problems, contributed to the decline in legitimacy of the new ruler in the eyes of many Russians. Then in 1604 the country was invaded by a small army headed by a man claiming to be Dmitry of Uglich, miraculously saved from Godunov’s assassins. Many towns, fortresses, soldiers, and cossacks of the southern frontier quickly joined Dmitry’s forces in the first popular uprising against a tsar. When Tsar Boris died in April 1605, resistance to the Pretender Dmitry (also known as “False Dmitry”) broke down, and he became tsar-the only tsar ever raised to the throne by means of a military campaign and popular uprisings.
Tsar Dmitry reigned for about a year before he was murdered by a small group of aristocrats. His assassination triggered a powerful civil war, essentially a duplicate of the civil war that had brought Dmitry to power. The usurper Vasily Shuisky denounced the dead tsar as an impostor, but Dmitry’s supporters successfully put forward the story that he had once again miraculously escaped death and would soon return to punish the traitors. So energetic was the response to the call to arms against Shuisky that civil war raged for many years and produced about a dozen more pretenders claiming to be Tsar Dmitry or other members of the old ruling dynasty. Starting in 1609, Russia’s internal disorder prompted Polish and Swedish military intervention, resulting in even greater misery and chaos. Eventually, an uneasy alliance was formed among Russian factions, and the Time of Troubles ended with the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.
ORIGINS OF THE TROUBLES
The origins of the Time of Troubles were very complex. In the age of the gunpowder revolution, the princes of Moscow unified Russia, quickly transformed their country into a highly effective state geared to war, and expanded their realm with dizzying speed. In the process of building the largest country in Europe, however, they created a coercive central state bureaucracy that subjugated virtually all elements of Russian society and grossly overburdened the bulk of the population. Russian autocracy and imperialism contributed significantly to the development of a serious state crisis by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Tsar Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) personally deserves some of the blame for the Time of Troubles. His unsuccessful Livonian War (1558-1583) and his dreaded Oprichnina contributed to Russia’s serious problems, as did his imposition of high taxes and his decision to allow the lords to collect taxes directly from their peasants. Ivan’s policies and actions retarded Russian economic activity and resulted in the massive flight of peasants and townspeople to untaxed lands or to the southern frontier. That in turn contributed to declining state revenue and to the weakening of the tsar’s gentry militia, which was heavily dependent on peasant labor.
In spite of clear signs of economic and social distress, Tsar Ivan’s successors continued Russia’s imperial drive to the south. Acting as Fyodor I’s regent, Boris Godunov took drastic steps to shore up state finances and the gentry cavalrymen in order to continue Russia’s rapid expansion to the south and east. In the 1590s, Godunov enserfed the Russian peasants, bound urban taxpayers to their tax-paying districts, and converted short-term contract slavery into real slavery. Those harsh measures did not solve Russia’s fiscal problems and actually made things much worse. Many towns became ghost towns, and Russia’s already staggering economy continued to decline. Godunov’s harsh policies of exploiting the population of the southern frontier and harnessing the cossacks to state service also contributed to the country’s problems. By the time Tsar Fyodor I died, Russia was suffering from a severe economic and social crisis, and many blamed Boris Godunov for their misery.
THE FIRST PHASE OF THE TROUBLES
The Time of Troubles began with the political struggle following the extinction of the old ruling dynasty in 1598. Godunov easily defeated his rivals, including Fyodor Romanov (the future Patriarch Filaret, father of Mkhail Romanov), and quickly became tsar; but his reputation suffered badly in the process. Boris was accused by his rivals of having arranged the murder of Dmitry of Uglich in 1591 in order to clear a path to the throne for himself. He also suffered from a commonly held view that boyars were supposed to advise tsars,
1549
not become tsars. During the reign of Tsar Boris (1598-1605), Russia’s severe state crisis continued to deepen. In addition, Boris’s harassment of certain aristocratic families caused some of them to enter into secret conspiracies against him. It was the great famine of 1601-1603, however, that ruined Tsar Boris’s reputation and convinced many of his subjects that God was punishing Russia for the sins of its ruler. Successive crop failures resulted in the worst famine in Russian history, which wiped out up to a third of Russia’s population. When a man claiming to be Dmitry of Uglich appeared in Poland-Lithuania in 1603 seeking support to overthrow the usurper Godunov, many of Tsar Boris’s subjects were inclined to believe that this man really was Dmitry, somehow miraculously rescued from Godunov’s assassins and now returning to Russia to restore the old ruling dynasty-and God’s grace. Tsar Boris and Patriarch Job denounced the Pretender Dmitry as an impostor named Grigory Otrepev, but that did not stop enthusiasm for the true tsar from growing, especially on the southern frontier and among the cos-sacks.
