Encyclopedia of Russian History

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this case, Trnovo, was the New Imperial City (Con-

stantinople) in the 1300s.

Russians did not seriously dispute Byzantium’s

pretenses until after the Council of Ferrera-Florence,

from 1438 to 1439, when factions of the Greek and

Russian Orthodox church accepted union with

Rome. By defending Orthodoxy against Roman

Catholicism, the Moscow metropolitans treated

first Basil II and then Ivan III as new Constantine.

With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans

in 1453, Muscovy/Russia became the Orthodox

monarchy. As Ivan III discarded the legal and cer-

emonial remnants of subordination to the Qipchak

(Golden Horde) khans during the period of 1476 to

1480, Archbishop Vassian Rylo of Rostov argued

the absurdity of an inviolable oath from a genuine

tsar to a false one of brigand descent. In present-

ing new Eastern tables for the years following the

year 1492

., which Orthodox calendars consid-

ered to be the millennial year 7000 since Creation,

Metropolitan Zosima declared Moscow to be the

new Constantinople, which itself was the New

Rome in one early copy and New Jerusalem in sev-

eral others. Ivan’s diplomacy vis-à-vis Imperial

German pretenses on the 1480s to 1490s and the

coronation ceremony of his grandson Dmitry in

1498 emphasized the historic equality of Russia

and Byzantium’s rulers. In the 1510s Joseph of

Volok, while claiming that the Orthodox Tsar is in

power like unto God, asserted that any wavering

from Orthodoxy would lead to the fall of Russia,

as other Orthodox kingdoms had ended due to

apostasy. Historical works produced in the 1520s

by this school of thought (Russian Chronograph,

Nikon Chronicle) underscored the preeminence of

Russia among Orthodox realms, while genealogi-

cal inventions used for state diplomacy asserted

Roman dynastic origins of Russia’s ruling house.

Filofei was not the only Russian churchman of

his time to oppose Bülew’s ideas; so did Metropol-

itan Daniel and Maksim Grek. Others also asserted

a new world-historic claim for Russia.

See also: BASIL II; BASIL III; CATHEDRAL OF THE DORMI-

TION; IVAN III; IVAN IV; PATRIARCHATE; POSSESSORS

AND NON-POSSESSORS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ostrowski, Donald. (1998). Muscovy and the Mongols:

Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier,

1304–1589. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Poe, Marshall. (2001). “Moscow, the Third Rome: The

Origins and Transformation of a ‘Pivotal Moment.’”

Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 49:412-29.

AVID

M. G

OLDFRANK

THIRTEEN YEARS’ WAR

The Thirteen Years’ War (1654–1667) consisted of

three phases of conflict between Muscovy, Poland-

Lithuania, and Sweden. Its roots can be found in

Bogdan Khmelnitsky’s Cossack revolt against

Poland-Lithuania, which began in 1648. The Rus-

sians supported the Cossacks initially with favor-

able trade contacts and military supplies, and then

eventually, following the 1653 Polish invasion of

Ukraine, the Russians allied themselves formally

with the Cossacks and entered the war in 1654.

Muscovy’s Tsar Alexei led around 100,000

men, including his Zaporozhian Cossack allies, into

Polish-Lithuanian territory and thus began the first

phase of the war. The Russians enjoyed initial

success, overwhelming the Polish forces and tak-

ing several important towns, such as Smolensk,

Mogilev, and Vitebsk. Russian and Cossack forces

regained much of the Ukrainian territories and even

invaded Poland as far as the town of Brest. The Pol-

ish-Lithuanians counterattacked but could not dis-

lodge the Russians. Poland’s King John II Casimir,

who had fled the country, managed to negotiate a

truce with the Russians, and hostilities temporar-

ily ended between the two nations with a three-

year truce (1656).

