Nizhny Novgorod Militia, Second People's (Nizhny Novgorod) Militia, Second Zemstvo Militia — a militia that arose in September 1611 in Nizhny Novgorod to fight against the Polish interventionists who had seized Moscow.
The Nature of the Phenomenon
It is generally accepted that the initiative to organize the Second People's Militia came from the artisan and merchant community of Nizhny Novgorod, an important economic and administrative center on the Middle Volga. In the early seventeenth century, Nizhny Novgorod ranked sixth among Russian cities in economic significance: whereas Moscow yielded the royal treasury some 12,000 rubles in customs duties at the end of the sixteenth century, Nizhny Novgorod yielded 7,000 rubles; the city was connected to the entire Volga river system and formed part of the ancient Volga trade route.[1] The Nizhny Novgorod Uyezd had at that time approximately 150,000 male inhabitants, with up to 30,000 households in 600 settlements. Nizhny Novgorod itself had around 3,500 male residents, of whom approximately 2,000–2,500 were posad people (townspeople). The garrison of Nizhny Novgorod in the early seventeenth century consisted of roughly 750 men: streltsy, paid foreign mercenaries, and fortress servicemen — gunners, gatekeepers, zatinshchiki (fortress-gun crews), and state blacksmiths.[1]
The surge of the national liberation movement in 1611 gave rise to the First People's Militia, its campaigns, and the March uprising of Muscovites led by the Zarайsk military governor Prince Dmitry Mikhaylovich Pozharsky. The failure of the First Militia did not dampen this surge but, on the contrary, intensified it. Many of the first militiamen already had experience fighting the invaders, as did the inhabitants of towns, uyezds, and volosts that had refused to submit to the pretenders and the intervening forces.
Victory
On 22 October 1612, Kitay-gorod was stormed and taken by Russian forces, but the Poles who had entrenched themselves in the Kremlin remained. Famine there had grown so severe that the boyar families and all civilian inhabitants were being expelled from the Kremlin, and the Poles themselves had been driven to the point of cannibalism.
The historian Kazimierz Waliszewski wrote of the Poles and Lithuanians besieged by Pozharsky's forces:
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They used Greek manuscripts for fuel to prepare their food, having found a large and priceless collection of them in the Kremlin archives. By boiling the parchment, they extracted from it a vegetable glue that deceived their agonizing hunger.
When these sources were exhausted, they dug up corpses; then they began killing their prisoners, and as feverish delirium intensified they descended to devouring one another — this is a fact beyond the slightest doubt: the eyewitness Budzilo records horrifying details of the final days of the siege that he could not have invented… Budzilo names individuals and notes dates: a lieutenant and a haiduk each ate two of their own sons; another officer ate his own mother! The stronger preyed upon the weaker, the healthy upon the sick. They quarreled over the dead, and amid the discord bred by cruel madness there arose the most remarkable notions of justice. One soldier complained that men from another company had eaten his kinsman, whereas by rights he and his comrades should have had that privilege. The accused invoked the regiment's claim to the corpse of a fellow soldier, and the colonel did not dare settle the dispute, fearing that the losing party might, in revenge for the verdict, eat the judge. |
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Pozharsky offered the besieged free passage out with their banners and weapons, but without the plundered treasures. They preferred to feed on prisoners and one another rather than part with their money. Pozharsky stationed his regiment at the Stone Bridge by the Trinity Gates of the Kremlin to receive the boyar families and protect them from the Cossacks. On 26 October the Poles surrendered and left the Kremlin. Budilo and his regiment entered Pozharsky's camp, and all survived. They were later sent to Nizhny Novgorod. Stroos and his regiment fell to Trubetskoy, and the Cossacks slaughtered all those Poles. On 27 October a solemn entry into the Kremlin was appointed for the forces of Princes Pozharsky and Trubetskoy. When the troops had assembled at the Lobnoe Mesto, the archimandrite of the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, Dionysius, conducted a solemn service of thanksgiving for the militia's victory. Afterward, to the ringing of bells, the victors entered the Kremlin accompanied by the people, with banners and church standards.
Thus was completed the cleansing of Moscow and the Muscovite state from foreign invaders.
Daily life and pay of the militia
"Russia was saved from the Time of Troubles by faith, wisdom, and courage."
An interview with the writer Valeriy Shamshurin.
