Time of Troubles

thumb|upright=1.3|alt=Painting of Kuzma Minin addressing a large crowd|[[Konstantin Makovsky's Appeal of Minin (1896) depicts Kuzma Minin against the background of the church of St. John the Baptist appealing to the people of Nizhny Novgorod to raise a militia against the Polish invaders and Sigismund III Vasa.]]

The Time of Troubles (), also known as Smuta (), was a period of political crisis in Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I, the last of the House of Rurik, and ended in 1613 with the accession of Michael I of the House of Romanov at the 1613 Zemsky Sobor.

It was a period of deep social crisis and lawlessness following the death of Feodor I, a weak and possibly intellectually disabled ruler who died without an heir. His death ended the main line of the Rurik dynasty, leading to a violent succession crisis with numerous usurpers and false Dmitrys (impostors) claiming the title of tsar. Russia experienced the famine of 1601–1603, which killed almost a third of the population, within three years of Feodor's death. Russia was also occupied by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Polish–Russian War and lost Smolensk.

The Time of Troubles ended with the election of Michael Romanov as tsar by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, establishing the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia until the February Revolution in 1917.

Background

Tsar Feodor I was the second adult son of Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar of Russia. Feodor's elder brother, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, was the heir apparent; Feodor was never considered a serious candidate for the Russian throne. However, Tsarevich Ivan was allegedly killed in anger by his father on 19 November 1581, making Feodor the new heir apparent.

According to the historian Chester Dunning, "Tsar Ivan knew perfectly well that Fedor could not rule on his own; before his own death in 1584, he set up a council of regents to govern in his son's name. Ivan named as regents two leading boyars; Fedor's uncle, Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev (head of the Romanov clan), and Prince Ivan F. Mstislavsky; he also named two leading members of his own court: a premier prince of the blood, the popular and heroic Prince Ivan Petrovich Shuisky, and Fedor's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov. On the day of the coronation, Boris was named koniushii boiarin (master of the horse or equerry) – a title that immediately identified him as the most powerful member of the boyar council. Prince Ivan Mstislavsky made a bid for power in 1585. He was stopped by the other regents and was forced to become a monk – which in Russia was an irreversible step. Out of this episode grew a tacit alliance between the Godunovs and the Romanovs to protect their families' interests." In 1586, after an anti-Godunov riot, "Aged Prince Ivan Shuisky was forced to become a monk and kept under heavy guard. Boris Godunov was now Tsar Fedor's sole regent and the most powerful man in Russia."

thumb|upright=1.2|alt=Painting of Ivan the Terrible weeping over the tsarevich Ivan, his injured son|[[Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan (1885), depicting the accidental killing of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich by his father Ivan the Terrible; it made Feodor I heir to the Russian throne.]]

In the middle of the 16th century, Russia suffered famines, pestilence and internal discord which were accompanied by Ottoman-backed raids by the Crimean Khanate. In 1571, Devlet I Giray, and his army ransacked its lands in the events known as Fire of Moscow. In 1591, Ğazı II Giray and his brother Fetih I Giray launched another in Russia, but they were completely defeated. This was the last trip of the Crimeans to Moscow.

After Tsar Ivan's death on , Feodor was crowned as the tsar on 10 June. The pious Feodor took little interest in politics, ruling through Boris Godunov (his closest advisor, a boyar, the son-in-law of Malyuta Skuratov and the brother of Feodor's wife, Irina Godunova). Feodor produced one child: a daughter, Feodosia, who died at the age of two.

According to Dunning, "At the outset of Tsar Fedor's reign, Boris Godunov and other regents moved against a threat emanating from the court faction supporting Ivan the Terrible's youngest son, Dmitrii – the child of Ivan's sixth and last wife, Maria Nagaia. In May, 1591, Tsarevich Dmitrii was reported to be dead. On the basis of testimony from several eyewitnesses," an investigative commission, "concluded that Dmitrii had accidentally slit his own throat during an epileptic seizure that came on while he was playing with a knife." This led to extremely poor harvests, with nighttime temperatures in the summer months often below freezing. Famine enveloped the country in 1602, followed by disease, claiming a third to two thirds of the population. Hunger riots, and the Khlopko rebellion of September 1603 also caused social instability.

False Dmitry I

thumb|upright=1.2|alt=Painting of a confused scene of human suffering|[[Sergei Ivanov (painter)|Sergey Ivanov's In the Time of Troubles (1886)]]

According to Dunning, "Russia's first civil war came about as a direct result of the bold invasion of the country by a man claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitrii, somehow 'miraculously' rescued from the 'usurper' Boris Godunov's alleged assassination attempt in 1591 and now returning to claim the throne from the illegitimate 'false tsar' Boris."

Vasili IV Shuisky

thumb|left|Portrait of Tsar Vasili IV Shuisky in the [[Tsarsky titulyarnik (1672)]]

According to Dunning, "Tsar Dmitrii's nemesis, Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, was one of the most senior and prestigious boyars whose family of Suzdal princes traced their ancestry back to Rurik…Tsar Dmitrii was a popular ruler while the conspirators represented only a relatively small group of disgruntled and ambitious individuals." Soon after Dmitrii's entry into Moscow, Vasilii, and his brothers Dmitrii and Ivan, spread the word that the tsar was Grishka Otrepyev, a runaway defrocked monk. Vasilii was condemned to exile, but then allowed to return to Moscow, and reinstated in the boyar council. Yet, "As soon as Vasilii Shuiskii returned to Moscow in late 1605, he began secretly conspiring to assassinate Tsar Dmitrii…By spring 1606, Shuskii could count on the support of some individuals at court, in the church, and among the merchant elite."

