| LECTURE#6 |
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What is the Time Of Troubles (1606 – 1613) and its result? Theodore I (1584 – 1598): a power vacuum. Boris Godunov (1598 – 1605). Suppressing boyars & binding peasants closer to their soil. Job, the first Russian patriarch (1589). The famines of 1601 – 1603. The end of the first Muscovite (Ryurikid) dynasty & the Time of Troubles (1606 - 1613). False Dmitry I. Vasily Shuysky’s rule in Moscow. The rebel army under Ivan Bolotnikov (1606). False Dmitry II as the spearhead of Catholic penetration into Russia. Russia, loosing its independence to Poland. Kuzma Minin & Dmirty Pozharsky. The new Russian tsar – Michael Romanov (1613).
Time of Troubles On his death-bed in 1584, Ivan IV appointed Boris Godunov as one of the guardians of his son and heir, Feodor. Like many sons of domineering men, Feodor was weak in will and initiative. Moreover, according to biographers, he was feeble minded. He was never more than a figurehead although 27 when becoming tsar, and a possible successor to Feodor was Ivan''s son by his seventh marriage: Dmitri. In 1591 Dmitri was nine and a half, and that year he died after his throat was slit. Officials claimed that the boy had accidentally cut himself playing with a knife during an epileptic fit. Believing that Dmitri had been murdered, mobs attacked and killed Dmitri''s guardians. Historians suspect that agents of Godunov had murdered Dmitri. At any rate, when Feodor died in 1598, at the age of 40, Ivan''s family had no heirs for the throne, and Boris Godunov was accepted as Moscow''s new tsar. Godunov, meanwhile, had won back the port of Narva from the Swedes, and he invited the British to trade through the port, without tolls. He tried to advance the interests of Russia''s middleclass. Near Moscow, he had fortresses and towns built, to check raiding by the Tatars and Finnish tribes. Godunov was the first of Moscow rulers to send young people abroad to study, and the first to allow Lutheran churches. But despite Godunov''s efforts to do well for Russia his reign ended in disaster. Drought came in 1601, followed by famine. Packs of people roamed about the countryside searching for something to eat. People tried eating bark from trees, and it is said cannibalism appeared again. Nobles could not feed their slaves and drove them out to starve, and an army of desperate slaves harassed Moscow. Rumor spread the Godunov was a usurper and that Russia was being punished for its sins. The famine lasted until 1604, killing, as many as 100,000 in Moscow and a third of Godunov''s subjects. Godunov died suddenly in 1605, in his fifties. He was succeeded by his one son, Theodor II. These were what historians call the Time of Troubles, and rebellion against Moscow authority was in motion. Someone to be known as the False Dmitri claimed to be Muscovy''s true tsar, and he pushed through the Ukraine and entered Moscow in triumph. Godunov''s wife, and Theodor II were assassinated. Nobles were pleased to be rid of the Godunov''s, and the people of Moscow were delighted, believing that another of God''s miracles had rescued them from the usurpers and had brought them their true tsar. Soon they were disappointed, as the False Dmitri failed to follow traditional etiquette. He did not attend church services and went about town dressed as a Pole with an entourage of Poles. The Poles were Roman Catholic and were believed by the Eastern Orthodox Russians to be heretics. In May 1606, the False Dmitri married a Catholic woman who brought with her from Poland more Poles. A Muscovite prince, Basil Shuisky, with allies among the nobles, overthrew and assassinated the False Dmitri and proclaimed that he had been an impostor. And many Muscovites were pleased again. The body of the False Dmitri was publicly displayed and then burned. His ashes were put into a cannon, which was fired in the direction of Poland. Outside Moscow, to the west, north and south, rebellions continued. In early 1609, Prince Basil Shuisky sought and won help from Sweden in exchange for agreeing to an "eternal" alliance against Poland and giving up any plan to expand into Livonia. In agreement with Prince Shuisky, 6,000 soldiers arrived from Sweden to combat rebel forces. Sigismund III of Poland was not pleased by the alliance between Sweden and Moscow and declared war on Moscow. In Moscow, Basil Shuisky was overthrown by a group of nobles who invited the Poles to create law and order. An army from Poland pushed into Moscow in 1610, and the son of Sigismund III, Vladislav, a Roman Catholic, was installed there as tsar. The Swedes believed that if Russia was being carved up they should take a portion for themselves, and they seized the area around Novgorod. The patriarch of the Orthodox church, Hermogen, refused to recognize the Polish tsar, and, in retaliation, the