Ruling family of Russia from 1613 to 1917; before that, a prominent clan of boyars in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.
1295
The origins of the Romanovs are obscured by later (post-1613) foundation myths, though it appears certain enough that the founder of the clan was Andrei Ivanovich Kobyla, who was already a boyar in the middle of the fourteenth century when he appears for the first time in historical sources. Because of the way the line of descent from Andrei Kobyla divided and subdivided over time, there has often been confusion and misidentification of the last names of this clan before it became the ruling dynasty in 1613 under the name Romanov. Andrei Kobyla’s five known sons were the progenitors of numerous boyar and lesser servitor clans, including the Zherebtsovs, Lodygins, Boborykins, and others. The Romanovs-as well as the Bezzubtsevs and the Sheremetev boyar clan-descend from the youngest known son of Andrei Kobyla, Fyodor, who had the nickname “Koshka.” The Koshkin line, as it would become known, would itself subdivide into several separate clans, including the Kolychevs and the Lyatskys. The Romanovs, however, derive from Fyodor Koshka’s grandson Zakhary, a boyar (appointed no later than 1433) who died sometime between 1453 and 1460. Zakhary lent his name to his branch of the clan, which became known as Za-kharins. Zakhary’s two sons, Yakov and Yuri, were both prominent boyars in the last quarter of the fifteenth century (and for Yakov, into the first decade of the sixteenth). Yuri’s branch of the family took the name Yuriev. Yuri’s son, Roman, from whom the later Russian dynasty derives its name, was not a boyar, but he is mentioned prominently in service registers for the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Roman’s son Nikita was one of the most important boyars of his time-serving as an okolnichy (from 1559) and later as a boyar (from 1565) for Ivan the Terrible. Nikita served in the Livonian War, occupied prominent ceremonial roles in various court functions including royal weddings and embassies, and, on the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584, took a leading part in a kind of regency council convened in the early days of Ivan’s successor, Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. Nikita retired to a monastery in 1585 as the monk Nifont. Roman Yuriev’s daughter Anastasia married Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1547, a union that propelled the Yuriev clan to a central place of power and privilege in the court and probably accounts for the numerous and rapid promotions to boyar rank of many of Nikita’s and Anastasia’s relatives in the Yuriev clan and other related clans. It was also during this time that the Yurievs established marriage ties with many of the other boyar clans at court, solidifying their political position through kinship-based alliances. With the marriage of Anastasia to Ivan, the Yuriev branch of the line of descent from Andrei Kobyla came firmly and finally to be known as the Romanovs.
The transformation of the Romanovs from a boyar clan to a ruling dynasty occurred only after no fewer than fifteen years of civil war and interregnum popularly called the Time of Troubles. During the reign of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich (1584-1598), Nikita’s son Fyodor became a powerful boyar; and inasmuch as he was Tsar Fyodor’s first cousin (Tsar Fyodor’s mother was Anastasia Yurieva, Fy-odor Nikitich’s aunt), he had been considered by some to be a good candidate to succeed to the throne of the childless tsar. The election to the throne fell in 1598 on Boris Godunov, however, and by 1600, the new tsar began systematically to exile or forcibly tonsure members of the Romanov clan. Scattered to distant locations in the north and east, far from Moscow, the disgrace of the Romanovs took its toll. In 1600 Fyodor Nikitich was tonsured a monk under the name Filaret and was exiled to the remote Antoniev-Siidkii monastery on the Dvina River. His brothers suffered exile and imprisonment as well: Alexander was sent to Usolye-Luda, where he died shortly thereafter; Mikhail was sent to Nyrob, where he likewise died in confinement; Vasily was sent first to Yarensk then to Pe-lym, dying in 1602; Ivan was also sent to Pelym, but would be released after Tsar Boris’s death in 1605. Fyodor Nikitich’s (now Filaret’s) sisters and their husbands also suffered exile, imprisonment, and forced tonsurings. Romanov fortunes turned only in 1605 when Tsar Boris died suddenly and the first False Dmitry assumed the throne. The status of the clan fluctuated over the next few years as the throne was occupied first by Vasily Shuisky, the “Boyar Tsar,” then by the second False Dmitry, who elevated Filaret to the rank of patriarch.
