In October 1582, Ivan the Terrible had a son, Dmitry, who had the share of becoming the last offspring (in the male line) of the royal dynasty of Rurikovich. According to the accepted historiography, Dmitry lived for eight years, but his name hung a curse over the Russian state for another 22 years.
The Russian people often have the feeling that the Motherland is under some kind of spell. "Everything is different with us - not like normal people." At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries in Russia, they were sure that they knew the root of all troubles - it was all the fault of the curse of the innocently murdered Tsarevich Dmitry.
Nabat in Uglich
For Tsarevich Dmitry, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible (from the last marriage with Maria Naga, which, by the way, was never recognized by the church), it all ended on May 25, 1591, in the city of Uglich, where he was in the status of the appanage prince of Uglich, was in honorary exile … At noon, Dmitry Ioannovich threw knives with the other children who were part of his retinue. In the materials of the investigation into the death of Dmitry, there is evidence of one youth who played with the tsarevich: "… the tsarevich played with a knife with them in the backyard, and an illness came to him - an epilepsy - and threw himself on the knife." In fact, these testimonies became the main argument for the investigators to qualify the death of Dmitry Ioannovich as an accident. However, the inhabitants of Uglich would hardly have been convinced by the arguments of the investigation. Russian people have always trusted more signs,rather than the logical conclusions of "humans". And there was a sign … And what a sign! Almost immediately after the heart of the youngest son Ivan the Terrible stopped, an alarm sounded over Uglich. The bell of the local Spassky Cathedral was ringing. And all would be fine, only the bell rang by itself - without the ringer. There is a legend about this, which for several generations the Uglians considered a reality and a fatal sign.
When the residents learned about the death of the heir, a riot began. The Uglichs destroyed the Prikaznaya hut, killed the sovereign clerk with his family and several other suspects. Boris Godunov, who actually ruled the state under the nominal tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, hastily dispatched archers to Uglich to suppress the rebellion. Not only the rebels got it, but also the bell: it was torn from the bell tower, the “tongue” was pulled out, the “ear” was cut off and publicly in the main square was punished with 12 lashes. And then he, along with other rebels, was sent into exile, to Tobolsk. The then Tobolsk voivode, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, ordered the corn-eared bell to be locked in the commanding hut, having made the inscription “the most exalted inanimate from Uglich” on it. However, the massacre of the bell did not save the authorities from the curse - everything was just beginning.
End of the Rurik dynasty
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After the news of the death of the tsarevich spread throughout the Russian land, rumors spread among the people that the boyar Boris Godunov had a hand in the "accident". But there were daredevils who suspected of a "conspiracy", and the then tsar - Fyodor Ioannovich, half-brother of the deceased prince. And there were reasons for this.
40 days after the death of Ivan the Terrible, Fyodor, the heir to the Moscow throne, began to actively prepare for his coronation. By his order, a week before the wedding to the kingdom, the widow-queen Maria and her son Dmitry Ioannovich were sent to Uglich - "to reign." The fact that the last wife of Tsar John IV and the prince were not invited to the coronation was a terrible humiliation for the latter. However, Fedor did not stop there: for example, the content of the prince's court was sometimes reduced several times a year. Just a few months after the beginning of his reign, he instructed the clergy to remove the traditional mention of the name of Tsarevich Dmitry during divine services. The formal reason was that Dmitry Ioannovich was born in the sixth marriage and, according to church rules, was considered illegitimate. However, everyone understood that this was only an excuse. The ban on mentioning the tsarevich during divine services was perceived by his court as a death wish. There were rumors among the people about the failed assassination attempts on Dmitry. Thus, the Briton Fletcher, being in Moscow in 1588-1589, wrote that his nurse died from the poison intended for Dmitry.
Six months after the death of Dmitry, the wife of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, Irina Godunova, became pregnant. Everyone was waiting for the heir to the throne. Moreover, according to legends, the birth of a boy was predicted by numerous court magicians, healers and healers. But in May 1592, the queen gave birth to a girl. There were rumors among the people that Princess Theodosia, as the parents called her daughter, was born exactly a year after Dmitry's death - on May 25, and the royal family delayed the official announcement for almost a month. But this was not yet the most terrible sign: the girl lived only a few months, and died in the same year. And here they began to talk about the curse of Dmitry. After the death of his daughter, the tsar changed; he finally lost interest in his royal duties, and spent months in monasteries. People said that Fyodor atoned for his guilt in front of the murdered prince. In the winter of 1598, Fyodor Ioannovich died without leaving an heir. The Rurik dynasty also died with him.
Great Famine
The death of the last sovereign from the Rurik dynasty opened the way to the kingdom of Boris Godunov, who in fact was the ruler of the country while Fedor Ioannovich was still alive. By that time, Godunov had a reputation among the people of the "murderer of the tsarevich", but this did not bother him much. Through cunning manipulations, he was nevertheless elected king, and almost immediately began with reforms.
In two short years, he carried out more transformations in the country than previous kings in the entire 16th century. And when Godunov had already, it seemed, won the people's love, a catastrophe burst out - from unprecedented climatic cataclysms, the Great Famine came to Russia, which lasted for three whole years. The historian Karamzin wrote that people “like cattle, they nibbled on grass and ate it; hay was found in the mouth of the dead. Horse meat seemed to be a delicacy: they ate dogs, cats, bitches, all kinds of filth. People became worse than beasts: they left their families and wives so as not to share the last piece with them.
