TIME OF TROUBLES
treat south. After enduring long sieges in Kaluga and then Tula, Bolotnikov was finally forced to surrender to Tsar Vasily in October 1607, but his men (with their weapons) were allowed to go free. Many of them immediately rejoined the civil war against Shuisky by entering the service of the second false Dmitry, an impostor who suddenly appeared in southwestern Russia during the summer of 1607.
The second false Dmitry was nothing more than a puppet of his Polish handlers, but his name attracted men from far and wide. Soon Dmitry took up residence in the village of Tushino and waged war against Shuisky in Moscow. The second false Dmitry managed to attract many Russian aristocrats into his service; Filaret Romanov became Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Tushino. When Marina Mniszech was released by Tsar Vasily, she, too, went to Tushino where she recognized her putative husband and eventually produced an heir, little Ivan Dmitriyevich. For over a year, war-torn Russia had two tsars and two capitals. Just as Shuisky’s luck appeared to be running out, however, the excesses of Tsar Dmitry’s foreign troops and cossacks caused a full-scale revolt against the second false Dmitry throughout much of northern Russia. Starting in late 1608, ordinary townspeople began fighting back against constant pillaging by Tsar Dmitry’s troops and heavy taxes collected by his rapacious agents.
Tsar Vasily eventually turned to Sweden for assistance against the second false Dmitry. In early 1609, troops raised by King Karl IX crossed the border and assisted Shuisky’s forces in clearing Dmitry’s supporters out of north Russia. Karl also gobbled up Russian territory for himself, immediately provoking Polish intervention in Russia. The Polish king Sigismund III invaded Russia and laid siege to the great fortress of Smolensk. Under pressure from all sides, the Tushino camp broke up during the winter of 1609-1610. The second false Dmitry and Marina fled to Kaluga, but some Tushi-nite courtiers traveled to Smolensk to beg Sigismund to permit his son, Wladyslaw, to become tsar of Russia. The king seemed to agree, and soon a Polish army headed toward Moscow. In June 1610, at the battle of Klushino, the Poles decisively defeated Tsar Vasily’s army. In July, exasperated Russian aristocrats seized Tsar Vasily and forced him to become a monk. Eventually, the powerful Russian lords who gained control of Moscow (the Council of Seven) agreed to allow the Poles to occupy the capital in the name of Tsar Wladyslaw. A grand procession of Russian dignitaries (including Filaret Romanov and Vasily Shuisky) was then sent to parley with King Sigismund about Wla-dyslaw’s accession, but the king threw them in prison. Sigismund had decided to conquer Russia and not to rule it indirectly through his son. In Moscow, the Council of Seven was unceremoniously shoved aside as a brutal military dictatorship was established by the Poles.
The Polish occupation of Moscow shocked much of Russia, and soon ordinary people began to organize to oust the foreigners. The murder of the second false Dmitry in December 1610 was celebrated by the Poles, but it actually removed the chief obstacle to unifying the Russian people against foreign intervention. A powerful but still disjointed patriotic movement slowly began to develop throughout the land and even in Moscow. Various Russian factions warily reached out to one other and with great difficulty coordinated operations against the hated Catholic Poles. Inside Moscow, protests against the Latin heretics by Patriarch Hermogen got him thrown into prison; but, before he starved to death, Hermogen sent letters to many towns urging his fellow Orthodox Christians to rise up and throw the evil foreigners out of Russia. Hermogen’s call to arms was highly effective.
By early 1611, a patriotic Russian commander, Dmitry Pozharsky, forged an uneasy alliance with forces that had been loyal to the second false Dmitry, including the cossack commander Ivan Zarutsky, who championed the cause of Marina Mniszech and Ivan Dmitriyevich. Pozharsky attempted to liberate Moscow in March; but, after bitter street fighting during which the Poles burned much of the outer city, Pozharsky’s patriots were forced to retreat and regroup. By June 1611, the patriots managed to form a highly representative council of the entire realm to coordinate military operations against the foreigners and to lay the foundation for a temporary national government. Pozharsky and others made sure that militarily useful cossacks who were willing to join the national militia received adequate food and the promise of freedom even if they had formerly been serfs or slaves. Such unprecedented promises attracted many new recruits to the patriot cause. Due to rivalry among its commanders, however, the national liberation movement stumbled during the following months. The unscrupulous Zarutsky tried to take over as militia commander, but other patriots wanted nothing to do with his unruly cossacks or little Ivan Dmitriyevich. UnforENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
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tunately, various factions ended up fighting against each other, and for many months chaos reigned in Russia. Shortly after the Poles captured Smolensk in June 1611 and the Swedes captured Novgorod in July, some beleaguered Russians asked the king of Sweden to consider putting his son on the Russian throne. Most patriots, however, dreamed of a Russian tsar.
