Рассказы об убийстве Прокопия Ляпунова в сочинениях современников о Смуте

Abstract

The paper explores artistic features of stories about the murder of Prokopy Petrovich Lyapunov, a head of the First volunteer corps, in 1611. Many Russian and foreign contemporary writings on the Time of troubles introduce the motif of the murder through traditional means appealing to devilish instigation or through sordid desires and intentions, or attempting to trace cause-effect documentary links between the events or by making a series of assumptions. A philosophical and literary story about the murdering of commander as expounded by Elias Herkman in “Historical narrative…” stands apart against this background. For each element of the criminal story Herkman finds a corresponding parallel in ancient Greek history. Whereas in most Russian texts authors and editors only acknowledge the fact of murder and fairly easily move on to the account on people`s sentiments related to the event. As for those rare monuments, that give relatively detailed account on the criminal story, which cardinally changed the fate of the First volunteer corps, narration bears a clear imprint of displaying official version of the events in question, that led to the use of omission method, not dismissing the intention of truthfully telling about the murder of Ryazan` commander.