The Legend of the Russian Joan of Arc
Something too expensive and rich for a peasant widow...
The image of a female rebel is so vivid that it could not help but appear in fiction: there are half a dozen novels written about Alena. For example, here is a description of Razin's meeting with Alena in S. Zlobin's novel "Stepan Razin": "Look at you! Razin grinned. "I thought you were a fathom tall, but you wear pants and a blouse, and you're over fifty, and you wear a sabre on your belt... it's not for nothing that they call you "old woman." And why does the author care that Razin could not physically meet Alena - he was fighting at the time she was in Temnikov, in the area of Astrakhan and Tsaritsyn?
K. V. Smirnov “Alena’s Fight” 1979 Temnikov Museum named after F. F. Ushakov
It must be said that Alena Arzamasskaya really existed, really took part in the uprising and really was burned. Otherwise, reality is so intertwined with fiction that untangling this knot is not an easy task.
The fact is that Russian documents about this extraordinary woman are extremely scarce, although they provide important information - where she lived, where she was from, who she was married to, and so on. And all the most colorful details are taken from the works of foreign authors, primarily Johann Frisch, the author of "Instructive Conversations" (1677), the dissertation of Johann Justus Marcius "Stenko Razin, the Don Cossack Traitor" (1674) and "Messages Concerning the Details of the Rebellion Perpetrated in Muscovy by S. Razin" of 1671.
For example, Frisch tells a story about Alyona’s “last battle”: “When part of his (Razin’s – Author’s note) troops were defeated by Dolgorukov, she, being their leader, took refuge in the church and continued to resist there so stubbornly that she first shot all her arrows, killing seven or eight more, and after she saw that further resistance was impossible, she untied her sabre, threw it away and threw herself backwards towards the altar with outstretched arms. In this pose she was found and captured. She must have possessed unprecedented strength, since in Dolgorukov’s army there was no one who could fully draw her bow.” Simply not a woman, but a Terminator (not to mention the fact that a bow in Russia is a noble weapon)!
The old woman-voivode leads the battle
And in the "Message" it is stated that: "Among other prisoners, a nun in a man's dress over a monastic robe was brought to Prince Yuri Dolgoruky. That nun had a detachment of seven thousand people under her command and fought bravely until she was taken prisoner." Seven thousand? That's a real wartime division; in the 17th century, a woman could command one only in fairy tales.
Marcius' dissertation, as befits a scientific work, is extremely brief: "But no one was punished more severely than the Mordvin Cossacks, if you do not count a certain woman who was burned because she exchanged the monastic rank to which she previously belonged for military clothes and affairs."
There is no information about Alena Arzamasskaya's age or appearance, so each artist has the right to their own vision of the character.
History heroic and very literary, at least for real life. Russian documents tell us about it.
On September 27, 1670, rebel detachments, raised ("seduced" in the terminology of the time) to fight by "thieves' letters", take the city of Temnikov. Around this time, the governor Yuri Dolgorukov (in the "Message" he is mistakenly called Dolgoruky) arrives in Arzamas to fight the "thieves". The prince begins sending detachments around the surrounding area, which take one settlement after another.
On October 6, the rebels attack one of these units near the village of Kerenki, but are defeated. After interrogating the prisoners, the first information about a nun in the ranks of the rebels appears: Ataman Andrei Osipov and abyz (priest) Murza Smail Sokolov say that they heard about an old woman who gathers people in the Shatsk district for "theft".
At one time, normal theft was called "tatba", that is, here we are talking specifically about treason. Osipov called the old woman a sorceress from the village of Krasnaya Sloboda and said that she was going to move from Shatsk to Kasimov. Sokolov and Osipov named different numbers of the detachment - from 200 to 600 people. And, yes, neither of them named the sorceress.
After the defeat at Kerenki, Ataman Fyodor Sidorov gathers the closest detachments of Razin's men in Temnikov; most likely, the old woman arrived in the city with one of them.
It is worth clarifying right away that “eldress” is not an age! It is a monastic rank, one could be an elder at 20 or at 60.
But the rebels are unlucky again: on November 30, they are beaten again. And then what happens regularly in such cases happens: the residents of Temnikov decide that they are not on the same path with the revolution and hand over the rebels to the governor Dolgorukov: 18 peasants, a priest, and the old woman Alena. They immediately explain that this is not an old woman at all, but a thief and a heretic ("conspiracy letters", roots, and other props are included).
There is a certain approximation to reality...
During the interrogation, the old woman said that: “They call her Alena, and her birthplace, sir, is the city of Arzamas, the daughter of a peasant from the Vyezdnye Sloboda, and she was married to a peasant from the same Sloboda; and when her husband died, she took the veil... And in the present year, sir, 197 (i.e. 1670), she came from Arzamas to Temnikov and took many people with her to steal, and she stole with them, and they stayed in Temnikov with the ataman Fedka Sidorov and taught him witchcraft.”
In general, the governor Dolgorukov did not drag his feet (the invention of the rubber vulcanization process was still two hundred years away): on the first day – interrogation with partiality and the sentence – to burn in a log house, along with letters and roots. The sentence was carried out the next day. Everything was in accordance with Article 1 of Chapter 1 “On Blasphemers and Church Rebels” of the Cathedral Code of 1649.
Was Alena an ataman and did she fight against government troops?
Well... In Russian court documents, the smallest protocol details were scrupulously observed. If someone was an ataman, then this person was never called anything other than an ataman in all documents, for example, Vaska Kosoy! The same Fyodor Sidorov appears in all documents as "ataman Fedka Sidorov" and nothing else. This title is not used in relation to Alyona - only "staritsa". And the Cossacks did not appoint women as atamans (not to mention that all the documents state: Alyona gathered people, but nowhere is it written that she commanded them).
The second principle of official documents from the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (and even earlier, much earlier!) is the scrupulous observance of hierarchy. The most important prisoners were always listed first in the "voivode's report", and then all the others in descending order. Dolgorukov's order is as follows: "the village priest Savva, 18 peasants from various villages and hamlets, a thief and a heretic old woman."
In general, of all his prey, the prince puts Alena in last place.
Nina Kosheleva as the old woman. Ballet “Alena Arzamasskaya”, State Opera and Ballet Theater named after I. M. Yakushev, Saransk
Why did the old woman Alena occupy such a high place in foreign sources?
It's all about European intellectual fashion. In the mid-17th century, at the instigation of Cardinal Richelieu, the "media promotion" of Joan of Arc began in France. No, she was known before and canonized long ago, but the cunning cardinal, on the wave of yet another conflict with England, makes her not just a pious conductor of God's will, but a real Amazon.
And foreigners drew elementary parallels: she took part in the war, was burned at the stake – here she is, the Russian Joan of Arc!
And the fact that the image of Zhanna doesn’t fit the real Alena, from the words “at all” and “completely”... Who cares about this?
It's a very beautiful literary story. They even staged a ballet called "Alena Arzamasskaya"...
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