Russian Classics Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

were the Russians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Inured by the exactions of their religion to an unquestioning faith in the supernatural, incapable from their teaching, as much as from their want of teaching, of forming a critical opinion upon a matter which admitted of doubt, and isolated from their own communities and from the sources of reliable information by vast distances and bad roads, they afforded a fit germinating bed for rumours and frauds of the flimsiest nature. Without proof many of them had accepted the theory that Boris Godounov was responsible for the murder of Dimitri Ivanovitch; equally without proof they were ready to credit the reports which began to fly about the country during the winter of 1603-1604 to the effect that the long-mourned Tzarevitch was alive and gathering an army beyond the Lit’uanian border. The explanation which accompanied this story was that Dimitri had been smuggled away from his would-be assassins at Ouglitch and another child had been killed in his stead. The fact that his mother and nurse had shrieked and swooned over his corpse, and that his relatives and the townsfolk who knew him well had had ample opportunity to detect any substitution while the body lay in state awaiting Shouyskie’s inquest, does not seem to have been taken into consideration. It was evident, from the accumulating reports that kept pouring in, that there was someone in Lit’uania, a tangible being, who claimed to be the veritable Dimitri, and it was also evident that the King of Poland and numbers of the Russ-Lit’uanian princes believed in his identity—or professed to.

The generally accepted theory among Russian historians as to the true personality of this pretended Ivanovitch is that he was one Grigorie Otrepiev, an enterprising monk, who had thrown off his frock to live a life of liberty among the western Kozaks. Amid the vicissitudes of a self-seeking career, both before and after quitting the cloister, the idea of impersonating the dead Tzarevitch seems to have cropped up from time to time, and finally, having entered the service of a Lit’uanian boyarin, the adventurer, on the pretence of mortal sickness, announced to a priest his identity with Dimitri. The chief evidence in support of his story was the discovery of a jewelled cross on his person, a clue which might have convicted him of sacrilegious pilfering as convincingly as of royal parentage. His “discoverers,” however, needed little convincing; the King of Poland, to whom he was exhibited after a somewhat rapid recovery, welcomed him as a useful weapon of offence against Boris; the Jesuits saw in him an instrument for the advancement of their Church; and the banished and disgraced Russians with whom he came in contact hailed him as the possible means of restoring them to the state from which they had fallen. Kostomarov, in an exhaustive monograph on the subject, throws doubt on the identity of the false Dimitri with the somewhat nebulous monk Otrepiev, and inclines to the belief that the pretender, whoever he was, was himself convinced of his veritable tzarskie descent.183

