Typological characteristics
These five rituals presented distinct aspects of the political ideas that made up the myth of the Muscovite ruler. All required the presence of the ruler, but one, the Fiery Furnace ritual, was performed as a liturgical drama and afforded him a passive, observer's role. It was also the only one of the five performed completely inside the Dormition and the only one that alluded to a distinction between good and evil emperors, and good and evil advisers, elements of a typology realised in contemporary literature.[331] Two ofthe rituals were limited to the outside spaces within the Kremlin (New Year and Last Judgement rituals in Cathedral Square) and featured the contemplation of crossing temporal boundaries, from the year ending to the 'year of the Lord's favour', and from history to eternity, respectively. Both alluded to Kremlin iconography, in the Golden Hall and outside the Dormition cathedral, respectively.
The two most significant and solemn of the royal rituals were much more complex in nature, revealing not only protocols of performance but semiotic representation on the iconographic, historical and eschatological levels. The Epiphany ritual and the revised Palm Sunday ritual utilised space inside and outside the Kremlin, emblematic of their more extensive, universal significance. Both used performance to re-enact events in the life of Christ, thereby introducing immediate association with the Holy Land: the Moscow River with the River Jordan, and the city of Moscow with the New Jerusalem. Both were influenced by the iconography of the Baptism and the Entry into Jerusalem. And both recalled pivotal historical events: the baptism of Vladimir, which launched the Christian history of the Rus', and Ivan IV's defeat of Kazan', which resulted in his triumphant entry into Moscow. As though at communion, observers of both rituals could partake of material objects made holy in the presence of the prelate and ruler: the water of the Moscow River and the constructed tree.
The contingent rituals were concerned primarily with matters of the present; the cyclical rituals with issues of fate and deliverance. This is especially true for the rituals thematically tied to Jerusalem. With the microcosmic Jerusalem as a site of pilgrimage, the River Jordan as an annual source of regeneration, and Golgotha as pulpit, the leaders of Church and state declared their intention by century's end to supplement the political ideas of Muscovy with a clearer vision of its messianic destiny following the Last Judgement and the Apocalypse. It was this conception of Muscovite ideology that survived the demise of the Riurikid dynasty and was carefully nurtured by its Romanov successors as the seventeenth century unfolded.
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The Time of Troubles (1603-1613)
MAUREEN PERRIE
Historians have used the term, 'The Time of Troubles' (smutnoe vremia, smuta), to refer to various series of events in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The classic study by S. F. Platonov, first published in 1899, dated the start of the Troubles to the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584, when a power struggle among the boyars began. It ended, according to Platonov, with the election of Michael Romanov to the throne in 1613.[332] In the Soviet period, the term, 'Time of Troubles', was abandoned in favour of the concept of a 'peasant war', derived from Friedrich Engels's study ofthe events in Germany in 1525.[333] I. I. Smirnov's account of the Bolotnikov revolt of 1606-7 identified that episode alone as the 'first peasant war' in Russia, but after Stalin's death some Soviet historians argued that the entire sequence of events from 1603 (the Khlopko uprising) to 1614 (the defeat of Zarutskii's movement) constituted a 'peasant war'.[334] Towards the end of the Soviet era, Russian historians rejected the notion of a 'peasant war' and either reverted to the use of the older term, 'Time of Troubles', or introduced the idea of a 'civil war'.[335] Western historians were never persuaded by the 'peasant war' concept for this period, preferring to retain the term, 'Time of Troubles'.[336] Chester Dunning's adoption of 'civil war' terminology, like that of the Russian historians R. G. Skrynnikov and
A. L. Stanislavskii, involves a conscious rejection of'class struggle' approaches to the period, and stresses vertical rather than horizontal divisions in Russian society. The 'civil war' approach also plays down the significance of foreign intervention - which was heavily stressed both in Stalin-era Soviet historiography and in some pre-revolutionary accounts - and finds the origins of the Troubles primarily in internal Russian problems.
This chapter presents the 'Time of Troubles' as beginning with the First False Dmitrii's invasion of Russia in the autumn of 1604. In the aftermath of the famine of 1601-3, the pretender's challenge to Boris Godunov's legitimacy as tsar interacted with the social grievances of the population of the southern frontier to produce a highly explosive mixture.
The First False Dmitrii
In the summer of 1603 a young man appeared on the estate of Prince Adam Vishnevetskii at Brahin in Lithuania. He claimed to be Tsarevich Dmitrii, Ivan the Terrible's youngest son, who had died under mysterious circumstances at Uglich in 1591. The youth explained that he had escaped from assassins sent by Boris Godunov to kill him, and was now seeking help to gain his rightful throne. Vishnevetskii apparently found his story credible, and reported it first to the Polish chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, and then to King Sigismund himself. The pretender obtained the patronage of Adam Vishnevetskii's cousin, Prince Constantine Vishnevetskii, and of Prince Constantine's father-in-law, Jerzy Mniszech, the Palatine of Sandomierz, whose family seat was at Sambor, in Poland. Mniszech offered Dmitrii military aid in return for the promise of territorial gains at the expense of Russia. Their agreement was cemented by the pretender's betrothal to Mniszech's daughter, Marina, and by his secret adoption of Roman Catholicism. In March 1604 the self-styled Dmitrii had an audience with the king in Cracow, where they discussed the prospect of Russia's conversion to Catholicism. The king, however, faced strong opposition in the Sejm to a military adventure in support of the pretender, which would have infringed the peace treaty that had been concluded between Poland and Russia in 1601. Sigismund was able to offer only unofficial encouragement to the undertaking. Dmitrii returned with Mniszech to Sambor, and spent the summer gathering military support. At the end of August they began their march on Muscovy to topple the 'usurper' Boris Godunov from the throne.
Who was this pretender who has become known as the 'First False Dmitrii'? Boris Godunov's government identified him as Grigorii Otrep'ev, a renegade monk of noble origin. This view has predominated in subsequent scholarship, although there have been some dissenting voices: Chester Dunning not only rejects the view that the pretender was Otrep'ev, but has even revived the idea that he may indeed have been Dmitrii of Uglich.[337] Although Dmitrii's real identity is impossible to prove definitively, the argument that he was Otrep'ev continues to be the most persuasive in the eyes of most modern historians.[338]It is also true, however, that the pretender performed his role with such self- confidence that he himselfmay well have believed that he really was Tsarevich Dmitrii.
332
S. F. Platonov,
333
I. I. Smirnov,
334
For example, A. A. Zimin, 'Nekotorye voprosy istorii krest'ianskoi voiny v Rossii v nachale XVII veka',
335
R. G. Skrynnikov,
336
Maureen Perrie,