Boris made a decent show of reluctance, refusing the crown three times. The official record of the meeting has its members clamouring long and loud for him to change his mind:
‘We want Boris Fedorovich [Godunov] to be Tsar. There is no other [candidate]. God himself has chosen him …’ And … the most holy Patriarch … said: ‘Blessed be God who willed this. The Lord’s will be done, for the voice of the people is the voice of God.’ And therefore … by the grace given us through the Holy Ghost we have all installed … Boris Fedorovich [as] Autocrat of all Russia, Sovereign of the Russian land.
Boris’s lack of hereditary credentials, was acknowledged, but it was pointed out that the Bible recorded cases of kings ‘invested with the purple of sovereignty who … were commoners … and yet ruled … according to God’s will honourably and justly’. 16
So on 3 September 1598 Boris was enthroned as tsar amid general acclamations. Huge cannon boomed out their salute, and embassies were sent out far and wide to announce the accession. Yet he took no chances. Potential rivals - including several Nagois and Romanovs - were taken under escort to distant prisons, an amnesty for common criminals was declared, a tax holiday was granted, and largesse was distributed to widows, orphans, foreigners in Russia’s service and the people of Moscow. 17 So Russia acquired an able, legitimate tsar. A succession crisis had been averted.
Russia’s prospects seemed good. Tsar Boris was experienced in all the major branches of state policy; he commanded the loyalty of state servants, both military and civil; and, in early middle age, he was at the height of his powers. Moreover, his son Fedor was a healthy and intelligent boy. Russia seemed destined to prosper under the new regime. Yet the seven lean years that followed were lean indeed, and by the time they ended Boris was dead, his heir murdered, the realm in ruins, and the enemy at the gate.
The cause was not the legacy of Ivan the Terrible, though this contributed to the disaster, and the supposed murder of the Tsarevich Dmitrii was merely incidental. The fundamental reason was a change in weather patterns known as the Little Ice Age. Bad weather caused repeated famines and associated ecological problems and epidemics. These in turn affected agriculture, and promoted migrations and public discontent. Soon social distress spilled over into political protest, giving space to the political climbers and entrepreneurs who are always ready to profit personally from public disasters. Events unfolded inexorably, as in a Greek tragedy.
They began with a severe drought in the first summer of Boris’s reign, and then fire struck the dried-out timbers of the still largely wooden city of Moscow. The winter of 1600 was long and very cold, particularly in the south and west, and then there was a spate of unusually heavy storms. The consequence was famine, but not disaster. Russians were no strangers to cruel weather and the destructive forces of nature. They resowed, repaired, eked out what they had left, borrowed if they had to. The urban population suffered when the price of bread rose, but, like the government of ancient Rome, the Russian tsardom made provision when hunger threatened. There had been localized famines before, and a widespread one in the winter of 1587—8, without causing any long-term trauma. This time it was different.
Disaster struck not once or twice, but year in, year out. The summer of 1601 was extremely wet. Day after day ‘rain fell without stopping, and the rye and the spring wheat got sodden and lay on the ground all winter.’ Around Moscow itself there were heavy frosts in late July, and every type of grain and vegetable was frozen. Nor was the disaster localized. It hit Pskov in the west, and also Kaluga and Livny in the south-east. In 1602 there was another drought, followed by violent storms and floods so great that even the very old could not remember their like. Then blights struck and epidemics, and every year now seemed a year of famine. 18 Well might the religious have recalled the ten plagues that God sent to afflict the Egyptians, and concluded that Tsar Boris must have committed dreadful God-offending acts. Historians who attribute Russia’s collapse to the dynasty dying out are just as mistaken as those who attributed it to Boris’s ‘sin’. Climate change and the series of weather disasters precipitated a social catastrophe, and political debacle flowed from it. Tales about the infant Dmitrii and the ‘usurper’ Boris only gained currency in the wake of the great hunger.
