Mikhail Ivanovich Worotynski

Prince Vorotynsky

Prince Michail Ivanovich Vorotynski ( Russian Михаил Иванович Воротынский , scientific transliteration Michail Ivanovič Vorotynskij; * between 1516 and 1519; † 1573 ) was a Russian general and boyar during the reign of the Ivan the Terrible . He was ruler of the Vorotynsk principality , one of the last Russian feudal principalities that did not yet fully belong to the unified tsarist Russia . Nevertheless, he did military service for the Russian tsar.

As a young man, he made a name for himself by taking Kazan in 1552 . He then served on the southern Russian steppe border, which was regularly exposed to attacks by the Crimean Tatars . As a member of the Rurikid high nobility, Worotynsky rose quickly in the military hierarchy and soon became commander in chief on the southern border and the organizer of the guard and defense service (see also Russian Verhaulinie ). The first Russian border service statute belongs to his pen.

Vorotynsky was the main commanding officer in the Battle of Molodi in 1572, in which a large Crimean Tatar-Ottoman army was routed near Moscow . This victory brought Vorotynsky enormous fame across the country, but he died eight months later. Ivan IV's adversary, Prince Andrei Kurbsky , who had fled to Lithuania , wrote in his book that the tsar became jealous of Vorotynski's fame and had him tortured after denouncing him, whereupon he died. There is no neutral source on Worotynsky's cause of death.

Vorotynsky was immortalized in 1861 as one of the 109 figures in the Monument to Thousand Years of Russia in Novgorod .

literature

• Володихин Д. М. Специалист по южному направлению. Князь Михаил Иванович Воротынский // Воеводы Ивана Грозного. - М .: изд-во «Вече», 2009.
• Ульянов В. П. Князь М. И. Воротынский - военный деятель России XVI в. Автореферат диссертации на соискание ученой степени кандидата исторических наук. Тюмень, 2006