Catholic government let him starve to death. The traditional hostility between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians intensified, and Orthodox Russians formed an army of national liberation. The Poles were driven from Moscow in 1613, and the Russian family named Romanov seized the opportunity to fill the vacant throne. The Romanov family was descended from a German nobleman who had migrated to Moscow in the 1300s. In the 1500s one of the Romanov daughters, Anastasia, had become Ivan IV''s first wife. Her son, Theodor, had been the last tsar of Ivan’s family, the Riurikid dynasty, hence the Romanov claim to royalty. The patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Moscow was a Romanov, and he proclaimed his sixteen-year-old son, Michael, as tsar. A national council of nobles, called the Zemsky Sobor, elected Michael as tsar, and the Russians were relieved to have a legitimate tsar to rally around. The Status of Russian Women In Russia, the husbands and wives of common people were closer than were the husbands and wives of the upper classes. Christian tradition among the Russians held them to the belief that a husband had authority over his wife, and it was common for a religiously devout husband to discipline his wife by beating her. But among common folks a husband and wife were likely to be friends, and to remain friends despite the beatings. Wives, as devout if not more so than their husbands, might expect an occasional beating, and some husbands who beat their wife might ask for her forgiveness. A husband and wife were in need of each other, struggling as they were to survive. They laughed and cried together. They bathed together, and they ate together with other couples of their small community - especially in winter, when they entertained themselves by getting drunk together. The upper classes were more inclined to follow the cultural tradition inherited from the Eastern Orthodox Christianity from Constantinople and keep males and females apart from each other. In upper class families boys and girls were segregated. The tradition from Constantinople held women inferior, as more childlike and simple than men and, given the opportunity, as wicked as the original Eve. Girls were kept locked behind doors and taught prayer and household skills such as embroidery. While still adolescents, girls might be married to someone the father had decided was appropriate - after negotiations involving dowry size and assurances that the girl was a virgin. The father would order the girl to stand with him and be introduced to her husband-to-be. It was common for a little ceremony to follow. The father would touch his daughter''s back with a coiled whip and say that she would now be free of his authority but that he was passing that authority to her future husband who, in his stead, would admonish her with this same whip, which he then gave to the husband-to-be. Carrying on the ritual, the husband-to-be declared that he believed that he would have no need to use the whip, and he attached it to his belt. In the wedding ceremony, the young bride pledged fidelity to her husband. They exchanged rings. They were blessed by the Church, and the bride touched her forehead to her husband''s shoes as a gesture of her subjugation. Then the groom covered his bride with the hem of his coat, symbolizing his obligation to support and protect her. Immediately they went to a nuptial bedroom while the wedding guests partied. The groom was given two hours. Then the guests, in accordance with tradition, burst into the bedroom, and upon hearing confirmation that the girl had been a virgin all cheered and continued their celebration. The bride then went on to a life without rights except through the husband, just as she had had no rights except through her father. It was her duty to see to her husband''s comfort and to bear his children. If the wife of an upperclass man was disobedient he might beat her. A work dating back to 1556, called The Household Management Code, attributed to a monk named Sylvester, advised that a disobedient wife should be whipped, with politeness rather than anger, and in secret. If a women turned on a husband she might try to kill him to protect herself, and if she succeeded and was prosecuted for it punishment was commonly burial up to the neck and being left to die. An exceptionally strong woman with an exceptionally weak husband might dominate her husband. Some upper class wives might play an active role managing the family''s servants. But often upper class wives were merely hidden away. Generally they dressed well, in brightly colored robes with golden threads and billowing sleeves, and they might wear glittering bracelets, but they were not likely to be seen in their glorious clothes except by the servants and her husband. Shopping was done by servants. The