Zarutskii, Ivan

Born in Ternopol’, date unknown; died 1614, in Moscow. Leader of cossack bands in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century.

Zarutskii was a member of I. I. Bolotnikov’s army until the summer of 1607, when he went over to the side of the second False Dmitrii; he led a unit of Don cossacks and received the title of boyar. With the breakup of the pretender’s camp at Tushino, he joined the forces of the Polish king, Sigismund III. In the fall of 1610, however, he returned to the pretender at Kaluga and, after the death of the latter, married his widow, Marina Mniszek. In January 1611, Zarutskii went over to the first national militia and became the leading figure in its government after the killing of P. Liapunov. In pursuit of his own ambitions, he turned against the national militia in 1612 and tried to organize the assassination of Prince D. M. Pozharskii. The approach of the militia to Moscow forced him to flee to Astrakhan. Finally, in 1614, as government forces neared Astrakhan and a popular uprising broke out there, he fled to the Ural steppes, where he was turned over to the government by the cossacks. Zarutskii and the son of Marina Mniszek were subsequently executed in Moscow, and Marina herself died in imprisonment.