O God, save thy people, and bless thine heritage…, preserve this city and this holy Temple, and every city and land from pestilence, famine, earthquake, flood, fire, the sword, the invasion of enemies, and from civil war…
The Time of Troubles -
The dynastic aspect stemmed from the fact that with the passing of Tsar Theodore the Muscovite ruling family died out. For the first time in Muscovite history there remained no natural successor to the throne. The problem of succession was exacerbated because there existed no law of succession in the Muscovite state, because a number of claimants appeared, because Russians looked in different directions for a new ruler, and because, apparently, they placed a very high premium on some link with the extinct dynasty, which opened the way to fantastic intrigues and impersonations.
While the dynastic issue emerged through the accidental absence of an heir, the national issue resulted largely from the centuries-old Russian struggle in the west and in the north. Poland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, felt compelled to take advantage of the sudden Russian weakness. The complex involvement of Poland, especially, in the Time of Troubles reflected some of the key problems and possibilities in the history of eastern Europe.
But it is the social element that demands our main attention. For it was the social disorganization, strife, and virtual collapse that made the dynastic issue so critical and opened the Muscovite state to foreign intrigues and invasions. The Time of Troubles can be understood only as the end product of the rise of the Muscovite state with its attendant dislocations and ten-
sions. It has often been said that Russian history, by comparison with the histories of western European countries, has represented a cruder or simpler process, in particular that Russian social structure has exhibited a certain lack of complexity and differentiation. While this approach must be treated circumspectly, it must not be dismissed. We noted earlier that it might be appropriate to describe appanage Russia in terms of an incipient or undeveloped feudalism. The rise of Moscow meant a further drastic simplification of Russian social relations.
To expand and to defend its growing territory, the Muscovite state relied on service people, that is, on men who fought its battles and also performed the administrative and other work for the government. The service people - eventually known as the service gentry, or simply gentry - were supported by their estates. In this manner, the pomestie, an estate granted for service, became basic to the Muscovite social order. After the acquisition of Novgorod, in its continuing search for land suitable for pomestiia, the Muscovite government confiscated most of the holdings of the Novgorodian boyars and even half of those of the Novgorodian Church. Hereditary landlords too, it will be remembered, found themselves obligated to serve the state. The rapid Muscovite expansion and the continuous wars on all frontiers, except the north and northeast, taxed the resources of the government and the people to the breaking point. Muscovite authorities made frantic efforts to obtain more service gentry. 'Needing men fit for military service, in addition to the old class of its servitors, free and bonded, nobles and commoners, the government selects the necessary men and establishes on pomestiia people from everywhere, from all the layers of Muscovite society in which there existed elements answering the military requirements.' Thus, for example, small landholders in the areas of Novgorod and Pskov and an ever-increasing number of Mongols, some of whom had not even been converted to Christianity, became members of the Muscovite service gentry.
When Moscow succeeded in the 'gathering of Russia' and the appanages disappeared, the princes and boyars failed to make a strong stand against Muscovite centralization and absolutism. Many of them, indeed, were slaughtered, without offering resistance, by Ivan the Terrible. But the relatively easy victory of the Muscovite despots over the old upper classes left problems in its wake. Notably, it has been argued that the Muscovite government displaced the appanage ruling elements all too rapidly, more rapidly than it could provide effective substitutes. The resulting weakening of the political and social framework contributed its share to the Time of Troubles. And so did the boyar reaction following the decline in the tsar's authority after Boris Godunov's death.
As the Muscovite state expanded, centralizing and standardizing administration and institutions and subjugating the interests of other classes to those of the service gentry, towns also suffered. They became administra-
tive and military centers at the expense of local self-government, commercial elements, and the middle class as a whole. This transformation occurred most strikingly in Novgorod and Pskov, but similar changes affected many other towns as well.
Most important, however, was a deterioration in the position of the peasants, who constituted the great bulk of the people. They, of course, provided the labor force on the estates of the service gentry, and, therefore, were affected immediately and directly by the rise of that class. Specifically, the growth of the service gentry meant that more and more state lands and peasants fell into gentry hands through the pomestie system. Gentry landlords, themselves straining to perform burdensome state obligations, squeezed what they could from the peasants. Furthermore, the ravages of the oprichnina brought outright disaster to the already overtaxed peasant economy of much of central Russia. Famine, which appeared in the second half of Ivan the Terrible's reign, was to return in the frightful years of 1601-3.
Many peasants tried to escape. The Russian conquest of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan opened up fertile lands to the southeast, and at first the government encouraged migration to consolidate the Russian hold on the area. But this policy could not be reconciled with the interests of the service gentry, whose peasants had to be prevented from fleeing if their masters were to retain the ability to serve the state. Therefore, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Muscovite authorities made an especially determined effort to secure and guarantee the labor force of the gentry. Legal migration ceased. The state also tried to curb Church landholding, and especially to prevent the transfer of any gentry land to the Church. Furthermore, serfdom as such finally became fully established in Russia. While the long-term process of the growth of serfdom will be discussed later, it should be mentioned here that the government's dedication to the interests of the service gentry at least contributed to it.
Hard-pressed economically and increasingly deprived of their rights, the peasants continued to flee to the borderlands in spite of all prohibitions. The shattering impact of the oprichnina provided another stimulus for the growth of that restless, dislocated, and dissatisfied lower-class element which played such a significant role during the Time of Troubles. Moreover, some fugitive peasants became cossacks. The cossacks, first mentioned in the chronicles in 1444, represented free or virtually free societies of warlike adventurers that began to emerge along distant borders and in areas of overlapping jurisdictions and uncertain control. Combining military organization and skill, the spirit of adventure, and a hatred of the Muscovite political and social system, and linked socially to the broad masses, the cossacks were to act as another major and explosive element in the Time of Troubles.
Dissatisfied elements in the Russian state included also a number of con-
quered peoples and tribes, especially in the Volga basin. The gentry itself, while a privileged class, had many complaints against the exacting government. Finally, it should be emphasized that conditions and problems varied in the different parts of the huge Muscovite state, and that the Time of Troubles included local as much as national developments. The Russian north, for example, had no problem of defense and very few gentry or serfs. Since a brief general account can pay only the scantest attention to these local variations, the interested student must be referred to more specialized literature, particularly to the writings of Platonov.
With the passing of Theodore, the Muscovite dynasty died out and a new tsar had to be found. While it is
