His godmother, Olga Matveevna Durandina,[2] at whose home he lived in Krasnoyarsk during his studies at the district school, introduced the future artist to the so-called long version of this document.

Before that, the artist could not find a suitable face for a long time — bloodless, fanatical,[1] corresponding to the famous description of Avvakum: "The fingers of your hands are delicate, your eyes are lightning-fast, and you throw yourself at enemies like a lion".

[1] According to another version, the static nature of the canvas disappeared and a sense of movement appeared after the artist decided to draw a running boy next to the carriage.

[7] Boyaryna's figure on the sliding carriage serves as a single compositional center around which the street crowd is grouped, reacting differently to her fanatical willingness to follow her beliefs to the end.

Although Surikov's new work, unlike The Morning of the Streltsy Execution, had a clear compositional center, it was also compared to an overly colorful Persian carpet.

[citation needed]The critic Vladimir Stasov, however, was moved by the canvas and wrote afterwards:Surikov has now created a picture that, in my opinion, is the first of all our paintings on subjects of Russian history.

[8]In an essay on the painting, Vsevolod Garshin speculated as to why a "noblewoman, the owner of 8,000 souls of peasants and landed estates, valued in our money at several million",[9] chose to end her life in a rotten dugout.

[10] For example, Vladimir Korolenko, who himself had been exiled for his Narodnik beliefs, argued with those who saw Boyaryna Morozova as a hymn to medieval fanaticism: She is so fearless in the face of torture that she compels us to sympathize with her heroic deed.

Alexander Benois saw a kind of dignity in Boyaryna Morozova — both in the crowding of the figures and in the lack of perspective depth, which, in his opinion, are designed to emphasize "typical and, in this case, symbolic narrow Moscow streets, and the somewhat provincial character of the whole scene".