Great). Peter’s uncle, Ivan Kirillovich Naryshkin, Natalya’s brother, was also subjected to a painful execution. He was killed in front of Peter, who was scared to death, and whom the boyars forced to watch the executions of his relatives.
“The reign of Princess Sophia Alekseevna began with all diligence and justice to all and to the pleasure of the people.”
After the rebellion, the Miloslavskys proclaimed both brothers Ivan and Peter to the kingdom, and the regent of the minor Peter was Princess Sophia, who became the de facto sovereign ruler. A double throne was even made for the half-brothers, which can still be seen in the Moscow Kremlin Museum. There is a hole in its back through which, it is believed, Sophia whispered to her younger brothers what they should have told the boyars. Moreover, as Prince Kurakin wrote, these pieces of advice were very practical: “The reign of Princess Sofya Alekseevna began with all diligence and justice to all and to the pleasure of the people, so never such a wise reign in Russian state did not have".
True, the Miloslavskys were unable to retain power, because in 1689 - on Peter’s 17th birthday - Sophia’s regency officially ended. The princess's favorite, the head of the Streltsy order, Fyodor Shaklovity, even offered to kill Peter and all his relatives, but Peter was informed about the impending coup, and he managed to escape from Moscow in time under the protection of the walls of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. As a result, the Naryshkins, who stood behind the young king, were able to outbid the Streltsy regiments. Boyar Shaklovity was killed, and Princess Sophia was imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent. The brothers, Ivan and Peter, remained full co-rulers.
In 1696, Ivan V dies, and young Peter decides to leave for Europe as part of the Great Embassy, and to leave incognito, under the name of the sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, Peter Mikhailov. However, just before leaving, a Streltsy riot almost broke out again in Moscow. During a ball at Lefort's, the king learned that a group of archers was preparing an assassination attempt on him. The conspiracy was led by Ivan Tsikler, a member of the Miloslavsky clan, and boyar Alexei Sokovnin, brother of the famous schismatic Morozova. During the rebellion of 1689, they went over to Peter’s side, playing a significant role in the capture of Princess Sophia, but then Tsikler and Sokovnin decided that the extent of the royal gratitude did not correspond to their merits. And then they decided to “replay everything”, that is, to kill Tsar Peter and return Sofya Alekseevna to the throne, who certainly would not spare money and bread positions for her faithful servants.
Of course, the princess herself only welcomed this turn of events.
The conspirators were captured and executed. But the tsar sent the streltsy regiments away from Moscow - to guard the southern borders and to the Polish-Lithuanian outskirts, where, of course, the “Praetorians”, accustomed to the comfortable life of Moscow, had a rather difficult time.
For the arrested archers, barracks and torture chambers were built, in which braziers with coals for torture were smoked daily
Already in Vienna, the sovereign learned that the archers had rebelled again - they deserted from the border and returned to Moscow, where they began to spread rumors that the real Tsar had been killed abroad, and instead of the Russian Tsar, the Germans had slipped in an impostor Antichrist so that the Gentiles from the German settlement could to seize power in Russia and sell it to heretics. Therefore, the archers decided to return Sophia to the kingdom.
The uprising lasted for several days. Soon, a detachment of tsarist troops under the command of General Patrick Gordon, which included the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments, surrounded the rebel archers under the walls of the New Jerusalem Resurrection Monastery on the Istra River, which is only forty miles from Moscow. The archers were surrounded and shot from cannons, and the survivors were taken prisoner and imprisoned in the monastery cellars. During the short investigation, 56 “leaders” of the riot were hanged, another two hundred were whipped and exiled.
Banners of the Streltsy regiments
But Tsar Peter, who hastily returned to Moscow, demanded that a new investigation be started. In the Streltsy revolt, he saw a chance to put an end to the hated Miloslavskys, the old boyar order, and the old army, lazy and corrupt, which was more dangerous to the rulers of Russia itself than to foreign invaders. Old world, which was so disturbing Peter, he decided to break it with one powerful blow, and then build everything anew: a new state, a new noble class, a new army of the European model.
