Boris Godunov and the Time of troubles from Cambridge History of Russia, volume 1

In March 1608 the Polish commander Prince Roman Rozynski arrived in Orel with a large detachment of cavalry, and ousted the hetman Mikolaj Miechowicki as commander-in-chief of Dmitrii's army. Perhaps as a result of Rozynski's influence, the pretender began to tone down the more socially divisive elements of his propaganda. From the spring of 1608 onwards, he tried to bid for the support of noble servicemen rather than that of military slaves. In a proclamation to Smolensk in April I608, Dmitrii condemned the reign of terror which Tsarevich Peter had introduced at Putivl' and Tula, and dissoci­ated himself from the various cossack 'tsareviches' who had appeared on the Volga and on the steppe.[361] He had already executed one of these - 'Tsarevich Fedor Fedorovich' - at the end of I607; he later hanged the Astrakhan' pre­tenders Ivan Augustus and Lavrentii at Tushino, probably in the summer of I608. What happened to the other seven pretenders who were named in his proclamation is unknown.

At the end of April 1608 Dmitrii marched from Orel towards Bolkhov, where Tsar Vasilii's army, commanded by his brother, Prince Dmitrii Shuiskii, was encamped. Rozynski inflicted a major defeat on Shuiskii, and occupied Bolkhov, before advancing on the capital via Kozel'sk, Kaluga, Borisov and Mozhaisk. The pretender's troops set up camp in the village of Tushino, just outside Moscow. On 25 June they defeated Shuiskii again at Khodynka, but were unable to take the capital. Dmitrii entrenched himself at Tushino, where he was to remain until the end of the following year.

Although the Polish troops who had joined the pretender's camp had done so without the official sanction of King Sigismund, Tsar Vasilii hoped to persuade the king to put pressure on his fellow countrymen to leave Russia. In a treaty signed in July i608 Shuiskii agreed to release the Mniszechs and other Poles imprisoned in Russia; in return, Sigismund promised that all Polish troops at Tushino would be withdrawn. In practice, after their release the Mniszechs ended up at Tushino, where Marina was 'reunited' with her 'husband'; and not only did the Polish soldiers fail to leave Tushino, but others soon joined them. The most notable ofthe new arrivals was Jan-Piotr Sapieha, a nephew of the Lithuanian chancellor Leo Sapieha.

The initial successes of the pretender's troops undermined support for Tsar Vasilii in Moscow, and from the autumn of 1608 many boyars and noblemen transferred their allegiance to Tushino. Subsequently some of these men switched sides more than once (they were described by a con­temporary as 'migratory birds'),[362] but Dmitrii managed to acquire a boyar duma and sovereign's court which included some eminent Muscovite aris­tocrats, including the Princes D. T. and Iu. N. Trubetskoi, and the boyar M. G. Saltykov. In October 1608 Metropolitan Filaret of Rostov (the for­mer Fedor Nikitich Romanov) was brought to Tushino as a prisoner, and was appointed patriarch. Various kinsmen of the Romanovs - Prince A. Iu. Sitskii, Prince R. F. Troekurov and I. I. Godunov - became Tushino

boyars.[363]

At the end of September i608 Sapieha and his men left Tushino to lay siege to the great Trinity-Sergius monastery, north-east of the capital. The siege was to last until January 1610, and the heroic resistance of the defenders constituted one ofthe most celebrated episodes ofthe Time of Troubles. The rest of Dmitrii's army remained at Tushino. Their blockade of Moscow was not complete, since Riazan', to the south-east, remained loyal to Shuiskii, and supplies were able to enter the capital by the Riazan' road, which led through Kolomna.