Far from being to blame, Boris did everything within his power to alleviate his people’s sufferings. He campaigned against speculators who hoarded grain waiting for the price to rise; he sold grain cheaply from his own granaries; he sent out messages of encouragement; he arranged for the indigent dead to be given decent burial, and doled out large sums to the needy from his own treasury. But luck had deserted him: the grain he sold cheaply was often resold for private gain; as news of his largesse spread, more and more poor peasants crowded into the city in expectation of his charity, compounding the problems. Whatever was done was never enough. An eyewitness described the scene:
I swear to God that this is the truth. I saw with my own eyes people lying on the streets, eating grass like cattle in summer and hay in winter. Some were already dead, with hay and dung in their mouths and also (pardon my indelicacy) had swallowed human excrement …
Many dead bodies of people who had perished through hunger were found daily in the streets.… Daily … hundreds of corpses were gathered up at the tsar’s command and carried away on so many carts, that to behold it (scarcely to be believed) was grisly and horrible. 19
The continuing period of abnormal weather precipitated not only famine and disease, but also a social and demographic crisis. Marginal farmers, peasants no longer able to pay their rents and taxes, or even feed themselves, abandoned their holdings and took to the road. The number of beggars, vagabonds and robbers multiplied, and they became more desperate. There was another, relatively sharp, population shift — this time from north to south, and particularly to the frontier lands. And it was from the southwest frontier that the first political challenge emerged in the autumn of 1604: a claimant to the throne who called himself Dmitrii and said he had escaped death at Uglich. From then on Boris’s days were numbered.
In July 1604 the Tsar received an ambassador from England, Sir Thomas Smith, who subsequently reported to Sir Robert Cecil on his reception. Great care had been taken to hide any sign of social distress from him, and Boris treated him warmly and ‘in great state, [seated] in a throne of gold, with his Imperiall Crowne on his head, his sceptre in his hand, & many other ornaments of state … his sonne [Fedor] who sat by him, inquired of the healthe of my King James I], and invited me to dine with them together with Fedor.’ After dinner and taking wine with the Tsar, Smith was dismissed, but was informed that ‘I should have … very shortly audience, agayne, for ye dispatche of businesse, but in ye meane time, newes came of certaine rebels risen in armes, against ye Emperor, in his borders towards Poland, which hath hindered my speedy dispatch [of business], and therfor must stay here, and returne ye same way I came.’ 20
Quite how a popular political rebellion got under way in a country governed by a relatively efficient, centralized monarchy, among a people that was largely illiterate, has never been satisfactorily explained. It has been suggested, however, that rumour served as a substitute for modern media in early modern Russia, and that many if not most of the political rumours that gained currency were started by politicians anxious to manipulate popular opinion and, indeed, to trigger popular protests. 21 But several elements were needed to get the rebellion started.
As we have seen, a series of natural disasters was disrupting the Russian economy and society. It was also bleeding the state of funds and raising doubts about the legitimacy of its government. But a rebellion against a God-sanctioned emperor had somehow to be justified. Hence the appearance of a pretender - someone claiming to be the Tsarevich Dmitrii miraculously rescued from death in 1591 and therefore Russia’s legitimate God-given ruler in this time of troubles. Who the pretender actually was is disputed. Tsar Boris thought he was a defrocked monk from the Miracle Monastery in Moscow, called Gri
gorii Otrepev. Chester Dunning, in his recent, massive study of the subject, suspects he was a protege of the Nagois, who brought up a child to believe he really was the infant Dmitrii. Whoever he was, the role he was cast in required ambition, nerve, intelligence and histrionic skills. ‘Dmitrii’ possessed them all. He had all the bravado of a chancer.
But personal qualities were not enough. He also needed sponsors — people to train and brief him, to provide contacts for him, and to fund him. Circumstantial evidence suggests that these backers were prominent Russians, enemies of Boris. The finger of suspicion has pointed not only to the Nagois but, among others, to the Romanovs as well. The pretender soon gained a powerful backer in Poland-Lithuania too: the wealthy magnate Adam Vyshnevetski who had extensive property interests in the frontier area near Seversk and was in dispute with the Muscovite government. It was Vyshnevetski who provided the pretender with a base, helped him recruit the nucleus of an army (a few hundred Cossacks, many of them recent immigrants from Muscovy), and introduced him to other helpers, notably Jerzy Mniszech, the Polish palatine (governor) of Sandomir, who agreed to serve ‘Dmitrii’ as military commander. 22
The pretender Dmitrii’s invasion was launched against the frontier fortress of Moravsk in October 1604. The garrison mutinied, and the place surrendered without a fight. The invaders moved on to the substantial town of Chernigov. Here there was resistance, but, thanks again to a rebellion by servicemen and townspeople, the city was captured and the troops in the citadel soon surrendered. News of these successes, and of ‘Dmitrii’ gaining more support, encouraged further defections from the Muscovite side — particularly from discontented servicemen, for the government was by now critically short of cash to pay them.