Nizhny Novgorod writer Valeriy Shamshurin devoted several decades to studying the history of the Time of Troubles. In the early 1990s he published his trilogy about the saving of the Fatherland by the people's militia of Minin and Pozharsky: "Stone Salt," "Alarm Bell over the Volga," and "Altar of the Fatherland." We met with him in Nizhny Novgorod on the eve of the annual event "Altar of the Fatherland," organized by Valeriy Anatolevich himself: for several years now, enthusiasts — residents of the towns through which the people's militia passed four centuries ago — have been retracing the path of their great forebears.
— Valeriy Anatolevich, we know from history that in the final period of the Troubles the country found itself on the brink of destruction: Moscow was occupied by the Poles, Russia was gripped by famine and devastation. And at that moment, when it seemed nothing could save the country, Patriarch Hermogenes sent from his prison in the Chudov Monastery a proclamation calling on the people to defend the faith. And the response to that call came from Nizhny Novgorod. Why here, of all places, do you think?
— Well, I think, first of all, that everything comes to pass by God's will, and nothing happens without it. And secondly, it would seem that conditions had developed such that the Troubles had not touched Nizhny. I mean the betrayals, the quarrels, the pillaging that had spread across almost the entire western part of Russia and further north. Just imagine: from the north came the Swedes, who were essentially laying claim to full power in Russia; the English were already contemplating their own intervention — their king James was giving it thought. From the west came the Lyakhi, as the Poles were called at the time, and the Lithuanians. To the south was the Crimea — the Crimean Tatars — and they too were trying to push closer to Moscow, to the capital.
As you can see, everywhere — all the regions — were engulfed in this turmoil. The only territory that remained relatively stable — relatively, of course, because when one part of the state is shaken, it inevitably affects another — was the lands connected with the Volga Region. And Nizhny Novgorod found itself at the center of this comparatively calm place.
Secondly — not everywhere did you have a Minin and a Pozharsky! Not everywhere were there such heroes! Both were devout men, free of greed; they were committed non-acquisitors, both inspired by the ideas of Nil Sorsky. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that the merchant and cattle-dealer Kuzma Minin donated all his property to the militia. That was entirely in keeping with his character and his habits.
And then, it was God's work, which he felt it necessary to carry out. We know that the Venerable Sergius of Radonezh appeared to him several times. And in the last of those dreams, he spoke to him sternly, telling Minin to take up the task of organizing resistance to the enemy that had come to Rus. And Kuzma Minin — a devout man whom everyone in the city respected, a zemsky starosta (elected community elder), which was a position of great standing; for the posad people he was the foremost man — he decided to issue a call to action. He was friends with Savva Yefimyev, the protopope of the Spaso-Preobrazhenskiy Cathedral, and had spoken with him more than once about the need to rouse the people, that it was no longer possible to endure — the state was in mortal danger: Moscow had been seized! Foreigners had entered the Kremlin! That was the holy of holies!
And Protopope Savva warmly supported Minin. According to accounts, first came a sermon by Protopope Savva in the Spaso-Preobrazhenskiy Cathedral. The people had gathered at the sound of the bell, which he struck in the middle of a working day. And then Minin stepped forward.
Everyone supported them: the posad people, the local Nizhny Novgorod authorities, and of course the Church. It was clear that if they did not rise up, no one would. And so the militia began to be assembled in Nizhny Novgorod.
And from Nizhny, messages flew to other cities as well — to Vologda, further into the lands beyond Moscow, to the south and the north, and even beyond the Urals — and they found a response. It was a great undertaking.
And there was one more great thing: Pozharsky, who had been wounded in Moscow during the fighting and was staying in his village of Ugreyevo, a few dozen versts from Nizhny Novgorod, did not respond immediately, but he did answer the call of the Nizhny Novgorod residents. Prince Pozharsky was at the time of the Nizhny Novgorod delegation's appeal recovering from a wound received during the Moscow uprising of March 1611, at the village of Mugreyevo in Suzdal Uyezd; at his first meeting with the Nizhny Novgorod envoys he gave no definite answer, and only a direct meeting with Minin convinced him to take command of the army.[2] He agreed to lead the militia, to lead the host. The Nizhny Novgorod residents placed no hope in other voivodes, knowing that even if they agreed, they might betray them. Whereas in Pozharsky they had complete trust.