In the autumn of 1608 Dmitrii's commanders concentrated on securing the allegiance of the towns which lay to the north and east of Moscow. Most of these towns recognised the pretender as a result of the use or threat of force by raiding parties from Tushino or from Sapieha's camp outside the Trinity monastery. Recent detailed research indicates that, contrary to the claims of some older historians, there is little evidence that popular uprisings in favour of Dmitrii took place in these towns. Pskov is a possible exception, but there the social conflicts pre-dated the formation of the Tushino camp and were in any case less polarised than the chronicle picture of 'little people' versus 'big people' suggests.[364]

By the end of i608, the only major cities to remain loyal to Shuiskii were Novgorod in the north-west and Smolensk in the west. On the Volga, Nizhnii Novgorod and Kazan' were still held by Shuiskii's commanders, but overall Tsar Vasilii's position seemed fairly hopeless. At the beginning of i609 the Kolomna road was briefly blocked, impeding the supply of food to the capital from the Riazan' region. As food prices increased in Moscow, so did discontent with Shuiskii. In February some of his courtiers made an attempt to overthrow him, but the plot was thwarted, mainly as a result of Patriarch Germogen's stout defence of the tsar. The boyar I. F. Kriuk-Kolychev organised another conspiracy on Palm Sunday, but this was discovered and the ringleader was executed.

In many parts of northern Russia, support for the pretender turned out to be short-lived. In the north-west, Pskov continued to acknowledge 'Tsar Dmitrii', but the towns ofthe north-east began to revolt against him from the beginning of 1609 onwards. Kostroma rebelled against the Tushinites as early as Decem­ber 1608, but there, and in Galich, the popular revolt was soon suppressed by Polish troops. The situation in many places was confused, with some towns changing sides more than once. The uprisings against the Tushinites were fuelled by the rapacity of the Poles and the cossacks, who imposed heavy taxes and other exactions on the townspeople, and sometimes resorted to bla­tant looting. Government propaganda also played a part. Shuiskii denounced Dmitrii as an impostor, and claimed that the Catholic Poles presented a threat to Orthodoxy; these assertions helped to gain him support. In most districts the anti-Tushino movement had a broad social base, comprising servicemen as well as townspeople and peasants.[365]

At the beginning of 1609 Shuiskii acquired additional forces from abroad. In August 1608 Tsar Vasilii had sent his nephew, Prince Michael Skopin-Shuiskii, to Novgorod to negotiate with Karl IX for Swedish military assistance against the Poles. In February i609 the Swedish commander Jacob Pontus de la Gardie arrived in Novgorod and concluded an agreement with Skopin-Shuiskii. In early May a combined Russian and Swedish army defeated troops that had been sent from Tushino against Novgorod. On 10 May Skopin-Shuiskii left Novgorod to march on Moscow and lift the siege of the capital. News of his advance encouraged those northern towns which still recognised Dmitrii to transfer their allegiance to Tsar Vasilii; but Pskov held out, in spite of an attempt by Prince Michael's forces to capture the town on 18 May. In July 1609 Skopin occupied Tver', and then moved east to link up with the troops sent by the north-eastern towns. At Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda they awaited the arrival of the boyar Fedor Sheremetev, who had been liberating the Volga towns to the south-east. Sheremetev had left his camp outside Astrakhan' in the autumn of 1607, and had gradually moved up the Volga. He reached Nizhnii Novgorod in the spring of 1609, and joined Skopin-Shuiskii at Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda towards the end of that year.

In the summer of 1609 King Sigismund, angered by Swedish support for Shuiskii, decided to intervene directly in the Russian civil war in order to obtain the Muscovite throne either for himself or for his son Wladyslaw. In September he laid siege to Smolensk. The Poles who were encamped at Tushino did not welcome Sigismund's action, and sent envoys to Smolensk to try to dissuade the king from his undertaking. But Sigismund in his turn made a bid for the support of the Tushinites. A delegation from Smolensk arrived at Tushino in December 1609 to conduct negotiations with RoZyiiski. The pretender was excluded from these talks. Fearing treachery, and aware that Skopin-Shuiskii's army was now close to Moscow, Dmitrii fled to Kaluga.

