All Polish efforts, finally led by Sigismund III himself, to come to the aid of the Polish garrison in Moscow failed.
The first aim of the victors was to elect a tsar and thus establish a firm, legitimate government in Russia and end the Time of Troubles. The specially called zemskii sobor which met for that purpose in the beginning of 1613 consisted of 500 to perhaps 700 members, although only 277 signatures have come down to us on the final document. It included the clergy, the boyars, the gentry, the townspeople, and even some representatives of peasants, almost certainly of the state peasants of northern Russia rather than of serfs. Twelve of the signatures belonged to peasants. While we have no records of the assembly and very little information about its deliberations, we know that the number of possible candidates for tsar was first reduced by the decision to exclude foreigners. From a half dozen or more Russians mentioned, the assembly selected Michael Romanov to be tsar, and the Romanov family ruled Russia for over 300 years, from 1613 to 1917.
Historians have adduced a number of reasons for this choice. Through Ivan the Terrible's marriage to Anastasia Romanova, Michael Romanov was related to the old dynasty. The family enjoyed popularity with the masses. In particular, the people remembered Anastasia, Ivan the Terrible's good first wife, and her brother, Nikita Romanov, who dared defend some of the victims of the violent tsar. Metropolitan Philaret, Nikita's son and Michael's father, who was a prisoner of the Poles at the time of the zemskii sobor, added to the advantageous position of the family. In particular, Miliukov and others have stressed that he stood closer to the Tushino camp and had much better relations with the cossacks than other boyars. Michael's youth too counted in his favor: only sixteen years old, he had not been compromised by serving the Poles or the pretenders, and he generally remained free of the extremely complicated and painful entanglements of the Time of Troubles. Michael Romanov also gained stature as Patriarch Hermogen's choice, although the patriarch himself did not live to see the election, having perished as a prisoner of the Poles shortly before the liberation of Moscow.
Thus, in February 1613, the zemskii sobor decided in favor of Michael Romanov. Next, special emissaries were dispatched to different parts of the Muscovite state to sound local opinion. When they reported the people's strong endorsement of the decision, Michael Romanov was elected to rule Russia as tsar, and the title was to pass on to his future descendants. It took additional time to persuade his mother and him to accept the offer.
Finally, Michael Romanov was crowned tsar on July 21, 1613. In Platonov's words: 'According to the general notion, God himself had selected the sovereign, and the entire Russian land exulted and rejoiced.'
Platonov's authoritative evaluation of the Time of Troubles contains several major points: the explosive crisis which Russia experienced represented the culmination and the overcoming of a dangerous disease, or perhaps several diseases. It ended with a decisive triumph over Polish intervention, over the aristocratic reaction inside Russia, over the cossacks and anarchy. The result meant a national victory for Russia and a social victory for its stable classes, that is, the service gentry, the townspeople, and the state peasants of the north. The state gained in strength, and the entire experience, which included popular participation in and indeed rescue of the government, contributed greatly to the growth of national sentiment and to a recognition of public, as against private, rights and duties by sovereign and subject alike.
Many other historians, both before and after Platonov, noted positive results of the Time of Troubles. S. Soloviev, for example, claimed that it marked the victory in Russia, at long last, of the concept of state over that of family and clan. The Slavophiles - whom we shall consider when we discuss Russian thought in the nineteenth century - were probably the most enthusiastic of all: to them the Time of Troubles represented a revelation of the greatness of the Russian people, who survived the hardest trials and tribulations, overcame all enemies, saved their faith and country, and re-established the monarchy.
Critical opinions too have not been lacking. Kliuchevsky, for one, stressed the social struggle, the abandonment of the tradition of patient suffering by the masses, and the legacy of devastation and discord which pointed to the great popular rebellions of later years. He also emphasized the peculiar role and importance of the pretenders which demonstrated the political immaturity of the Russians. Michael Romanov himself could be considered a successful pretender, for his main asset lay in his link with the extinct dynasty. It might be added that Basil Shuisky, for his part, pointed out in his manifestoes that he belonged to an even older branch of the princely house of Suzdal and Kiev than the former Muscovite rulers and thus possessed every claim to legitimacy.
' Soviet historians devoted considerable attention to the Time of Troubles, which they often characterized as a period of peasant revolts and foreign intervention. They concentrated on the class struggle exemplified by Bolotnikov's rebellion, on the role of the poorer classes generally, and sometimes on the role of the non-Russian nationalities. In contrast to Platonov they fa-
vored the revolutionary not the 'stable' elements. Among the weaknesses of Soviet interpretations was an underestimation of the significance of the Church.
In conclusion, we may glance at the Muscovite government and society as they emerged from the Time of Troubles. In spite of everything that happened between 1598 and 1613, autocracy survived essentially unimpaired. In fact, at the end of it all, autocracy must have appeared more than ever the only legitimate form of government and the only certain guarantee of peace and security. Centralization, too, increased in the wake of social disorganization. In particular, local self-government that had developed in [van the Terrible's reign did not outlast the Time of Troubles. The Church, on its side, gained authority and prestige as the great champion of the interests of the country and the people and the most effective organization in the land that had survived the collapse of the secular order.
The service gentry also won. We know something about the aspirations of that class from such documents as the invitation to ascend the Muscovite throne sent to Wladyslaw by the service gentry in Tushino. The conditions of the offer included full protection of the Orthodox Church in Russia and freedom of religion, for Wladyslaw was a Catholic; rule with the help of the boyar duma and the zemskii sobor; no punishment without trial in court; the preservation and extension of the rights of the clergy, the service gentry, and to a degree the merchants; the rewarding of servitors according to merit; the right to study abroad; and at the same time a prohibition of serfs leaving their masters and a guarantee that slaves would not be freed. This attempt by the Tushino gentry to establish a government failed, but, in a broader sense, the Muscovite gentry succeeded in defending its interests during the Time of Troubles and in preserving and in part re-establishing a political and social order in which it occupied the central position. The Muscovite system, based on a centralizing autocracy and the service gentry, thus surmounted the great crisis and challenge of the Time of Troubles and continued to develop in the seventeenth century as it had in the sixteenth. It is this fundamental continuity that makes it difficult to find any lasting results of the Time of Troubles, anything beyond Platonov's 'disease overcome.'
The losers included, on one hand, the boyars and, on the other, the common people. The boyars attained their greatest power in the reign of Basil Shuisky and the period immediately following his deposition. Yet this power lacked popular support and failed to last. In the end, autocracy returned with its former authority, while the boyars, many of their families further decimated during the Time of Troubles, had to become unequivocally servants of the tsar. The desires of the boyars found expression in the remarkably mild 'conditions' associated with the accession of Basil Shuisky, that is in his
promise not to purge the boyars arbitrarily, and in the Muscovite invitation to Wladyslaw, which changed the earlier Tushino stipulations to exclude promotion according to merit and the right to study abroad and insisted that foreigners must not be brought in over the heads of the Muscovite princely and boyar families.
The common people also suffered a defeat. They, and especially the serfs, slaves, fugitives, vagabonds, and uprooted, together with the cossacks, fought for Bolotnikov, for the various pretenders, and also in countless lesser armies and bands. Although they left little written material behind them, their basic demand seems clear enough: a complete overturn, a destruction of the oppressive Muscovite social and economic order. But the order survived. The decades which followed the Time of Troubles saw a final and complete establishment of serfdom in Russia and in general a further subjugation of the working masses to the interests of the victorious service gentry.
The legacy of the Time of Troubles, good and bad, was the point of departure for the reign of Michael Romanov.
