Utilisateur:Ghirlandajo/Ukes
Timofey Ankudinov or Akindinov was an impostor from Vologda who claimed that his father was Tsar Basil IV of Russia.
According to official accounts, Ankudinov married a granddaughter of the Bishop of Vologda but in late 1643 burnt down his house in Vologda (his wife died in the fire) and fled Russia with a large sum of misappropriated money. He wondered around Europe in 1644-1653, calling himself "Prince of Greater Perm" or "Prince John Shuisky" (Ioannes Suiensis).
He sought financing for a military intervention into Muscovy, or "a new Dymitriad". He also composed a number of verses satirizing the Tsar's government and glorifying those potentates that lent him support. This verses make him one of the first Russian poets. A couple of his "ukases" survive.
The pretender was harbored by the Serb priests, the Polish magnates, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Ibrahim I, Christina of Sweden, and Pope Innocent X. When Ankudinov was visiting the Duchy of Holstein in 1654, he was seized and delivered to the agents of Tsar Alexis. He was drawn and quartered in Moscow.
The Russian Orthodox Church kept anathemizing Ankudinov on the Feast of Orthodoxy until the reign of Peter the Great. It claimed that the pretender had converted to Islam during his stay in Turkey and promised the sultan to convert Russia in case of a military invasion.