The Soviet historian Vladimir Plugin had a theory that the icon had nothing to do with Nikon of Radonezh, but was brought to the Trinity Lavra by Ivan the Terrible. He theorized that all previous scholars after the famous historian Alexander Gorsky made the wrong assumption that Ivan the Terrible only "covered with gold" the icon that had already been kept at the Trinity Lavra. Plugin said that the icon was brought to the Lavra by Ivan himself, and that "The Trinity" had been created much earlier, probably 150 years prior to that date. However, in 1998 Boris Kloss pointed out that the so-called "Troitsk Story of the Siege of Kazan", written before June 1553, contains a clear reference to the fact that Ivan the Terrible only "decorated" the existing icon for the Lavra.