The Time of Troubles (), also known as Smuta (), was a period of political crisis in Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Feodor I, the last of the House of Rurik, and ended in 1613 with the accession of Michael I of the House of Romanov at the 1613 Zemsky Sobor.
It was a period of deep social crisis and lawlessness following the death of Feodor I, a weak and possibly intellectually disabled ruler who died without an heir. His death ended the main line of the Rurik dynasty, leading to a violent succession crisis with numerous usurpers and false Dmitrys (impostors) claiming the title of tsar. Russia experienced the famine of 1601–1603, which killed almost a third of the population, within three years of Feodor's death. Russia was also occupied by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Polish–Russian War and lost Smolensk.
The Time of Troubles ended with the election of Michael Romanov as tsar by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, establishing the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia until the February Revolution in 1917.
Background Tsar Feodor I was the second adult son of Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar of Russia. Feodor's elder brother, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, was the heir apparent; Feodor was never considered a serious candidate for the Russian throne. However, Tsarevich Ivan was allegedly killed in anger by his father on 19 November 1581, making Feodor the new heir apparent.
According to the historian Chester Dunning, "Tsar Ivan knew perfectly well that Fedor could not rule on his own; before his own death in 1584, he set up a council of regents to govern in his son's name. Ivan named as regents two leading boyars; Fedor's uncle, Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev (head of the Romanov clan), and Prince Ivan F. Mstislavsky; he also named two leading members of his own court: a premier prince of the blood, the popular and heroic Prince Ivan Petrovich Shuisky, and Fedor's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov. On the day of the coronation, Boris was named koniushii boiarin (master of the horse or equerry) – a title that immediately identified him as the most powerful member of the boyar council. Prince Ivan Mstislavsky made a bid for power in 1585. He was stopped by the other regents and was forced to become a monk – which in Russia was an irreversible step. Out of this episode grew a tacit alliance between the Godunovs and the Romanovs to protect their families' interests." In 1586, after an anti-Godunov riot, "Aged Prince Ivan Shuisky was forced to become a monk and kept under heavy guard. Boris Godunov was now Tsar Fedor's sole regent and the most powerful man in Russia."
In the middle of the 16th century, Russia suffered famines, pestilence and internal discord which were accompanied by Ottoman-backed raids by the Crimean Khanate. In 1571, Devlet I Giray, and his army ransacked its lands in the events known as Fire of Moscow. In 1591, Ğazı II Giray and his brother Fetih I Giray launched another in Russia, but they were completely defeated. This was the last trip of the Crimeans to Moscow.
After Tsar Ivan's death on , Feodor was crowned as the tsar on 10 June. The pious Feodor took little interest in politics, ruling through Boris Godunov (his closest advisor, a boyar, the son-in-law of Malyuta Skuratov and the brother of Feodor's wife, Irina Godunova). Feodor produced one child: a daughter, Feodosia, who died at the age of two.
According to Dunning, "At the outset of Tsar Fedor's reign, Boris Godunov and other regents moved against a threat emanating from the court faction supporting Ivan the Terrible's youngest son, Dmitrii – the child of Ivan's sixth and last wife, Maria Nagaia. In May 1591, Tsarevich Dmitrii was reported to be dead. On the basis of testimony from several eyewitnesses," an investigative commission, "concluded that Dmitrii had accidentally slit his own throat during an epileptic seizure that came on while he was playing with a knife."
In January 1598, Fedor died. According to Dunning, "The tsar's death without an heir brought to an end the only ruling dynasty Moscow had ever known." Irina abdicated the throne to the boyar council and entered a convent. Godunov soon prevailed over his chief rival for the throne, Feodor Romanov, and was crowned in September 1598; according to Dunning, "To help calm any discontent and to cement his claim to the throne, the new tsar had himself 'elected' after the fact by a sham Zemsky Sobor." After the Romanov conspiracy of 1600, Feodor Romanov was forced to become a monk.
"Boris Godunov has been called one of Russia's greatest rulers," according to Dunning, "The man responsible for the expansion of Russia at the end of the sixteenth century was Boris Godunov." Yet in 1592, he had effectively enserfed millions, burdened the populace with heavy taxes, harassed the free cossacks, and in 1597, introduced a slave law converting contract slaves into slaves for life.
Between 1601 and 1603, Russia experienced a famine, potentially caused by the eruption of the Peruvian volcano Huaynaputina. This led to extremely poor harvests, with nighttime temperatures in the summer months often below freezing. Famine enveloped the country in 1602, followed by disease, claiming a third to two thirds of the population. Hunger riots, and the Khlopko rebellion of September 1603 also caused social instability. It was this famine and its consequences which served to hugely damage the image of Tsar Boris, which was worsened by the fact that the "many people came to view the famine as a clear sign of God's anger with the Russian people and their ruler."
False Dmitry I
According to Dunning, "Russia's first civil war came about as a direct result of the bold invasion of the country by a man claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitrii, somehow 'miraculously' rescued from the 'usurper' Boris Godunov's alleged assassination attempt in 1591 and now returning to claim the throne from the illegitimate 'false tsar' Boris."
