In the long term, the oppressive effects of serfdom were to aid Russian expansion by encouraging a steady flow of people ready to pioneer newly discovered or recently secured territories at the periphery of the state. However, by the 1580s Ivan’s main expansionist thrusts had all been halted. Poland and Sweden had blocked Russia’s roads westward and to the Baltic; the Turks blocked the advance to the south. And Ivan himself seemed a broken man. He had finally conceded failure in the war for Livonia; he had brought ruin to much of his realm, and destroyed many of its best human assets. Compared with such costs, his achievements seemed slight indeed. In his last testament, redolent with quotations from the Bible, he gave vent to despair and self-pity: ‘My spirit is afflicted, my spiritual and bodily wounds have increased, and there is no physician to heal me … I have found no comforters, they have repaid me with evil for my kindness and hatred for my love.’ 35
Resentful and full of foreboding, one imagines, both for his empire and for the state of his soul, Ivan confronted death. He died in 1584, and Russia did indeed fall into ruin. Before long, the pretensions to imperial status were to seem almost risible.
6
The Crash
H
ISTORIANS OFTEN ATTRIBUTE Russia’s descent into anarchy in the early 1600s to Ivan’s misrule, yet the tyrant’s death did not mark the onset of what Russians call ‘the era of confusion’ and we in the West know as the ‘Time of Troubles’. Indeed, there was something of a recovery However disappointing the terms that ended the Livonian war may have been politically, the conclusion of hostilities the year before Ivan’s death eased the economic pressure on the country Recognition that the terror of Ivan’s oprichnina had gone for good gave hope to many; there was a breathing space, a chance to stabilize the country after the disruptions of the oprichnina — and the new tsar’s government seized the opportunity.
Economic activity revived; the outward migration of population from the Moscow region ceased. Abandoned villages were gradually resettled. Service gentry, in despair at losing their peasant tenants, who had been leaving for the freedom of the frontier areas or for large estates which offered them terms that mere gentry could not afford, were mollified by new laws. These banned the departure of peasant tenants before St George’s Day (the end of the autumn harvest), and authorized their recovery by force for a period thereafter. At the same time, the weight of government demands on the peasantry was lightened.
The new domestic policy sought to establish internal calm after all the recent storms. It was paralleled by a foreign policy which guarded Russia’s essential interests without requiring any massive mobilization of resources. Dangerous ambition was abandoned, and feelers were put out to countries far and near offering co-operation for mutual benefit. The defences of the southern frontier were shored up; a twelve-year peace was concluded with Poland-Lithuania in 1591; diplomatic relations were established with the Ottoman Empire, and commercial relations with Holland and France. Only the confrontation with Sweden continued — but it was to result in the recovery of central Karelia and territories on the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga which had been lost in the Livonian War. Another triumph, achieved by peaceful means, was the raising of the metropolitan see of Moscow, hitherto subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople, to the status of an independent patriarchate in 1591. This made the Russian Church effectively a national church, increasing both its authority and that of its partner, the state. 1
If Ivan’s misrule had made a collapse inevitable, the measures taken under his successor kept disaster at bay, and when the reckoning eventually came it was to be precipitated and deepened by factors independent of Ivan’s actions — by ‘acts of God’ that were quite unforeseeable.
The new tsar, Fedor, was the elder of Ivan’s two surviving sons. The younger, Dmitrii, was to die an accidental death in 1591. Years afterwards this event was to precipitate a crisis, but not at the time. True, Tsar Fedor was rumoured to be of limited ability - he was probably mentally retarded - but he served well enough as a figurehead, and he soon gained a reputation for piety, a critical indicator of legitimacy in that age and therefore a real political asset. Besides, it transpired that he was capable of siring an heir. His policies, however, are associated with those who managed affairs for him - the regents, his ministers.
