The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)
who had been attacked during the popular uprising for his continued loyalty
to the Godunovs, was stripped of his office.
On 20 June 1605 the pretender made a triumphal entry into Moscow, where
hewasgreetedas the ‘truesun’shiningonRussia.
12
Accordingtosomecontem-
porary sources, many of those who continued to oppose him, and to express
scepticism about his identity, were secretly arrested, imprisoned and put to
death; but only two public executions took place. The brothers Shuiskii were
brought to trial, accused of plotting to kill the new tsar. All three were found
guilty. Prince Vasilii Shuiskii was sentenced to death, but he was reprieved
at the last moment and sent into exile with his brothers. Soon after this, the
pretender’s credibility received an important boost when the former Tsaritsa
Mariia Nagaia (now the nun Marfa), the mother of Dmitrii of Uglich, publicly
recognised him as her son. On 21 July, three days after Marfa’s arrival in the
capital, Dmitrii was crowned in the Dormition cathedral in the Kremlin.
Historians have offered conflicting assessments of Dmitrii’s achievements
as tsar. The problem of reaching a balanced evaluation is complicated not only
by the brevity of his reign, but also by the lack of official sources, since many
documentsweredestroyed afterhisoverthrowinMay1606.Some scholarshave
presented him as an enlightened reformer, who brought a refreshing element
ofWesternising modernisation into the traditional worldof Muscovitepolitics,
before being sweptfrom power bya backlash of conservative boyaropposition
to his innovations; others have seen him as an opportunist who was unable to
cope with the complexities of power, and paid the price for his failures. A recent
Russian study suggests that Dmitrii relied on a boyar duma whose aristocratic
composition was not too dissimilar from that of Boris Godunov, and that his
domestic policy was fairly traditional. In the end he was overthrown as a result
of the machinations of the most powerful faction in the duma, which no longer
foundhimto beausefulfigurehead.
13
ChesterDunning,too,stressescontinuity
in policy between Tsar Dmitrii and his immediate predecessors; and he argues
that the pretender’s opponents were only a small and unrepresentative group
of boyars.
14
There has been particular controversy among historians about Dmitrii’s
social legislation which affected the position of slaves and peasants. A law of
7 January 1606 forbade the joint assignment of a bondsman to more than one
owner, thereby ensuring that slaves would be freed on the deaths of their
12 Conrad Bussow, The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm,ed.andtrans.G.EdwardOrchard
(Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1994), p. 50.
13 V. I. Ul’ianovskii, Rossiiskie samozvantsy: Lzhedmitrii I (Kiev: Libid’, 1993), pp. 41–124.
14 Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War,pp.201–25.
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