Conspiracies were rampant after Feodor's death. Rumors circulated that his younger brother, Dmitry, was still alive and in hiding (despite official accounts that he had been stabbed to death at an early age, by accident or by Godunov's order). Russia's political instability was exploited by several usurpers, known as False Dmitrys, who claimed to be the tsarevich (and heir to the tsardom). False Dmitry I appeared in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1603, claiming to be the heir to the Russian throne.
According to Dunning, "The source of the pretender scheme was a conspiracy among Russian lords. When Dmitrii finally revealed himself in Poland-Lithuania in 1603, Tsar Boris openly accused the boyars of organizing the pretender scheme. There is, in fact, quite a bit of evidence linking the pretender to the Romanov clan." Dimitrii had revealed his identity to the Ukrainian magnate Prince Adam Vishnevetsky, who helped him gain the support of the Zaporozhian and Don cossacks. Jerzy Mniszech housed Dmitrii, and helped secure several witnesses testifying him to be the Tsarevich Dmitrii.
Dunning notes, "King Sigismund, Polish Catholic leaders, and the Jesuits soon took great interest in reports that Dmitrii was considering conversion to Catholicism. They dreamed, among other things, of converting all of Russia and then using the Russians against Sweden."
By September 1604, Mniszech, as Dmitrii's commander-in-chief, had gathered about 2500 men. In October 1604 they crossed the Poland-Lithuania border into Russia. According to Dunning, "Dmitrii's invasion in October 1604 triggered the first phase of Russia's first civil war – a massive rebellion of southwestern and southern frontier provinces, towns, garrisons, and cossacks that grew into a much wider conflict that toppled the Godunov dynasty."
After Godunov's death in 1605, False Dmitry I made a triumphal entrance into Moscow and was crowned tsar on 21 July. He consolidated power by visiting the tomb of Ivan the Terrible and the convent of Ivan's widow, Maria Nagaya, who accepted Dimitry as her son and confirmed his story. False Dimitry I was married per procura to Marina Mniszech on 8 May 1606, in exchange for promises of land grants and wealth. He converted to Catholicism, relying on Polish Jesuits and Polish nobles (who were prominent at his court) and on Mniszech's private armies.
Vasili IV Shuisky
According to Dunning, "Tsar Dmitrii's nemesis, Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, was one of the most senior and prestigious boyars whose family of Suzdal princes traced their ancestry back to Rurik…Tsar Dmitrii was a popular ruler while the conspirators represented only a relatively small group of disgruntled and ambitious individuals." Soon after Dmitrii's entry into Moscow, Vasilii, and his brothers Dmitrii and Ivan, spread the word that the tsar was Grishka Otrepyev, a runaway defrocked monk. Vasilii was condemned to exile, but then allowed to return to Moscow, and reinstated in the boyar council. Yet, "As soon as Vasilii Shuiskii returned to Moscow in late 1605, he began secretly conspiring to assassinate Tsar Dmitrii…By spring 1606, Shuskii could count on the support of some individuals at court, in the church, and among the merchant elite."
False Dmitry I quickly became unpopular, since many in Russia saw him as a tool of the Poles. On 17 May 1606, ten days after his marriage, Dmitry was killed by armed mobs during an uprising in Moscow after he was ousted from the Kremlin. Many of his Polish advisors were also killed or imprisoned during the rebellion.
Vasilii Shuiskii's conspirators included his brothers Dmitrii and Ivan, his nephew Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, Vasily and Ivan Golitsyn, okolnichy Ivan Kriuk-Kolychev, okolnichy Mikhail Tatishchev, monks, priests, clerics, merchants, plus trusted dvoriane and deti boiarskie from Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, and Moscow. Several thousand Polish wedding guests were in Moscow for the tsar's wedding to the Polish princess Marina Mniszech. On the morning of 17 May 1606, Vasily Golitsyn and Mikhail Tatishchev led the assault on the Kremlin Frolov gate while Vasilli Shuiskii sent heralds warning Muscovites that the Poles were attempting to assassinate the tsar. A terrible massacre followed with six or seven hours of rioting in which 420 Poles were killed, and several hundred Russians. This allowed assassins to kill the tsar's guards. The tsar, fell and broke his leg while jumping out of a window, and was shot by Mylnikov. Shuiskii then attempted to justify the assassination by demonizing the tsar, claiming he was a sorcerer and skomorokh. His corpse lay on Red Square for three days, was denied a Christian burial, and was eventually burned. Legend states that his ashes were fired from a cannon in the direction from which he had arrived to Moscow. Yet a rumor was soon started that a foreigner resembling the tsar had been killed, which soon led to another civil war in the name of the "true tsar" Dmitrii.
On 19 May 1606, Shuiskii's co-conspirators met at his townhouse, planning his assumption of power, and then proceeded to Red Square where he was proclaimed tsar. According to Dunning, "The narrowness of the group supporting him, his reputation as a liar, his act of regicide, his hasty seizure of power without the approval of a zemsky sobor, and his lack of any serious effort to gain the support of the common people all combined to undermine Tsar Vasilii's credibility and to destabilize his reign from the outset." Referred to as the "boyar-tsar", Shuiskii had himself crowned on 1 June, he then stripped Filaret Romanov of his office. Yet, Mikhail Molchanov escaped the assassination plot, fleeing to Putivl, where he conspired with Grigory Shakhovskoy to initiate the uprising of Bolotnikov.