Opera Background
Boris Godunov
The Historical Boris Godunov: The Time of the Troubles
Boris Godunov’s Rise to PowerThe Time of the Troubles
After Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov’s Rise to Power
The story of Boris Godunov’s rise to power can be traced back to a double wedding in Russia’s Imperial family. The first couple was Ivan the Terrible, Russia’s first Tsar, a man with a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness, and his seventh wife. The other couple was Tsarevitch Fyodor, Tsar Ivan’s son, and Irina Godunov. Fyodor was not the heir to the throne. Besides being a younger son, he was feebleminded and incapable of governing the country. Irina, for her part, was not a princess; she came from a “new” boyar (noble) family who had come into power by serving Ivan the Terrible. Her humble background was comforting to Ivan the Terrible, who had spent much of his reign seizing power and land from the princes of his realm. Moreover, Irina and her brother Boris were orphans who had been brought up at court as wards of the Tsar. There could be no doubt about the Godunovs’ loyalty to the throne.
The heir to the crown was Tsarevitch Ivan, an intelligent young man who showed great promise as a ruler. But this promise was cut short one day when Tsar Ivan brutally struck his son and his son’s pregnant wife. Ivan’s son died, and his daughter-in-law miscarried. The tragedy held grave consequences for Russia, which was left without an acceptable heir. Fyodor was clearly mentally unfit to rule the country. Ivan’s only other son, Dmitry, fruit of the Tsar’s seventh marriage, was considered illegitimate by the Russian Orthodox Church, which only recognized three marriages over the course of a person’s lifetime.
Tsar Ivan died in 1584. Fyodor inherited the throne and exiled his two-year-old half brother Dmitry to the provincial city of Uglish. Boris Godunov, Tsar Fyodor’s capable brother-in-law, acted as regent. Godunov was a strong leader; he made peace with Lithuania, defended Moscow against the Tartars, excelled in strengthening diplomatic ties with Europe, and even arranged for the Russian Orthodox church to have its own patriarch. Among his most lasting and influential reforms was the law of serfdom, which permanently bound Russian peasants to their land. The law was motivated by a variety of considerations: the demand for a stable tax base and steady labor force, and the need to prevent peasants from leaving small landholders—who provided much of the army—for richer landlords. The law was understandably unpopular with peasants. Boris also suffered the resentment of princes and older boyar families—including the Shuysky family—who plotted to remove him from power.
In 1591, the middle of Boris’s regency, the nine year old Dmitry was found dead at his home in Uglich. The official explanation was that the boy, who was an epileptic, had suffered a fit while playing with knives and accidentally killed himself. His politically ambitious family claimed that Dmitry had been murdered. A commission appointed by Boris and headed by Vasili Shuysky concluded that the death had been accidental. To this day, no one is really sure how Dmitry met his end; however, popular legend has it that the boy was assassinated by Boris Godunov.
In 1598 Tsar Fyodor died childless, the last of his line. After a period of confusion, a zemsky sobor (“Assembly of the Land”) was convened to elect a new Tsar. They chose Boris Godunov.
Thus began what is referred to today as the Time of the Troubles. Boris’s reign was plagued by natural disasters and a three-year-long famine which, combined with the new law of serfdom, proved catastrophic for the country. The deeply superstitious Russian people felt that the Tsar was to blame; he had lost God’s mandate to rule and brought misfortune on everyone. Suspecting that treason or witchcraft might be the source of his country’s woes, Tsar Boris turned to the brutal torture and surveillance tactics of Ivan the Terrible in an attempt to discover who was sabotaging his reign.
There had always been rumors that Tsarevitch Dmitry had been secretly saved from his assassins. As conditions in Russia worsened these rumors spread like wildfire. Boris Godunov was deeply disturbed by them, and did everything in his power to discover whether they were true. Then a young man claiming to be Tsarevitch Dmitry appeared in Poland. He enjoyed the quiet support of the Polish monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church, both of which had designs on Russian territory. The False Dmitry, as he is generally called, cemented these ties by converting to Catholicism and getting engaged to ambitious polish princess Marina Mniszek, whose father acted as Dmitry’s host and patron. Moscow authorities identified the pretender as runaway monk Grigory Otrepiev, but this did not stop an army of mercenaries and adventurers from rallying behind the False Dmitry.
In 1604 False Dmitry crossed into Russian territory with an army of 2,000. No doubt his venture would have been doomed had he not attracted the support of the many dissatisfied and rebellious factions inside Russia looking for a banner to rally behind: at first just ferocious rebelling Cossacks and dissatisfied peasants, but eventually members of Tsar Boris’s own military staff. The Tsar’s forces were superior and defeated False Dmitry’s army on several occasions, but failed to press their advantage, punishing renegade towns instead of expelling the enemy. Eventually False Dmitry’s forces began to move towards Moscow.
But before the pretender’s forces could reach the capital Boris Godunov died. His sixteen year old son, Fyodor Borisovich, was coronated as Tsar Fyodor II. But the rebellion continued gaining momentum. Even the commander of Fyodor’s own campaign defected to the False Dmitry’s camp. False Dmitry’s supporters took the Kremlin and murdered Fyodor II.
False Dmitry ruled as Tsar for less than a year. The populace and nobility alike were alarmed when they discovered that their new Tsar was a Catholic with a Polish wife. The Polish soldiers and entourage who had accompanied the new royal couple offended the city with their arrogant behavior and boisterous celebrations. False Dmitry was arrested and executed. Legend has it that after his body was burned his ashes were loaded into a canon and shot towards Poland. However, a Polish garrison remained inside the Kremlin for several years as Russia was thrust into further civil war.
Through a series of clever machinations, Shuysky had the council of boyars name him the new Tsar, dubbing himself Basil IV. But his reign was unpopular and ineffectual from the start. Peasant uprisings, rampaging Cossacks, rival upstart armies, and bands of brigands ravaged Russia as provinces and princes revolted against the crown. New pretenders to the throne emerged: first a Cossack leader claiming to be the (non-existent) son of Tsar Fyodor I, then a Second False Dmitry who claimed to have escaped execution.
The Second False Dmitry, who bore no resemblance to either of the other Dmitrys, married the ever-ambitious Marina Mniszek and obtained the endorsement of the original Dmitry’s mother. The Second False Dmitry rallied an army and captured a vast amount of territory, but was unable to take Moscow. Instead he set up a shadow government outside the city gates, acting as Tsar over the territories he controlled.
Poland and Sweden took sides in the civil war and marched their troops into Russian territory. The Second False Dmitry relied increasingly on Polish aid, becoming a burden to the Polish forces. Polish King Sigismund III advanced first his son and then himself for the Tsar’s throne, sending shock waves through Russia. Chaos and war ran rampant in the divided country until 1612, when a national army under the leadership of butcher Kuzma Minin and general Prince Pozharsky unified the country to combat the Polish threat. They emerged victorious, and in 1613 the zemsky sobor chose young Michel Romanov as the new Tsar. The dynasty he established was to rule until 1917.
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