At this point, while Sweden was involved in the

First Northern War (1655–1660) against Poland

and Denmark, Muscovy sought to regain territory

it had formerly lost to the Swedes and moved to

capture several towns, including Dinaburg, Dor-

pat, and Keksholm. The Russians failed, however,

to take Riga, which they besieged during the sum-

mer of 1656, because they had no naval force and

could not cut Riga off from its lines of supply. The

Swedes launched a powerful counterattack, scat-

tering the Russian army and forcing the tsar to flee

for his life. When the war with Denmark took a

turn for the worse in 1657, the Swedes sought

peace with Muscovy (Truce of Valiesari, 1658).

The third and final phase of the war began

when the truce between Muscovy and Poland-

Lithuania ended in 1658. The Russians fought a se-

THIRTEEN YEARS’ WAR

1543

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

ries of fierce battles with the Poles in Lithuania and

Belarus, defeating them at Vilnius, Kaunas, and

Grodno, but losing twice at Mogilev (1661, 1666),

and Vitebsk (1664). In the Ukrainian lands, the

Russians suffered significant defeats at Konotop

(1659), Lubar (1660), and Kushliki (1661). Com-

plicating factors in the south included the defection

of the Russians’ Cossack allies under Vyhovsky,

which isolated the Russians against the Poles, and

Lubomirsky’s Rebellion, which weakened the gov-

ernment of King John II Casimir at a critical mo-

ment and forced the Poles to accept peace with

Muscovy. Early in 1664, the tsar approached the

Poles to begin negotiations, but it was not until

1667 that a provisional peace agreement was

signed at Andrusovo. Despite its losses, Muscovy

came out of the war with sizeable gains in terri-

tory, not least of which included the key cities of

Smolensk and Kiev.

See also: NEW-FORMATION REGIMENTS; SMOLENSK WAR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Longworth, Philip. (1984). Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias.

New York: Franklin Watts.

O’Brien, Carl Bickford. (1963). Muscovy and the Ukraine,

1654–1667. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rady, Martyn. (1990). Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine,

1462–1725. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

W. M. R

EGER

THREE EMPERORS’ LEAGUE

The Three Emperors’ League, or Dreikaiserbund, was

part of the diplomatic web created by Otto Bis-

marck (1815–1898) to keep France isolated. An ini-

tial agreement between Alexander II of Russia,

William I of Prussia, and Francis-Joseph of Aus-

tria-Hungary was reached in September 1873. This

phase of the Three Emperors’ League is sometimes

referred to as the Three Emperors’ Treaty. The

agreement was renewed in June 1881, with the

same signatories for Prussia and Austria-Hungary,

but with the new tsar, Alexander III, representing

Russia.

The dual goals of the league were to prevent

intervention by Austria-Hungary or Russia in the

event of an outbreak of hostilities between France

and Germany and to prevent friction between Aus-

tria-Hungary and Russia over territorial claims in

the Balkans. Both of these goals are apparent in the

terms of the agreement. Article 1 addresses the po-

tential of a Franco-German conflict by stating, “In

case one of the High Contracting Parties should find

itself at war with a fourth Great Power, the two

others shall maintain towards it a benevolent neu-

trality and shall devote their efforts to the local-

ization of the conflict.” The issue of potential

conflict over the Balkan territories of the Ottoman

Empire is dealt with in Article 2. It states, “The three

Courts, desirous of avoiding all discord between

them, engage to take account of their respective in-

terests in the Balkan Peninsula. They further

promise one another that any new modifications

in the territorial status quo of Turkey in Europe

can be accomplished only in virtue of a common

agreement between them.”

Ultimately, this alliance foundered over the is-

sue of Balkan territorial claims. The Austro-Hun-

garian Empire contained a sizeable number of Slavs

who were sympathetic to the plight and aspira-

tions of their Balkan brothers in Bosnia and Herze-

govina. Simultaneously, the Russian tsar was

under pressure from the Pan-Slavs to intervene in

the Balkans because the Pan-Slavic movement re-

garded Russia as the protector of the Orthodox

Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

A series of uprisings against the Ottoman Em-

pire and reprisals by the Turkish forces occurred in

the Balkans in the mid-1870s. These events led to

the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. Although the Rus-

sians decisively defeated the Turkish forces, oppo-

sition from Austria-Hungary and Great Britain led

to the final settlement being decided at the Congress

of Berlin in 1878. Under the auspices of the hon-

est broker Bismarck, much of the fruit of the Rus-

sian military victory was plucked from their hands.