Then Peter Basmanov, whom the Tsar had charged with the defence of the region, succeeded in stopping the advance. He summoned up various detachments of musketeers, town Cossacks, service people of various ranks and recruits to his headquarters at Novgorod-Seversk, which boasted a useful battery of artillery. The town held, forcing the rebels to lay siege to it. But then Putivl declared for ‘Dmitrii’, and this prompted more defectors from all ranks - less out of love for ‘Dmitrii’ than from fear they might be lynched if they remained loyal. But Basmanov and his men held firm at Novgorod-Seversk giving time for a strong force from Moscow to approach it. When the armies met, however, the pretender’s forces got the better of the inconclusive contest.
In the weeks that followed, ‘Dmitrii’s’ supporters continued to increase, but then, perhaps afraid of what might happen to the likes of him if the common people got the upper hand, Mniszech deserted. In January 1605 Shuiskii arrived with reinforcements from Moscow and elsewhere, and at the battle of Dobrynichi the superior firepower of the Tsar’s army forced the enemy into a disorderly retreat. The insurgency might have ended there. It did not.
Shuiskii’s men ravaged the areas they recaptured, partly as punishment for the rebellion, partly to compensate themselves for the privations they had suffered at the enemy’s hands. But their behaviour made the Tsar no friends, and by the spring of 1605 most of the service ranks in southern Russia were angry. Boris’s tired troops broke off their siege of Rylsk and concentrated on trying to secure the strategic fort of Kromy, where the garrison had gone over to the enemy. Large forces were brought up to retake Kromy, but a spirited defence in which a Cossack ataman called Korela distinguished himself kept the Tsar’s forces at bay.
Then on 13 April Tsar Boris, who had been ill since January (probably with heart disease), died — and this precipitated the disasters which followed. So long as the Tsar lived he could probably count on the loyalty of most Russians. Now he was dead the chances were recalculated. Most of the troops from central Russia remained loyal, but not the men from the southern frontier, and a carefully planned mutiny among many of them stationed with the loyalist army at Kromy changed the balance of forces. Suddenly the loyalty of many senior commanders began to erode. Boris’s heir was a youth of sixteen with little experience and no personal following. And, thanks to the rumours that Boris’s enemies had been spreading, many doubted his right to succeed. People had been whispering that the Tsarevich Dmitrii was planning to take revenge on Tsar Boris; that Boris was not the legitimate tsar; that his son and successor, Tsar Fedor, was so frightened of ‘Dmitrii’ and the vengeance of the Russian people that he planned to flee to England.
As for the personable ‘Dmitrii’, whom rumour said was the true tsar — son of the grim but popular Ivan — events in the south showed him to have support. A trickle of notables, including the commander Basmanov, began to drift into ‘Dmitrii’s’ camp, and the trickle soon became a flood. Boris’s reign had been marred by catastrophes of every kind. With the false Dmitrii as tsar the people hoped for better. They were not to get it.
In May 1605 a crowd began to gather around the high point of Red Square outside the Kremlin in Moscow, the place used for official proclamations and state executions. Soon it was a multitude, including many servicemen. Letters from the pretender were brandished, and the crowd grew more restive and threatening. Ministers concluded that the situation was beyond their powers to control alone, and sent for Patriarch Job. According to the ‘New Chronicle’, composed around 1630, 23 Job — a Godunov loyalist, who had already pronounced anathema on the pretender — tried every wile he knew, using sweet reason in an attempt to calm the throng, and threatening them with the judgement of God. But nothing worked. The mob wanted ‘Dmitrii’. Tsar Fedor, his mother, his sister, other Godunovs, relatives and the people reputedly loyal to them were seized and taken away, their houses looted. The Patriarch was seized too, and led off to imprisonment. Then ‘Dmitrii’ was sent for.
