The Streltsy

13 hrs. 23 min.

Language Russian

Author Konstantin Masalsky

Narrator Yury Zaborovsky

Description

Konstantin Petrovich Masalsky is a popular Russian writer of the mid-19th century. In 1821 he graduated from the noble boarding school at St. Petersburg University; he served in the ministries of the interior and foreign affairs. He published many novels, short stories, and plays in journals, chiefly historical ones.

He also wrote several historical works and for the first time translated Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” from the original. Masalsky did not have a major literary gift, but the liveliness and external entertainment of his works—often featuring something close to a detective intrigue—brought him success in the 1830s–1840s.

The novel “The Archers” recreates the events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the time of the Khovanshchina and the archers’ rebellions—when Russia had to choose between patriarchal old ways and the sharp rise of Peter’s reforms.