The Russians felt that they had won the war but

lost the diplomatic negotiations. Both the Balkan

nationalists and the Russian Pan-Slavists felt a lin-

gering resentment toward Austria-Hungary and

Germany for depriving them of the fruits of the

Russian military victory.

The Three Emperors’ League was not renewed

when it expired in 1884. Instead, Russia moved

closer diplomatically to France. This shift culmi-

nated in the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894. The

dissolution of the Three Emperors’ League took Eu-

rope a step closer to the outbreak of World War I.

THREE EMPERORS’ LEAGUE

1544

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

See also: AUSTRIA, RELATIONS WITH; GERMANY, RELA-

TIONS WITH; PANSLAVISM; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS;

WORLD WAR I

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. (2003). “The

Three Emperors’ League.” <http://www.yale.edu/

lawweb/avalon/empleagu.htm>.

Eyck, Erich. (1968). Bismarck and the German Empire. New

York: Norton.

Glenny, Misha. (2001). The Balkans: Nationalism, War,

and the Great Powers, 1804–1999. New York: Pen-

guin.

EAN

K. B

ERGER

THREE-FIELD SYSTEM

The three-field system predominated in Russian

peasant agriculture until the Stalin era. Plowland

was divided into three sections: each year one sec-

tion was sown in the winter, a second was sown

to another grain in the spring, and a third was left

fallow to restore its fertility. The following year

the section that had been sown in the winter was

sown in the spring, the section sown in the spring

was left fallow, and the previous year’s fallow was

sown in the winter. Land not sown to grain was

kept outside the three-field system.

Similar forms of rotation prevailed across Eu-

rope well into the eighteenth century. These forms

were displaced by systems that promised higher

productivity and money profits. In Russia, how-

ever, the Agricultural Revolution did not make sig-

nificant inroads on the three–field system, though

it prompted learned landowners to reproach peas-

ants for superstitiously clinging to an outmoded

system.

In fact, the three–field system remained an ap-

propriate adaptation to Russian conditions for a

long time. It assumed a relative abundance of land

and took into account the harshness of the climate

and (often) the poor fertility of the soil. In contrast

to profit–seeking farmers, Russian peasants sought,

above all, to avert the threat of starvation. The

forms of rotation practiced in the West entailed the

intensive application of fertilizers, in the form of

manure and of crops such as clover. The animals

that provided the manure and ate the clover pro-

duced dairy and meat products for the market. Rus-

sia’s vast spaces and poor system of transportation

meant that most peasants did not have the access

to markets required for relatively perishable prod-

ucts (as opposed to grain, which peasants did mar-

ket). As railroads improved access to markets,

many peasants did adapt. As late as 1920, how-

ever, for most peasants, abandoning the three–field

system meant pursuing illusory gains and running

unacceptable risks. It was not yearning for profits

but the pressure of population on land that brought

the three-field system into crisis. What peasants

perceived as a problem of land shortage fueled the

revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

See also: ALEXANDER I; NAPOLEON I

TILSIT, TREATY OF

1547

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schroeder, Paul. (1994). The Transformation of European

Politics, 1763–1848. Oxford, UK: Oxford University

Press.

AVID

ETZEL

TIME OF TROUBLES

In the decade and a half before the founding of the

Romanov dynasty in 1613, Russia endured what

has been known ever since as the Time of Troubles,

a period of severe crisis that nearly destroyed the

country. It followed the death of Tsar Fyodor I in

1598 and ended with the election of Tsar Mikhail

Romanov in 1613. The Time of Troubles has long

fascinated and puzzled the Russian people and has

inspired scholars, poets, and even musicians. To

many Russians who lived through the Troubles, it

was nothing more or less than God’s punishment

of their country for the sins of its rulers or its peo-

ple. Others since then have sought more secular ex-

planations, noting that at the center of the Troubles

was the most powerful uprising in Russian history

prior to the twentieth century, the so-called Bolot-

nikov rebellion (named after the rebel commander,

Ivan Bolotnikov). Focusing on that event, histori-

ans erroneously concluded long ago that at the heart

of the Troubles was Russia’s first social revolution

of the oppressed masses against serfdom. Recently,

that interpretation has been decisively overthrown;

instead of a social revolution, the Time of Troubles

produced Russia’s first civil war, a conflict that split

Russian society vertically instead of horizontally.