And Peter energetically got down to business. For the arrested archers, barracks and torture chambers were built in Preobrazhenskoye, in which braziers with coals were smoked daily to torture the archers. The unfortunates, strung up on the rack, were beaten with whips, burned with firebrands, their legs were burned, and tortured with red-hot tongs. Ten investigative commissions were created, which were headed by people loyal to Peter - boyars, who proved their loyalty to the sovereign by personally torturing and killing the Streltsy colonels.
Public executions also began in October. Moreover, they executed not only on Red Square, but also in all areas of Moscow, where collective gallows, platforms and simply execution decks were also built.
Hundreds of heads, impaled on iron stakes embedded in the loopholes of the Kremlin walls, were put on display for many years - for the edification of posterity
The Austrian diplomat Johann Korb, who witnessed these multi-day executions, wrote: “And the thieves and factory owners who left them... their arms and legs were broken by wheels, and those wheels were stuck on stakes on Red Square... the living were laid on those wheels, ...moaned and groaned... In front of the Kremlin, they pulled two brothers alive onto wheels, having previously broken their arms and legs... The criminals tied to the wheels saw their third brother in the pile of corpses. The pitiful cries and piercing cries of the unfortunate can only be imagined by those who are able to understand the full force of their torment and unbearable pain.”
A special gallows in the shape of a cross was also built for regimental priests - they were executed by court jesters, dressed in robes for the occasion.
The corpses of those executed remained at the execution sites for five months. Hundreds of heads, impaled on iron stakes embedded in the loopholes of the Kremlin walls, were put on display for many years - for the edification of posterity.
The wives and children of the executed streltsy were deprived of their property in the streltsy settlements and deported to Siberia, to the most empty and barren places, from where they were forbidden to leave. The neighbors of these people, on pain of death, were forbidden not only to provide shelter to the fugitive archers and members of their families, but even to supply them with food or water.
The systematic extermination of the Streltsy army continued until the very beginning of the Northern War with Sweden. The defeat at Narva, the betrayal of foreign officers who easily sided with the Swedes, the loss of many Russian and Ukrainian cities - all this forced Peter to change his mind. The Streltsy regiments were restored, and the Streltsy remained in the Russian army until the very late XVIII century.
“We looked at the executioners as heroes. They knew them by their names: which one was Mishka, which one was Sashka. Their shirts are red, their ports are wide.”
Perhaps it was precisely this desire for “Europeanization” at any cost, breaking all the foundations and traditions of patriarchal Russian society, that Surikov saw in Emperor Alexander II.
And, of course, the childhood impressions of Surikov himself, who more than once witnessed executions in Krasnoyarsk, also played an important role in the film.
“Executions and corporal punishment took place publicly in public squares,” Surikov told Maximilian Voloshin. – There was a scaffold not far from the school. There the mare was punished with whips. Children loved executioners. We looked at the executioners as heroes. They knew them by their names: which one was Mishka, which one was Sashka. Their shirts are red and their ports are wide. They walked around the scaffold in front of the crowd, straightening their shoulders. Heroism was in full swing... Now they will say - education! But it strengthened me. And the criminals had this attitude: if you did it, then you have to pay. And what strength people had: they could withstand a hundred lashes without shouting. And there was no horror. More like delight. The nerves withstood everything.
I remember one was beaten; he stood like a martyr: he didn’t shout even once. And all of us – boys – were sitting on the fence. First the body became red, and then blue: only venous blood flowed. They are given alcohol to snort. And one Tatar was brave, and after the second lash he began to scream. The people laughed a lot. I remember one woman was beaten - she killed her husband, a cab driver. She thought that they would tear her up in her skirts. I've done a lot on myself. So the executioners tore her skirts off - they flew through the air like doves. And she just screamed like a cat - all the people laughed...
“When I wrote Streltsov, I had the most terrible dreams: every night I saw executions in my dreams.”
