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2 results

  • 4 - Election and Heredity 1598–1645

  • Paul Bushkovitch, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia
    Published online:
    29 March 2021
    Print publication:
    18 March 2021, pp 121-181

  • Summary

    Tsar Boris Godunov had a designated heir but was overthrown by the First False Dmitrii, and his son perished in the Time of Troubles. The false Dmitrii claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible and the true heir. After the people of Moscow had overthrown and killed Dmitrii, the boyar elite elected as tsar Vasilii Shuiskii. After further disorder, the Polish king Zygmunt III imposed his son Władysław on the Russian throne by a forced election, but the militia under Prince D. M. Pozharskii and the merchant Kuzma Minin defeated the Polish forces. In 1613 an Assembly of the Land elected Michael Romanov as tsar. Tsar Michael did not marry until his father, Filaret, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, returned to Russia in 1619. After Michael’s marriage to Evdokiia Streshneva in 1626, he fathered many children, including his heir Aleksei. Michael followed the older procedures, requiring oaths to the whole family and demonstrating his choice of heir by giving his oldest son a role in court ceremonies. At no point did the Russians suggest that election was in any way inferior to heredity in succession to the throne.

  • 18 - The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)

  • from Part II - The Expansion, Consolidation and Crisis of Muscovy (1462–1613)
  • Edited by Maureen Perrie, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 2006, pp 409-432

  • Summary

    This chapter presents the 'Time of Troubles' as beginning with the First False Dmitrii's invasion of Russia in the autumn of 1604. In the aftermath of the famine of 1601-3, the pretender's challenge to Boris Godunov's legitimacy as tsar interacted with the social grievances of the population of the southern frontier to produce a highly explosive mixture. The dynastic crisis of 1598 gave rise to the First False Dmitrii; and his triumphs in their turn inspired new pretenders. The failure of Tsar Dmitrii to put in an appearance had greatly demoralized Bolotnikov's forces, but a second False Dmitrii had in fact surfaced in Russia well before the fall of Tula. 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.