The long and bloody civil war occurred in two dis-

tinct phases: 1604–1605 and 1606–1612.

The Time of Troubles began with the extinc-

tion of Moscow’s ancient ruling dynasty. After

TIME OF TROUBLES

1548

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

lllustration of Napoleon I of France, Frederick William III of Prussia, and Alexander I at Tilsit, July 7, 1807.

Tsar Fyodor I’s death in 1598, Boris Godunov (re-

gent for mentally retarded Fyodor) easily defeated

his rivals to become tsar. Nevertheless, many peo-

ple questioned the legitimacy of the new ruler,

whose sins supposedly included having Tsar Ivan

IV’s youngest son, Dmitry of Uglich, killed in 1591

in order to clear a path to the throne for himself.

During Tsar Boris’s reign Russia suffered a horri-

ble famine that wiped out up to one-third of the

population. The effects of the famine, coupled with

serious long-term economic, social, demographic,

fiscal, and political problems, contributed to the de-

cline in legitimacy of the new ruler in the eyes of

many Russians. Then in 1604 the country was in-

vaded by a small army headed by a man claiming

to be Dmitry of Uglich, miraculously saved from

Godunov’s assassins. Many towns, fortresses, sol-

diers, and cossacks of the southern frontier quickly

joined Dmitry’s forces in the first popular upris-

ing against a tsar. When Tsar Boris died in April

1605, resistance to the Pretender Dmitry (also

known as “False Dmitry”) broke down, and he be-

came tsar—the only tsar ever raised to the throne

by means of a military campaign and popular up-

risings.

Tsar Dmitry reigned for about a year before he

was murdered by a small group of aristocrats. His

assassination triggered a powerful civil war, es-

sentially a duplicate of the civil war that had

brought Dmitry to power. The usurper Vasily

Shuisky denounced the dead tsar as an impostor,

but Dmitry’s supporters successfully put forward

the story that he had once again miraculously es-

caped death and would soon return to punish the

traitors. So energetic was the response to the call

to arms against Shuisky that civil war raged for

many years and produced about a dozen more pre-

tenders claiming to be Tsar Dmitry or other mem-

bers of the old ruling dynasty. Starting in 1609,

Russia’s internal disorder prompted Polish and

Swedish military intervention, resulting in even

greater misery and chaos. Eventually, an uneasy

alliance was formed among Russian factions, and

the Time of Troubles ended with the establishment

of the Romanov dynasty in 1613.

ORIGINS OF THE TROUBLES

The origins of the Time of Troubles were very com-

plex. In the age of the gunpowder revolution, the

princes of Moscow unified Russia, quickly trans-

formed their country into a highly effective state

geared to war, and expanded their realm with

dizzying speed. In the process of building the largest

country in Europe, however, they created a coer-

cive central state bureaucracy that subjugated vir-

tually all elements of Russian society and grossly

overburdened the bulk of the population. Russian

autocracy and imperialism contributed signifi-

cantly to the development of a serious state crisis

by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Tsar

Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) personally deserves some of

the blame for the Time of Troubles. His unsuc-

cessful Livonian War (1558–1583) and his dreaded

Oprichnina contributed to Russia’s serious prob-

lems, as did his imposition of high taxes and his

decision to allow the lords to collect taxes directly

from their peasants. Ivan’s policies and actions re-

tarded Russian economic activity and resulted in

the massive flight of peasants and townspeople to

untaxed lands or to the southern frontier. That in

turn contributed to declining state revenue and to

the weakening of the tsar’s gentry militia, which

was heavily dependent on peasant labor.