Vasilii Shuiskii's conspirators included his brothers Dmitrii and Ivan, his nephew Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, Vasily and Ivan Golitsyn, okolnichy Ivan Kriuk-Kolychev, okolnichy Mikhail Tatishchev, monks, priests, clerics, merchants, plus trusted dvoriane and deti boiarskie from Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, and Moscow. Several thousand Polish wedding guests were in Moscow for the tsar's wedding to the Polish princess Marina Mniszech. On the morning of 17 May 1606, Vasily Golitsyn and Mikhail Tatishchev led the assault on the Kremlin Frolov gate while Vasilli Shuiskii sent heralds warning Muscovites that the Poles were attempting to assassinate the tsar. A terrible massacre followed with six or seven hours of rioting in which 420 Poles were killed, and several hundred Russians. This allowed assassins to kill the tsar's guards. The tsar, fell and broke his leg while jumping out of a window, and was shot by Mylnikov. Shuiskii then attempted to justify the assassination by demonizing the tsar, claiming he was a sorcerer and skomorokh. His corpse lay on Red Square for three days, was denied a Christian burial, and was eventually burned. Legend states that his ashes were fired from a cannon in the direction from which he had arrived to Moscow. Yet a rumor was soon started that a foreigner resembling the tsar had been killed, which soon led to another civil war in the name of the "true tsar" Dmitrii.

According to Dunning, "Both before and during the siege of Moscow, Bolotnikov had written to Prince Shakhovskoi in Putvil urging him to find Tsar Dmitri and bring him to Moscow. Unable to comply, Shakhovskoi instead at some point made contact with the large group of cossacks on the southern frontier who were headed by the self-styled 'Tsarevich Petr,' the mythical son of Tsar Fedor Ivanovich who had supposedly been hidden from the evil Boris Godunov as a child and had grown up in obscurity. Shakhovskoi knew perfectly well that no such person existed, but he nevertheless invited Petr and his cossacks to hurry to Putivl to help restore Tsar Dmitrii to the throne." Shakhovskoi told Petr, that in the absence of Tsar Dmitri's arrival, "Petr could be tsar, since he was the true born son of Feodor Ivanovich and therefore the lawful heir to the realm." Tsarevich Petr was in reality Ilia Korovin, the illegitimate son of a Murom woman and the cobbler Ivan Korovin. In January 1607, Petr left Putivl for Tula with an army of 30,000. In May, Bolotnikov retreated to Tula following the siege of Kaluga. In June, Tsar Vasilii started the four-month siege of Tula.

According to Dunning, "Almost overnight Pozharskii, Liapunov, and even Zarutskii gained enormous prestige and popularity for fighting the hated foreigners. In January 1611, Nizhni Novgorod informed Prokofy Liapunov that the town, on the advice of Pariarch Hermogen and the 'entire realm,' had resolved to raise forces to liberate Moscow." Though imprisoned, "...Hermogen still managed to continue stirring up the patriot cause by writing incendiary letters to Russian towns right up to his death by starvation in February 1612." The cousins King Karl and King Sigismund were acting like competing conquerors, with Sweden occupying Korela in March, and the Poles occupying Smolensk in June. On 17 July 1611, Sweden's de la Gardie occupied Novgorod, and by early 1612, had annexed many border towns and fortresses, cutting Russia off from the Baltic Sea. The Polish commander Gosiewski had ordered the outer city burned, giving time for the Poles to stop the Muscovite uprising, and attacks of the "national militia", when Prince Pozharskii was seriously wounded. According to Dunning, "In that bloody work they were actively assisted by Mikhail G. Saltykov, members of the council of seven (especially Fedor Mstislavsky, Fedor Sheremetev, and Ivan Romanov), other nobles, and rich merchants who greatly feared their own countrymen and knew what fate awaited them if the insurgents were successful." The Polish occupation was now reduced to the Kremlin and Kitaigorod, which the Poles looted. On 22 September 1612, the Poles and Lithuanians took and burned Vologda killing and capturing many of its inhabitants; many other cities were also devastated or weakened. The cultivated area in Central Russia shrank by several times. Due to the shrinking population the peasants' wages improved and the process of enserfment which had intensified in the second half of the 16th century was rolled back to a degree.

The Time of Troubles has inspired artists and playwrights in Russia and abroad. The three most popular subjects are the Pozharsky-Minin liberation of Moscow, the struggle between Boris Godunov and False Dmitry I, and Ivan Susanin, a peasant who supposedly sacrificed himself to lead the Poles away from Mikhail Romanov:

A Life for the Tsar (Ivan Susanin during the Soviet era), an opera by Mikhail Glinka
Boris Godunov, a play by Alexander Pushkin
Boris Godunov, an opera by Modest Mussorgsky based on Pushkin's play
Two operas about False Dmitriy I: Dimitrij by Antonín Dvořák and Dimitri by Victorin de Joncières, with libretti based on Friedrich Schiller's unfinished play Demetrius
The Monument to Minin and Pozharsky, in Red Square
Minin and Pozharsky, a film by Vsevolod Pudovkin
1612, a 2007 epic film by Vladimir Khotinenko

Russian and Polish artists have painted a number of works based on the period. Chester Dunning, in his 2001 book Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty, wrote that modern Russia began in 1613 with the founding of the Romanov dynasty.

On 4 April 2024, Smuta was released, a Russian action role-playing game set during the Time of Troubles.

References

Citations

Sources

In particular, refer to pp. 896–897.