Perrie M. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689
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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
threatfrom Sweden,whichwasstilloccupyingNovgorod and other partsofthe
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 mili-
tia. 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 sur-
rendered, 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 Wl
adyslaw.
The Polish army advanced rapidly and a detachment commanded by Adam
ˇ
Z
´
ol
kiewski reached the outskirts of Moscow by mid-November. But military
failures and the onset of winter forced the Poles to retreat.
Atthe 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 dele-
gates gathered in the capital at the beginning of January 1613. One of their first
resolutionswasto rejectanyforeigncandidates forthethrone, 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 undoubtedlyhelped Michael’s election (his father was the
nephew of Anastasiia Romanovna, the first wife of Ivan IV); and the fact that
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The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)
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 ter-
ror 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 1614
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; theywere
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.
44
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 1614–15 the government was preoccupied with
mopping-up operations against various roving cossack bands whom they per-
ceived as a major threat to social and political stability.
45
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 Wl
adyslaw 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 1619 to become patri-
arch and de facto ruler of the country. Some have seen this event as the real
end of the Time of Troubles.
46
But the Poles still refused to drop Wladyslaw’s
claim to the title of tsar. In 1632, on the death of King Sigismund, the Russians
44 Ibid., pp. 218–28.
45 Stanislavskii, Grazhdanskaia voina,pp.93–152.
46 Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War,p.459.
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maureen perrie
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,Wl
adyslaw – 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
According to S. F. Platonov’s classic account of the Time of Troubles, 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.
47
Recent scholarship has,
however, questioned several of Platonov’sconclusions, contesting in particular
his claim that the position of the old aristocracy was significantly weakened
as a result of the Troubles.
48
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 seven-
teenth 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
47 Platonov, Ocherki [4th edn], pp. 429–33.
48 A. P. Pavlov, ‘Gosudarev dvor v istorii Rossii XVII veka’, FOG 56 (2000): 227–42; Dunning,
Russia’s First Civil War,pp.461–80.
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The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)
their followers, served to discredit pretence in the eyes of most ordinary Rus-
sians. 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.
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part iii
∗
Russia under the first
Romanovs (1613–1689)
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19
The central government and its
institutions
marshall poe
For the Muscovite state, the seventeenth century was one of evolution and
growth, rather than radical change.
1
The century experienced no political
revolutions of the magnitude seen during the reigns of Ivan III and Ivan
IV. Russia, having recovered from the confusion of the Time of Troubles,
remained a strong autocracy held firmly in the hands of a small, martial rul-
ing class. This is not to say that there was general stasis. Things still fell apart,
though only for brief moments. And one can detect a single important political
trend – the remarkable inflation of honours begun under Tsar Aleksei (Alexis)
Mikhailovich and radically amplified by his weak successors. Nonetheless,
the general picture was one of continuity, punctuated by momentary fits of
confusion and gradual change.
Thecase ismuchthe same in the realmof institutions.
2
Seventeenth-century
Muscovy was administered by the same fundamental types of organisation
that it had been before the great upheaval of the beginning of the century. The
most important institutions remained the royal family, its court and courtiers
(gosudarev dvor) and the administrative chancelleries (prikazy). Similarly, the
boyar council and the Assemblyof the Land – both inventions of an earlier age –
continued to operate in the seventeenth century much as they had before. All
of these institutions grew, but not so much as to fundamentally alter their
essential character.
1 The best general history of seventeenth-century Russia remains V. O. Kliuchevskii, A
Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968). For
a survey of primary and secondary sources, see S. A. Kristensen [Christensen], Istoriia
rossii XVII v. Obzor issledovanii i istochnikov (Moscow: Progress, 1989). On high politics,
see Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613–1689
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), and Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The
Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
2 For an overview of governmental institutions, see N. P. Eroshkin, Ocherki istorii gosu-
darstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Uchebno-
Pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo Ministerstva prosveshcheniia RSFSR, 1960).
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marshall poe
Finally, we might note that the state existed for the same purpose as it had in
the sixteenth century and earlier – to serve the interests of the Muscovite ruling
class.
3
Though one occasionally finds biblical tropes in Muscovite ornamental
texts about monarchs ‘tending their flocks’ and such, the truth is that the elite
did not hide the fact that they were a self-interested ruling class and that the
state was the instrument of their domination. They showed open contempt
for peasants, merchants and often clergymen, and almost never missed an
opportunity to fleece them – a point made and bemoaned by the well-travelled,
well-educated and well-informed political philosopher (and proto-Slavophile!)
Iurii Krizhanich in the 1660s.
