Music and Time Annotation << Back From history of formation of Old Russian violin performance of the 17th century A.V. Ustugova Violin playing, and instruments of ancient Russia still remain largely mysterious and unexplored phenomenon. This article presents an attempt to recreate the history of the existence of a violin in the old Russian musical culture of the XVII century based on the analysis of written and iconographic sources. The methodological basis of this article is historical and integrated approaches, and elements of linguistic and etymological analysis were also used. As a result of the study, the constructive features of the ancient Russian violin, the scope of its distribution and performance features were identified, and two types of Old Russian violinists were identified and the image of «skrypotchik» was reconstructed from palace records. Keywords: violin, skrypotchik, ancient Russian violin performance, bow instruments, musical terminology. Contacts: E-mail: uav80@mail.ru Pp. 23-28.