Kudeyar

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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (March 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Кудеяр]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Кудеяр}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Kudeyar (Russian: Кудеяр) is a Russian legendary folk hero whose story is told in Mykola Kostomarov's 1875 novel of the same name.

According to this legend, Kudeyar was the elder brother of Ivan the Terrible. His mother purportedly was Solomonida Saburova, whom Vasily III divorced on account of her barrenness and incarcerated in a convent. Several months after the controversial divorce she bore a son, who was smuggled to the Cossacks living along the Don River, where he became their fearless ataman and champion in the manner of Robin Hood.

Actually, there were several Cossack robbers of this name. There is a letter of one Muscovite boyar to Ivan IV from Crimea, where he reports that "there is only one brigand left here - the accursed Kudeyar". The name is apparently Persian, composed of two elements standing for "god" and "man".