They not only robbed, killed for a hunk of bread, but also devoured each other … Human meat was sold in pies in the markets! Mothers gnawed on the corpses of their babies!..”More than 120,000 people died of hunger in Moscow alone; numerous gangs of robbers were operating throughout the country. Not a trace remained of the people's love for the chosen tsar that was born - the people again spoke of the curse of Tsarevich Dmitry and the "damned Borisk".
End of the Godunov dynasty
1604 finally brought a good harvest. It seemed that the troubles were over. It was the calm before the storm - in the fall of 1604 Godunov was informed that the army of Tsarevich Dmitry was moving from Poland to Moscow, miraculously escaping from the hands of Godunov's killers in Uglich back in 1591. "Rabotsar", as Boris Godunov was called among the people, probably realized that Dmitry's curse was now embodied in an impostor. However, Tsar Boris was not destined to meet face to face with False Dmitry: he died suddenly in April 1605, a couple of months before the triumphant entry into Moscow of "escaped Dmitry". There were rumors that the desperate "accursed king" committed suicide - poisoned. But Dmitry's curse also extended to Godunov's son, Fyodor, who became king, who was strangled with his own mother shortly before False Dmitry entered the Kremlin. They saidthat this was one of the main conditions for the "tsarevich" for a triumphant return to the capital.
The end of popular confidence
Until now, historians argue whether the "king was not real." However, we will probably never know about it. Now we can only say that Dmitry did not manage to revive the Rurikovichs. And again the end of spring became fatal: on May 27, a cunning conspiracy was staged in the boyars under the leadership of Vasily Shuisky, during which False Dmitry was killed. They announced to the people that the tsar, whom they had recently idolized, was an impostor, and they staged a public posthumous desecration. This absurd moment finally undermined the people's trust in the authorities. Ordinary people did not believe the boyars and bitterly mourned Dmitry.
Soon after the murder of the impostor, at the beginning of summer, a terrible frost struck, which destroyed all crops. In Moscow, rumors spread about the curse that the boyars had brought upon the Russian Land by killing the legitimate sovereign. The cemetery at the Serpukhov Gate of the capital, where the impostor was buried, became a place of pilgrimage for many Muscovites. There were many testimonies about the "appearances" of the risen tsar in different parts of Moscow, and some even claimed that they received a blessing from him. Frightened by popular unrest and a new cult of the martyr, the authorities dug up the corpse of the "thief", loaded his ashes into a cannon and fired at Poland. The wife of False Dmitry Marina Mnishek recalled when the body of her husband was dragged through the Kremlin gates, the wind blew off the shields from the gates, and unharmed, in the same order, installed them in the middle of the roads.
The end of the Shuiskys
The new tsar was Vasily Shuisky - the man who, in 1598, initiated an investigation into the death of Tsarevich Dmitry in Uglich. The man who concluded that the death of Dmitry Ioannovich was an accident, having put an end to False Dmitry and received tsarist power, suddenly admitted that the investigation in Uglich had evidence of the violent death of the tsarevich and direct involvement in the murder of Boris Godunov. Saying this, Shuisky killed two birds with one stone: he discredited his personal enemy Godunov, even if he was already dead, and at the same time proved that False Dmitry, who was killed during the conspiracy, was an impostor. Vasily Shuisky even decided to reinforce the latter with the canonization of Tsarevich Dmitry.
A special commission was sent to Uglich, headed by Metropolitan Filaret of Rostov, which opened the tsarevich's grave and allegedly found an incorrupt body of a child in the coffin, which oozed a fragrance. The relics were solemnly brought to the Archangel Cathedral of the Kremlin: a rumor spread throughout Moscow that the boy's remains were miraculous, and the people went to Saint Dmitry for healing. However, the cult did not last long: there were several cases of death from touching the relics. Rumors about false relics and the curse of Dmitry spread throughout the capital. The cancer with the remains had to be removed out of sight into the reliquary. And very soon, several more Dmitriev Ioannovichs appeared in Russia, and the Shuisky dynasty, the Suzdal branch of the Rurikovich, who for two centuries were the main rivals of the Danilovich branch for the Moscow throne, was interrupted at the first tsar. Vasily ended his life in Polish captivity: in the country towards which, on his order, the ashes of False Dmitry I were once shot.
The final curse
The Troubles in Russia ended only in 1613 - with the establishment of a new dynasty of the Romanovs. But did Dmitry's curse run dry with this? The 300-year history of the dynasty suggests otherwise. Patriarch Filaret (in the world Fyodor Nikitich Romanov), the father of the first "Romanov" tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, was in the midst of "passions for Dmitry". In 1605, he, imprisoned by Boris Godunov in a monastery, was released as a "relative" by False Dmitry I. After Shuisky's accession, it was Filaret who brought the "miraculous relics" of the tsarevich from Uglich to Moscow and planted the cult of St. Dmitry Uglitsky - in order to convince that once the False Dmitry who saved him was an impostor. And then, having risen in opposition to Tsar Vasily, he became the "named patriarch" in the Tushino camp of False Dmitry II.
Filaret can be considered the first of the Romanov dynasty: under Tsar Mikhail he bore the title "Great Sovereign" and was actually the head of state. The reign of the Romanovs began with the Troubles and the Troubles ended. Moreover, for the second time in Russian history, the tsarist dynasty was interrupted by the murder of the tsarevich. There is a legend that Paul I closed in a chest for a hundred years the prediction of Elder Abel concerning the fate of the dynasty. It is possible that the name of Dmitry Ioannovich appeared there….