The first monument to Ivan Susanin in Kostroma

In the evening of October 7, 1834, Emperor Nicholas I arrived in Kostroma from Yaroslavl. In an open wheelchair, he drove to the Ipatiev Monastery. In the Trinity Cathedral defended a prayer service, visited the "cell" of Mikhail Fedorovich. Observing the places "sacred by memories", the Emperor went to the house of Senator Borschev on the main square of the city.

Probably, then we were talking about the monument to Ivan Susanin, because it was in the Ipatiev monastery that the local nobility proposed to put it. The proposal was prepared in September, and during the Kostroma visit passed through the chief of the gendarmes Benkendorf.

Yuri Bartenev, the disgraced director of schools of the Kostroma province, was in the beginning of 1835 in his village Zolotov near Galich. Short uninvited leisure, he wrote in his "Chronicle":

- I am notified from St. Petersburg on February 2 that architect Ton is going to Kostroma to see the area, where and how to erect a monument. “Behold, the writer continues, your thought is personified!” There is no mention of you.”

It follows that it was Bartenev who had the idea of the monument to Susanin. Probably, after the trip of Constantine Thon, the future creator of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and chose a place for the monument.

June 8 was followed by the highest permission to build a monument to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich and the settler Ivan Susanin as a testimony that noble descendants saw in the immortal feat of Susanin - saving the life of the newly elected Russian land tsar through the donation of his life - the salvation of the Orthodox faith and the Russian kingdom from foreign domination and enslavement.

The design was entrusted to the author of many sculptural decorations of the northern capital, Vasily Demut-Malinovsky. On April 16, 1838, the project was approved, and the square was ordered to be renamed Susaninskaya.

Soon the fairy tale affects, but it is not soon done. The foundation was laid in August 1843, the monument was brought in September 1843, began to install in May 1845, bronze figures were put in August 1847, the final decoration began in August 1850. By this time, the author of the project had been in a different world for four years.

Finally, on Fedorovskaya, on March 14, 1851 according to the Julian calendar (today it is the 26th), the monument to Ivan Susanin and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was opened in Kostroma.

“On this holy day, Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, the three cornerstones of the Russian Kingdom, merged into one joyful festival,” wrote Kostromich Yevtykhy Voznesensky, who recorded in detail the entire course of events.

What happened next, everyone knows. In 1918, the national hero was recognized as the tsar's henchman and was overthrown together with the first Romanov from the pedestal. The bronze was disposed of, and the column was buried on the outskirts of the city. In the 1970s, it was dug up, and Mayor Boris Korobov remembered it in 1991, when Kostromists were waiting for President Yeltsin. The column was placed on a stand in the center of the square.

The foundation is ready for the restoration of the monument. Now on the Internet argue Kostromich and Kostromiki: nothing that the peasant on his knees? “Let’s raise the people from their knees!” they cried. “Let’s restore historical justice,” others say. There is no unity in the Russian state.

Susaninskaya Square, which used to be decorated with a monument to Ivan Susanin and Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, is included in both red and blue routes of author’s excursions."Kostroma at 15:15.".

According to the materials of the scientific consultant of the project “Kostroma at 15:15” candidate of cultural studies Larisa Sizintseva.