Russia’s first civil war started with the invasion of the country by the Pretender Dmitry in October 1604. Helped by self-serving Polish lords such as Jerzy Mniszech (father of Marina Mniszech), Dmitry managed to field a small army for his campaign for the Russian throne. As soon as he crossed the border into southwestern Russia, Dmitry was greeted with enthusiasm by much of the frontier population. Several towns voluntarily surrendered to him, and many Russian soldiers (and their commanders) quickly joined Dmitry’s army. Large numbers of cossacks also swelled the Pretender’s forces as he advanced. In December 1604, Dmitry’s army defeated Tsar Boris’s much larger army near Novgorod-Seversky, but in January 1605 the Pretender was decisively defeated at the battle of Do-brynichi. Dmitry hastily retreated to Putivl while Tsar Boris’s army wasted time waging a terror campaign against the local populations that had dared to support the Pretender. By the spring of 1605, Dmitry had recovered, and his forces were growing rapidly. Tsar Boris’s army, by contrast, got bogged down trying to capture rebel-held Kromy, a key fortress guarding the road to Moscow. The death of Boris Godunov in April 1605 paved the way to tsardom for Dmitry. Boris was succeeded by his son, Tsar Fyodor II, but the rebellion of Fyodor’s army at Kromy on May 7 sealed the fate of the Godunov dynasty. On June 1, 1605, a bloodless uprising in Moscow overthrew Tsar Fy1550 odor. Dmitry then entered the capital in triumph, and he was crowned on June 20.
THE SECOND PHASE OF THE TROUBLES
Tsar Dmitry ruled wisely for about a year before being assassinated by Vasily Shuisky, whose seizure of power reignited the civil war. Dmitry’s reign is controversial; many historians have been convinced that he was an impostor named Grigory Otrepev who never commanded the respect of the aristocracy or of the Russian people. In fact, Tsar Dmitry was not the monk-sorcerer Otrepev; instead, he impressed his contemporaries as an intelligent, well-educated, courageous young warrior-prince who truly believed that he was Ivan the Terrible’s youngest son. Tsar Dmitry was also a popular ruler. He did, however, open himself up to criticism for his lack of zealousness in observing court rituals and for a perceived laxity in his commitment to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Criticism notwithstanding, it is significant that Tsar Dmitry was toppled by a coup d’?tat involving a small number of disgruntled aristocrats, not by a popular uprising. His assassination, during the celebration of his wedding to the Polish Princess Marina Mniszech in May 1606, shocked the nation and very quickly rekindled the civil war that had brought him to power. The renewed civil war in the name of the true tsar Dmitry raged for years and nearly destroyed Russia.
Within a few hours of Tsar Dmitry’s assassination, his supporters successfully put forward the story that he had once again miraculously escaped death and would soon return to punish Shuisky and his co-conspirators. One of Tsar Dmitry’s courtiers, Mikhail Molchanov, escaped from Moscow and assumed Dmitry’s identity as he traveled to Sambor (the home of the Mniszechs) in Poland-Lithuania. There he set up Tsar Dmitry’s court and began seeking support for the struggle against Shuisky. Molchanov sent letters to Russian towns and to the cossacks of the southern frontier declaring that Tsar Dmitry was still alive and urging them to rise up against the usurper Tsar Vasily. Those appeals had a powerful effect. Enthusiastic rebel armies led by Ivan Bolotnikov and other commanders quickly pushed Tsar Vasily’s forces out of southern Russia and reached the suburbs of Moscow by October 1606. During the siege of the capital, however, Shuisky bribed two rebel commanders to switch sides. Istoma Pashkov’s betrayal of the rebel cause occurred during a major battle on December 2, forcing Bolotnikov’s men to break off the siege and reENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