In spite of clear signs of economic and social

distress, Tsar Ivan’s successors continued Russia’s

imperial drive to the south. Acting as Fyodor I’s re-

gent, Boris Godunov took drastic steps to shore up

state finances and the gentry cavalrymen in order

to continue Russia’s rapid expansion to the south

and east. In the 1590s, Godunov enserfed the Russ-

ian peasants, bound urban taxpayers to their tax-

paying districts, and converted short-term contract

slavery into real slavery. Those harsh measures did

not solve Russia’s fiscal problems and actually

made things much worse. Many towns became

ghost towns, and Russia’s already staggering econ-

omy continued to decline. Godunov’s harsh poli-

cies of exploiting the population of the southern

frontier and harnessing the cossacks to state ser-

vice also contributed to the country’s problems. By

the time Tsar Fyodor I died, Russia was suffering

from a severe economic and social crisis, and many

blamed Boris Godunov for their misery.

THE FIRST PHASE OF THE TROUBLES

The Time of Troubles began with the political

struggle following the extinction of the old ruling

dynasty in 1598. Godunov easily defeated his ri-

vals, including Fyodor Romanov (the future Patri-

arch Filaret, father of Mikhail Romanov), and

quickly became tsar; but his reputation suffered

badly in the process. Boris was accused by his ri-

vals of having arranged the murder of Dmitry of

Uglich in 1591 in order to clear a path to the throne

for himself. He also suffered from a commonly held

view that boyars were supposed to advise tsars,

TIME OF TROUBLES

1549

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

not become tsars. During the reign of Tsar Boris

(1598–1605), Russia’s severe state crisis continued

to deepen. In addition, Boris’s harassment of cer-

tain aristocratic families caused some of them to

enter into secret conspiracies against him. It was

the great famine of 1601–1603, however, that ru-

ined Tsar Boris’s reputation and convinced many

of his subjects that God was punishing Russia for

the sins of its ruler. Successive crop failures resulted

in the worst famine in Russian history, which

wiped out up to a third of Russia’s population.

When a man claiming to be Dmitry of Uglich ap-

peared in Poland-Lithuania in 1603 seeking sup-

port to overthrow the usurper Godunov, many of

Tsar Boris’s subjects were inclined to believe that

this man really was Dmitry, somehow miracu-

lously rescued from Godunov’s assassins and now

returning to Russia to restore the old ruling dy-

nasty—and God’s grace. Tsar Boris and Patriarch

Job denounced the Pretender Dmitry as an impos-

tor named Grigory Otrepev, but that did not stop

enthusiasm for the true tsar from growing, espe-

cially on the southern frontier and among the cos-

sacks.

Russia’s first civil war started with the inva-

sion of the country by the Pretender Dmitry in Oc-

tober 1604. Helped by self-serving Polish lords such

as Jerzy Mniszech (father of Marina Mniszech),

Dmitry managed to field a small army for his cam-

paign for the Russian throne. As soon as he crossed

the border into southwestern Russia, Dmitry was

greeted with enthusiasm by much of the frontier

population. Several towns voluntarily surrendered

to him, and many Russian soldiers (and their com-

manders) quickly joined Dmitry’s army. Large

numbers of cossacks also swelled the Pretender’s

forces as he advanced. In December 1604, Dmitry’s

army defeated Tsar Boris’s much larger army near

Novgorod-Seversky, but in January 1605 the Pre-

tender was decisively defeated at the battle of Do-

brynichi. Dmitry hastily retreated to Putivl while

Tsar Boris’s army wasted time waging a terror

campaign against the local populations that had

dared to support the Pretender. By the spring of

1605, Dmitry had recovered, and his forces were

growing rapidly. Tsar Boris’s army, by contrast,

got bogged down trying to capture rebel-held

Kromy, a key fortress guarding the road to

Moscow. The death of Boris Godunov in April 1605

paved the way to tsardom for Dmitry. Boris was

succeeded by his son, Tsar Fyodor II, but the re-

bellion of Fyodor’s army at Kromy on May 7 sealed

the fate of the Godunov dynasty. On June 1, 1605,

a bloodless uprising in Moscow overthrew Tsar Fy-

odor. Dmitry then entered the capital in triumph,

and he was crowned on June 20.

