Ivan the Terrible had succeeded in stamping out ruthlessly all open resistance to his will, and had created an autocratic
Theodore I., 1584-1598.
government of the Oriental type; but the elements of disorder were still lying beneath the surface, and as soon as the cunning, energetic despot died they reappeared. His son and successor, Theodore (Feodor), was a weak man of saintly character, very ill fitted to consolidate his father's work and maintain order among the ambitious, turbulent nobles; but he had the good fortune to have an energetic brother-in-law, with no pretensions to sanctity, called Boris Godunov, who was able, with the tsar's moral support, to keep his fellow-boyars in order. This he did during fourteen years, and his administration was signalized by two important innovations—the attaching of the peasants to the land ( adscriptio glebae ) and the creation of the patriarchate—both of which deserve a passing notice.
Boris has often been called the creator of serfage in Russia, but in reality he merely accelerated a process which was the natural result of economic conditions. In a primitive,
Beginnings of serfdom.
thinly populated, agricultural country, in which the demand for agricultural labour greatly exceeds the supply, the value of land is in proportion to the number of permanent labourers settled on it, and the landed proprietors naturally try to attract to their estates as many peasants as possible; and in this competition the large proprietors have evidently an advantage over their humbler and weaker rivals. Such had been for a considerable time the condition of Russia, and the small proprietors were now becoming so impoverished that they could no longer fulfil their duties to the state. The remedy they proposed was that the labourers should be prohibited from migrating from one estate to another, and an order to that effect was issued, with the result that the peasants, being no longer able to change their domicile and seek new employers, fell practically under the unlimited power of the proprietors on whose land they resided. This change was, of course, popular among the lower and middle ranks of the landlord class, but was very displeasing to the great nobles.
The second of the two innovations above mentioned was popular among all classes. Hitherto the highest authority in
The patriarchate.
the Russian Church was the metropolitan, who was nominally under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople, and as soon as Constantinople fell into the hands of the infidel, and the tsars of Muscovy claimed to be the successors of the Byzantine emperors, it seemed right and proper that the Russian Church should become autocephalous and be governed by an independent Russian patriarch. The change was very dexterously effected by Godunov, with the formal assent of the Eastern Orthodox Church as a whole, and one of his adherents was placed on the patriarchal throne.
Having thus gained the support of a large majority of the landed proprietors and the ecclesiastics, Boris Godunov increased
Boris Godunov, 1598-1605.
his influence to such an extent that on the death of Tsar Feodor without male issue in 1598 he was elected his successor by a Great National Assembly. His short reign was not so successful as his administration under the weak Feodor. The oligarchical party considered it a disgrace to obey a simple boyar; conspiracies were frequent, the rural districts were desolated by famine and plague, great bands of armed brigands roamed about the country committing all manner of atrocities, the Cossacks on the frontier were restless, and the government showed itself incapable of maintaining order. Under the influence of the great nobles who had unsuccessfully opposed the election of Godunov, the general discontent took the form of hostility to him as a usurper, and rumours were heard that the late
The pseudo-Demetrius.
tsar's younger brother Dimitri (Demetrius), supposed to be dead, was still alive and in hiding. In 1603 man calling himself Dimitri, and professing to be the rightful heir to the throne, appeared in Poland, and a few months later he crossed the frontier with a large force of Poles, Russian exiles, German mercenaries and Cossacks from the Dnieper and the Don. In reality the younger son of Ivan the Terrible had been strangled before his brother's death—by orders, it was said, of Godunov—and the mysterious individual who was impersonating him was an impostor; but he was regarded as the rightful heir by a large section of the population, and immediately after Boris's death in 1605 he made his triumphal entry into Moscow. Thus began a period of Russian history commonly called “the Troublous Times,” which lasted until 1613. (See Demetrius, Pseudo- .)
The reign of Dimitri was short and uneventful. Before a year had passed a conspiracy was formed against him by
Basil Shuiski, 1606-10.
an ambitious noble called Basil (Vassili) Shuiski, and he was assassinated in the Kremlin. The chief conspirator, Shuiski, seized the power and was elected tsar by an Assembly composed of his faction, but neither the ambitious boyars, nor the pillaging Cossacks, nor the German mercenaries were satisfied with the change, and soon a new impostor, likewise calling himself Dimitri, son of Tsar Ivan, came forward as the rightful heir. Like his predecessor,
Pseudo-Demetrius II., 1608-10.
he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polish king, Sigismund III., and was strong enough to compel Shuiski to abdicate; but as soon as the throne was vacant Sigismund put forward as a candidate his own son, Wladislaus. To this latter the people of Moscow swore allegiance on condition of his maintaining Orthodoxy and granting certain rights, and on this understanding the Polish troops were allowed to occupy the city and the Kremlin. Then Sigismund unveiled his real plan, which was to obtain the throne not for his son but for himself. This scheme did not please any of the contending factions and it roused the anti-Catholic fanaticism of the masses. At the same time it was displeasing to the Swedes, who had become rivals of the Poles on the Baltic coast, and they started a false Dimitri of their own in Novgorod.
Russia was thus in a very critical condition. The throne was vacant, the great nobles quarrelling among themselves,
Accession of the house of Románov.
the Catholic Poles in the Kremlin of Moscow, the Protestant Swedes in Novgorod, and enormous bands of brigands everywhere. The severity of the crisis produced a remedy, in the form of a patriotic rising of the masses under the leadership of a butcher called Minin and a Prince Pozharski. In a short time the invaders were expelled, and a Grand National Assembly elected as tsar Michael Románov, the young son of the metropolitan Philaret, who was connected by marriage with the late dynasty.
During the reign of Michael (1613-45) the new dynasty came to be accepted by all classes, and the country recovered
Michael, 1613-45.
to some extent from the disorders and exhaustion from which it had suffered so severely; but it was not strong enough to pursue at once an aggressive foreign policy, and the tsar prudently determined to make peace with Sweden and conclude an armistice of fourteen years with Poland. At the conclusion of the armistice in 1632, during a short interregnum in Poland, he attempted to avenge past injuries and recover lost territory; but the campaign was not successful, and in 1634 he signed a definitive treaty by no means favourable to Russia. That lesson was laid to heart, and he subsequently maintained a purely defensive attitude. As a precaution against Tatar invasions he founded fortified towns on his southern frontiers—Tambov, Kozlov, Penza and Simbirsk; but when the Don Cossacks offered him Azov, which they had captured from the Turks, and a National Assembly, convoked for the purpose of considering the question, were in favour of accepting it as a means of increasing Russian influence on the Black Sea, he decided that the town should be restored to the sultan, much to the disappointment of its captors.