The pretender's flight demoralised and divided the Tushino encampment. Some of the Russians defected to Shuiskii in Moscow; some returned to their homes; while others followed Dmitrii to Kaluga. In January 1610 Jan- Piotr Sapieha abandoned the siege of the Trinity monastery and retreated to Dmitrov, where Marina Mniszech joined him from Tushino. Marina subse­quently moved to Kaluga to be reunited with Dmitrii, while Sapieha retreated further west after Dmitrov fell to Skopin-Shuiskii's forces. At the end of Jan­uary 1610 a group of Russian boyars at Tushino sent a delegation to Smolensk, headed by M. G. Saltykov, who agreed terms with King Sigismund on 4 Febru­ary for the offer of the Russian throne to Prince Wladyslaw. Finally, on 6 March Rozynski burned the Tushino camp to the ground and withdrew its remaining occupants to Volokolamsk.

Soon after the abandonment of Tushino, Skopin-Shuiskii entered Moscow in triumph. On 23 April, however, he died suddenly in the capital: according to rumour, he was poisoned either by Tsar Vasilii or by Prince Dmitrii Shuiskii, who were thought to be jealous of their nephew's success and fearful that he might become a rival candidate for the throne. Vasilii Shuiskii's enemies, led by Prokopii Liapunov, the governor of Riazan', exploited these rumours in order to mobilise further opposition to the tsar. The military situation also began to deteriorate for Shuiskii after Prince Michael's death. Tsar Vasilii appointed his brother Dmitrii as commander-in-chiefofhis army and sent him, with the Swedish general de la Gardie, against King Sigismund's camp at Smolensk. The Polish commander Stanislaw Zoikiewski advanced to meet them, defeated them at Klushino, and occupied Mozhaisk. At the same time, the Second False Dmitrii, who had successfully recruited a new army of cossacks and Poles, including Sapieha's mercenaries, left Kaluga and marched on the capital.[366] On

16 July 1610 he set up camp at Kolomenskoe, just outside Moscow. Some of the pretender's supporters approached Shuiskii's opponents in the capital and suggested that both sides overthrow their tsars and elect a new sovereign. On

17 July Shuiskii was deposed and tonsured as a monk, but Dmitrii's men failed to keep their side of the bargain.

The situation in Moscow after Shuiskii's removal was critical. Attempts to organise the election of a new tsar proved abortive, and power passed into the hands of a council of seven boyars who acted as a provisional government. Zolkiewski advanced to the outskirts of the capital, and began to negotiate terms with the boyars for the offer of the Russian throne to Wladyslaw, in return for Polish military assistance against Tsar Dmitrii. An agreement was reached on 17 August, and Moscow and most of the towns which had recog­nised Shuiskii swore an oath of allegiance to Wladyslaw. Zolkiewski managed to persuade Sapieha's troops to defect from Dmitrii's camp, and the pretender fled back to Kaluga. Zolkiewski moved quickly to consolidate his position. He ensured that the Russian delegation which was sent to Smolensk to offer the throne to Wladyslaw included both Prince Vasilii Golitsyn, who had been one of the leading Russian candidates for election to the throne, and Filaret Romanov, whose young son Michael was another favoured contender. Then, on the pretext that the people of Moscow might revolt in favour of the pre­tender, Zolkiewski moved his troops into the capital, in direct contravention of his agreement of 17 August with the boyars. Soon afterwards Zolkiewski left for Smolensk, escorting the deposed tsar, Vasilii Shuiskii, and his brothers into captivity, and leaving the Polish commander Alexander Gosiewski in charge of the capital. At Smolensk, however, it became clear that King Sigismund had no intention of sending Wladyslaw to Moscow, but planned to become tsar of Russia himself. When this proposition was rejected by the Russian envoys, they were imprisoned, and the king resumed his siege of Smolensk.