THE SECOND PHASE OF THE TROUBLES

Tsar Dmitry ruled wisely for about a year before

being assassinated by Vasily Shuisky, whose

seizure of power reignited the civil war. Dmitry’s

reign is controversial; many historians have been

convinced that he was an impostor named Grigory

Otrepev who never commanded the respect of the

aristocracy or of the Russian people. In fact, Tsar

Dmitry was not the monk-sorcerer Otrepev; in-

stead, he impressed his contemporaries as an intel-

ligent, well-educated, courageous young warrior-

prince who truly believed that he was Ivan the

Terrible’s youngest son. Tsar Dmitry was also a

popular ruler. He did, however, open himself up to

criticism for his lack of zealousness in observing

court rituals and for a perceived laxity in his com-

mitment to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Criti-

cism notwithstanding, it is significant that Tsar

Dmitry was toppled by a coup d’état involving a

small number of disgruntled aristocrats, not by a

popular uprising. His assassination, during the cel-

ebration of his wedding to the Polish Princess Ma-

rina Mniszech in May 1606, shocked the nation

and very quickly rekindled the civil war that had

brought him to power. The renewed civil war in

the name of the true tsar Dmitry raged for years

and nearly destroyed Russia.

Within a few hours of Tsar Dmitry’s assassi-

nation, his supporters successfully put forward the

story that he had once again miraculously escaped

death and would soon return to punish Shuisky and

his co-conspirators. One of Tsar Dmitry’s courtiers,

Mikhail Molchanov, escaped from Moscow and as-

sumed Dmitry’s identity as he traveled to Sambor

(the home of the Mniszechs) in Poland-Lithuania.

There he set up Tsar Dmitry’s court and began seek-

ing support for the struggle against Shuisky.

Molchanov sent letters to Russian towns and to the

cossacks of the southern frontier declaring that Tsar

Dmitry was still alive and urging them to rise up

against the usurper Tsar Vasily. Those appeals had

a powerful effect. Enthusiastic rebel armies led by

Ivan Bolotnikov and other commanders quickly

pushed Tsar Vasily’s forces out of southern Russia

and reached the suburbs of Moscow by October

1606. During the siege of the capital, however,

Shuisky bribed two rebel commanders to switch

sides. Istoma Pashkov’s betrayal of the rebel cause

occurred during a major battle on December 2, forc-

ing Bolotnikov’s men to break off the siege and re-

TIME OF TROUBLES

1550

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

treat south. After enduring long sieges in Kaluga and

then Tula, Bolotnikov was finally forced to surren-

der to Tsar Vasily in October 1607, but his men

(with their weapons) were allowed to go free. Many

of them immediately rejoined the civil war against

Shuisky by entering the service of the second false

Dmitry, an impostor who suddenly appeared in

southwestern Russia during the summer of 1607.

The second false Dmitry was nothing more

than a puppet of his Polish handlers, but his name

attracted men from far and wide. Soon Dmitry

took up residence in the village of Tushino and

waged war against Shuisky in Moscow. The sec-

ond false Dmitry managed to attract many Rus-

sian aristocrats into his service; Filaret Romanov

became Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church

in Tushino. When Marina Mniszech was released

by Tsar Vasily, she, too, went to Tushino where

she recognized her putative husband and eventu-

ally produced an heir, little Ivan Dmitriyevich. For

over a year, war-torn Russia had two tsars and

two capitals. Just as Shuisky’s luck appeared to be

running out, however, the excesses of Tsar

Dmitry’s foreign troops and cossacks caused a full-

scale revolt against the second false Dmitry

throughout much of northern Russia. Starting in

late 1608, ordinary townspeople began fighting

back against constant pillaging by Tsar Dmitry’s

troops and heavy taxes collected by his rapacious

agents.

