/For 360th anniversary of Dmitry Pozharsky's death/

Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, a Russian commander and people's hero, was born on November 1st, 1578. In 1608 he was appointed commander of an errand detachment to wage a struggle against Poles and Cossacks. He was distinguished for commander's artfulness and luck. During the rebellion of the Muscovites against the Polish-Lithuanian invaders on March 19th-20th, 1611, he was wounded on Lubyanka and taken to the St. Sergius' Trinity Monastery and then to his patrimonial village of Mugreyevo. The ambassadors came to Pozharsky there with a proposal that he becomes commander of the Nizhny Novgorod volunteer corps which rose to save Moscow from the Polish invaders. At the end of February 1612, Pozharsky at the head of the volunteer corps left Yaroslavl (300 km to the north-east of Moscow), and on August 18 the corps stopped six kilometres the capital. On August 21st-24th Pozharsky had a fight with the Polish-Lithuanian army commanded by hetman Khodkevich, who tried to penetrate the Kremlin from the outside to help the besieged Poles who stayed there. The victory in this fight decided the fate of the enemy garrisons in the Kitai-Gorod (China-city) and in the Kremlin which capitulated on October 22nd-26th, 1612. At the end of 1612 - the beginning of 1613, Pozharsky (together with Prince Dmitry Trubetskoi) headed the Moscow provisional government and participated in electing tsar Mikhail Romanov, the founder of the Romanov dynasty which reigned till 1917. In 1804-1818 the Russian sculptor Ivan Petrovich Martos created a monument to Kozma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky. Initially, the monument was placed in front of the trade rows on the Red Square but in 1930 it was moved to St. Basil's cathedral.