Whatever the origin and past career of this apparition, he succeeded in the first duty of an impostor, which is to impose. The personal resemblance which he bore to the family to which he claimed to belong does not appear to have been very striking; the medals and coins afterwards struck for him give his presentment as that of a coarse-featured thick-set man, with a heavy lower-jaw, recalling a Habsburg rather than a Rurikovitch type.184 But with a widely scattered population like that of Russia, rumour, assertion, and hearsay information weighed more than actual facts; the bulk of the people may not have been convinced, but many of them were ready to give the Pretender the benefit of the doubt. Besides the unofficial but more or less open support which he received from the Poles, the restless or uneasy spirits on the Russian side of the border hastened to join his standard. The Don Kozaks, impatient of the control of Boris’s strong hand, sped gleefully to join a leader in whose ranks were already gathered numbers of their fellow-freebooters from the Dniepr. The Tzar displayed a calmness which perhaps he did not feel, and contented himself at first with an expostulatory message to the King of Poland, and an address, signed by the Patriarch and all the bishops, to their fellow-clergy in Lit’uania, counselling them to withhold their allegiance from the unfrocked monk who was masquerading as a Tzarevitch. While a cross-current of proclamations was being directed from Moskva into Lit’uania and from the grand duchy into White Russia, the adventurer was preparing for bolder measures. Though Sigismund would not openly avow him, his cause had been warmly taken up by Urii Mnishek, Palatine of Sendomir, who supported him with men and money, and promised him, moreover, the hand of his daughter Marina. Boris’s attitude of scornful indifference had left the border province of Sieverski more or less open to an invasion, and in October the “Ljhedimitri” (false-Dimitri) crossed with his little army into Moskovite territory. 1604His audacity was rewarded with a large measure of success. The frontier town of Moravsk opened its gates to the Pretender, and the ancient city of Tchernigov followed the example. Novgorod Sieverski, held for Boris by Petr Basmanov (son of that angel-faced Thedor who came to such a miserable end in the days of Ivan), administered a timely check to the invader’s progress, but Poutivl and other neighbouring towns went over to the impostor’s cause. The Tzar set to work in earnest to stamp out the treason which had gained such an advantageous start, but the armed men who had sprung up at his summons to combat the Tartar Khan did not gather in such numbers to march against the soi-disant Tzarevitch. Nor was the sovereign sure of the fidelity either of the troops raised or of the voevodas who were to command them. Gladly would he have seen Basmanov, the man of his heart, who had already stood “among innumerable false, unmoved,” at the head of the tzarskie forces, but the exigencies of his statecraft required that he should employ the old family chiefs on this critical service. 1604-5Accordingly kniaz Mstislavskie and kniaz Vasili Shouyskie were entrusted with the direction of a winter campaign in the Sieverski Oukrain, which resulted in the Ljhedimitri being driven out of the open field and obliged to take refuge in Poutivl. Deserted by the Palatine of Sendomir and most of the Poles, and unable to count even on the continued adherence of the Kozaks, the bold disputer of the throne of Moskva was indeed in desperate circumstances. But the very despair which animated his followers made them formidable opponents to the Tzar’s troops, whose leaders were either incapable of following up their success or unwilling to do so. Instead of making a determined attack on Poutivl and securing the impostor’s person, they centred their efforts on the siege of Kromi, a gorodok held by a small Kozak garrison. The satisfaction felt at Moskva at the first successes of the tzarskie arms gradually evaporated as the weeks dragged on without result, and men began to speak significantly of the marvellous escapes and invincible tenacity of the man who claimed to be Dimitri. That the pretender had many adherents in the capital itself was becoming evident, and Boris is credited by the chroniclers with having cut off the tongues of some who were indiscreet enough to voice their sentiments; a proceeding which, though out of keeping with the Tzar’s general methods, was too thoroughly akin to Moskovite traditions to be unhesitatingly set down as fable. Boris was, however, wise enough to see that he must stand or fall by Russian disposition alone, and the loyal offer of assistance made him by the Duke of Sudermanland, now King of Sweden, was declined. In possession of the throne and the immense treasure appertaining thereto, enjoying the support of the Hierarchy, feared, if not loved, by the boyarins and voevodas, and held in esteem by the Courts of Austria, England, and Sweden, the Godounov Tzar might well have stood his ground against the doubtful rival whom he had hemmed into a corner of the Sieverski province. Every year that he reigned made people more accustomed to the new dynasty, made them look more naturally to his son Thedor as their future sovereign. If the Ljhedimitri had secret well-wishers at the Court, if there were within the Kreml’s precincts men who fancied Boris guilty of reaching the throne by a hidden crime, it was by the same means that they must vanquish him. That such a design existed would not be much to say; that it was ever put into practice there is no proof. History merely records that the Tzar, after transacting business all the morning, dined in the “gilded room” in his palace, and was suddenly stricken with a mysterious malady, of which he died two hours later (13th April 1605). So, working and ruling to the last, passed away the great boyarin, who, with all his faults, gave Russia one of the noblest of her Tzars. His great crime in the eyes of the people who had chosen him to reign over them was that he did not belong to the sacred House of Rurikovitch, but for all his Tartar extraction he was more western in his ideas than any of the sovereigns of Moskovy who had gone before him, and the fifteen-year-old son whom he had educated to succeed him gave promise of being an enlightened and gracious ruler. Since the vaunted Dimitri Donskoi, he was the first Gosoudar