Tsar Vasily eventually turned to Sweden for

assistance against the second false Dmitry. In early

1609, troops raised by King Karl IX crossed the bor-

der and assisted Shuisky’s forces in clearing

Dmitry’s supporters out of north Russia. Karl also

gobbled up Russian territory for himself, immedi-

ately provoking Polish intervention in Russia. The

Polish king Sigismund III invaded Russia and laid

siege to the great fortress of Smolensk. Under pres-

sure from all sides, the Tushino camp broke up

during the winter of 1609–1610. The second false

Dmitry and Marina fled to Kaluga, but some Tushi-

nite courtiers traveled to Smolensk to beg Sigis-

mund to permit his son, Wladyslaw, to become

tsar of Russia. The king seemed to agree, and soon

a Polish army headed toward Moscow. In June

1610, at the battle of Klushino, the Poles decisively

defeated Tsar Vasily’s army. In July, exasperated

Russian aristocrats seized Tsar Vasily and forced

him to become a monk. Eventually, the powerful

Russian lords who gained control of Moscow (the

Council of Seven) agreed to allow the Poles to oc-

cupy the capital in the name of Tsar Wladyslaw.

A grand procession of Russian dignitaries (includ-

ing Filaret Romanov and Vasily Shuisky) was then

sent to parley with King Sigismund about Wla-

dyslaw’s accession, but the king threw them in

prison. Sigismund had decided to conquer Russia

and not to rule it indirectly through his son. In

Moscow, the Council of Seven was unceremoni-

ously shoved aside as a brutal military dictatorship

was established by the Poles.

The Polish occupation of Moscow shocked

much of Russia, and soon ordinary people began

to organize to oust the foreigners. The murder of

the second false Dmitry in December 1610 was

celebrated by the Poles, but it actually removed

the chief obstacle to unifying the Russian people

against foreign intervention. A powerful but still

disjointed patriotic movement slowly began to de-

velop throughout the land and even in Moscow.

Various Russian factions warily reached out to one

other and with great difficulty coordinated opera-

tions against the hated Catholic Poles. Inside

Moscow, protests against the Latin heretics by

Patriarch Hermogen got him thrown into prison;

but, before he starved to death, Hermogen sent let-

ters to many towns urging his fellow Orthodox

Christians to rise up and throw the evil foreigners

out of Russia. Hermogen’s call to arms was highly

effective.

By early 1611, a patriotic Russian commander,

Dmitry Pozharsky, forged an uneasy alliance with

forces that had been loyal to the second false Dmitry,

including the cossack commander Ivan Zarutsky,

who championed the cause of Marina Mniszech and

Ivan Dmitriyevich. Pozharsky attempted to liberate

Moscow in March; but, after bitter street fighting

during which the Poles burned much of the outer

city, Pozharsky’s patriots were forced to retreat and

regroup. By June 1611, the patriots managed to

form a highly representative council of the entire

realm to coordinate military operations against the

foreigners and to lay the foundation for a tempo-

rary national government. Pozharsky and others

made sure that militarily useful cossacks who were

willing to join the national militia received adequate

food and the promise of freedom even if they had

formerly been serfs or slaves. Such unprecedented

promises attracted many new recruits to the patriot

cause. Due to rivalry among its commanders, how-

ever, the national liberation movement stumbled

during the following months. The unscrupulous

Zarutsky tried to take over as militia commander,

but other patriots wanted nothing to do with his

unruly cossacks or little Ivan Dmitriyevich. Unfor-

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1551

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

tunately, various factions ended up fighting against

each other, and for many months chaos reigned in

Russia. Shortly after the Poles captured Smolensk in

June 1611 and the Swedes captured Novgorod in

July, some beleaguered Russians asked the king of

Sweden to consider putting his son on the Russian

throne. Most patriots, however, dreamed of a Rus-

sian tsar.

By late 1611, a new patriotic movement and a

new military force capable of salvaging Russia’s na-

tional sovereignty began to take shape in Nizhny

Novgorod. There a butcher named Kuzma Minin

convinced his fellow citizens to raise money for an

army to liberate Russia and to restore order to the

realm. Minin chose Prince Pozharsky to be the

commander-in-chief of the new militia, and Minin

himself became the patriotic movement’s treasurer

with very broad powers. Many Russian towns and

villages quickly joined the movement, and

Yaroslavl soon emerged as the headquarters of the

provisional government. Pozharsky succeeded ad-

mirably in getting cossacks and others to join his

growing militia; and once Zarutsky broke with the

national liberation movement and rode off to the

south with Marina Mniszech and Ivan Dmitriye-

vich, Pozharsky was able to concentrate on the

siege of Moscow.

