In spite of the recovery in the economy, the consequences of the economic and social crisis had not been entirely overcome by the end of the sixteenth century: most of the arable land and farmsteads in the majority of districts remained unworked, and the rural population had not returned to its pre- crisis level.38 Before it had recovered from the post-oprichnina crisis, Russia's economic system suffered a new blow at the beginning of the seventeenth century - a terrible famine which lasted for three years and which affected the entire territory ofthe country. The famine of 1601-3 cost hundreds of thousands of human lives. Godunov's government enacted energetic measures to alleviate the consequences of this natural disaster. It took steps to combat speculation in grain: royal decrees prescribed fixed prices for grain and the punishment of speculators; large sums of money were distributed in the capital and in other towns to help the starving; and public works were organised. But these measures failed to bring about a significant improvement in the situation.
37 Platonov, Ocherkipo istorii Smuty, p. 160.
38 Kolycheva, Agrarnyi stroi, p. 201; Agrarnaia istoriia, p. 296.
Against the background of famine and economic crisis, social conflicts were exacerbated, and a widespread flight of peasants and slaves took place. In order to alleviate the build-up of social tensions, in the autumn of i60i the government issued a decree which solemnly announced that the peasants' traditional right of departure on St George's Day was being restored.[36] But this arrangement was re-established only on the lands of the provincial nobility and the lowest-ranking courtiers. Peasants on court and state lands did not gain the right to move, nor did peasants who belonged to large-scale ecclesiastical and secular landowners. As before, Boris Godunov did not want to infringe the interests of the influential ruling elite. By making concessions to the enserfed peasantry and to the large-scale landowners, the government damaged the interests of the mass of the gentry. In order to prevent the complete ruination of the petty servicemen, the decree permitted nobles to transfer no more than one or two peasants 'among themselves'. The terms of the 1601 decree were reaffirmed in a new decree of 24 November i602. The practical implementation of the decrees of 1601 and 1602 not only failed to reduce the social discord, but significantly increased it. The peasants interpreted the laws in their own interests, as granting them complete freedom from serfdom, while the noble landowners defied the provisions of the legislation by obstructing peasant movement in every way. The law was not reissued in 1603, and at the end of his reign Boris Godunov returned to his old policy of enserf- ment.[37] This increased the discontent of the peasantry. At the same time, the popularity of Godunov's government among the nobility was significantly undermined.
In a situation characterised by famine and economic crisis, disturbances began among the lower social classes. In the autumn of i603 a large-scale bloody battle took place on the outskirts of Moscow between government forces and a substantial detachment of insurgents led by a certain Khlopko. The government repeatedly sent troops of noble servicemen to suppress disturbances in various towns. In Soviet historiography all of these events were considered to be symptoms of class struggle on the part of the peasantry, and to mark the beginning of a Peasant War.[38] This interpretation was convincingly challenged by R. G. Skrynnikov, who demonstrated that the popular unrest of 1601-3 had been on a smaller scale than previously thought, and that the disturbances themselves did not amount to much more than ordinary banditry.[39]
The situation on the southern frontiers was particularly tense. At the beginning of the seventeenth century great hordes of fugitive peasants and slaves had fled southwards from the central and northern regions of the country and had joined the ranks of the 'free' cossacks. Their numbers were swelled not only by agricultural workers, but also by the boyars' military slaves and even by impoverished nobles. The cossack hosts were fairly numerous; battle- hardened in conflicts with the Tatars and Turks, they represented a military force to be reckoned with. What is more, the cossacks were unhappy about the construction of the new towns on the southern frontier, which drove a wedge into their lands. The sharp increase in grain prices during the famine had encouraged the cossacks to make more frequent raids into Crimean and Turkish territory, which threatened to bring about international complications for Russia. The cossacks also attacked Russian settlements and merchant caravans. All of these developments forced Boris Godunov's government to introduce a number of repressive measures against them, and, in particular, to prohibit the sale of gunpowder and food supplies to the Don.[40] But Godunov's repressions were not able to pacify the 'free cossackry' and merely accelerated the outbreak of its dissatisfaction.
In an attempt to safeguard the food supply of its newly annexed southern lands, the government introduced a widespread initiative to compel the local population to perform labour services (barshchina) on state lands (the so-calledgosudareva desiatinnaiapashnia, or sovereign's tithe ploughlands). But because the peasant population in this region was small, the tilling of the land was mainly carried out by the servicemen 'by contract' (pribornye) and by the petty gentry, who had to combine the burden of military service with heavy agricultural labour. All of this could not fail to provoke protest from the servicemen of the southern towns. The small-scale southern landholders were greatly enraged by the expansion of large-scale boyar landownership on to the fertile lands of the south. The proximity of these big landowners, who were influential at court, harmed the economy of the petty servicemen, and this provoked their hatred towards the 'boyar' government in Moscow.
At the end of Boris Godunov's reign the southern frontier was a powder keg, ready to explode from any spark. The spark was provided by the incursion into Russian territory of a pretender claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitrii, who had supposedly escaped from the assassins sent by Godunov to kill him. Godunov's government claimed that he was Grigorii Otrep'ev, a fugitive unfrocked monk and former nobleman from Galich, and this remains the most convincing explanation of the identity of the man who posed as Ivan the Terrible's son, Dmitrii.[41]
At the time when it crossed the Russian frontier in the autumn of 1604, the False Dmitrii's army consisted only of 2,000 Polish noblemen and a few thousand Zaporozhian and Don cossacks. However, as it advanced further towards the Russian heartland, it recruited impressive new forces. The pretender's success was guaranteed primarily by the extensive support he received from the free cossacks and from the population of the southern frontiers who rebelled against Godunov. The townspeople of the south voluntarily recognised the 'true' Tsar Dmitrii and handed their governors over to him.
37
V.I. Koretskii,
38
1.1. Smirnov
40
A. L. Stanislavskii,
41
R. G. Skrynnikov