And Minin knew that Pozharsky was a non-acquisitor.
This is something researchers overlook when they wonder why Minin and Pozharsky suddenly came together. They were of the same spirit, they were men of the same inclination, they loved their land deeply, they knew their people because they had lived among them. Pozharsky had grown up in his estate as a child, side by side with the peasants. He knew all the hardships of the common people — both the taxpaying peasants and the black-plowing freeholders. And he proved this in the final years of his life, when he took to building churches. That is what a true man looks like — he gave all his money to the construction of churches! And large estates had been granted to him for his victories, and he certainly had money.
As for Minin, he was a man of stern fiber, of strict character, and he knew how to count every kopek, as any merchant does. And he borrowed. When he borrowed a very large sum from Yaroslavl merchants — there was not enough money for weapons for the militia — he faced the threat of a debtor's pit for the rest of his life. And he borrowed that money and said: when victory comes, we will settle with you. He was already certain of victory then!
And so, one man at a time, one drop at a time, drawn essentially from the last remaining people in the state, the militia was assembled. The collection of funds for the militia was not limited to voluntary donations: a "fifth penny" was levied — 20% of all income from the trading and artisan population.[2] And it took very great courage and boldness, resolve and deep faith to assemble a militia. So none of this was accidental.
This was no free-roaming band, like that of Stenka Razin. It was a regular army that was assembled in Yaroslavl, where it remained for three months in order to properly prepare the warriors for battle. For the Poles of that time, when they were led by Hetman Khodkevich, fielded the finest army in Europe. And the Polish cavalry was considered unbeatable in those days.
— Even in the time of the First False Dmitry it had already shown what it was capable of...
— Yes, and in the struggle against the Crimean Tatars, and in battles against our own forces led by Vasily Shuisky. They were very formidable troops.
— And our Second Militia — the one raised at Minin's call, which was fairly well supplied with provisions and equipment — how did it come together in Nizhny? It couldn't have happened in a single day, with Minin's call going out and everyone immediately stepping forward...
— No, of course not. Well, Minin's call was above all a call to collect money for the army. And then, once Pozharsky had agreed to become the military voivode and had arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, things began to move: the military prikaz started sending out these appeals in all directions. Not at once, of course; cautiously, with counsel from trusted people — there were many messengers dispatched from Nizhny Novgorod in every direction... Minin was well known throughout Rus. There had been a First Militia too, as we know — Lyapunov's — and it had failed; people who had joined that militia had already been burned, had made their mistakes.
So here one needed great authority. Kuzma Minin was already well known even before he began assembling the militia — first and foremost among the trading people, among the merchant community. And then he was known more broadly throughout the Volga region, the Urals, and Moscow. For his integrity, his honesty, his sharp and capable business sense. That is why the response was so wide. And besides, he had good helpers.
— Who were these people who made up the fifteen hundred warriors who gathered in Novgorod? Were there really that many?
— Yes, that was approximately the number. They were mainly serving noblemen, boyars' sons — that is, fighting men — Cossacks, and later volunteers who came from the posad (merchant and artisan) classes. The first to arrive in Nizhny Novgorod were the Smolensk men, who had been left homeless when Smolensk was taken by the Polish king Sigismund. They had settled in Arzamas, not far from Nizhny, and when they heard Minin's call, they responded immediately. First their envoys came, then everyone followed — about a thousand men of the finest soldiery. These Smolensk men formed the core of the militia and bore the full weight of military discipline, military custom, and order. The atmosphere of a fighting camp was established at once — a fighting unit that could be held together, kept mobile, and thrown into battle without delay.
— We can barely imagine today what those fifteen rubles — plus another five or ten — meant to the militiamen of the time. What could one buy with that money, and what was it spent on?
— A horse cost about one and a half rubles then. Fifteen rubles was, in effect, the full kit: a coat of mail, a helmet, weapons, fodder for the horse. It was an enormous sum of money. With it you could build not just one house — but several. Such wages were not paid even under the tsar; it was above the tsar's rate of pay. Minin borrowed from the Stroganov merchants, from the salt traders. And Kuzma went into debt deliberately, so that the army would want for nothing. He understood that if a fighting man was clothed and shod, had a spare horse — "odvukon'," that is, two horses, one of them a remount — and had everything he needed for life and for war, then that man could be relied upon. Minin was a shrewd man, a true practical administrator; he understood that the army had to be equipped to the very highest standard, properly and fully.
