Russia (19 page)

The Catholics were to register another victory with the foundation in 1596 of the Uniate Church of Ukraine, a communion which retained most of the Orthodox liturgy and permitted parish priests to marry, but which recognized the Pope’s authority and (albeit with greater misgivings) the Gregorian calendar. At the same time the Orthodox Church ceased to have any official existence in Lithuania,
of
which Ukraine then formed a part. After most of the Lithuanian elite had been lured away from Orthodoxy by the promise of all the privileges of the Polish nobility if they became Catholics, the new confession threatened to suborn much of the Ukrainian clergy and the peasants too.

There was resistance. The immensely wealthy Prince Konstantin
Ostrozhsky championed the cause of Orthodox Christianity. He funded a school and a Slavonic printing press, sponsored writers, and summoned up moral support from the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople. Orthodox merchants organized confraternities and also founded schools, and Cossacks raised violent protests against Polish influence and Polish rule. In time the various strands of opposition were to combine and the movement was to gather a force which Moscow was able to exploit (See Chapter 7). However, the mobilization of these different interests was slow and their co-ordination was difficult. Besides, the Orthodox cause boasted too few educated polemists to be able to compete with the barrage of propaganda mounted by the Jesuits, and by the turn of the century the Tsar was preoccupied with other problems.
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In 1598 Tsar Fedor died, and his death precipitated a crisis for the state. Fedor was the last of his line. The Riurikid dynasty, which had produced too many claimants to the crown when lateral succession was allowed, produced too few now that claims were confined to vertical succession. It was an unexpected misfortune. Of the three sons whom Ivan IV had fathered, Ivan, the eldest had died accidentally. Ivan had struck him in a fit of temper, and, falling awkwardly, the child fractured his skull. The youngest, Dmitrii, had died of misadventure playing with a knife. Now, seven years later, Fedor had died without leaving an heir. As a church historian put it, the royal house of Russia was left without a tenant.
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Who, then, should succeed?

There were several hopefuls. Some, including the Romanovs and Nagois, were related to Ivan’s wives; others, like Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, claimed both distinguished ancestry and ministerial experience. Boris Godunov, though not of princely descent, was also a candidate. As the late Tsar’s brother-in law, a senior minister and a senior courtier he was well-positioned, though Shuiskii and Fedor Romanov also sat on the boyar council. Boris’s particular advantage was the powerful support of his friend Patriarch Job (whom he himself had been instrumental in appointing); he was also well qualified in terms of both native ability and personal qualities, and, insofar as he was known, popular. The distinguished historian A. A. Zimin describes him as resolute and far-sighted, as capable of dissembling and cruelty when circumstances demanded, but also generous and charming.
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In fact he was the obvious choice for tsar, and an Assembly of the Land duly endorsed his election.

Boris made a decent show of reluctance, refusing the crown three times. The official record of the meeting has its members clamouring long and loud for him to change his mind:

‘We want Boris Fedorovich [Godunov] to be Tsar. There is no other [candidate]. God himself has chosen him …’ And … the most holy Patriarch … said: ‘Blessed be God who willed this. The Lord’s will be done, for the voice of the people is the voice of God.’ And therefore … by the grace given us through the Holy Ghost we have all installed … Boris Fedorovich [as] Autocrat of all Russia, Sovereign of the Russian land.

Boris’s lack of hereditary credentials, was acknowledged, but it was pointed out that the Bible recorded cases of kings ‘invested with the purple of sovereignty who … were commoners … and yet ruled … according to God’s will honourably and justly’.
¹⁶

So on 3 September 1598 Boris was enthroned as tsar amid general acclamations. Huge cannon boomed out their salute, and embassies were sent out far and wide to announce the accession. Yet he took no chances. Potential rivals - including several Nagois and Romanovs - were taken under escort to distant prisons, an amnesty for common criminals was declared, a tax holiday was granted, and largesse was distributed to widows, orphans, foreigners in Russia’s service and the people of Moscow.
¹⁷
So Russia acquired an able, legitimate tsar. A succession crisis had been averted.