By the autumn of 1610 most Russians realised that their prospective new tsar was not the potential convert to Orthodoxy, Prince Wladyslaw, but the ardently Catholic King Sigismund; the Poles, moreover, had occupied Moscow and were continuing hostilities elsewhere. In these circumstances, the popularity of the Second False Dmitrii again began to grow. At Kaluga, the pretender's supporters were at first primarily cossacks - including Don cossacks under the command of the ataman I. M. Zarutskii - and Tatars. By December, Dmitrii had recruited some mercenaries, and a number of new towns, such as Viatka and Kazan', had recognised him as tsar.[367] Feuding, accompanied by the torture and execution of suspected 'traitors', had however become endemic in the Kaluga camp. On II December the pretender was murdered by the Tatar prince Peter Urusov, in a revenge attack for Dmitrii's killing of the khan of Kasimov, another Tatar leader who had entered Dmitrii's service. A few days later, Marina Mniszech gave birth to a son, Ivan Dmitrievich, who became a 'hereditary pretender' (K. V Chistov has described him as 'an involuntary pretender (samozvanets) by birth').[368]

The national liberation campaign

Even before the murder of the Second False Dmitrii, other elements in Rus­sian society had begun to mobilise opposition to the Polish occupation of Moscow. The death of the pretender, who had been a controversial and divi­sive figure, provided an additional impetus to their efforts. In Moscow itself Patriarch Germogen refused to swear loyalty to King Sigismund, and was placed under virtual house arrest by the boyar government. None the less, Germogen was able to have his appeals for resistance smuggled out of the cap­ital. The patriarch's letters found the soil particularly well prepared in Riazan', where Shuiskii's old enemy Prokopii Liapunov was governor. Nizhnii Nov­gorod was also responsive to the call. Liapunov began to recruit an army of servicemen from various towns, and he also bid for the support of the forces that had previously recognised Tsar Dmitrii. Prince Dmitrii Trubetskoi, the most senior ofthe Second False Dmitrii's boyars, brought troops from Kaluga; and Zarutskii, who had fled from Kaluga with Marina and her son after the pretender's murder, led his Don cossacks from Tula.

As the liberation army approached Moscow, the people ofthe capital staged an unsuccessful uprising against the Poles on I9 March I6II. The occupiers withdrew into the Kremlin, burning the outlying parts of the city as they retreated and making much of the population homeless. The national militia set up camp outside the capital and took an oath to elect a tsar. But the forces besieging Moscow were very heterogeneous in their composition, and were plagued by disputes and disagreements. They could not even agree on the choice of a single leader, creating instead a triumvirate of Liapunov, Trubetskoi and Zarutskii. On 30 June an agreement was signed by the triumvirs and by representatives of the troops, which was designed to resolve conflicts over the remuneration of servicemen and cossacks.[369] New disputes soon broke out, however, over their preferred candidate for the throne. Liapunov favoured one of the sons of Karl IX, in the hope that this would guarantee military assistance from Sweden against the Poles. Zarutskii, by contrast, promoted the cause of Marina Mniszech's infant son, 'Tsarevich' Ivan Dmitrievich. The two leaders' support for rival candidates for the throne contributed to a conflict which resulted in Liapunov's murder by the cossacks on 22 July 1611. After Liapunov's death, many of the noble servicemen deserted the besiegers' camp. Zarutskii and Trubetskoi continued to blockade the capital with their predominantly cossack forces, but their attempts to capture the city in the autumn were unsuccessful. By the end of the year many cossacks too had drifted away from Moscow.[370]

In the course of i6ii the foreign intervention forces made considerable advances. Smolensk finally fell to King Sigismund on 3 June, but a subsequent offensive by the Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz failed to dislodge Zarutskii and Trubetskoi from their camp outside Moscow. In July 1611 the Swedish commander de la Gardie occupied Novgorod, but instead of comingto the assistance ofthe liberation forces besieging the capital, the Swedes pursued their own interests, and annexed many Russian towns in the Novgorod region.

