Is it true that the heroine of the Patriotic War of 1812 Vasilisa Kozhin is an invented person?

It is common that during the war with Napoleon in the Smolensk province, a partisan detachment, led by a woman named Vasilisa, acted in the Smolensk province. We checked whether it really was.

The story of a simple Russian peasant woman who defended the country from the French became popular two centuries ago. "Oldostih Vasilisa, who broke hundreds of Frenchmen" mentioned In the fourth volume of “War and Peace”, Leo Tolstoy. But real glory came to her already in Soviet times: with her image released The postage brand, and in the west of Moscow, in her honor was named the street. In 2012, when the 200th anniversary of the war with Napoleon was celebrated, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation released A memorable coin dedicated to Vasilisa. Two years later on the screens I went out The film "Vasilisa", where Svetlana Khodchenkova played the partisan.

For the first time about Vasilisa Kozhina Wrote In 1812 in the journal "Son of the Fatherland". The author of a small text with reference to an unnamed merchant says: “The headman of one village of Sychevsky district led the party of prisoners to the city. In his absence, the peasants were brought by several more people who were captured by them, and they gave them to the old -vasih Vasilisa for departure. Vasilisa gathered the peasants, hung on a horse, picked up a braid and, traveling around the prisoners, screamed in an important voice: "Well, the villains are French! In Frunt! Go, march!" One of the captured officers, annoyed, being that a woman decided to command them, did not obey her. Vasilisa immediately hit him with a scythe on the head, he fell dead to her feet, and she cried out: "To all of you, thieves, dogs, there will be the same thing who will only move a little! I have twenty-seven such mischievous heads! The march into the city!" Two years later, the story fell into the "Complete meeting of jokes of the memorable war of Russians with the French."

The journal, which contains the source of the story about Vasilisa, was not a publication that published scientific works or official information of state structures. His founded During the Patriotic War, “for the placement of relations and private news from the army, for refuting harmfulons about the course of incidents, for concentration of patriotic opinions.” The editors did not hide the patriotic orientation of the published texts, while the desire for reliability was not declared anywhere.

Nevertheless, the story from the "Son of the Fatherland" led to the appearance of the picturesque images of Vasilisa. In 1813, the Lubok of Alexei Venetsanov appeared “French - hungry rats in the team near the head -style Vasilisa” with the signature “Illustration of the episode in the Sychevsky district, where the wife of the rural elder Vasilisa, gaining a team from armed braids and dracoli of Babs, drove several captures of the enemies, one of which was killed by her.” The drawing was published in the Terebenev ABC-an educational and patriotic publication for children. In the same year, artist Smirnov wrote A portrait of Kozhina, for some reason, having placed a medal on her chest on a tape installed for awards in honor of the capture of Paris. The evidence that this little -known painter created a portrait from nature was not preserved. Apparently, it is precisely in the signature to this picture that the name of Vasilisa - Kozhin is first mentioned. Before the revolution, Vasilisa remained often the heroine of pseudo -historical fiction, and the authors of such works were not embarrassed to supplement the facts known from the original source. For example, in one of these novels she Wears The surname of Tulaeva, and then lives in the village of Primenka, then in the village of Sychevka.

In the Soviet years, the history of Vasilisa Kozhina continues to grow in new details, while links to any newly discovered sources do not appear. In the monograph of the historian Nikolai Garinich, Vasilisa is already commanding a partisan detachment. The same story is in the work of Eugene Tarle, who, however, He emphasizesIt is impossible to separate legends and rumors from the facts with a story about Vasilisa. In the article of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia indicated: “Vasilisa (gg. Birth and death are unknown), a partisan of the Patriotic War of 1812, a peasant woman, the oldist of the farm of Gorshkov, Sychevsky district of the Smolensk province. Having organized a detachment of partisans from adolescents and women, armed with braids, forks, axes, etc., K. destroyed and captured by a soldier of the Napoleonic army during their retreat from Russia. She was awarded a medal and a monetary prize. ” Note that this small text is strikingly different from the memories of contemporaries. At the same time, the author of the article does not refer to any sources (compare at least the articles about the same Leo Tolstoy or Mikhail Kutuzov).

It is also forced to think about the fact that Vasilisa entered the pages of history textbooks already in Soviet times, although in the Russian Empire about the war of 1812 they wrote about the “people's”. The authors emphasized the heroism of the common people and the widespread patriotic rise. Modern textbooks They tell About Vasilisa without much details: “All-Russian fame by her brave actions against the enemy troops was acquired by the peasant worker of the Sychevsky district of the Smolensk province Vasilisa Kozhin.” Publicist Andrei Arkhangelsky after the release of the film "Vasilisa" turned to the staff of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences for a comment. Scientists Explainedthat "Vasilisa Kozhina is most likely a mythical character."

It is likely to find out the truth. There is a clear explanation for this: despite the popular nature of the war, which emphasized two centuries ago, historical science is obliged to operate with preserved sources. The latter peasants simply did not leave in any sufficient quantities, because many were illiterate, and the state of their life during the war documented little. This difference in the level of reliability becomes visual if we compare the number of known facts about Vasilisa with the biography of the partisan Denis Davydov Or a cavalry girl Nadezhda Durovawho came from the nobles. The lack of facts not only allows you to create myths that cannot be confirmed or refuted, but also upset historians who are deprived of the opportunity to reliably investigate the lives of individual representatives of the majority of the population of that time.

Legend

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. http://www.museum.ru/museum/1812/library/markin1/index.html
2. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2009518
3. https://daily.afisha.ru/archive/vozduh/cinema/vasilisilisa-svetlanoy-hodchenkoovo-opolchency-blondinka/