A Life for the Tsar
In the early-19th century the charters attracted the attention of nascent Russian historiography, and Ivan 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". Gradually evolved a legend on Ivan's life and death.