The pretender was already on his way, making a triumphal progress towards Moscow, receiving the plaudits of the people and the homage of virtually every potentate. As he approached, Prince Vasilii Golitsyn ordered the young Tsar and his mother to be suffocated. On 20 June 1605 ‘Dmitrii’ entered Moscow, heading a large parade. He was solemnly crowned tsar on the following day. But his own days were numbered, and he was not to last a year.
The arguments about the false Dmitrii — who and what kind of man he was, and what he stood for — continue to this day. The sources are mostly parti pris and allow great scope for speculation. However, the fact that the chronicles favour one interest or another, that official documents contain propaganda, and that reports by contemporaries reflect rumour suggests that Russia was awash with political talk at that time — talk that reflected attempts by interested parties to justify their cause or discredit an enemy, and to bring opinion to their side. And now Dmitrii was in power the tenor of the rumours changed. Instead of questioning Boris’s legitimacy, they attacked Dmitrii. It was said that he was really Grigorii Otrepev, a defrocked monk; that he was a puppet of the Jesuits; that he was executing Orthodox monks who were hostile to him; that he had promised to cede Russian territory to the King of Poland; that he intended to massacre the clergy and convert Russians to the Catholic religion; that he was a sex maniac; that he practised magic with devils. 24 One may suppose that many of these rumours were put about by friends of Vasilii Shuiskii, who was plotting against Dmitrii. On 17 May 1606 his plot succeeded.
Dmitrii may not have been as evil as most Russians came to paint him, and Chester Dunning has recently argued that he had merit as a ruler. However, his association with Poles and Jesuits was regarded with deep suspicion, as was his marriage to the Catholic Marina, his supporter Mniszech’s daughter. A scuffle between wedding guests in which a Russian met his death at the hands of the visitors triggered a violent reaction. In the ensuing fight both Dmitrii and Basmanov met their deaths. Their naked corpses were publicly displayed for three days, inviting excoriation and ridicule. But Marina escaped. They said she turned herself into a magpie (like a witch) and flew away.
Vasilii Shuiskii became tsar (as Vasilii IV), and a new patriarch, called Hermogen, was installed. The twin pillars supporting the state were in place aga
in, and for the first time in seven years the weather was normal. But the effects of the revolutions in climate and politics were still evident in endemic discontent, and the new tsar failed to establish his legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Rumours that Dmitrii still lived took hold again. A fearful Shuiskii turned to public relations to shore up his position. He or his minions dreamed up two master-strokes. First, the false Dmitrii’s body was ‘rediscovered’ at a site far from where it had been buried, prompting another set of rumours to circulate - that the Devil was playing tricks on Christian folk; that Lapps had taught Dmitrii how to die and come alive again; that he had been so evil that the earth would not accept him. So his remains were publicly burned on a wooden float adorned with pictures of hell. The second device, intended to make assurance doubly sure, was the ‘discovery’ of the real Tsarevich Dmitrii’s allegedly uncorrupted remains at Uglich. 25Nevertheless, another pretender calling himself Dmitrii was soon to appear.
In the summer of 1607 crowds gained the upper hand over the forces of law and order as another great rebellion welled up from the south under a new leader, a former galley slave and Cossack called Ivan Bolotnikov. They ‘threw the governors into gaol, plundered their masters’ houses … looted their property, raped their wives and virgin daughters … and committed … unspeakable outrages’. 26 Russia, in fact, was at war with itself. The south was in perpetual revolt, and the central Volga region was soon up in arms too. Political entrepreneurs from Moscow exploited the situation - a nobleman called Molchanov actually impersonated ‘Tsar Dmitrii’, riding on the crest of yet another wave of rumours about his survival - and by October Moscow itself was under siege by rebels. As a result, food prices rose to famine heights inside the city Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii was saved only by a rift in the rebels’ ranks. The gentry among them were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the levelling instincts of the lower orders, and soon went over to him. Thanks to them the siege of Moscow was broken, and the rebels were routed.
Russia Page 17
