Search

3 results

3 - Benediction to Election 1533–1598
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 69-120
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

After a fourteen-year boyar regency, Ivan the Terrible was crowned tsar and married to Anastasiia Romanova. In 1553 the tsar’s illness led to a succession crisis: some boyars hesitated to swear loyalty to his infant son. The birth of two more sons, Ivan and Fyodor, guaranteed an heir. As the oldest boy grew up, Tsar Ivan brought him to meetings with boyars and ambassadors, took him along for military campaigns, and had him married. The son’s untimely death left his younger brother the heir. Tsar Fyodor was incapable of effective rule and did not produce a son, leading to the election of his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, as his heir.

18 - The Time of Troubles (1603–1613)
from Part II - The Expansion, Consolidation and Crisis of Muscovy (1462–1613)
- By Maureen Perrie
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
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
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.

11 - Fedor Ivanovich and Boris Godunov (1584–1605)
from Part II - The Expansion, Consolidation and Crisis of Muscovy (1462–1613)
- By A. P. Pavlov
Edited by Maureen Perrie, University of Birmingham
Book:

The Cambridge History of Russia

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

14 September 2006, pp 264-285
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

In Vienna in November 1584 Luka Novosil'tsev, the Russian ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire, referred to Boris Godunov as 'the ruler of the land, a great and gracious lord'. Thus in the summer of 1584 Godunov emerged from the shadows and was officially recognised as the ruler of the state and de facto regent for Tsar Fedor. For the next twenty years, until his death, he was the central political figure in Muscovy. One of the most important events of Godunov's regency was the establishment of the Russian patriarchate in 1589. In the realm of foreign policy, Boris Godunov's government aimed to overcome the onerous consequences of the Livonian war and to restore the international prestige of the Muscovite state. Contemporaries are unanimous that the reign of Fedor Ivanovich was a period of stability and prosperity. Boris Godunov's government was greatly concerned to satisfy the economic needs of the nobility.