The turmoil in Russia at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries was a shock that shook the very foundations of the state system.
There are three periods in the development of the Troubles. The first period is dynastic. This is the time of the struggle for the Moscow throne between various contenders, which lasted until Tsar Vasily Shuisky inclusive. The second period is social. It is characterized by the internecine struggle of social classes and the intervention of foreign governments in this struggle. The third period is national. It covers the time of the struggle of the Russian people against foreign invaders until the election of Tsar Mikhail Romanov.
Death of Ivan the Terrible.
After the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584, his son Fyodor, incapable of government affairs, became his successor. “The dynasty was dying out in his face,” remarked the English ambassador Fletcher. “What kind of a tsar I am, it’s easy to confuse me in any business, and it’s not difficult to deceive”, - a sacramental phrase put into the mouth of Fyodor Ioannovich A. K. Tolstoy. The actual ruler of the state was the king's brother-in-law, boyar Boris Godunov, who withstood a fierce struggle with the largest boyars for influence on state affairs. After the death of Fedor in 1598, the Zemsky Sobor elected Godunov as tsar.
Boris Godunov was an energetic and intelligent statesman. In conditions of economic devastation and a difficult international situation, he solemnly promised on the day of his wedding to the kingdom, "that there will be no poor man in his state, and he is ready to share the last shirt with everyone." But the chosen king did not have the authority and advantage of a hereditary monarch, and this could call into question the legality of his being on the throne.
Godunov's government lowered taxes, exempted merchants for two years from paying duties, landowners - for a year from paying taxes. The tsar started a big construction, took care of the education of the country. The patriarchate was established, which increased the rank and prestige of the Russian Church. He also led a successful foreign policy - there was a further advance in Siberia, the southern regions of the country were mastered, the Russian positions in the Caucasus were strengthened.
Godunov Boris Fedorovich.
At the same time, the internal situation in the country under Boris Godunov remained very difficult. In the conditions of unprecedented in scale crop failure and famine 1601-1603. there was a collapse of the economy, people who died of hunger were counted in hundreds of thousands, the price of bread rose 100 times. The government took the path of further enslaving the peasantry. this provoked a protest from the broad masses, who directly linked the deterioration of their situation with the name of Boris Godunov.
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The aggravation of the internal political situation led, in turn, to a sharp decline in the prestige of Godunov not only among the masses, but also among the boyars.
The biggest threat to the power of B. Godunov was the appearance in Poland of an impostor who declared himself the son of Ivan the Terrible. The fact is that in 1591, under unclear circumstances in Uglich, Tsarevich Dmitry, the last of the direct heirs to the throne, died, allegedly having run on a knife in a seizure of epilepsy. Political opponents of Godunov attributed to him organizing the murder of the prince in order to seize power, popular rumor picked up these accusations. However, historians do not have convincing documents that would prove Godunov's guilt.
It was in such conditions that False Dmitry appeared in Russia. This young man by the name of Grigory Otrepiev introduced himself as Dmitry, using rumors that Tsarevich Dmitry was alive, "miraculously escaped" in Uglich. The agents of the impostor actively disseminated in Russia the version about his miraculous salvation from the hands of the murderers sent by Godunov, and proved the legality of his right to the throne. Some assistance in organizing the adventure was provided by Polish magnates. As a result, by the fall of 1604, a powerful army had been formed to march on Moscow.
The beginning of the Troubles
Taking advantage of the current situation in Russia, its fragmentation and instability, False Dmitry with a small detachment crossed the Dnieper near Chernigov.
False Dmitry I - Grigory Otrepiev.
He managed to win over to his side a huge mass of the Russian population, who believed that he was the son of Ivan the Terrible. The forces of False Dmitry grew rapidly, cities opened their gates to him, peasants and townspeople joined his troops. False Dmitry moved on the wave of the outbreak of the peasant war. After the death of Boris Godunov in 1605, the governors began to go over to the side of False Dmitry, in early June Moscow also took his side.
According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, the impostor "was baked in a Polish stove, but hatched in a boyar environment." Without the support of the boyars, he did not have a chance for the Russian throne. On June 1, on Red Square, the letters of the impostor were announced, in which he called Godunov a traitor, and promised "honor and promotion" to the boyars, "mercy" to the nobles and clerks, benefits to merchants, "silence" to the people. The critical moment came when people asked the boyar Vasily Shuisky if the prince was buried in Uglich (it was Shuisky who headed the state commission in 1591 to investigate the death of Tsarevich Dmitry and then confirmed his death from epilepsy). Now Shuisky claimed that the prince had escaped. After these words, the crowd broke into the Kremlin, smashed the houses of the Godunovs and their relatives. On June 20, False Dmitry solemnly entered Moscow.
Sitting on the throne turned out to be easier than staying on it. To strengthen his position, False Dmitry confirmed the feudal legislation, which caused the discontent of the peasants.
But, above all, the tsar did not live up to the expectations of the boyars, because he acted too independently. On May 17, 1606, the boyars led the people to the Kremlin, shouting “The Poles are beating the boyars and the sovereign,” and as a result False Dmitry was killed. Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky ascended the throne. A condition for his accession to the Russian throne was the limitation of power. He vowed “not to do anything without a Council,” and this was the first experience of building a state order based on a formal limitation of the supreme power. But the situation in the country did not normalize.
The second stage of the Troubles
The second stage of the turmoil begins - the social one, when the nobility, metropolitan and provincial, clerks, clerks, Cossacks enter the struggle. However, first of all, this period is characterized by a wide wave of peasant uprisings.
Ivan Isaevich Boltnikov - mysterious adventurer.