These included the brothers Shchelkalov — Andrei, who had headed the Foreign Office (Posolskii prikaz) from 1570 to 1594, and Vasilii, who as head of both the Musketeer Office (Streletskii prikaz) and the Felony Department (Razboinii prikaz) was effectively in charge of state security. 2Two other leading lights were Dmitrii Godunov, a former oprichnik, and his brother Boris, who made a reputation as a financial manager. The Godunovs hailed from Kostroma on the Volga, where they were generous benefactors of the riverside Trinity Monastery. Both had been members of Ivan’s council of ministers; both were shrewd politically, and when Boris persuaded the Tsar to marry his sister his prospects were much enhanced.
The policies that Boris and his colleagues pursued were judicious. One of the new regime’s first measures was to abolish the tax privileges of hereditary estate-holders. It also gave effective relief to the hard-pressed service gentry by giving them seigneurial rights over their ploughland, as well as allowing them to pursue and recover their runaway peasants. Tradesmen, craftsmen and other productive commercial people — another vital constituency — were helped too, by exempting the suburbs and settlements where they lived from taxation. These measures promoted social peace and encouraged commerce especially in central Russia, but the government also took radical measures to develop the south and south-east, chiefly by building new towns.
Samara and the stronghold of Ufa in northern Bashkiria (founded in 1586), Tsaritsyn, later Stalingrad (1589), Saratov (1590) and Tsivilsk — forts and future cities with alliterative, romantic names — were all founded on the middle and lower reaches of the Volga at this time. The government’s hold of the steppe was furthered both by founding new towns and by refor-tifying others: Voronezh and Livny (1586), Kursk (1587), Yelets (1592), Kromy (1595) and in 1598 Belgorod on the river Donets. The purpose was to create strong defensive points and governmental centres to administer the growing population of those parts, for since Tsar Ivan’s time Russian settlement had been growing denser south and east of the centre. In pursuing this policy, therefore, the state was trying to catch up with its own population, and at the same time to promote, protect and control commerce. But it also probed regions beyond. In 1586 an emissary was sent to spy out the land of Kakhetia south of the Caucasus Mountains. He returned with an envoy from the local king. This proved the beginning of a long, close association between Russia and Georgia. 3
Before the end of the century Moscow was also in touch with the Kazakhs of the southern steppe, and further north, across the Urals, it was extending its authority into Siberia. Tiumen was founded in 1585, Tobolsk in 1587, as well as Pelym, Tara and other strong-points, including eventually Verkhoturia. This was a remarkably swift follow-up of Yermak’s conquest of the Tatar state of eastern Siberia and the Stroganovs’ exploitation of it. The building boom extended to established towns too. Astrakhan and Kazan were given new stone citadels at this time, and Smolensk on the western frontier was developed into the strongest fortress of all. 4
The chief purpose of the government’s extension into Siberia was to secure that invaluable source of furs — a major export — and to administer the native population, the hunters and trappers, who all paid their taxes in furs. Russia was creating an immense colonial empire in Siberia and the southern steppe. But it did so innocently, without realizing the world significance of the fact, 5 its long-term strategic significance in giving Moscow control of the world’s most extensive land mass. But, though the motive was short-term and practical, the policy was systematically pursued. Every strong-point, whether built of logs upon earthworks, of brick or of stone, was strategically sited and provided a serviceable district centre for the government’s representative, who act
ed as both civil governor and military commander. 6
Scattered as many of them were, it would be the work of decades to develop these strong-points into an integrated system of defence. In the meantime older expedients still had their uses, like that of which the Elizabethan venturer Jerome Horsey wrote in 1588: ‘The moving Castle gulaigorod]… so framed, that it may be set up in length … two, three, foure, five, sixe or seven miles’. A double wall of timber spaced with three yards in between and closed at both ends, the structure could be dismantled, transported and re-erected where needed, and was an effective block to Tatar and other raiders from the steppe. 7
Careful thought as well as improvisation lay behind these essentially expansionist developments — as behind the stabilization programme and the economic and foreign policies — and Boris Godunov was the moving spirit behind all of them. He had a particular interest in the south-east, and some relevant expertise, having earlier run the department which administered Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia. He knew all about running a central financial department and how the palace was administered, was supported by some very able helpers, and made it a principle to promote and exploit talent. Apart from the Shchelkalov brothers, he furthered the careers of men like Foma Petelin, the treasury specialist whom the English merchant Giles Fletcher considered outstandingly efficient and politically astute, and Eleazar Vyluzgin, chief administrator of the department of service estates, who seems to have headed the regents ‘private office and who, in 1591, was sent to Uglich with the commission of inquiry into the sudden death of the Tsarevich Dmitrii.