I saw the death penalty twice. Once three men were executed for arson. One was a tall guy, like Chaliapin, the other was an old man. They were brought on carts in white shirts. Women climb, cry, their relatives. I was standing close. They fired a volley. Red stains appeared on the shirts. Two fell. And the guy is standing. Then he fell too. And then, suddenly, I see it rises. They fired another volley. And it rises again. Such horror, I tell you. Then one officer came up, pointed a revolver, killed him ... "
“When I wrote Streltsov, I had the most terrible dreams: every night I saw executions in my dreams. There is a smell of blood all around. I was afraid of the nights. You will wake up and be happy. Look at the picture. Thank God, there is none of this horror in it. My only thought was not to disturb the viewer. So that there is peace in everything. I was always afraid that I might awaken an unpleasant feeling in the viewer... My painting doesn’t depict blood, and the execution had not yet begun. But I experienced all this – both blood and executions – within myself. “The morning of the Streltsy executions”: someone called them well. I wanted to convey the solemnity of the last minutes, and not the execution at all...”
Perhaps this is why Surikov broke all the canons of historical painting of that time, placing his creation outside genre templates.
Surikov Estate Museum
The end of the 19th century was a real heyday of historical painting in Europe - everything European peoples at that time they were enthusiastically comprehending and constructing their past. But the plot of every historical picture has always developed around some historical hero- commander, general, politician, who was a guide and at the same time a creator of history.
But Surikov has no such hero: both the archers, and even the frozen Peter the Great himself, are lost somewhere in the background of the picture, in the mix of carts and human crowds.
Dirt - as a symbol of the dark and chaotic folk element - became the main character in Surikov’s painting
In the foreground of the picture is dirt.
The greasy and impassable Moscow mud, in which both the victims and their executioners, both the right and the guilty, were smeared.
– This is the most important thing in the whole picture! - exclaimed Surikov. - Previously, Moscow was unpaved - the mud was black. Here and there it sticks, and next to it pure iron glistens like silver...
Dirt - as a symbol of the dark and chaotic folk element - became the main character in Surikov’s painting, the main driver of all historical events and processes. The elements dragged young Peter to the throne, the elements knocked over all the eminent boyars at his feet, the elements will rule over all the next generations of Russian rulers...
... Tsar Alexander III sighed thoughtfully and turned to the exit.
It is useless to prohibit dirt; you just need to ensure cleanliness and maintain order.
P.s. A year later, in 1882, Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna now officially visited the X exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. “For the Itinerants, who... had a hard life, this was a whole event,” wrote the famous art critic Prakhov. “Many members of the Partnership began to receive regular orders from the royal family, and their paintings also became part of the collection of the Anichkov Palace, and later became the property of the Russian Museum.” At the same time, the Association of Itinerants adopted an unspoken rule not to sell any paintings until the Emperor Emperor made his purchases.
Editor's Choice
Painting: 1881
Canvas, oil.
Size: 218 × 379 cm
Description of the painting “Morning of the Streltsy Execution” by V. Surikov
Artist: Vasily Ivanovich Surikov
Title of the painting: “Morning of the Streltsy Execution”
Painting: 1881
Canvas, oil.
Size: 218 × 379 cm
IN AND. Surikov comes from those proud and freedom-loving Don Cossacks who came to the Don along with Ermak. The artist’s mother, remarkably, also came from a Cossack family whose history stretched back almost 200 years. The painter grew up in harsh Siberia, rich in unique beauty and unique history. This is how his artistic taste and worldview were formed.
After his marriage, Surikov, peaceful and happy, turned to the topic of the Streltsy uprising of 1682 - history always attracted him. The idea for the painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” arose from a candle that burned during the day and seemed tragic and lonely. The artist nurtured the idea of the painting for many years, until he saw St. Basil's Cathedral, which seemed bloody to him. Surikov began to have dreams, and, according to his recollections, he could smell the smell of blood. Waking up, he decided to depict not the execution, but the minutes that preceded it. It’s interesting that “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” became the first historical picture Surikov and was instantly bought by Tretyakov.
It was not for nothing that the master of the brush chose a foggy morning, on which the clothes of the convicts and the fanatical, frightening gaze of Peter stood out. It was the early part of the day that best reflected the method of rapprochement - reducing the distance between the place of execution, St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. Its effect of crowd movement is stunning, although in fact only a couple of dozen characters are clearly written.