4
Any attempt at protest that was not couched in
the most subservient terms was met with a rush of horrific violence (violence
that only the state could muster, since it was the only organised interest in early
modern Russia). As visiting foreigners often noted, there was no talk of the
‘commonwealth’,the ‘common good’, orcommonanything(that wouldcome
with Peterand from Europe). Muscoviteshigh and low believed the tsar owned
everything – land and those occupying it – by heavenly proclamation.
5
That he
distributed his largesse unequally (and predominantly to the elite) bothered
not a soul. No one could conceive of any other order, no one objected to it (at
least for very long . . .) and no one even thought it wrong. It was the way of
things, and that was that.
The tsar in his court
Muscovites had an entire catalogue of sayings to the effect that the tsar was
like God (and, one might add, the God of Moses rather than Jesus),
6
so it is
only appropriate that we begin our survey of seventeenth-century institutions
with the ruler and his court.
Let us begin with the royal person, for he was an institution in his own right.
In contrast to some monarchies, the Russians do not seem to have recognised
or even known about the ‘king’s two bodies’ doctrine.
7
The clergy said and
3 For an extended discussion of the Russian ruling class and its interests, see Marshall T.
Poe, The Russian Moment in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
4 Iurii Krizhanich, Politika, ed. A. Gol’dberg (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), pp. 583–4.
5 P. V. Lukin, Narodnye predstavleniia o gosudarstvennoi vlasti v Rossii XVII veka (Moscow:
Nauka, 2000), passim.
6 On these dicta, see Marshall T. Poe, ‘A People Born to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern
European Ethnography, 1476–1748 (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press,
2000), appendix 1.
7 On the European concept, see E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1957). For an explicit contrast, see Michael Cherniavsky,
‘Saintly Princes and Princely Saints’, in his Tsar and People: A Historical Study of Russian
National and Social Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), pp. 28–30.
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The central government and its institutions
commoners believed that the tsar was selected by the Lord, not to hold the
office of tsar, but to be tsar. This is why one finds so much talk of the ‘true
tsar’ and ‘pretenders’, particularly during the Time of Troubles when it was
hard to tell the difference, but also after the ascension of the Romanovs.
8
Just
how one could know the ‘true tsar’ was anybody’s guess, but that there was a
‘true’ – that is, divinely appointed – tsar was never seriously questioned. There
was, then, no office of ‘tsar’; there was just the ‘true tsar’, a person and family
ordained by the hand of the All Mighty.
We know, of course, that Michael Romanov was elected or, rather, his
family won out in a rough and tumble competition dominated by occupying
cossacks in 1613. But it was not considered polite (or even safe)
9
to mention this
after the fact. That is because Michael was the ‘true tsar’. His family and their
propagandists spent a lot of effort to drive this point home. They went so far as
to argue that they were not only the very descendents and rightful heirs to the
Riurikids (via one of Ivan IV’s marriages), but that they were in some mystical
sense Riurikids themselves. This effort to cloak themselves in other-worldly
divinity appealed to the Muscovite mind, but it doubtless had little effect on
the men who actually engineered the Romanov ‘succession’. They knew, as
politicians always know, what had actually happened. Nonetheless, it made no
sense for them to do anything but play along. The tsar, after all, was one of
them and would – if he were wisely selected – protect their interests. Michael
and his successors did just this, and they became ‘true tsars’ as a result.
Though one reads occasionally in Muscovite didactic texts that the tsar
should do this or that (take council, be merciful, be wise),
10
he really had only
two hard and fast duties: to produce a suitable heir and to rule the country in
consultation with his boyars. There were, naturally, rules about how he would
perform these two tasks, the former governed by Christian doctrine and the
latter by custom. Since the rights and obligations of Orthodox marriage are
8 On pretenderism, see Chester Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and
the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University
Press,2001) and MaureenPerrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia:
The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995).
9 On the Romanovs’ campaign to stamp out pretenderism, see Mark C. Lapman, ‘Political
Denunciations in Muscovy, 1600 to 1649: The Sovereign’s Word and Deed’, unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard,University, 1982; N.I. Novombergskii, Slovo i delo gosudarevy:
Protsessy do izdaniia Ulozheniia Alekseia Mikhailovicha 1649 g. (Moscow: A. I. Snegireva,
1911), and G. G. Tel’berg, Ocherki politicheskogo suda i politicheskikh prestuplenii (Moscow:
Tipografiia Imperatorskogo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1912).
10 See Daniel Rowland, ‘The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of
Troubles’, RH 6 (1979): 259–83, and his ‘Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits
on the Power of the Tsar (1540s–1660s)?’, RR 49 (1990): 125–56.
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