Disputes about the mysterious death of Tsarevich Dmitry do not subside to this day. According to the official version, the boy inadvertently stabbed himself in the neck with a knife. But, according to rumors, Tsarevich Dmitry was villainously stabbed by people sent by Boris Godunov. Thus, the death of Tsarevich Dmitry from a personal drama turned into a historical tragedy. This version still has a noticeable impact on historiography.
What actually happened at the courtyard of the Uglich Kremlin on a sunny day on May 15 four hundred years ago?
1584 - Tsarevich Dmitry, together with his mother Maria Naga, the sixth or seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible, left for Uglich. Their marriage, according to the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church, could not be considered legal and, as a result, Dmitry, to whom Tsar Ivan IV allocated a separate principality with the capital in Uglich, as illegitimate, should have been called not a prince, but a specific Uglich prince. But he still went down in history as "the young Tsarevich Dmitry". He was the only hope of the Naked family for exaltation.
From the age of 6-7 he began to feel like a future sovereign. The boy was noted for a family trait - cruelty and unbridled character. He often ordered the courtyards to sculpt figures of people from snow and carve out of wood figures of people and assigned them the names of the Moscow boyars, and then cut off their limbs and heads, saying at the same time: “With this I will do this when I become king, and with this - commercials . In Russian history there has already been an example of a royal child, gifted and passionate, who was brought up in the same way. Over time, Tsar Ivan the Terrible grew out of this child.
Tragic events played out on Saturday, when the inhabitants of the Kremlin were preparing for dinner. The tsarevich, as always at this time, played with the boys with a knife in the "butt". The one who threw a knife from a certain distance had to get into a circle outlined on the ground. It was Dmitry's turn. And at this time the unexpected happened. Everyone rushed to the courtyard. Maria Nagaya snatched the body of the already dead prince from the hands of Arina Tuchkova. The queen, distraught with grief, pointing at Volokhov, under whose supervision Dmitry was during the game, lamented that it was her Osip and the son of Bityagovsky and Mikita Kachalov who killed Tsarevich Dmitry.
The bell was struck. Excited people were already crowding around. Many came running with clubs and knives. Bityagovsky, who jumped out straight from the dining table, tried to calm the people down, denying accusations of his involvement in the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. However, both in our time and in those times, the "psychology of the crowd" played a role, fueled by the Nagimi brothers.
A. S. Pushkin somehow shrewdly remarked: “The people, like children, require entertainment, action. The people demand strong sensations, for them and execution is a sight. Laughter, pity and horror are the three strings of our imagination, overwhelmed by dramatic magic. Clerk Mikhail Bityagovsky, who was sent by Godunov to supervise Tsarevich Dmitry, and his assistants Nikita Katchalov and Danila Tretyakov were immediately torn to pieces by agitated people. In front of Maria Nagoya's eyes, Danila Bityagovsky and Osip Volokhov, who were playing with Dmitry, were killed.
A commission of inquiry was sent to Uglich, headed by Metropolitan Gelasiy of Sark and Podoinsky, and in fact it was led by Vasily Shuisky, an insidious and clever opponent of Boris Godunov. Historians write that the commission was investigating the case "in hot pursuit."
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From a forensic point of view, this is not entirely true. Investigation in hot pursuit is considered when it was carried out within the first day after the incident. Shuisky's commission arrived in Uglich only on May 19, that is, on the fourth day after the incident. From the point of view of modern forensics, death under so-called "unexplained circumstances" implies the possibility of murder, suicide, or an accident. "Search" - the investigation file of Shuisky, has reached our time. It should be noted that the investigation was carried out quite professionally. As expected, several versions were worked out. In Russia, at all times, they knew how to conduct "search" cases.
It was established that at the time of the tragedy, all the killed servicemen were not at the place of death of Tsarevich Dmitry. The clerks and clerks conducted confrontations, interrogated witnesses in detail. The stories of the boys who watched the game were given special significance. After all, children are easily suggested and during interrogations, with competently posed questions, they can give evidence "necessary" for the investigation.
As the analysis of the records of the investigation file confirms, during the inquiry the children were not subjected to psychological pressure from the adults. The boys told about what happened like this: "… the prince was playing with a knife with them in the backyard, and an illness came to him - a falling ailment - and threw himself on the knife." The adults confirmed: "… yes, at the time when he was beating, he stabbed himself with a knife and therefore died."
The commission, having examined the testimony of witnesses, came to the unequivocal conclusion that there was an accident during an attack of epilepsy. After studying all the documents on June 2, 1591, the "Consecrated Cathedral" and the boyar duma announced to the people: "Tsarevich Dmitry was killed by God's judgment."
Now the participants in the riot in Uglich suffered a cruel reprisal: the brothers Mikhail, Andrei and Grigory Nagiy were imprisoned in prison in distant cities, and the mother of the prince, Maria Nagaya, was tonsured a nun and exiled to a distant monastery. Many townspeople were also punished. The fate of the Uglich bell, which announced the "murder" of Tsarevich Dmitry, became human: he was deprived of one "ear" and was "exiled" to distant Tobolsk under strong guard.
Considering the difficult political situation of those times, some skeptics still say: "Couldn't the trusted people of Boris Godunov insert certain sheets of evidence in his favor into the search file?" Scientific research carried out in our days has confirmed the absolute authenticity of the "Search".