Russia’s prospects seemed good. Tsar Boris was experienced in all the major branches of state policy; he commanded the loyalty of state servants, both military and civil; and, in early middle age, he was at the height of his powers. Moreover, his son Fedor was a healthy and intelligent boy. Russia seemed destined to prosper under the new regime. Yet the seven lean years that followed were lean indeed, and by the time they ended Boris was dead, his heir murdered, the realm in ruins, and the enemy at the gate.

The cause was not the legacy of Ivan the Terrible, though this contributed to the disaster, and the supposed murder of the Tsarevich Dmitrii was merely incidental. The fundamental reason was a change in weather patterns known as the Little Ice Age. Bad weather caused repeated famines and associated ecological problems and epidemics. These in turn affected agriculture, and promoted migrations and public discontent. Soon social distress spilled over into political protest, giving space to the political climbers and entrepreneurs who are always ready to profit personally from public disasters. Events unfolded inexorably, as in a Greek tragedy.

They began with a severe drought in the first summer of Boris’s reign, and then fire struck the dried-out timbers of the still largely wooden city of Moscow. The winter of 1600 was long and very cold, particularly in the south and west, and then there was a spate of unusually heavy storms. The consequence was famine, but not disaster. Russians were no strangers to cruel weather and the destructive forces of nature. They resowed, repaired,
eked out what they had left, borrowed if they had to. The urban population suffered when the price of bread rose, but, like the government of ancient Rome, the Russian tsardom made provision when hunger threatened. There had been localized famines before, and a widespread one in the winter of 1587—8, without causing any long-term trauma. This time it was different.

Disaster struck not once or twice, but year in, year out. The summer of 1601 was extremely wet. Day after day ‘rain fell without stopping, and the rye and the spring wheat got sodden and lay on the ground all winter.’ Around Moscow itself there were heavy frosts in late July, and every type of grain and vegetable was frozen. Nor was the disaster localized. It hit Pskov in the west, and also Kaluga and Livny in the south-east. In 1602 there was another drought, followed by violent storms and floods so great that even the very old could not remember their like. Then blights struck and epidemics, and every year now seemed a year of famine.
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Well might the religious have recalled the ten plagues that God sent to afflict the Egyptians, and concluded that Tsar Boris must have committed dreadful God-offending acts. Historians who attribute Russia’s collapse to the dynasty dying out are just as mistaken as those who attributed it to Boris’s ‘sin’. Climate change and the series of weather disasters precipitated a social catastrophe, and political debacle flowed from it. Tales about the infant Dmitrii and the ‘usurper’ Boris only gained currency in the wake of the great hunger.

Far from being to blame, Boris did everything within his power to alleviate his people’s sufferings. He campaigned against speculators who hoarded grain waiting for the price to rise; he sold grain cheaply from his own granaries; he sent out messages of encouragement; he arranged for the indigent dead to be given decent burial, and doled out large sums to the needy from his own treasury. But luck had deserted him: the grain he sold cheaply was often resold for private gain; as news of his largesse spread, more and more poor peasants crowded into the city in expectation of his charity, compounding the problems. Whatever was done was never enough. An eyewitness described the scene:

I swear to God that this is the truth. I saw with my own eyes people lying on the streets, eating grass like cattle in summer and hay in winter. Some were already dead, with hay and dung in their mouths and also (pardon my indelicacy) had swallowed human excrement …

Many dead bodies of people who had perished through hunger were found daily in the streets.… Daily … hundreds of corpses were gathered up at the tsar’s command and carried away on so many carts, that to behold it (scarcely to be believed) was grisly and horrible.
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The continuing period of abnormal weather precipitated not only famine and disease, but also a social and demographic crisis. Marginal farmers, peasants no longer able to pay their rents and taxes, or even feed themselves, abandoned their holdings and took to the road. The number of beggars, vagabonds and robbers multiplied, and they became more desperate. There was another, relatively sharp, population shift — this time from north to south, and particularly to the frontier lands. And it was from the southwest frontier that the first political challenge emerged in the autumn of 1604: a claimant to the throne who called himself Dmitrii and said he had escaped death at Uglich. From then on Boris’s days were numbered.