The Polish garrison in Moscow surrendered on

October 27, 1612. As soon as the capital was lib-

erated, urgent and unprecedented messages were

sent throughout the country calling for represen-

tatives of all free men (nobles, gentry, soldiers,

townspeople, clergy, peasants from crown and

state lands, and cossacks) to come as quickly as

possible to Moscow. Soon the most representative

Assembly of the Land (Zemsky sobor) in Russian his-

tory gathered to choose a new tsar. Under intense

pressure from the cossacks (who by then made up

half of the national militia), Filaret Romanov’s son

Mikhail was elected on February 7, 1613.

The Time of Troubles officially ended with the

crowning of Tsar Mikhail on July 21, 1613, but it

took several years to restore order to a devastated

land. While bureaucrats and members of the As-

sembly of the Land worked feverishly to rebuild the

Russian government, Tsar Mikhail dispatched mil-

itary forces to destroy Zarutsky, Marina Mniszech,

and Ivan Dmitriyevich. They were finally captured

and executed in 1614. Kicking the Poles and Swedes

out of Russia proved to be far more difficult. Only

after a Swedish invasion was stalled by the heroic

defense of Pskov in 1615–1616, did King Gustavus

Adolphus agree to negotiate with Tsar Mikhail. The

Treaty of Stolbovo (1617) restored Novgorod to the

Russians, but the Swedes kept enough captured ter-

ritory to block Russian access to the Baltic Sea un-

til the time of Peter the Great. After 1613, Polish

armies tried repeatedly to try to put Tsar Wlady-

slaw on the Russian throne. The sturdy defense of

Moscow in 1618 by Prince Pozharsky, the capital’s

civilian population, and the cossacks (who were

very badly treated by the Romanov regime) finally

convinced the Poles to negotiate. Poland gained

many west Russian towns (including Smolensk)

from the Truce of Deulino (1618), but Filaret Ro-

manov was released from Polish captivity. In many

ways, the celebration of Patriarch Filaret’s return

to Moscow in 1619 marked the real end of the Time

of Troubles.

The Time of Troubles had been a terrible night-

mare for the Russian people. By the time the Trou-

bles ended, Russia’s economy was shattered and

many towns were ruined. As a result, the early Ro-

manovs faced serious fiscal problems. The condi-

tions of overtaxed townspeople, serfs, and gentry

cavalrymen actually worsened during the early

seventeenth century and set the stage for sharp

conflicts under Tsar Mikhail’s son, Tsar Alexis.

Ironically, the rapid expansion of the Romanov em-

pire after 1613 caused many people to conclude in-

correctly that the Time of Troubles did not have

much long-term impact. In fact, the terrifying ex-

perience of the Troubles produced a powerful con-

sensus within Russian society in favor of enhancing

the already great authority and prestige of the tsar

(and the patriarch). That consensus significantly

strengthened Russian autocracy and imperialism,

and it also slowed down the development of capi-

talism and the emergence of civil society in Russia.

See also: ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; BOLOTNIKOV, IVAN

ISAYEVICH; DMITRY OF UGLICH; DMITRY, FALSE;

FEDOR IVANOVICH; FILARET ROMANOV, PATRIARCH;

GODUNOV, BORIS FYODOROVICH; IVAN IV; OPRI-

CHNINA; OTREPEV, GRIGORY; POZHARSKY, DMITRY

MIKHAILOVICH; ROMANOV, MIKHAIL FYODOROVICH;

SHUISKY, VASILY IVANOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbour, Philip. (1966). Dimitry Called the Pretender: Tsar

and Great Prince of All Russia, 1605–1606. Boston:

Houghton Mifflin.

Bussow, Conrad. (1994). The Disturbed State of the Russ-

ian Realm, tr. G. Edward Orchard. Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s.

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