page_title: Kostroma
section_title: Under the Rurikids
hierarchical_section_title: Kostroma / History / Under the Rurikids
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Кострома
context_page_description: Kostroma is a historic city and the administrative center of Kostroma Oblast, Russia. A part of the Golden Ring of Russian towns, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Volga and Kostroma. Population: 268,742; 278,750; 278,414.
context_section_description: The city was first recorded in the chronicles for the year 1213, but historians believe it could have been founded by Yury Dolgoruky more than half a century earlier, in 1152. Since many scholars believe that early Eastern Slavs tribes arrived in modern-day  Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia 400 to 600 AD, Kostroma could be much older than previously thought.
  The city shares the same name as the East Slavic goddess Kostroma.
  Like other towns of the Eastern Rus, Kostroma was sacked by the Mongols in 1238. It then constituted a small principality, under leadership of Prince Vasily the Drunkard, a younger brother of the famous Alexander Nevsky. Upon inheriting the grand ducal title in 1271, Vasily didn't leave the town for Vladimir, and his descendants ruled Kostroma for another half a century, until the town was bought by Ivan I of Moscow.
  As one of the northernmost towns of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Kostroma served for grand dukes as a place of retreat when enemies besieged Moscow in 1382, 1408, and 1433. In 1375, the town was looted by Novgorod pirates (ushkuiniks). The spectacular growth of the city in the 16th century may be attributed to the establishment of trade connections with English and Dutch merchants (Muscovy Company) through the northern port of Archangel. Boris Godunov had the Ipatiev and Epiphany monasteries rebuilt in stone. The construction works were finished just in time for the city to witness some of the most dramatic events of the Time of Troubles.
  Kostroma was twice ravaged by the Poles; it took a six-month siege to expel them from the Ipatiev monastery. The heroic peasant Ivan Susanin became a symbol of the city's resistance to foreign invaders; several monuments to him may be seen in Kostroma. The future Tsar, Mikhail Romanov, also lived at the monastery. It was here that an embassy from Moscow offered him the Russian crown in 1612.
caption: Ipatievsky Monastery, 2009
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