Another point is Surikov’s insight into the history of Rus', and its rather tragic moments. It was the events of the era of the author of the “Window to Europe” that amazed the artist, and then the audience. Then Princess Sophia, who fought with Peter for power, led the Streletsky revolt. Moreover, the archers at that time were considered the elite army of Russia, to whose opinion even the tsars obeyed. The 17th century became a period of reprisals against the supporters of the Naryshkins, from whom Peter’s mother came, and the future tsar as a child saw all the executions carried out by the archers. Then his face began to twitch, a fanatical look appeared, and the execution of the archers became not only a way to pacify the riots, but also a personal vendetta for his lost childhood.
Surikov remembered the death row prisoners in Siberia on the scaffold, their views, behavior and attitude towards the executioners, which later became iconic for the “Morning of the Streltsy Execution”. The most main idea paintings - both physical images of the faces of people who were sent to death, and the moral confrontation of the red-bearded archer with Peter.
The artist could not paint the image of a man with a red beard for a long time until he saw a gravedigger in a cemetery - just as angry, even furious and rebellious. If you look closely at the candle in his hands, you will see that the way he holds it resembles a knife. The image of Peter is historically accurate; he not only sits confidently on a horse, but his entire figure betrays a nervous, monumental tension-expectation. The girl in the red scarf, who was confused in the crowd, is the daughter of the artist himself, who waited until she grew up to paint the image.
Take a closer look at the overall composition and style of the canvas. The first archer, without waiting for dawn, was already led to the gallows. A crowd of onlookers from commoners and boyars has gathered around, and the archer with a black beard looks around hauntedly. The gray-haired man became distraught, realizing the horror of what was happening, and the archer on the cart bowed in forgiveness. A young woman screamed in despair because her husband was being executed, and someone’s mother sat down limply on the ground.
The picture is made in dark, even heavy colors. All architectural buildings are symbolic. The Kremlin tower reflects the figure of Peter, alone in this crowd, the nearby tower becomes symbolic for the figures of onlookers, boyars and foreign guests. The soldiers, stretched out in a clear line, stand like the wall of the Kremlin. St. Basil's Cathedral seems to unite a huge crowd of people, and the dome of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary is cut off at the top of the picture. It is noteworthy that critics consider it a symbol of decapitated Rus'. Ten other domes become a symbol of lit candles, one of which once inspired Surikov.
Take a closer look at the arrangement of the domes - they are geometrically strict and correct. The slanted line that starts from the lower left corner and runs through the entire picture is the candle lights. They pierce the crowd from the man who sits with his back to the audience, moving through the red-bearded and black-bearded archer to the suicide bomber, who is at the top and lowered his head, as if already on the scaffold.
But take a closer look at one more thing. If you visually draw a line through a candle in the dirt, through a soldier blowing out the flame, you will get a cross that crushes the crowd of rioters. In “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” you can find three other crosses, but already on distant plans compositions. Look at the Sagittarius above, under the arc on the left side and at the space behind this person - these are the crosses that divide the picture in half.
This division represents two worlds - the world of the elite of the Streltsy troops, which is a thing of the past and new world Peter, who violated all the traditions of Rus'. The man in uniform became the one who was able to reshape life anew, making it the way we are accustomed to. For Surikov, he is a symbol of bloody changes, and the archers are a symbol of human souls that did not fit into the new era.
The number 7 is symbolic for the picture: 7 candles are burning, 7 archers who will be executed, 7 chapters of St. Basil's Cathedral. The candle that fell into the mud is also symbolic - this is the soul trampled by Peter.
... Tsar Peter was not as cruel and fanatical as Surikov wrote him. It is reliably known that when the morning of the execution arrived, he offered each of the 150 archers a pardon, but with further exile. Only three of them understood the value of life and peace of mind of their loved ones, and the king gave it to them. The rest walked to the scaffold, proudly raising their heads and looking with rage at young Peter.
There is one more moment in “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” - it is beautiful with a special deadly beauty. The canvas is full of bright outfits, Streltsy costumes and Kremlin towers. This is like a reflection of the fact that even after the death of many people, others will live on, passing on stories about Peter and the Streltsy from generation to generation.