The untimely death of the Tsar’s younger brother is popularly attributed to Boris, but the charge is unjust. Boris had no motive to kill Dmitrii in 1591, when Tsar Fedor, whatever his mental strength may have been, was in good health and expected to sire heirs. Generations of good historians from V. I. Klein to Ruslan Skrynnikov have sifted the evidence and concluded that Boris was innocent and that, as the investigation report concluded, Dmitrii died by accident or misadventure while playing with a sharp instrument in the courtyard of the palace at Uglich. 8 Why, then, has the contrary view prevailed?
The rumour that the Tsarevich had been murdered was first put about immediately after his death by his mother’s kinsmen, the Nagois. But the Nagois hated Boris. They had tried to displace Tsar Fedor, and Boris had thwarted them, sidelining the heir apparent and his entourage. After the death they sought revenge, spreading derogatory rumours about Boris and trying to organize opposition to him. They had little immediate effect, although, as we shall see, they were to gain ground later. The myth that Boris had had Dmitrii murdered was furthered fifteen years later by the young prince’s canonization (for cynical political reasons) as an innocent ‘sufferer for Christ’s sake’, like the popular boy saints Boris and Gleb. Later still, and for their own purposes, the Romanovs were also to exploit the myth. 9 The leading nineteenth-century historian Soloviev followed the Nagois’ line, giving an account of ‘the saint’s murder’ which was dramatic, sentimental and disgracefully tendentious, and the famous Vasilii Kliuchevskii followed him uncritically - although both historians wrote before essential evidence was published in 1913.
Meanwhile Russia’s greatest poet, Pushkin, and the composer Mussorgsky had used the myth to create a popular Shakespearian-type tragedy and a famous opera. Since then the lie about Boris’s implication in Dmitrii’s ‘murder’ has been perpetuated by the Church, which would find it embarrassing to de-canonize the saint, and by the financial interests of those who profit from the pilgrims and tourists attracted to Dmitrii’s shrine. Boris Godunov has been traduced. There is no evidence that he plotted to murder his way to the throne as Shakespeare pictures Richard of York doing; no evidence that he was more scheming than any other politician anxious to preserve his position near the top of the pile. But there is evidence that he was an able minister concerned to promote the country’s interests, treating its subjects no worse than necessary 10
In 1588 Terka, Russia’s stronghold in the north-eastern foothills of the towering Caucasus, was rebuilt on a new site. In the following year Prince Andrei Khvorostinin was appointed its governor. The region had been identified as particularly important, and the government sensed that its politics were complex, so Khvorostinin was instructed to follow the situation there particularly closely. In 1589 he reported that Shevkal, the shamkhal of Tarku, was being wooed by the Ottoman pasha of Derbent. The shamkhal was chief of the Kumukhs, who had originated in the mountains of Dagestan but had come to dominate the Kumyks of the coastal plain west of the Caspian. But if the Turks wanted the shamkhal to declare for them, the Russians wanted him on their side and the Turks out of the region. The motive was control of the profitable trade route between Moscow and Persia, the source of rich silks and other oriental luxuries. 11Besides, the Tarku area was adjacent to the most convenient road south across the mountains to the exotic lands of Georgia and Armenia. Moscow was now particularly interested in the little successor states to the united Georgia that the Mongols had undermined, for their peoples were Orthodox Christians and natural allies. So in April 1589 an embassy left Moscow for the south, returning a mission from the King of Imretia which accompanied them. The importance of the mission can be gauged by the presents it took.
