Philip Longworth - Russia

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, 23Job — 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. 24One 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 again, 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’. 26Russia, 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.