And yet, publications about the premeditated murder of Tsarevich Dmitry still continue to appear. Even many of the eminent scientists do not cease to assert that the names of the real perpetrators of the murder, apparently, will never be known. Maybe these were mercenaries, whom no one knew in Uglich, they could easily get into the territory of the Kremlin, since it was practically not guarded. Having committed atrocity, the criminals left the territory of the palace and, on horseback, left the city. The versions of these scientists are based on the alignment of political forces of those times.
They believe that the death of Tsarevich Dmitry was beneficial in the first place to Vasily Shuisky. But 13 years after the tragedy, Shuisky recognizes the "murdered Tsarevich" in the False Dmitry as an impostor, and 2 years later, having been "called out" to the kingdom, he announced to the people in his letters that Dmitry "would truly die and was buried in Uglich." The role of Dmitry's mother, Maria Nagoya, was also quite unsightly. Brought from the monastery for a face-to-face meeting, she also admits her son to False Dmitry, hastily inventing a tale about the allegedly "substituted Dmitry" during an attack, and that then the "substitute" child died.
According to one of the available versions, Dmitry was killed by order of Boris Godunov, while the killers deliberately gave the prince a sharp knife during the game and patiently waited for the prince to stab him during an epileptic seizure. The improbability of such a situation is obvious.
The story of the death of Tsarevich Dmitry and the great Russian writer A. Chekhov was not spared. After graduating from the medical faculty, he was going to defend his thesis on the topic: "Medicine in Russia" and in this thesis he wanted to use medical data to approach the solution of the historical solution to the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. Studying the data on the boy's death, Chekhov wrote with regret that forensic medicine was completely absent in the study.
The prince suffered from a "black disease", "epilepsy" - the most severe epilepsy, accompanied by unexpected frequent, prolonged seizures. Nowadays, medicine considers epilepsy as a neuropsychiatric disease, in some cases leading to the disintegration of the personality. History knows many examples of epilepsy among famous people: Julius Caesar, F. Dostoevsky, V. Gog, G. Flaubert … All of them, suffering from "epilepsy", retained their intellectual and creative potential. But these examples only confirm the exception to the rule.
This disease has been known since ancient times. Already in the IV century, the treatment of epilepsy was divided into dietary, surgical and pharmacological. Diet methods recommended rubbing the patient's body with wine vinegar and olive oil, forbade the use of certain types of fish, meat and game; surgical - bloodletting, cuts on various parts of the body, craniotomy; pharmacological - the use of herbs, decoctions. They also recommended constant prayers and fasting, and wearing amulets. Moxibustion of the scalp in the occipital region was considered extremely effective. But all these tools were of little help.
And, of course, the prince was doomed - a boy with a torn psyche, crippled by a bad upbringing. If you look at Dmitry with ordinary human eyes without a "historical" background, then on the fateful day, May 15, he went out into the courtyard, exhausted by a severe attack, where his peers were awaiting him.
The last seizure before his death lasted for two days continuously. He bit the hands of the mothers and nannies, who were trying to keep the body arching in convulsions.
In medical practice, there have been cases of epileptic seizures, when the patient is caught by an attack in the most unexpected place. Often, epileptics inflict rather severe bodily harm on themselves when they hit the ground and surrounding objects. All this, as it were, confirms the version of the accident, or the version of "murder without a killer." But medical practice has never recorded a death similar to the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. It turns out that medical statistics, if not rejecting, then kind of casts doubt on the version of "murder without a killer", as well as the version about an accident during an epileptic seizure.
What is the real cause of death of Tsarevich Dmitry?
Observant A. Chekhov could not but be interested in the question: could Dmitry inflict a fatal stab wound in the neck with his hand? Here is what he wrote to the publisher Suvorin: “About epilepsy it is possible to read it in any textbook on nervous diseases, as well as (for a researcher it is necessary) in the corresponding department of forensic medicine. But you are not an expert, you will not understand the medical chaos. I will take a piece of paper and briefly outline everything you need and explain if I can. The boy could have killed himself."
Well, what does the forensic medical examination of our time tell us about such cases? Can the victim hurt himself with his hand?
Of course it can. Modern forensic practice knows many cases of death in epileptics, who at the time of the attack were holding piercing and cutting objects in their hands. For this reason, the Occupational Safety and Health Regulation prohibits persons with epilepsy from working in mechanized labor. But could death have occurred so quickly, as in the case of Tsarevich Dmitry, with a knife wound on the neck?
Medicine on this issue answers positively: death occurs from an air embolism of the heart, that is, from the ingress of air into its right ventricle, with injuries of the vessels of the neck. An amount of air between 20 and 100 ml can cause death of the injured person. And when even a relatively small amount of air quickly enters the vascular bed, death usually occurs immediately, which apparently happened to Tsarevich Dmitry.
Historiography still does not have information to assert the involvement of Boris Godunov or Vasily Shuisky in the death of Tsarevich Dmitry.
And numerous facts of forensic medicine and data from expert practice speak for the fact that he could have died if the vessels of the neck were damaged with a knife, which he held in his hand, during an attack of epilepsy.
Considering the reliability of the materials carefully conducted after the tragedy "Search" in Uglich and the possibility of inflicting fatal injections on oneself in cases of epilepsy, which is confirmed by the modern practice of forensic medical examination, confirmed by modern scientific research, the death of Ivan the Terrible's son, Tsarevich Dmitry, should be interpreted as an accident.
A. Maslov