Shuiskii was deposed when a Polish army captured the Kremlin (he died in Polish captivity and is buried near Warsaw). Between 1610 and 1612 boyar clans negotiated with Polish King Sigismund Vasa regarding succession by him or his son Wladyslaw, also insisting on no arbitrary arrest or treatment of elites. Muscovite armies expelled the Poles from Moscow in late 1612 before negotiations were finalized, and the selection of Michael Romanov as the new tsar demonstrated the traditional ideology at work—his succession was made legitimate by a claim of dynastic heritage (he was the grand-nephew of Ivan IVs first wife Anastasiia) and by public consensus. Hundreds of representatives of the gentry, Cossacks, and taxpaying townsmen were summoned to Moscow to select a tsar. Throughout January and February 1613 delegates debated options, rejecting foreign candidates and settling on Michael Romanov. Back-room politics undoubtedly played a role, as this was a shrewd choice for the ruling elite. In selecting 16-year-old Michael Romanov, whose boyar father had been forcibly tonsured by Boris Godunov and was in exile in the Commonwealth in 1613, they expected a weak ruler. Again, all this consultation was traditional affirmation, not constitutional power. Crowned in the Kremlin, Michael Romanov instituted the ritual, thereafter standard, of bringing the empire's entire populace to swear an oath of allegiance to the new tsar (Empress Elizabeth in 1741 ceased asking landlords' serfs to take the oath; Paul I restored the practice in 1796). Russia returned to previous patterns of autocratic rule: Michael Romanov's father returned to Russia in 1619 to become effectively co-tsar as Patriarch Filaret, the new dynasty cultivated and expanded the elite, councils were called less and less frequently (only to deal with immediate issues of war and peace), and the new dynasty projected legitimacy by symbolically "restoring" as much of sixteenth-century court procedure as possible while harshly punishing dissent. An illustrated history of Michael Romanov's accession, done decades later, underscores the significance of popular consensus by depicting hundreds of people welcoming him as he entered Moscow in 1613 (Figure 6.8).
Accidents ofbirth shaped tsarist succession differently in the seventeenth century than in the preceding. As a rule, succession was stable. Only Michael Romanov's sons were considered sovereign; his collateral kin were lavished with lands, boyar status, and wealth, but were not given appanages, any hint of sovereign power, or place in succession. Succession was made easier by the fact that few sons survived; daughters, however, proliferated. Michael Romanov (1613-45) left three daughters of a total of seven, but he had only one son, who succeeded as Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645-76). Aleksei Mikhailovich and his two wives in turn had ten daughters (eight of whom survived to adulthood) and four sons (three of whom survived him). To prevent rival power bases, none of these sons received territorial appanages and none of the daughters was allowed to marry, domestically or abroad, to prevent factions from proliferating. Aided by long reigns, Romanov succession flowed smoothly with minimal struggle among boyars from 1613 to 1682, when Tsar Fedor Alekseevich (1676-82) died without issue, leaving one brother from each of his father's two marriages (to Mariia Miloslavskaia and Natalia Naryshkina).
As in Ivan IV's minority, the stakes were so high for boyar clans that violence broke out. The claim of 16-year-old Ioann and his Miloslavskii clan against that of 10-year-old Peter and his Naryshkin clan was weakened by Ioann's physical disabilities; initially the patriarch summoned a council of hierarchs, court elites, and Moscow townsmen, less capacious than many such Councils, but within the tradition. It declared Peter tsar. The Miloslavskie then took advantage ofgrievances among the Moscow musketeers to incite them into a rebellion that quickly attracted urban masses. Their storming of the Kremlin and arson across the city resulted in the murders of several boyars, including Peter's uncle Ivan Naryshkin. The victorious Miloslavskii faction then engineered what Lindsey Hughes calls "a makeshift assembly similar to the one that had elected Peter"; it proposed the unprecedented solution that the two boys share the throne. Oath-kissing around the realm and coronation of the two tsars followed. The Miloslavskie then promptly took charge, with Sofiia Alekseevna acting as regent for Ioann, and Peter and his Naryshkin kinsmen expelled from the Kremlin.
From May 1682 the remarkable Sofiia Alekseevna de facto ruled, but traditional political culture came to bear in 1689 when Peter reached maturity, symbolized by his marriage in January. This, compounded by Ioann's inability
Figure 6.8 An illustrated book of 1673 depicts the 1613 election and coronation of the new Romanov dynasty; here the thousands celebrating 16-year-old Michael Romanov and his mother on the way to Moscow suggest the legitimacy of his succession. General Research Division, The New York Public Library.
to produce a male heir, reignited tensions and by autumn boyar clans had read the handwriting on the wall. Avoiding violence, they trekked out to swear loyalty to Peter at his place of refuge, the Trinity-St. Sergii Monastery. Peter deposed Sofiia, Ioann endured as co-ruler until his death in 1696, and the Naryshkin faction ousted the Miloslavskie. Despite this crescendo of violence and factional struggle, succession by primogeniture was fairly regular from the fifteenth century to 1689, with crises over Ivan IVs marriage (1533-47) and disputes between factions in tsarist in-laws in 1682.
Otherwise, violence flared up rarely in this political system; in this regard one might mention the infamous Oprichnina of Ivan IV. From 1564 to 1572, Ivan carved out a physical territory for himself and his "Oprichnina" army as a sort of "widow's bench," a place to retire to, leaving the rest ofthe realm to be ruled by the boyars as "the Land." From 1564 to 1572, Ivan ruled the state from the Oprichnina court at Aleksandrov, while he acted out a facade of living in an appanage. He set up the Oprichnina territory with its own administration and army that grew to 6,000, recruited from non-boyar lines of established clans as well as from lower families. His new men were granted lands (confiscated from established princely and gentry families) with generous immunities at a time when appanages, and to a lesser extent immunities, were being phased out. Later, continuing the appanage analogy, in 1575 Ivan transferred his tsar's title to the Chinggisid tsarevich Semeon Bekbulatovich for a year in 1575, "retiring" from rule.
The Oprichnina was exceedingly violent, even taking into account the literary luridness of non-witness foreign accounts: elite families were dispossessed of their lands and many high ranking men murdered; Oprichnina troops killed indiscriminately. Memorial records cite up to 4,000 losses, including hundreds in the sack of Novgorod in 1570. But no method has been found in Oprichnina madness: no single institution, region, or social class was targeted; suffering fell on all with no discernible social or political goals. No new institutions or political practices were established, although some new Oprichnina families endured in elite status. Once it was over, Russia reverted to the same institutions ofgovernment, the same ideologies, the same boyar clans in charge, with a larger elite, a ravaged economy (the Livonian War was a fiasco, taxes had skyrocketed), and undoubtedly a deep psychological wound in individuals and groups. The impact ofthe violence can be sensed in part by efforts of the next several regimes (Boris Godunov, Mikhail Romanov) to avoid violence with the elite, as Andrei Pavlov has stressed, and also by an unprecedented emergence of history writing focusing on tyranny and legitimacy.