— It seems to me that many people today perceive the figures of Minin and Pozharsky — the saviors of the Fatherland, as in Martos's sculpture — as heroic and... faceless. Yet if you think about it: one of them was barely past thirty! The other was over fifty. They were utterly different men, from different estates. What united them?
— Well, in 1612 Pozharsky was 33 years old. And Minin was around 50, or just past 50. And I think these men certainly did not look so monumental. They were ordinary people. But appearances are not the point. These were deeply devout men, and faith helped them make their decisions. They never undertook any task without prayer. So: faith, wisdom, and the experience of life and of war — all that they possessed, and all that shaped their characters.
Personally, I think they were very wise men, both of them; they understood their people, and understood that without faith and without a tsar, the country would simply perish in those times. And their conviction and faith, I believe, passed to many others.
They were constantly among the militia; they did not set themselves apart as commanders. Yes, there was the voivode's tent, but during the Yaroslavl standstill one traitor wounded Pozharsky with a knife — the prince had simply stepped out to inspect the artillery train, without any guard, which is why the treacherous Cossack was able to attack him.
And Minin even more so was always among the people. That is to say, they were close to them; they did not separate themselves from the army. They ate the same food, they went to the same churches, they were not above picking up an axe if something needed to be built.
Remember how Dmitry Donskoy went onto the field of Kulikovo as an ordinary fighting man? That image was very close to their hearts. As were the holy figures of Metropolitan Aleksiy, who was constantly at Dmitry Donskoy's side, and the Venerable Sergius of Radonezh — these were the people who inspired Minin and Pozharsky.
Records survive at the Trinity–St. Sergius Lavra: the learned archimandrite Dionisy spent a very long time in conversation with Minin. And he marveled at how experienced and seasoned Kuzma was — how well he knew his business and the goal he was pursuing. And Dionisy was one of the most enlightened men of his age.
— Were there other people worthy of mention in the Nizhny Novgorod militia?
— I can recall the abbot of our Pechersky Monastery, Archimandrite Feodosiy, who led the Nizhny Novgorod delegation to Pozharsky. There was also a man close to Minin who succeeded him as zemsky starosta — Markov. And there were others... The merchants and agents of the Stroganovs, the Yaroslavl merchants, Voivode Alyabiev: by the time the militia had already set out he had died, but in the early days he helped Minin enormously. And other voivodes helped a great deal as well.
Nikolay Mikhaylovich Karamzin, in his sketches "On the Way to the Trinity," noted that a particular harmony had taken hold within the militia — where it was not simply a fighting force but a fellowship. Where each man knew that without the others all would be lost. That if one fell, the next must fight for two. This unity of mind and spirit was created by the example of those men who brought together the common, simple folk with the influential — the princes, the boyars, the noblemen — and fused them all into one. This is that very "national unity" of which we all speak today. For the salvation of Russia, for her benefit, so that Russia would not only be saved but would afterward flourish. This is what we lack in our own time. Unity. Dostoyevsky spoke of it well: and in this lies the mission of our Russian people — to unite people. And it was present in the militia.
And this, I believe, is the most important lesson we must take from what we know about the militia, from what we think about it.
— Tell me, why did the militiamen not march straight to Moscow but went by a roundabout route? After all, cities that had betrayed lay ahead — Kostroma, Yaroslavl itself. To my modern eye, the difference seems small. They could have waited in Nizhny itself for the reinforcing detachments and then marched on Moscow. Yet they went around.
— This is connected with purely military reasons. The fact is that when the militia was assembling in Nizhny Novgorod, the enemy assumed they would certainly take the usual route: through Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod. Outposts were already in place along that road; Zarutsky, who by that time had married Marina Mniszech, blocked the way with his Cossacks. He wanted to place Ivanka — the son of the second False Dmitry and Marina Mniszech — on the throne.