A Third False Dmitrii was active in the north-west in 1611-12. The real identity of this pretender is unknown: the official chronicler describes him as Sidorka or Matiushka, a deacon from Moscow.[371] He first appeared in Novgorod at the beginning of 1611, before moving to Ivangorod, where he made an unsuccessful attempt to gain support from the Swedes. He was soon recognised by the neighbouring towns of Iam, Kopor'e and Gdov. Pskov at first resisted him, but after Novgorod had surrendered to de la Gardie the Pskovans invited the new Tsar Dmitrii to their town, in the hope that he would defend them against the Swedes. The pretender arrived in Pskov on 4 December 1611, and established his headquarters there. By this time, however, the name of Tsar Dmitrii had lost its broad social appeal, and only a handful of towns recognised his new incarnation. The cossacks remained susceptible to pretenders, however, and the Pskovan tsar soon established links with their encampments outside Moscow. In March 1612 they swore allegiance to the Third False Dmitrii.[372]

After the death of Liapunov some of the towns which had previously sup­ported the liberation army expressed their distrust of its two remaining com­manders, Trubetskoi and Zarutskii. They were particularly concerned that Zarutskii and his cossacks might plan to place Marina Mniszech's son on the throne. Patriarch Germogen sent a proclamation to Nizhnii Novgorod calling on the townspeople to reject the infant 'Tsarevich' Ivan Dmitrievich.[373] The receipt of the patriarch's letter in Nizhnii, in August 1611, served as the impulse for the organisation of a new liberation army. The collection of resources to fund its recruitment was undertaken by Koz'ma Minin, a local butcher and elected representative of the townspeople; the command of the troops was entrusted to Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii, one of Liapunov's generals, who had been wounded outside Moscow in March 1611 and was convalescing near Nizh­nii Novgorod. Over the winter of 1611-12 Minin and Pozharskii mobilised their forces. The nucleus of the 'second national militia', as it is sometimes called, was provided by the garrison of Nizhnii Novgorod and neighbouring Volga towns, together with some refugee servicemen from the Smolensk region. At the beginning of March 1612 Minin and Pozharskii left Nizhnii and headed towards Moscow. At Iaroslavl' they learned that the cossack encampments outside the capital had taken an oath to the Third False Dmitrii. Pozharskii immediately sent proclamations to various towns, condemning Zarutskii and Trubetskoi for recognising the Pskov pretender and calling on all true Chris­tians to renounce the new Tsar Dmitrii as well as Marina and her son.

The cossack encampments soon deserted the cause of the Third False Dmitrii, who had in any case made himself very unpopular in Pskov, by ruling through terror and intimidation. In May the townspeople overthrew him and sent him under escort to Moscow, where he was held prisoner by the cossacks. Trubetskoi and Zarutskii wrote to Pozharskii at Iaroslavl' to assure him that they had repudiated Dmitrii, and had also abandoned the claim of Marina's son to the throne. They were prepared to join forces with Pozharskii in liberating Moscow from the Poles and electing a new tsar by common agreement.[374] Pozharskii, however, reacted coldly to these concilia­tory approaches. He had established his headquarters at Iaroslavl', where he headed a provisional government and continued to recruit servicemen into his army. In discussions about a future tsar, Pozharskii seemed to favour the Swedish prince Karl Filip (whose brother, Gustav Adolf, had succeeded their father Karl IX as king). Pozharskii's assurances to the Swedes about Karl Filip's prospects of obtaining the Russian throne helped to neutralise the military threat from Sweden, which was still occupying Novgorod and otherparts ofthe north-west.