daughters of a tsar led the most isolated lives. They were not allowed to marry beneath their rank, and they were forbidden from marrying foreign royalty, considered by the Church to be heretics or infidels. And marriage to a brother as among ancient Egyptian royalty was out of the question. This often left the tsar''s daughters to a life of prayer, embroidery and gossip among other women. They would attend church via secret passage ways, where they would be shielded by a red silk curtain. If they were in a procession they would be behind a wall of canopies. Or if traveling over roads they would be out of sight in a specially designed carriage, sitting next to their maids and escorted by men on horseback who cleared the roads before them. A husband divorced his wife by sending her to a convent. The Church allowed each husband two divorces. A woman sent to a convent had her head shaved and she was dressed in a long black gown with hood. Also in the convent might be widows driven there by greedy relatives wishing to avoid sharing an estate, or wives who had run away, preferring anything to going back to their husbands. These women were expected to die in their convent. Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved. http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h20russ.htm _______________________________________________________________________ POLES ON THE WARPATH The Polish invasion and occupation of Russia, which the Russians refer to as the Time of Troubles, had its origin in the social and economic difficulties inherited from the time of Ivan the Terrible. Ivan IV created what we might call an inner disequilibrium. Every social class in Russia had a bag full of grievances in the 16th century. The old aristocracy had been ruined and those who had survived with their lives sought to restore its former power and glory. But fear and terror pervaded all aspects of Russian life and prevented the formation of sensible policies and programs which would have restored all sense of national unity and pride. The new aristocracy, called dvoriane had no esprit de corps. They were all varied lot and did not have all sense of mutual interest. Some of the estates which the new pomestchiks had acquired were inadequate to sustain their new position in the state and in local administration. There was an overwhelming labor shortage which affected not only the dvorianstvo, but all estate owners, including the state and the church. Hundreds of peasants searched for freedom and economic security in Siberia and other less populated areas and thus contributed to all general exodus of peasants from their former estates. The plight of the peasants was certainly an unpleasant one and no one could really blame them for running away. Special privileges granted to the secular and ecclesiastical landlords contributed to their impossible situation. There was throat-cutting competition among landlords for tenants. The monasteries were the chief beneficiaries of this cruel competition, since most peasants thought they would be better treated by the monks than by their former landlords. This flight of the peasantry was encouraged by the church, which had persuaded the State to give the peasants legal permission for moving on one single day of the year--the holiday of St. George. Many peasants used St. George''s Day to flee from their creditor lords. But flight from the obligation to pay one''s debts had very bad results. It tended to turn the debtor into all slave of the new owner, since the debt could be used to blackmail the peasants. The state intervened to some degree by preventing ''''old timers" to leave. Thus the older peasants were stuck with the debt of their younger compatriots who had the good fortune and the courage to desert without paying the debt. Many peasants fled to the east into Siberia and to the south to join the Cossacks. The government made another effort to assist the fleeing peasants by making it illegal to force them to return after five years. This decree was issued in 1597. But most of the benefits of state intervention went to the lords. The dvorianstvo and the monasteries, for instance, did not have to pay taxes. The commercial tax collectors themselves did not have to pay taxes either. So the poor peasants had to bear the brunt of the financial burden. No wonder they tried to escape from their debtors. The people of the cities, mostly former peasants were no better off and tee government tried to keep them from moving too. So, the sixteenth century was a time when large masses of the Russian population was uprooted. One foreign observer called it a major demographic crisis, which it certainly was. There was a rising wave of popular discontent in every social group and class. Freedom was ruthlessly eliminated by the actions of the state and the frustrated landlords. Perhaps, because