The late sixteenth century was thus a time of deep crisis, the central Russian lands becoming depopulated by peasant flight, the towns troubled by poverty and disorder. Ivan himself added a vital new element to the crisis when he killed his eldest son in a fit of fury. He of all people should have known what a disaster to Muscovy was the weakening of the succession to the throne. Of his two surviving sons, one, Fedor, ruled from 1584–98, but was always in poor health and died young, while the other, Dmitrii, was the offspring of his fifth wife and thus not acknowledged as heir by the Orthodox Church, in any case he died in mysterious circumstances in the provincial town of Uglich in 1591.
At this time, when the dynasty seemed to be faltering, Moscow took one final step to buttress its claims to be the ‘Third Rome’. By a mixture of cajolery and pressure, the eastern Patriarchs were persuaded in 1589 to consent to the elevation of the title of Metropolitan of Moscow to that of Patriarch. This was a step of little practical importance, since the Muscovite church had long been self-governing, but its symbolic significance was considerable, since this was the first patriarchal title to be created since the age of the ecumenical councils ten centuries earlier. The Muscovite church joined the ranks of the most ancient and dignified Orthodox jurisdictions.14
The end of the Riurik dynasty in 1598 posed for the Muscovite state questions it had never faced before. Hitherto the state had been inseparable from the person of the Grand Prince/Tsar: indeed the word ‘state’ is a misnomer if applied to most people’s contemporary understanding of the authority under which they lived. But now for the first time those active in politics – those holding a chin, or official status – had to learn to look at monarchical authority in a more abstract way, to ask themselves what qualities they expected of the person who would exercise it, and under what conditions he would do so. This was a mental leap which was extraordinarily difficult to make.
The problem was that Ivan IVs brief attempt to institutionalize and frame in law the demands the Tsar could make on the various strata of society had collapsed as a result of his wars and the grotesque machinations of the oprichnina. No service noble, merchant or peasant could know for certain in advance what obligations he would have to discharge from one year to the next, nor could he apply to a court if he felt they had been exceeded. The whole concept of sovereignty remained that of the appanage principality, whose lands and people were completely at the disposal of its ruler, while he answered only to God for his treatment of them. Muscovy had not outgrown this mentality before it became a proto-national state, claiming to speak for all Russians, and on top of that an incipient and fast-growing empire.
The patrimonial outlook had implications for the subjects as well as the ruler. They too could treat the realm as a master’s estate which they were at liberty to quit if they preferred to seek employment elsewhere. The impenetrable forests and immense open plains gave them the geographical means to escape the most importunate ruler. This very fluidity of social relations made the creation of either legality or intermediate institutions extremely difficult. As we have seen, Ivan abandoned the attempt at an early stage. It also meant that subjects who wished to oppose authority rather than merely flee it had no accepted channels for doing so other than by sponsoring an alternative ruler, that is, a pretender.
The only shadowy institutions which did exist to represent the various strata of society were the zemskie sobory. The new importance of the Patriarchate was underlined when Patriarch Job convened a sobor to solve the crisis created by the abrupt end of the dynasty. It unanimously offered the throne to Boris Godunov, who, though not from one of the most senior boyar families, had been Fedor’s brother-in-law and regent, and was thus a natural candidate.
The circumstances of his election are of interest, for they represent a moment when the beginnings of a covenant between Tsar and people might have been worked out. Godunov several times declined the throne when it was offered to him. According to the historian Kliuchevskii, the boyar members of the sobor were expecting that he would accept a charter (gramota) defining the limits of his power. By playing a ‘comedy of silence’, refusing the crown but also refusing to sign any kind of limitation on the authority of the crown, Godunov put the sobor in the position where they had either to offer him traditional unrestrained patrimonial authority or open the way to a potentially very damaging struggle for the succession. Not surprisingly, the delegates put stability first, and Godunov became Tsar without any restraints to his power. Kliuchevskii feels that Godunov’s behaviour was misguided: ‘Boris was not the hereditary patrimonial ruler of the Muscovite state, but the people’s choice. He began a new succession of Tsars with a new political significance, In order not to be absurd or detested, he should have behaved in a different way, and not aped the defunct dynasty with its appanage customs and prejudices.’15
Most of the boyar clans were thus discontented with Godunov from the outset. The service nobles formed the bulk of his support, but many of them were worried that the peasants on whom they relied for their livelihood were being enticed away from them by wealthier landowners or monasteries, who could offer better conditions. Boris reacted to their complaints by limiting the peasants’ right to move and facilitating procedures for reclaiming those who had done so. He combined this with trying to impose greater control over the Cossacks and small landowners of the vulnerable southern frontier regions.
As factionalism mounted, Boris set his minions to spy on his rivals and enemies: he imprisoned or murdered some, and exiled others to remote regions. Deportations, confiscations and executions multiplied, recalling sinister memories of Ivan the Terrible. These afflictions might have been tolerated in a Tsar who had come to the throne by heredity. But Boris had been chosen, and it followed that alternatives could be contemplated. The last straw was a series of bad harvests in 1601–3.
Before long a pretender appeared, claiming to be Ivan IVs son Dmitrii, escaped from his reported death in Uglich. He immediately attracted a large and diverse following: boyars jealous of Godunov, service nobles desirous of larger estates and a firmer grip on their peasants, Cossacks anxious to reassert their ancient freedoms, peasants calling for an easing of serfdom. Although representatives of all these classes flocked to his banner, their aspirations contradicted each other, and there was no way any ruler, no matter how skilful, could have reconciled them. However, Boris’s sudden death in April 1605 opened the capital to them, without their mutual differences having been resolved.16
The chaos was compounded by international intervention: Poland-Lithuania and Sweden, eager to take advantage of the weakening of their threatening eastern neighbour, sent their troops in to enforce their own territorial, religious and dynastic interests. Over the next few years, Muscovy was torn apart by boyar feuds, social revolution and international warfare. Sovereignty over it was claimed or temporarily exercised by three pretenders, a leading boyar, a boyar council, a Polish prince and a triumvirate of service nobles. This was the epoch which Russians refer to as the ‘Time of Troubles’ (smutnoe vremia).
Yet in the end Muscovy did not disintegrate, and in 1613 the motley and disreputable parade of pretenders came to an end when a zemskii sobor elected a new Tsar, Mikhail Romanov, from a boyar family which had been a principal rival of the Godunovs. However one explains it, some sense of shared identity and destiny impelled the various warring groups to find sufficient common ground to cooperate in expelling the foreigners from their capital city and in restoring the authority of the state. The way in which the ‘land’ recovered in the absence of a legitimate Tsar suggested that Muscovy had the potential to outgrow the dynastic patrimonial framework, that a potentially state-bearing people existed.
Precisely because the state was falling apart and had to be reconstituted, the Time of Troubles was quite fruitful in political programmes, some of which indicate the way a Russian civic nation might have evolved had the relentless pressure of empire and great power status been eased.