After securing his rear as a result of the agreement with the Swedes, Pozharskii finally left Iaroslavl' on 27 July 1612. On the following day Zarut- skii fled from the encampment outside Moscow, apparently fearing that he would be deposed from his command by the leaders of the new national mili­tia. Zarutskii was accompanied by about half of his army, probably around 2,500 men. At Kolomna he collected Marina and her son, and they then rode with their cossacks to the Riazan' district, where Zarutskii rallied support for Tsarevich Ivan's claim to the throne. Pozharskii's army arrived outside Moscow in mid-August, just in time to play a major part in the rout of Chod- kiewicz's Polish forces, which had advanced on the capital from the west. Zarutskii's flight removed a major obstacle to the creation of a single army of liberation, and at the end of September Pozharskii and Trubetskoi agreed to form a united command. A month later, the occupiers of the Kremlin sur­rendered, and Moscow was liberated at last. But the danger from the Poles was not yet over. After the defeat of Chodkiewicz, King Sigismund himself marched on Russia in the hope of obtaining the crown for his son Wladyslaw. The Polish army advanced rapidly and a detachment commanded by Adam Zolkiewski reached the outskirts of Moscow by mid-November. But military failures and the onset of winter forced the Poles to retreat.

At the end of 1612 the liberators of Moscow, headed by Minin, Pozharskii and Trubetskoi, summoned an Assembly of the Land to elect a new tsar. The dele­gates gathered in the capital at the beginning of January 1613. One of their first resolutions was to reject any foreign candidates for the throne, a decision which was directed not only against the Polish and Swedish princes, but also against Marina and her son. This left three main Russian contenders: Prince Ivan Golitsyn, Prince Dmitrii Trubetskoi and Michael Romanov, Filaret's sixteen- year-old son. Of these, the cossacks favoured the latter two, because of their connection with Tushino. The young Romanov also enjoyed broad support from other sections of the population, and he was the eventual choice of the electoral assembly in February 1613. The Romanovs' association by marriage with the old dynasty undoubtedly helped Michael's election (his father was the nephew of Anastasiia Romanovna, the first wife of Ivan IV); and the fact that the ambitious and energetic Filaret was in Polish captivity made his teenage son more acceptable to the boyars.

One of the first actions of Tsar Michael's government was to send troops in pursuit of Zarutskii. After a battle with government forces at Voronezh in June 1613 the cossack ataman headed for Astrakhan', where he was welcomed with great enthusiasm. Zarutskii spread the rumour that Tsar Dmitrii was still alive, and he and Marina acted as the guardians of the young 'tsarevich' Ivan Dmitrievich. In the winter of 1613-14 Zarutskii initiated a reign of ter­ror in Astrakhan', killing the governor, Prince I. D. Khvorostinin, and many of the 'good' (wealthy) citizens, perhaps because they opposed his plans to seek assistance from the Persian Shah and the Turkish Sultan. At Easter I6I4 there was a popular uprising against Zarutskii's rule, and soon afterwards he fled the city with Marina and her son, accompanied by a small band of cossacks. A few days later, government troops commanded by Prince I. N. Odoevskii entered Astrakhan', and the city transferred its allegiance to Tsar Michael. Zarutskii and his followers were captured on the River Iaik; they were returned to Astrakhan' and then sent to Moscow. Zarutskii was impaled; the three-year-old Tsarevich Ivan was hanged; and Marina died in captivity soon afterwards.[375]

The execution of Zarutskii and Ivan Dmitrievich eliminated the last serious challenge to Tsar Michael's legitimacy within Russia. Unrest continued for some time, however, and in I6I4-I5 the government was preoccupied with mopping-up operations against various roving cossack bands whom they per­ceived as a major threat to social and political stability.[376] Foreign intervention continued for several more years. Peace was concluded with Sweden only in 1617, when Novgorod was returned to Russia as a result of the Treaty of Stolbovo. Hostilities with Poland lasted even longer. Chodkiewicz invaded Russia again in 1617 in a further attempt to place Prince Wladysiaw on the throne. The Poles were obliged to retreat, but in the Treaty of Deulino, signed in December 1618, Russia ceded Smolensk and other western borderlands to King Sigismund. In accordance with the terms of the treaty, Filaret Romanov was released from captivity, and he returned to Russia in I6I9 to become patri­arch and de facto ruler of the country. Some have seen this event as the real end of the Time of Troubles.[377] But the Poles still refused to drop Wladysiaw's claim to the title of tsar. In 1632, on the death of King Sigismund, the Russians went on to the offensive against Poland, in an attempt to reconquer Smolensk. They failed to achieve this goal, but in the 'perpetual' Peace of Polianovka, of 1634, Wladyslaw - who had been elected King of Poland in succession to his father - formally renounced his claim to the Russian throne, thereby tying up that remaining loose end from the Time of Troubles.