Secondly, the Poles also expected an attack from that direction, because it was the shorter, easier road — a well-worn, well-traveled route. Moreover, the militia was not yet fully assembled. Many forces still had to arrive from the North and the Urals. The march to Yaroslavl was far more practicable. Yaroslavl was seized by advance detachments under the command of Pozharsky's kinsman and comrade-in-arms, Dmitry Petrovich Pozharsky-Lopata, while in Kostroma the voivode Ivan Sheremetev, who backed the Seven Boyars, attempted to organize a defense, but the townspeople rose up and arrested him.[2] And once they had firmly established themselves in Yaroslavl, a great many troops arrived over three months. In early April 1612, Pozharsky's regiments entered Yaroslavl, where a new Council of All the Land was formed from representatives of the clergy, the Boyar Duma, elected noblemen, and posad men; by summer 1612 the Yaroslavl army numbered more than ten thousand men, and alongside Russian detachments it included Belarusians, Tatars, Mordva, Chuvash, and Bashkirs.[2] Training and equipping of the army proceeded there as well.
It was a more advantageous position. And from Yaroslavl the road to Moscow was direct — through Rostov Veliky, familiar territory. There they naturally stopped at the monastery of the Venerable Iriarkh. And the Trinity Lavra lay ahead, with Dionisy — he accompanied them and gave his blessing on the final stretch of the march. And do you remember the account of how the wind blew constantly in their faces as the militia set out on its last march to Moscow? Dionisy was greatly troubled — it was an ill omen when the wind hindered the militia. And then suddenly the wind shifted and blew at their backs, and the militia advanced on Moscow. And it won the battle against Khodkevich, and in the end liberated the Kremlin and achieved victory.
Interview conducted by Sergey Kanev.
The Soviet historiographical interpretation
The early Soviet interpretation of those events (1934) makes for interesting reading:
"As the democratic revolution grew, the upper ranks of the Cossack forces began to feel <…> uncomfortable. The Nizhny Novgorod merchant Minin began assembling a militia 'for the liberation of Moscow from the Poles and the infidels,' and — herein lay his stroke of genius — he promised those who joined the militia wages such as even the tsar's guard had never received in former times. <…>
Small wonder that such a measure led, as contemporaries report, to complete agreement between the landowners and merchants on one side, and the lesser service people and the better-off Cossacks on the other. The latter saw that serving the propertied classes was far more profitable than consorting with the popular masses and aiding the democratic revolution, which clearly benefited the poor and held out no prospect of wealth to anyone. <…> Little by little the entire staff of the Tushino camp passed over to the side of Minin and the commander-in-chief appointed by the merchantry to lead the assembled force — Pozharsky.
The insurgent masses, left without leaders, could offer no resistance. <…> The merchants' and landowners' militia now faced only one organized opponent — the Polish army in the Kremlin — but dealing with it, with the help of the Cossacks who had gone over to the propertied classes, was not difficult. <…> Thus the Romanov dynasty came to power in Russia. The fruit of the upper ranks of the revolutionary armies betraying those below them».
The English as the chief beneficiaries of the victory over the Time of Troubles
The revolution of Minin and Pozharsky was carried out with English money. The English were the chief beneficiaries of the victory over the Time of Troubles.
The sequence of events, according to this paradigm, runs as follows.
Between 1605 and 1620, a desperate struggle for power and property rights was taking place on the territory of Muscovy between the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish factions — the former represented by the False Dmitrys, the latter by Vasily Shuisky and the Novgorod nobility.
In 1611, a third force appeared on the scene — the English.
One of the main English footholds was Nizhny Novgorod itself, 15 km from which they owned salt deposits. The book "On the Origin of Wars and Troubles in Muscovy" (1997) states plainly: of all parties, only Stroganov and the English King James I Stuart gave money to the Minin and Pozharsky militia — 20,000 pounds. The rest of what would today be called the Russian "elite," including the Orthodox Church, were channeling funds either to the Polish-Lithuanian or the Swedish faction, or simply burying their money in the ground. It is worth noting that the authors cited above refer to the book "The Sovereigns of the House of Romanov," p. 56 (1913), which states that Pozharsky initially negotiated financial assistance with the Austrian Emperor Matthias Habsburg — but nothing came of it.