In July 1604 the Tsar received an ambassador from England, Sir Thomas Smith, who subsequently reported to Sir Robert Cecil on his reception. Great care had been taken to hide any sign of social distress from him, and Boris treated him warmly and ‘in great state, [seated] in a throne of gold, with his Imperiall Crowne on his head, his sceptre in his hand, & many other ornaments of state … his sonne [Fedor] who sat by him, inquired of the healthe of my King James I], and invited me to dine with them together with Fedor.’ After dinner and taking wine with the Tsar, Smith was dismissed, but was informed that ‘I should have … very shortly audience, agayne, for ye dispatche of businesse, but in ye meane time, newes came of certaine rebels risen in armes, against ye Emperor, in his borders towards Poland, which hath hindered my speedy dispatch [of business], and therfor must stay here, and returne ye same way I came.’
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Quite how a popular political rebellion got under way in a country governed by a relatively efficient, centralized monarchy, among a people that was largely illiterate, has never been satisfactorily explained. It has been suggested, however, that rumour served as a substitute for modern media in early modern Russia, and that many if not most of the political rumours that gained currency were started by politicians anxious to manipulate popular opinion and, indeed, to trigger popular protests.
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But several elements were needed to get the rebellion started.

As we have seen, a series of natural disasters was disrupting the Russian economy and society. It was also bleeding the state of funds and raising doubts about the legitimacy of its government. But a rebellion against a God-sanctioned emperor had somehow to be justified. Hence the appearance of a pretender - someone claiming to be the Tsarevich Dmitrii miraculously rescued from death in 1591 and therefore Russia’s legitimate God-given ruler in this time of troubles. Who the pretender actually was is disputed. Tsar
Boris thought he was a defrocked monk from the Miracle Monastery in Moscow, called Grigorii Otrepev. Chester Dunning, in his recent, massive study of the subject, suspects he was a protege of the Nagois, who brought up a child to believe he really was the infant Dmitrii. Whoever he was, the role he was cast in required ambition, nerve, intelligence and histrionic skills. ‘Dmitrii’ possessed them all. He had all the bravado of a chancer.

But personal qualities were not enough. He also needed sponsors — people to train and brief him, to provide contacts for him, and to fund him. Circumstantial evidence suggests that these backers were prominent Russians, enemies of Boris. The finger of suspicion has pointed not only to the Nagois but, among others, to the Romanovs as well. The pretender soon gained a powerful backer in Poland-Lithuania too: the wealthy magnate Adam Vyshnevetski who had extensive property interests in the frontier area near Seversk and was in dispute with the Muscovite government. It was Vyshnevetski who provided the pretender with a base, helped him recruit the nucleus of an army (a few hundred Cossacks, many of them recent immigrants from Muscovy), and introduced him to other helpers, notably Jerzy Mniszech, the Polish palatine (governor) of Sandomir, who agreed to serve ‘Dmitrii’ as military commander.
²²

The pretender Dmitrii’s invasion was launched against the frontier fortress of Moravsk in October 1604. The garrison mutinied, and the place surrendered without a fight. The invaders moved on to the substantial town of Chernigov. Here there was resistance, but, thanks again to a rebellion by servicemen and townspeople, the city was captured and the troops in the citadel soon surrendered. News of these successes, and of ‘Dmitrii’ gaining more support, encouraged further defections from the Muscovite side — particularly from discontented servicemen, for the government was by now critically short of cash to pay them.

Then Peter Basmanov, whom the Tsar had charged with the defence of the region, succeeded in stopping the advance. He summoned up various detachments of musketeers, town Cossacks, service people of various ranks and recruits to his headquarters at Novgorod-Seversk, which boasted a useful battery of artillery. The town held, forcing the rebels to lay siege to it. But then Putivl declared for ‘Dmitrii’, and this prompted more defectors from all ranks - less out of love for ‘Dmitrii’ than from fear they might be lynched if they remained loyal. But Basmanov and his men held firm at Novgorod-Seversk giving time for a strong force from Moscow to approach it. When the armies met, however, the pretender’s forces got the better of the inconclusive contest.