Hello from gorgeous cow country in upstate NY!
As a child of immigrants, I was raised on stories of a glorious Holy Russia that I knew better than the San Francisco of my childhood. That land was filled with heroes who gave their lives for God, Tsar, and country and who left legacies that all of us children aspired to.Â
Of course, so much of that was legend, a lifeline for immigrants who had lost everything, and who preferred to remember a semi-fictional history that left out some of the more disturbing details.Â
But as I grew up and learned the more nuanced truth, I only became more fascinated. Because what I found was this: despite the darkness of the human condition, you still have bright lights appearing in unexpected places—heroes and heroines whose lives read like adventure tales.Â
As a writer of fantasy, I find great inspiration in these stories. Sometimes I find character details there, sometimes actual plot details. Over the past few years, all the research I’ve done for my Raven Son series has turned up a wealth of fascinating accounts from Russian history that make for interesting reading all on its own.Â
I've collected them into a single book:Â Heroes for All Time.Â
This little book is a glimpse into the world of my Russia— a world filled with complex characters living out difficult lives in sometimes impossible circumstances. But more often then not, they rose above these difficulties to become truly heroic. In our own chaotic time, their stories are worthy of being retold again and again.
Today, Heroes for all Time is available for sale.
Here's an excerpt from the book, for your reading pleasure:
Heroism. Heroes. We want to believe in them. But too often, both in history and current events, it seems the heroes have headed for the hills, leaving the halls of power to the cunning and the unscrupulous. And so we indulge in escapist fantasies about superheroes that might save us from ourselves, if they can get their own lives in order first, that is.
In my writer’s manifesto, I describe what I see as a necessary “story hero” for our time. He is not a hulking warrior who puts down hundreds of enemies with his sword. He is not a cunning politician who outwits his corrupt fellows to help further yet another social program. No Conan, no Odysseus.  Instead, he is a man of humility, yet a man of strength. (I should say that whatever I say of heroes is true of heroines as well).Â
As difficult as it is to find such heroes in fiction, it ’s even more difficult to find them in history, especially during the tumultuous time when Prince Dmitry was murdered. But it seems that the best heroes are made in the crucible of dark times. Interestingly enough, one such hero, a true hero for any time, was also a Prince Dmitry. But his last name was Pozharky.
A MILITARY FAMILY
The Pozharsky family was descended from Riurik, the half-legendary first ruler of the Rus. In the 16th century, the family fell into decline and lost its ancestral holdings. In those days, there were several ways for a noble family to gain status:
• Appointment to a military command
• Assignment as a city governor
• Presence at court
• Ideally, a seat in the Boyar Duma, the circle of advisors to the Tsar.
To get into the Duma, however, you had to receive a special rank from the Grand Prince of Moscow himself.
In the 16th century, scores of aristocratic families campaigned to achieve “Duma” status. Hundreds more vied for military commander postings. The Pozharsky family showed no such ambitions, content to merely be useful. They received low-level assignments in the army.
Many of them lost their lives in various battles. They never achieved Boyar or Duma status, despite their noble birth. And when one of them rose to a slightly higher social position, that Pozharsky was always happy to serve, even if that service took him somewhere to the remotest outskirts of the country.
It’s interesting to me that a man who would become the savior of Russia came from relatively humble, if hardworking, stock.
INTO THE FIRE OF THE TIMES OF TROUBLE
Prince Dmitry entered the so-called Time of Troubles (1598-1613) as a middle-rank officer, something between colonel and major general in our terms. This was considered a decent career for those times, better than most of Dmitry’s ancestors. Still, it was nothing spectacular. In spite of this, he became one of the most remarkable figures of the short, but bloody, Time of Troubles.
During the reign of Tsar Vasily Shuisky (1606 – 1610), Pozharsky finally became a first-rank military commander (voyevoda). He was an effective commander, defending the capital from Polish-Lithuanian gangs and Russian rioters alike. Shuisky, one of the least popular Tsars in Russian history, failed to control a rising tide of ill feeling against him. It didn’t help that a man pretending to be a murdered heir of the Riurikid line, the first so-called False Dmitry, was gaining support among all levels of society as he marched on Moscow with a Polish army.
In 1610, Pozharsky was serving as voyevoda of Zaraisk, a town near Moscow. It was besieged by an army of Russians who believed in the right of False Dimitri to the throne of Moscow. In this frightening atmosphere of treachery, when one couldn’t tell friend from foe, Pozharsky managed to keep his own army loyal to the Tsar, remaining steadfast inside the kremlin of Zaraisk. Eventually, though he was besieged, he managed to put the rebellion down.
However, in that same year, the Russian aristocracy, having decided that it preferred to rule the country on their own, betrayed Tsar Vasily Shuisky. Lulled into false security by spurious promises of the Polish government, they invited an army of Polish invaders into Moscow. They believed they could take control of the political turmoil and get rid of autocracy in favor of an oligarchy. Instead, they betrayed their country and made it a vassal state of Poland. It was a moment of terrible, unbearable humiliation for Russia.
Despite False Dmitry’s temporary success in taking Moscow, he still needed to secure his military position. He invited Ukrainian Cossacks to Moscow to support his own Polish troops. Before they could reach Moscow, Pozharsky’s army and a guerilla force led by Prokopii Liapunov managed to clear them out of the areas near Ryazan. Then, both of the victorious Russian armies moved toward Moscow. Pozharsky got there first.
If you'd like to read the rest of this story, as well as many others like it, buy Heroes for All Time today.
And thank you, as always, for joining me on my writerly adventures!
~Nicky
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