As you know, real music not only purifies, ennobles, but also exposes evil. So, good people guslars carried through the vibrations of strings in Russia the beginnings of the Slavic archetype of kindness and love, which was in no way included in the plans of the artificial ideology of justifying evil under the stamp of Judeo-Christianity, imposed by Byzantium by "fire and sword".
The songs that were performed by guslars, or, more correctly, guslists, are songs about the plight of the Russian people, about the Russian share. For this, the church authorities persecuted guslars. For a long time, the gusli was banned by both the churchmen and the state authorities, who were afraid that with their songs the performers would incite people to revolt against serfdom and the Byzantine Inquisition in Russia.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov (who received the nickname 'Quiet') mercilessly dealt with buffoons and guslars - minnesingers of Holy Russia. He destroyed both people and tools, and in Russia it became 'quiet' for a long time …
In the struggle for spiritual power that has been going on in Russia for a millennium, apparently, the guslars nevertheless remained undefeated, since even at the end of the 20th century the archaic form of the living gusl tradition was preserved in Russia, which was found by the expedition of the Leningrad Conservatory in Pskov, Novgorod and Kirov regions.