Furthermore: having first assembled a small militia (500 Russian streltsy and 200 foreigners — mainly representatives of Baltic towns and countries, as well as Englishmen), Pozharsky did not march on Moscow, as one might have expected, but on Kazan. There, the militia's first act was to kill the voivode Belsky, a former member of the council under Fyodor Ioanovich, and then it moved up the Volga to Yaroslavl. It is supposed that at Kazan the militia seized the treasury and also recruited around 1,000 Tatars. In the spring of 1612, the English set up their headquarters in Yaroslavl, where some 200 more Englishmen arrived. This party — most importantly! — brought not only money but also cannon. The authors cited above say that these cannon are still kept in a museum in Pereslavl-Zalessky. Subsequently, part of the Don Cossacks joined the militia for pay (while the Zaporozhians remained loyal to the Pole Żółkiewski to the last).
"In the liberation army outside Moscow, formed from two regiments, pan-zemstvo and effectively pan-state organs of power were reconstituted — central administrative departments. A coalition government was formed with the participation of the 'commanders' and chancellery officials of both camps. The First Militia was represented in it by: Prince D. T. Trubetskoy, councillor secretary S. Z. Sydavny-Vasilyev, and secretaries I. Tretyakov, N. Novokshenov, and M. Pozdeyev. Entering the Zemstvo government from the Nizhny Novgorod Militia were: Prince D. M. Pozharsky, 'elected man' K. Minin, Prince D. M. Cherkassky, V. I. Buturlin, I. I. Sheremetev, and I. V. Izmaylov.
In foreign policy, the new provisional Zemstvo government continued to orient itself toward Sweden, linking the resolution of the dynastic question to the candidacy of the Swedish prince. The militia's leaders considered his speedy arrival in Novgorod and election as sovereign by the Zemsky Sobor to be indispensable conditions for the final acceptance of Karl Filip in Moscow. "And when the royal prince Karl Filip Karlovich comes to Veliky Novgorod, we shall then, having taken counsel with all the realms of the Russian tsardom, send envoys to the royal prince Karl Filip Karlusovich, with a full agreement (!) on matters of state and of the land."
What did the English receive in return for financing the Minin and Pozharsky operation? As N. I. Ulyanov writes (The Historical Experience of Russia. An essay from the collection "Scripts," Ann Arbor, 1981), the Royal Council in London resolved that the lands along the Northern Dvina and the lower Volga, together with the cities of Arkhangelsk, Kholmogory, Ustyug, Totma, Vologda, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Astrakhan, were to come under the protectorate of King James I.
As a result of the Romanovs' final victory in the Time of Troubles in 1619, the English obtained everything they wanted: their monopoly on Muscovy's foreign trade remained unshakeable right up to Cromwell's English Revolution of 1648, when they, in the words of Alexei Mikhailovich, "put their lawful king Karlus to death."
The Song "Nizhny Novgorod Militia. 2012"
Nizhny Novgorod Militia. 2012
I live on the Volga and the Oka,
And since childhood I have dreamed of a great war.
Over the years I've saved up a tidy sum of cash,
And acquired a full arsenal "through the right channels."
Chorus:
Cruisers, destroyers and gunboats
We torpedo from the Strelka, to hell and back!
Planes and rockets strike like a bird in flight
Thirty-three anti-aircraft guns and a machine gun.
Over the radio I spoke — a call to the nation
I proclaimed mobilization to the people
Nizhny fell into line as if on parade
On Lenin, on Gorky and where the military enlistment office stands
Chorus
Volunteers came marching in from Kirov,
From Kazan, Ufa and Vladimir
The Capital surrenders to us without friction
For we are no barbarians — we are the Militia!
Chorus
Our goal — to save civilization
To blow up all their globalization
Rise up, Mother Russia, against them all
For Minin, Pozharsky, and for the marines!
Chorus
User Ovechkin (Andrey Konchalin), NN.RU
See also
Links
Sources
- topwar.ru — How Minin and Pozharsky created the Second People's Militia (archive)
- gubernia.media — The Time of Troubles and Fate — Fundraising for the militia was not limited to voluntary donations: a "fifth penny" was levied — 20% of all income from the trading and artisan population. (archive)
Sources
- opentextnn.ru — Otkryty Tekst — P. V. Chechenkov. The Time of Troubles and the Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
- nkj.ru — Nauka i Zhizn — T. Doroshenko. Overcoming the "Great Ruin" of the Russian State: the Militias of 1611 and 1612 (no. 1, 2006) (archive)
- rosguard.gov.ru — Rosgvardiya — National Unity Day
- Vremya N — Four Centuries of the Feat of Minin and Pozharsky. National Unity Day (archive)