Conclusion

Accordingto S. F. Platonov's classic account ofthe Time ofTroubles, the social groups at both the top and bottom of Russian society lost out at the expense of the middle strata. The old princely-boyar aristocracy was totally discredited, first by Vasilii Shuiskii's attempt to establish an oligarchic regime and then by the boyars' collaboration with the Poles. At the other end of the spectrum, the cossacks and the fugitive peasants and slaves who swelled their ranks also suffered a defeat with the suppression of Zarutskii's movement. The 'middle classes' - the ordinary servicemen and the more prosperous townsmen, who liberated Moscow from the Poles and elected Michael Romanov as their tsar at the Assembly of the Land - emerged victorious.[378] Recent scholarship has, however, questioned several of Platonov's conclusions, contesting in particular his claim that the position of the old aristocracy was significantly weakened as a result of the Troubles.[379]

Perhaps the most remarkable consequence of the Time of Troubles was the fact that the autocratic monarchical system survived more or less unchanged from the late sixteenth century, with no significant new restrictions on the power of the tsar. It is highly revealing that the conflicts of the early seven­teenth century were fought out under the banners of competing claimants for the throne, rather than of competing types of monarchy. Of course the various candidates represented different styles and systems of rule; but they all based their claims to the throne on their legitimacy as the 'true' tsar rather than on any programme of social or political reform. The basis of legitimacy was contested (hereditary versus elective), but not the autocratic nature of monarchical rule itself. The dynastic crisis of 1598, occurring as it did in a system based on hereditary succession, gave rise to the First False Dmitrii; and his triumphs in their turn inspired new pretenders. The proliferation of cossack 'tsareviches', however, and the killing and looting committed by their followers, served to discredit pretence in the eyes of most ordinary Rus­sians. After the Time of Troubles, no further Russian samozvanets was able to obtain the type of broad social support which had accrued to the first two False Dmitriis: later pretenders who achieved any significant backing did so almost exclusively from the lower classes, and from cossacks and peasants in particular.

unlawful seventh wife'. It is quite possible that Godunov was hatching some kind of plan to dispose of the tsarevich and his kin.²⁷ But if he had intended to murder Dmitrii, May 1591 was not the most appropriate time to make the attempt. In April and May there was worrying news that the Crimean khan was preparing to invade, and things were not entirely calm in the capital in the spring of 1591. In general we do not have sufficiently strong arguments either to reject or to confirm the findings of the report of the Uglich investigation, and the question of the circumstances of Tsarevich Dmitrii's death remains an open one.

In May 1592 the court ceremoniously celebrated the birth of a daughter - Tsarevna Fedos'ia - to Tsar Fedor and Tsaritsa Irina. But the tsarevna died on

25 January 1594, before her second birthday (see Table 11.1). Her death clearly

revealed that the ruling dynasty was facing a crisis, and it made the question of the succession urgent. The Godunovs blatantly promoted their claims to the throne. From the middle of the 1590s Boris began to involve his son Fedor in affairs of state. But Boris Godunov was not the only candidate for the throne. His former allies, the Romanovs, stood in his way. Their advantage lay in the fact that Tsar Fedor himself had Romanov blood (from Tsar Ivan's marriage to Anastasiia Romanovna). As Fedor's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov could not boast a blood relationship with the tsar. Gradually the Romanovs advanced themselves at court and acquired influential positions in the duma. Around them there gathered a close-knit circle oftheir kinsmen and supporters. From

27 Dzhil's Fletcher, OgosudarstveRusskom (St Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1906), p. 21; cf. Berry and Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 128.