uproarious Zaporozhians penning their reply." According to Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Pylypenko (2019), the letter is 'perhaps the most famous forgery in Ukrainian history, a fake with a long and vibrant history (...). The text has undergone numerous translations and rewritings.' A French and a German translation became the best-known versions, as these made the text accessible to a large European readership. Pylypenko pointed out that the letter bears many stylistic similarities to other fake documents and forgeries that appeared in the 17th century, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy), which purported to be genuine correspondence between various Eastern European Christian monarchs and the Ottoman sultan, but were in fact works of political-religious propaganda. Repin's interpretation Nikolai Gogol's 1842 romantic-historical novella Taras Bulba describes the incident in passing. Repin associated with Savva Mamontov and his artistic circle and probably heard the story there; at any rate, Repin made his first sketches for the painting in Mamontov's home. While working on the original version, Repin in 1889 began work on a second version. This work remained unfinished. The artist tried to make the second version of The Cossacks more "historically authentic". In 1932 it was transferred by the Tretyakov Gallery to the M. F. Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum. In 1935, it was moved to the , where it is now stored. This canvas is slightly smaller than the original version. The historian Dmytro Yavornytsky assisted Repin in portraying the scene authentically. During the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in March 2022, when the Kharkiv region came under heavy artillery and air fire, the museum staff rushed to remove their artworks from the museum to a safer place. The second version of The Cossacks was amongst the artworks relocated for safety. Models The "Cossacks” who posed for the painting were friends of Repin and academics from Saint Petersburg University, and included men of Ukrainian, Russian, Cossack, Jewish and Polish ancestry. Depictions The image has become a well-known reference in Russian culture, parodied or emulated by other work such as political cartoons, including Members of Duma drafting a reply to Stolypin and Soviet leaders write the letter of defiance to George Curzon, seen below. It is also referenced in other works, such as both the 2009 Russian film Taras Bulba, which depicts the scene itself, and the American film of the same name (which includes the painting in its opening