By Sergei NIKITIN, criminologist, Moscow Office of Forensic Medicine; and Tatyana PANOVA, Cand. Sc. (History), head of the Archeology Department, Moscow Kremlin Museum The Moscow Kremlin museums are in custody of a unique gallery of sculptural portraits of Russian czars and grand princesses of the sixteenth century. This portraiture was reproduced in our time and age, in the 1960s and 1990s. Our readers have already met Sophia Palaeologus (Palaeo-logos(*)), the second wife of Grand Prince Ivan III and the grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, the first Russian czar. Our readers have also learned something about the fate of Yelena (Helen) Glinskaya(**), the mother of Ivan the Terrible: that young woman, embroiled in Kremlin infighting, was poisoned. Although it makes no sense to go over that story again, it would be worthwhile nonetheless to supply more lowdown... So: Grand Princess Yelena Glinskaya, the widow of Grand Prince Vassily III, expired in the small hours of Wednesday, April 3, 1538, leaving two little orphans, the sons Ivan and Yuri. And who knows, the Russian history of the latter half of the sixteenth century might not have been as tragic and gory as it actually was had Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV) been in for a more fortunate destiny in his childhood. Yet ill stars looked down on him. As was the custom of the day, the Muscovites learned about Yelena Glinskaya's demise from the tolling of the bells. The news of the sudden death of the thirty-year-old woman spread apace and overwhelmed everybody. There was quite a bit of rumor and hearsay. And yet the rumours that the regent princess had been poisoned proved to be true in the end. More than that, investigations carried out late in the 20th century confirmed the worst. It was not by chance that Yelena figured in the NOTES penned by one of her contemporaries, the Austrian diplomat Sigismund Herberstein. Accusing the grand princess of the death of her uncle, Mikhail Lvovich, in gaol, Herr Herberstein observed ... Читать далее