For King Alexander himself there were:
Forty sables worth 100 rubles,
A thousand ermine pelts worth 30 rubles,
Fifteen fish teeth [probably walrus tusks] worth 70 rubles,
A cuirass worth 20 rubles,
A helmet worth 20 rubles
as well as three falcons, which were not valued 12 — perhaps priceless — one of which specialized in catching swans. Valuable gifts were also taken to present to princes and mirzas (to use the Persian term for prince) of the neighbouring Avars and Kabardinians. But the shamkhal of Tarku was to be given only a warning to send hostages for his future good behaviour if he did not want war.
This particular attempt to expand into the eastern Caucasus was to end in failure in 1594 when a Russian force, deserted by its Muslim allies, was routed. A joint attempt with Georgian forces was also to come to grief in 1605, though the attempts did not end there. In any case the 1594 mission had other aims, including cultural penetration. The mission, which was given an escort of nearly 300 soldiers and 50 Terek Cossacks, also included priests who were experts in liturgy and canon law and three icon painters. Clearly Moscow wanted the Georgians to conform to its version of the religiously correct. This had become all the more important now that the see of Moscow had been raised to patriarchal status, and the Catholic Church was campaigning not only against the Protestants, but against Orthodox Christians too.
The Catholics were to register another victory with the foundation in 1596 of the Uniate Church of Ukraine, a communion which retained most of the Orthodox liturgy and permitted parish priests to marry, but which recognized the Pope’s authority and (albeit with greater misgivings) the Gregorian calendar. At the same time the Orthodox Church ceased to have any official existence in Lithuania, of which Ukraine then formed a part. After most of the Lithuanian elite had been lured away from Orthodoxy by the promise of all the privileges of the Polish nobility if they became Catholics, the new confession threatened to suborn much of the Ukrainian clergy and the peasants too.
There was resistance. The immensely wealthy Prince Konstantin Ostrozhsky championed the cause of Orthodox Christianity. He funded a school and a Slavonic printing press, sponsored writers, and summoned up moral support from the patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople. Orthodox merchants organized confraternities and also founded schools, and Cossacks raised violent protests against Polish influence and Polish rule. In time the various strands of opposition were to combine and the movement was to gather a force which Moscow was able to exploit (See Chapter 7). However, the mobilization of these different interests was slow and their co-ordination was difficult. Besides, the Orthodox cause boasted too few educated polemists to be able to compete with
the barrage of propaganda mounted by the Jesuits, and by the turn of the century the Tsar was preoccupied with other problems. 13
In 1598 Tsar Fedor died, and his death precipitated a crisis for the state. Fedor was the last of his line. The Riurikid dynasty, which had produced too many claimants to the crown when lateral succession was allowed, produced too few now that claims were confined to vertical succession. It was an unexpected misfortune. Of the three sons whom Ivan IV had fathered, Ivan, the eldest had died accidentally. Ivan had struck him in a fit of temper, and, falling awkwardly, the child fractured his skull. The youngest, Dmitrii, had died of misadventure playing with a knife. Now, seven years later, Fedor had died without leaving an heir. As a church historian put it, the royal house of Russia was left without a tenant. 14 Who, then, should succeed?
There were several hopefuls. Some, including the Romanovs and Nagois, were related to Ivan’s wives; others, like Prince Vasilii Shuiskii, claimed both distinguished ancestry and ministerial experience. Boris Godunov, though not of princely descent, was also a candidate. As the late Tsar’s brother-in law, a senior minister and a senior courtier he was well-positioned, though Shuiskii and Fedor Romanov also sat on the boyar council. Boris’s particular advantage was the powerful support of his friend Patriarch Job (whom he himself had been instrumental in appointing); he was also well qualified in terms of both native ability and personal qualities, and, insofar as he was known, popular. The distinguished historian A. A. Zimin describes him as resolute and far-sighted, as capable of dissembling and cruelty when circumstances demanded, but also generous and charming. 15 In fact he was the obvious choice for tsar, and an Assembly of the Land duly endorsed his election.
Russia Page 16