of these domestic problems foreign states became involved in Russian affairs. It was certainly tempting since Russia seemed to have lost its unity and cohesion, making it a vulnerable tool for the ambitions of her more powerful neighbors. These hungry neighbors were primarily Poland-Lithuania and Sweden. In 1587 Sigismund III from the Swedish house of Vasa was elected to the Polish-Lithuanian throne. Russia vigorously opposed this election since it threatened to create a large state on her western border. But, despite Russian opposition Sweden and Poland-Lithuania were joined in 1592, when Sigismund succeeded to the Swedish throne. However, the Swedes themselves objected and Sigismund was forced to return to Poland. Russia had been in an almost permanent state of war with Poland. But in 1587 a 15-year armistice was signed between Poland and Russia and Sigismund confirmed this return to peace. Using this armistice with Poland. Russia than tried to recover some territory lost to Sweden by Ivan Iv. The Russians actually occupied Yam and Ivanograd, but failed to take their major objective, Narva. Peace was finally restored again with Sweden in 1595. But Russia'' access to the Baltic was still denied her and disagreements with Sweden, therefore, continued to plague Russian policy-makers and became another cause of the great war with Sweden under Peter the Great. On the eastern border the Tartars were still active, but their invasions were less frequent now. The Crimean Tartars came close to the capital in 1591 but were finally routed near the gates of Moscow. The Crimean khan than sought revenge in 1592 by plundering the cities of Tula and Riazon. When the Russians finally annexed Astrakhan her influence was further expanded into the Caucasus area. When the native population of Western Siberia revolted under the leadership of Ermak and the help of some Cossacks, Boris Gudonov reconquered it and set up some new trading posts at Tobolsk. The situation in the east and south-east was brought under control more or less. These events took place between the death of Ivan Iv in 1584 and the election of Boris Gudonov as tsar in 1598. During this time the actual tsar was Fedor, but he was totally incapable of ruling. The real power was in the hands of a group of boyars. Among these the most powerful turned out to be Boris Gudonov, whose only claim to prominence was the marriage of his sister to the feeble tsar Fedor. Although he had no legitimate claim to the throne Boris Gudonov managed to have himself elected to the tsarship in 1598. For a while managed fairly well, but then the problem of the Pseudo-Dimitry popped up and gave him considerable trouble. It also invited foreign entanglements. Dimitry, the brother of Fedor and son of Maria Nagoi, Ivan IV''s last and illegal wife, was the only legitimate heir. But Dimitry had apparently died at Uglich in 1591; some think he was killed through a conspiracy of boyars inspired by Boris Gudonov. This, of course, opened the way'' for Boris to assume the throne after Fedor died in 1598. However, a series of pretender now claimed that Dimitry had not really died and that therefore the legitimate heir was still about the land and should assume his office. One of these pretenders was a fellow by the name of Gregory Otrepov, who set himself up on the Dniester in a castle owned by the Polish nobleman George Muiszek. He was supported by many other Polish nobles and even became a Roman Catholic in 1804. Part of the reason for the conversion was a proposed union of east and west and the introduction of Roman Catholicism in Russia. Eventually Otrepov became engaged to Marina Muiszek, the daughter of George. Yet, thus far the Polish government was not, apparently involved in these machinations. It was a purely Russian phenomenon, according to the Russian historian Platonov. Some even claim that the Jesuits and the Pope were behind this schemes, but there is no proof for that. What does seen fairly certain is that the powerful boyar family of the Romanovs and other boyars wanted to use Dimitry as a weapon against Boris Gudonov. As a result of this Boris began to persecute the Romanov family'' But this only crystallized the opposition, which began to gather around the so-called Pseudo-Dimitry. When Boris Gudonov died in 1605 many boyars who had been loyal to Boris now would rather switch than fight and consequently went over to the forces of Dimitry. So Dimitry-Otrepov was able to install himself in the Kremlin with his Polish retinues. His success was due to three important factors: 1. the weakness of the Moscow government; 2. the neutrality of the upper classes; and 3. the enthusiasm of the underprivileged and oppressed who looked upon Dimitry as a savior and easily believed the propaganda about him being the real son of Ivan IV and hence the true tsar. The connivance