Vadim the Bold was a legendary chieftain of the Ilmen Slavs

Ilmen Slavs

The Ilmen Slavs was the northernmost tribe of the Early East Slavs, which inhabited the shores of the Lake Ilmen and the basin of the rivers of Volkhov, Lovat, Msta, and the upper stream of the Mologa River in the 8th to 10th centuries....

 who led their struggle against Rurik

Rurik

Rurik, or Riurik , was a semilegendary 9th-century Varangian who founded the Rurik dynasty which ruled Kievan Rus and later some of its successor states, most notably the Tsardom of Russia, until 1598....

 and the Varangians

Varangians

The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were people from the Baltic region, most often associated with Vikings, who from the 9th to 11th centuries ventured eastwards and southwards along the rivers of Eastern Europe, through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.According...

 in the 9th century.

According to the Nikon Chronicle

Nikon Chronicle

The Nikon Chronicle or Chronicle of Nikon , also known as the Patriarch's Chronicle , is a major 16th century Russian chronicle. It was named after patriarch Nikon, who owned a copy...

, an historic 16th century Russian chronicle that covered events of 859–1520 CE, the Novgorodians broke into rebellion against Rurik

Rurik

Rurik, or Riurik , was a semilegendary 9th-century Varangian who founded the Rurik dynasty which ruled Kievan Rus and later some of its successor states, most notably the Tsardom of Russia, until 1598....

, their ruler, but his Varangian druzhina

Druzhina

Druzhina, Drużyna or Družyna in the medieval history of Slavic Europe was a retinue in service of a chieftain, also called knyaz. The name is derived from the Slavic word drug with the meaning of "companion, friend". -Early Rus:...

 managed to quell the riots and murdered their leader, Vadim. The first Russian historian, Vasily Tatishchev

Vasily Tatishchev

Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev was a prominent Russian statesman, and ethnographer, best remembered as the author of the first full-scale Russian history...

, conjectured that Vadim's mother was the elder daughter of Gostomysl

Gostomysl

Gostomysl is a legendary 9th-century posadnik of Novgorod who was introduced into the historiography by Vasily Tatishchev, an 18th-century historian. Gostomysl's rule is associated with the confederation of Northern tribes, which was formed to counter the Varangian threat in the mid-9th century...

. Hence, Vadim was Rurik's elder cousin and had a better claim to the throne.

In Russian literature

After Tatischev's publications, Vadim became one of the most popular characters in the 18th-century Russian literature

Russian literature

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...

. Yakov Knyazhnin

Yakov Knyazhnin

Yakov Borisovich Knyazhnin was Russia's foremost tragic author during the reign of Catherine the Great. Knyazhnin's contemporaries hailed him as the true successor to his father-in-law Alexander Sumarokov, but posterity, in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, tended to view his tragedies and comedies...

, a leading playwright, penned a play in which he contrasted Vadim, a defender of Novgorod's ancient freedom, with the authoritarian Rurik. When the play appeared in 1791, Catherine the Great was enraged, although she had fictionalized Vadim's struggle against Rurik in one of her own plays. Against the background of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, Knyazhnin was accused of Jacobinism and all printed copies of his play were to be burnt.

Authenticity issues

In the 19th century, Sergey Solovyov

Sergey Solovyov

Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov was one of the greatest Russian historians whose influence on the next generation of Russian historians was paramount. His son Vladimir Solovyov was one of the most influential Russian philosophers...

 and other major historians cast a doubt on the historicity and authenticity

Authentication

Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity...

 of Vadim. Currently, he is considered a legendary personage. Yet his freedom-loving character appealed to the spirit of Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

. Three leading Russian poets of the era, Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...

 and Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...

, based their poems on the subject of Vadim's legendary exploits.