By late 1611, a new patriotic movement and a new military force capable of salvaging Russia’s national sovereignty began to take shape in Nizhny Novgorod. There a butcher named Kuzma Minin convinced his fellow citizens to raise money for an army to liberate Russia and to restore order to the realm. Minin chose Prince Pozharsky to be the commander-in-chief of the new militia, and Minin himself became the patriotic movement’s treasurer with very broad powers. Many Russian towns and villages quickly joined the movement, and Yaroslavl soon emerged as the headquarters of the provisional government. Pozharsky succeeded admirably in getting cossacks and others to join his growing militia; and once Zarutsky broke with the national liberation movement and rode off to the south with Marina Mniszech and Ivan Dmitriye-vich, Pozharsky was able to concentrate on the siege of Moscow.
The Polish garrison in Moscow surrendered on October 27, 1612. As soon as the capital was liberated, urgent and unprecedented messages were sent throughout the country calling for representatives of all free men (nobles, gentry, soldiers, townspeople, clergy, peasants from crown and state lands, and cossacks) to come as quickly as possible to Moscow. Soon the most representative Assembly of the Land (Zemsky sobor) in Russian history gathered to choose a new tsar. Under intense pressure from the cossacks (who by then made up half of the national militia), Filaret Romanov’s son Mikhail was elected on February 7, 1613.
The Time of Troubles officially ended with the crowning of Tsar Mikhail on July 21, 1613, but it took several years to restore order to a devastated land. While bureaucrats and members of the Assembly of the Land worked feverishly to rebuild the Russian government, Tsar Mkhail dispatched military forces to destroy Zarutsky, Marina Mniszech, and Ivan Dmitriyevich. They were finally captured and executed in 1614. Kicking the Poles and Swedes out of Russia proved to be far more difficult. Only after a Swedish invasion was stalled by the heroic defense of Pskov in 1615-1616, did King Gustavus
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Adolphus agree to negotiate with Tsar Mikhail. The Treaty of Stolbovo (1617) restored Novgorod to the Russians, but the Swedes kept enough captured territory to block Russian access to the Baltic Sea until the time of Peter the Great. After 1613, Polish armies tried repeatedly to try to put Tsar Wlady-slaw on the Russian throne. The sturdy defense of Moscow in 1618 by Prince Pozharsky, the capital’s civilian population, and the cossacks (who were very badly treated by the Romanov regime) finally convinced the Poles to negotiate. Poland gained many west Russian towns (including Smolensk) from the Truce of Deulino (1618), but Filaret Romanov was released from Polish captivity. In many ways, the celebration of Patriarch Filaret’s return to Moscow in 1619 marked the real end of the Time of Troubles.
The Time of Troubles had been a terrible nightmare for the Russian people. By the time the Troubles ended, Russia’s economy was shattered and many towns were ruined. As a result, the early Romanovs faced serious fiscal problems. The conditions of overtaxed townspeople, serfs, and gentry cavalrymen actually worsened during the early seventeenth century and set the stage for sharp conflicts under Tsar Mikhail’s son, Tsar Alexis. Ironically, the rapid expansion of the Romanov empire after 1613 caused many people to conclude incorrectly that the Time of Troubles did not have much long-term impact. In fact, the terrifying experience of the Troubles produced a powerful consensus within Russian society in favor of enhancing the already great authority and prestige of the tsar (and the patriarch). That consensus significantly strengthened Russian autocracy and imperialism, and it also slowed down the development of capitalism and the emergence of civil society in Russia. See also: ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; BOLOTNIKOV, IVAN ISAYEVICH; DMITRY OF UGLICH; DMITRY, FALSE; FEDOR IVANOVICH; FILARET ROMANOV, PATRIARCH; GODUNOV, BORIS FYODOROVICH; IVAN IV; OPRI-CHNINA; OTREPEV, GRIGORY; POZHARSKY,
