Ivan Susanin (; died 1613) was a Russian national hero and martyr of the early-17th-century Time of Troubles. According to the popular legend, Polish troops seeking to kill Tsar Mikhail hired Susanin as a guide. Susanin persuaded them to take a secret path through the Russian forests, and neither they nor Susanin were ever heard from again. Evidence In 1619, Bogdan Sobinin from the village of Domnino, near Kostroma, received from Tsar Mikhail half of the village of Derevischi (Lith. Derevičiai). According to the extant royal charter, the lands were granted him to reward his father-in-law, Ivan Susanin, who refused to reveal to the Poles the location of the Tsar's family according to the newly created legend to boost the hatred of peasants toward Lithuania whose lands Tsar had annexed. Subsequent charters (from 1641, 1691 and 1837) diligently repeated the 1619 charter's phrases about Ivan Susanin being "investigated by Polish and Lithuanian people and subjected to incredible and great tortures in order to learn the great tsar's whereabouts but, though aware about that and suffering incredible pains, saying nothing and in revenge for this being tortured by Polish and Lithuanian people to death". The legend of Susanin's life and death evolved over time. In the early-19th century, the charters attracted the attention of nascent Russian historiography, and Susanin was proclaimed a Russian national hero and a symbol of the Russian peasants' devotion to the tsar. Susanin was officially promoted as a national hero and commemorated in poems and operas, such as Mikhail Glinka's 1836 opera A Life for the Tsar. Legend The village of Domnino was owned by Xenia Shestova, the wife of Fyodor Romanov and the mother of Mikhail Romanov. Upon Mikhail's election to the Russian throne in 1613, the Zemsky Sobor sent Prince Vorotynsky and several other boyars to inform Mikhail, who lived in Domnino, about his election. Many Polish detachments still roamed Russia, however. They supported Sigismund III Vasa, who refused to accept his defeat and still claimed the Russian throne. One of them discovered the news and sent troops to Kostroma to find and to kill the young tsar. It is said that they were unsure of the road to Domnino and so they started to ask locals for directions. In woods near the village, they met a logger, Ivan Susanin, who promised to take them via a "shortcut" through a forest directly to the Hypatian