of the Polish government and the assistance of the Polish nobles certainly helped his assumption of power as well, although it was not the determining factor at this time. *The small nucleus of Polish knight in Dimitry''s army soon lost its identity when numerous Russian forces and peasants joined Dimitry''s army as it advanced on the capital in 1604. So the dominant factor was not Polish but Russian. yet once he was established in Moscow the Poles in his retinue began to make trouble. the many foreign mercenaries demanded their pound of flesh. Jesuits and Polish clericals in his following schemed for a re-union of the eastern and western churches. The Russian. both high and low, soon began to resent the foreigners whom Dimitry appointed to high office. Dimitry''s Roman Catholicism and his obvious indifference to orthodox ritual troubled the Russians and made them suspicious. A kind of conservative reaction set in. A series of disputes developed over petty titles and etiquette always involving Poles versus Russians. Then in March 1606 Dimitry and Marina Muiszek were married in a public ceremony within the Kremlin. A large Polish delegation, including many Roman Catholic friars came to the wedding. A massive popular disturbance, instigated by the boyars, led to the murder of Dimitry and hundreds of Poles and Lithuanians'' A boyar by the name of Vasili Shuisky now takes the reigns of government in his hands and calls himself tsar. He is offered support by Charles IX of Sweden against a group of dissident Cossacks who refuse to accept his claim to the throne. But Shuisky refused to accept the offer, probably because he feared that the Swedes also had designs on Russia. In any case, a so-called Second Pretender pops up in Poland in 1607. The Poles under King Sigismund now give more direct aid to the Russian pretender, primarily because Sigismund resents the massacre of the Poles during the wedding of the first pretender in May 1606. The Poles are also incensed at the indignities which the Russians repeatedly heaped on the Polish ambassadors in Russia. This Second Pretender was largely dependent on Polish troops and two Polish magnates, Sapia and Rozynski, assume command of the Polish army for the pretender. The dissident Cossacks are also recruited and led by the Poles. So a war develops between the Russians and the Second Pretender''s Polish-Cossack army with its headquarters at Tushino. This war began in the spring of 1608 and soon led to the blockade of Moscow. Now Shuisky was forced to appeal for foreign help himself. Meanwhile Shuisky is able to make an agreement with Sigismund which brings about a kind of armistice and the withdrawal of Polish-Lithuanian troops serving with the insurgents. This occurred in June 1808. Negotiations are also begun with Sweden and an agreement is made in 1609 which provides for the cession of Russian territory on the Gulf of Finland in return for Swedish military assistance against the remaining dissidents. To aid his nephew, the tsar, prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky now decides to get into the act. The prince begins to gather his own private army of mercenary Swedes, Frenchmen, Englishmen and Scotch adventurers, totaling some 15,000 men, and marches to relieve Moscow. Meanwhile, the Second Pretender at Tushino quarrels with Rozynski and his Polish followers and thus looses his support. As a. result Tushino has to be abandoned and the blockade of Moscow collapsed in 1610. The Poles meanwhile are mad at the Russians for making the alliance with Sweden and in September 1609 they decide to besiege Smolensk. Sigismund also calls on the Poles at Tushino to join his colors and this leads to a split between the Cossacks and Poles and between Rozynski and the Second Pretender. when Rozynski dies in 1610 the remaining Polish troops go over to Sigismund. So the Russian aristocrats and even the leader of the Russian church Filaret who had supported the Pretender go over to the Poles under Sigismund when the star of the Pretender seems to be sinking fast. These Russian nobles who changed their allegiance to the Poles were sarcastically referred to as perelety or ''''migratory birds,'''' which did not of course endear them to the hearts of loyal Russians, especially the common folk. These boyar switch-hitters now made an agreement with Sigismund which promised to take Wladyslav as the new tsar of Muscovy. It also assured the inviolability of Russian institutions and the Orthodox Church, including the rights of landlords over their peasants and the rights of dvoriane to promotion on the basis of service and merit. The still dissident Cossacks meanwhile join the second Pretender who has now migrated to Kaluga. Michael Shuisky dies and is replaced by Prince Dimitry Shuisky--the Shuisky family is bound and determined to get to the seat of power--who