In the summer of 1606, a leader appeared among the masses - Ivan Isaevich Bolotnikov. The forces gathered under the banner of Bolotnikov were a complex conglomerate of different strata. There were Cossacks, peasants, slaves, and townspeople, a lot of service people, small and medium feudal lords. In July 1606, Bolotnikov's troops set out on a campaign against Moscow. In the battle near Moscow, Bolotnikov's troops were defeated and were forced to retreat to Tula. On July 30, the siege of the city began, and after three months the Bolotnikovites capitulated, and he himself was soon executed. The suppression of this uprising did not mean the end of the peasant war, but it began to decline.
The government of Vasily Shuisky sought to stabilize the situation in the country. But both the service people and the peasants were still dissatisfied with the government. The reasons for this were different. The nobles felt Shuisky's inability to end the peasant war, while the peasants did not accept the feudal policy. Meanwhile, a new impostor appeared in Starodub (in the Bryansk region), declaring himself the escaped “Tsar Dmitry”. According to many historians, False Dmitry II was a protege of the Polish king Sigismund III, although many do not support this version. The bulk of the armed forces of False Dmitry II were Polish gentry and Cossacks.
"Tushinsky thief" - False Dmitry II.
In January 1608 he moved to Moscow.
Having defeated Shuisky's troops in several battles, by the beginning of June False Dmitry II reached the village of Tushino near Moscow, where he settled in a camp. Pskov, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vologda, Astrakhan swore allegiance to the impostor. The Tushintsy occupied Rostov, Vladimir, Suzdal, and Murom. In Russia, two capitals were actually formed. Boyars, merchants, officials swore allegiance to False Dmitry, then to Shuisky, sometimes receiving salaries from both.
In February 1609, the Shuisky government concluded an agreement with Sweden, counting on help in the war against the “Tushino thief” and his Polish troops. Under this treaty, Russia gave Sweden the Karelian volost in the North, which was a serious political mistake. This gave Sigismund III a pretext for the transition to open intervention. Rzeczpospolita began military operations against Russia with the aim of conquering its territory. Polish troops left Tushino. False Dmitry II, who was there, fled to Kaluga and, ultimately, ingloriously ended his voyage.
Sigismund sent letters to Smolensk and Moscow, where he argued that, as a relative of the Russian tsars and at the request of the Russian people, he was going to save the dying Moscow state and its Orthodox faith.
The Moscow boyars decided to accept help. An agreement was concluded on the recognition of the prince Vladislav as the Russian tsar, and before his arrival to obey Sigismund. On February 4, 1610, an agreement was signed that included a plan for the state structure under Vladislav: the inviolability of the Orthodox faith, restriction of freedom from the arbitrariness of the authorities. The sovereign had to share his power with the Zemsky Sobor and the Boyar Duma.
On August 17, 1610, Moscow swore allegiance to Vladislav. And a month before that, Vasily Shuisky was forcibly tonsured into monks by the nobles and taken to the Chudov Monastery. To govern the country, the Boyar Duma created a commission of seven boyars, called the "seven-boyarshchina". On September 20, the Poles entered Moscow.
Sweden also launched aggressive actions. Swedish troops occupied a significant part of the north of Russia and were preparing to seize Novgorod. Russia faced a direct threat of losing its independence. The aggressive plans of the aggressors caused general indignation. In December 1610 False Dmitry II was killed, but the struggle for the Russian throne did not end there.
The third stage of the Troubles
The death of the impostor immediately changed the situation in the country. The pretext for the presence of Polish troops on Russian territory disappeared: Sigismund explained his actions by the need to "fight the Tushino thief." The Polish army turned into an occupation army, the seven-boyars into a government of traitors. The Russian people united to resist the intervention. The war acquired a national character.
The third period of turmoil begins. From the northern cities, at the call of the patriarch, detachments of Cossacks, led by I. Zarutsky and Prince Dm., Begin to converge to Moscow. Trubetskoy. Thus the first militia was formed. In April - May 1611, Russian troops stormed the capital, but did not achieve success, as internal contradictions and rivalry between the leaders affected. In the fall of 1611, one of the leaders of the Nizhny Novgorod settlement, Kuzma Minin, vividly expressed the desire for liberation from foreign oppression, who appealed to create a militia to liberate Moscow. Prince Dmitry Pozharsky was elected head of the militia.
Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky.
In August 1612, the militia of Minin and Pozharsky reached Moscow, and on October 26 the Polish garrison surrendered. Moscow was liberated. The Time of Troubles or "great devastation" that lasted about ten years is over.
Kuzma Minin.
Under these conditions, the country needed a government of a kind of social reconciliation, a government that could ensure not only cooperation between people from different political camps, but also a class compromise. The candidacy of a representative of the Romanov family suited different strata and classes of society.
After the liberation of Moscow, letters about the convocation of the Zemsky Sobor for the election of a new tsar were scattered throughout the country. The Council, held in January 1613, was the most representative in the history of medieval Russia, reflecting at the same time the balance of forces that developed during the liberation war. Around the future tsar, a struggle broke out, ultimately they agreed on the candidacy of 16-year-old Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, a relative of the first wife of Ivan the Terrible. This circumstance created the appearance of a continuation of the previous dynasty of Russian princes. On February 21, 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected Mikhail Romanov the Tsar of Russia.
Zemsky Sobor in 1613.
From that time on, the reign of the Romanov dynasty began in Russia, which lasted a little more than three hundred years - until February 1917.
So, concluding this section, connected with the history of the "Time of Troubles", it should be noted: acute internal crises and long wars were generated largely by the incompleteness of the process of state centralization, the lack of necessary conditions for the normal development of the country. At the same time, it was an important stage in the struggle for the establishment of the Russian centralized state.