When finally an Assembly of the Land (Zem-sky sobor) was summoned in 1613 to decide the question of the succession, numerous candidates were considered. Foreigners (like the son of the king of Poland or the younger brother of the king of Sweden) were quickly ruled out, though they had their advocates in the Assembly. Focus then turned to domestic candidates, and then in turn to Mikhail Romanov, the sixteen-year-old son of Filaret, who was elected tsar. Debate among historians has since ensued about the reasons for this seemingly unlikely choice. Some point to the kinship ties of the Romanovs with the old dynasty through Anasta-sia’s marriage to Ivan the Terrible, or to the gen1296
ROMANOV DYNASTY
A 1914 portrait of Nicholas II, his wife, and children. Clockwise from left: Olga, Maria, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, Anastasia, Tsarevich Alexei, and Tatiana. POPPERFOTO/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/HULTON/ARCHIVE. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. eral popularity of the Yuriev clan during Ivan’s violent reign. Others point to the fact that Mikhail Romanov was only sixteen and, according to some, of limited intelligence, indecisive, and sickly, and therefore presumably easily manipulated. Still others point to the Cossacks who surged into the Assembly of the Land during their deliberations and all but demanded that Mikhail be made tsar, evidently because of the close ties between the boy’s father (Filaret) and the Cossack supporters of the second False Dmitry. A final and persuasive argument for the selection of Mikhail Romanov in 1613 may well be the fact that, in the previous generation, the Yuriev-Romanov clan had forged numerous marriage ties with many of the other boyar clans at court and therefore may have been seen by the largest number of boyars attending the Assembly of the Land as a candidate “of their own.”
At the time of Mikhail Romanov’s election, his father Filaret was a prisoner in Poland and was released only in 1619. On his return, father and son ruled together-Filaret being confirmed as patriarch of Moscow and All Rus and given the title “Great Sovereign.” Mikhail married twice, in 1624 to Maria Dolgorukova (who promptly died) and to Yevdokia Streshneva in 1626. Their son Alexei succeeded his father in 1645 and presided over a particularly turbulent and eventful time-the writing of the Great Law Code (Ulozhenie), the Church Old Believer Schism, the Polish Wars, and the slow insinuation of Western culture into court life inside the Kremlin. Alexei married twice, to Maria Miloslavskaya (in 1648) and to Natalia Naryshk-ina (in 1671). His first marriage produced no fewer than thirteen known children, including a daughter, Sophia, who reigned as regent from 1682 to 1689, and Tsar Ivan V (r. 1682-1696). His second marriage gave Tsar Alexei a son, Peter I (“the Great”), who ruled as co-tsar with his half brother Ivan V until the latter’s death in 1696, then as sole tsar until his own death in 1725.
Succession by right of male primogeniture had been a long-established if never a legally formulated custom in Muscovy from no later than the fifteenth
1297
century onward. The first law of succession ever formally promulgated was on February 5, 1722, when Peter the Great decreed that it was the right of the ruler to pick his successor from among the members of the ruling family without regard for primogeniture or even the custom of exclusive male succession. By this point, the dynasty had few members. Peter’s son by his first marriage (to Yev-dokia Lopukhina), Alexei, was executed by Peter in 1718 for treason, leaving only a grandson, Peter (the future Peter II). Peter the Great also had two daughters (Anna and the future Empress Elizabeth) by his second wife, Marfa Skavronska, better known as Catherine I. Peter had half sisters-the daughters of Ivan V, his co-tsar, including the future Empress Anna-but even so, the dynasty consisted of no more than a handful of people. Perhaps ironically, Peter failed to pick a successor before his death, but his entourage selected his widow Catherine as the new ruler over the obvious rights of Peter’s grandson. This grandson, Peter II, took the throne next, on Catherine’s death in 1727, but he died in 1730; and with his passing, the male line of the Romanov dynasty expired. Succession continued through Ivan V’s daughter, Anna, who had married Karl-Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp. Their son, Karl-Peter, succeeded to the throne in 1762 as Peter III. Except for the brief titular reign of the infant Ivan VI (1740-1741)-the great grandson of Ivan V who was deposed by the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (ruled 1741-1762)-all Romanov rulers from 1762 onward are properly speaking of the family of Holstein-Gottorp, though the convention in Russia always was to use the style “House of Romanov.”