in turn is defeated by the Hetman Zolkiewski and his Cossacks. As a result many of Dimitry''s troops desert to the Poles. The Swedes, who had been fighting against some of the Cossacks decide to withdraw to Novgorod. Finally the boyar tsar Vasili Shuisky, who had managed to hang on to the slim threads of power, is dethroned and a government made up of the boyar duma takes over in July 1610. But this boyar duma has accepted the agreement made with Sigismund by the perelety and thus the Poles become the rulers of Moscow between 1610 and 1612. Wladyslav is elected tsar by a questionable Zemski Sobor and the population of Russia (mostly Muscovites) takes an oath of allegiance to the new tsar and to Zolkiewski after the latter defeated the Second Pretender. Opposition to the Poles built up almost as soon as the foreign dictatorship was established in Moscow. The old patriarch Hermogen stimulated anti-Catholic feeling in Moscow. Prokopy Liapunov organized an. opposition army in Riazon, where there were few Poles to stop him. In Nishni-Novgorod a wholesale cattle dealer by the name of Kurzma Minin organized an army to march on Moscow and Hermogen who has bad meanwhile been arrested, spreads opposition from prison. The Cossacks are organized by Prince Trubetskoy and Zarutsky. A large, though scattered, militia is thus organized to free Russia from the Polish intruders. While Moscow is being attacked the Second Pretender, having lost most of his following, is murdered. But the city of Novgorod, always going its own way, severs all ties with Moscow and submits to Swedish suzerainty. But a Polish army manages to storm and take Smolensk, while Rome and Poland celebrate the Polish-Catholic victory. Liapunov fails, but Minin and a new hero by name of Pozharsky organize a militia which marches on Moscow, where the Cossacks have already taken control of a large portion of the city. Two armies under Pozharsky and the Cossacks under Zarutsky are able to defeat a Polish relief army which is sent to hold Moscow. By December 1612 the Poles are completely routed and Russia is once again free of foreign control, although the situation is still faced with the difficult problem of securing a new tsar. So in conclusion we might ask what the significance of this time of trouble really was. Some have insisted that these events constituted a kind of social revolution in Russia. If it was a revolution, it was certainly an abortive one, that achieved very little in the way of substantive social change. The masses were awakened and moved to take joint action; dynasties were changed; there was foreign occupation; there was desolation, hatred, and impoverishment. Yet not a single constructive political idea came out of it all. Energies were expanded to restore the past, not to bring about social change. Muscovite absolutism emerged unscathed from these primitive conflicts and disorders. The only important change was the final breakdown of the ancient princely and boyar families, a process which had already started during the unification and the oprichnina. The successors to the power of the ancient aristocracy were the dvoriane who owed their new wealth and influence to the sovereigns pleasure. This new aristocracy followed the example of the old. what we have here is a mere change of personalities rather than a remodeling of the social structure. The church retained its estates and privileges, as one could have expected. Serfdom was rejuvenated and officially accepted. In fact it was stronger than before and became the very foundation of the Muscovite state. The foreigners merely stimulated chauvinism and the fear to depart from tradition. The Cossacks, the mass of peasants and slaves gain nothing from this movement which they had mainly generated. A small minority of Cossacks were allowed to form military, semiautonomous communities and the masses of slaves and serfs were returned to their masters. The reasons for the failure of this so-called revolution are obvious enough: the anarchistic character of the movement, the inability of the leaders to keep it under the control, the lack of revolutionary vision and the deep-rooted tradition of passive submission. http://mars.vnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/russia/lectures/10poles.html by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College. Also check: http://www.gavle.to/~t.hallqvist/english3.html http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/forestoakms/site%20pages/Academics/Social%20Studies/Russian%20history/page3.html http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz96798b17318.html http://www.vacilando.org.uk/index.php?title=Time_of_Troubles http://www.peoples.ru/state/king/russia/godunov/ On the web sight below one can read A. Pushkin’s play “Boris Godunov” in English: http://www.blackmask.com/books73c/brsgddex.htm |
