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Three sinister secrets of the Time of Troubles – was False Dmitry a sorcerer, was the Seven Boyars a parliament, and why was Shuisky hated
A group of boyars declared themselves the Zemsky Sobor, and Vasily IV was deposed and forced to become a monk. Photo: neural network shedevrum.ai
A group of boyars declared themselves the Zemsky Sobor, and Vasily IV was deposed and forced to become a monk. Photo: neural network shedevrum.ai
The events that led to one of the greatest crises of the Russian tsarist era, caused by the repressions of the Rurik dynasty, still cause many surprises for historians.
The so-called "Period of Troubles" lasted from 1598 to 1613 and was marked by natural disasters, machinations, interventions and numerous wars, including a civil war.
Let us look at the two main actors in these events and at the immature political course of the Time of Troubles from a special point of view.
In 2017, Dmitry Antonov's book "The Sorcerer on the Throne" was published. The focus is on formal legends about false kings, sorcerers and servants of the devil. In 1605-1606, the impostor False Dmitry I seized power in the state. Rumors that he was considered a sorcerer and heretic were groundless.
The "confirmation" usually refers to the murder of the impostor and the terrible frosts that followed immediately after his burial. Rumors began to circulate that the tortured king's curse was due to a lack of food.
There were people who saw the king as a "walking dead man", flashing lights and rolling lights over his grave, and heard singing and drums. People said: "The devils consider it an honor for me to take off my clothes."
Muscovites also whispered that the day after the burial of the Tsar, the body appeared in the almshouse, and two pigeons sat nearby, not afraid of passers-by. To calm the people, the body of False Dmitry was dug up, burned and the Poles were shot at with cannons. Where do swindlers come from?
However, unlike Europe, this crisis led to the establishment of an absolutist regime, culminating in the reign of Peter I and Catherine II. And the key moment is the removal from power of the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty, Tsar Vasily Shuisky.
In 1610, for the first time in Russian history, the tsar was not poisoned or killed during a palace coup, but simply deprived of power. Power passed into the hands of the boyars, the capital, and local nobles for two years. The noble faction (Prince Fyodor Mstislavsky, Ivan Vorotynsky, Andrei Trubetskoy, Andrei Golitsyn, Boris Lykov-Obolensky, and the boyars Ivan Romanov and Fyodor Sheremetev) was given the name of the Seven Boyars by the chronicler.
The conspirators, who had gathered in the area of the Serpukhov Gate, declared themselves the Zemsky Sobor, deposed Vasily IV and forcibly tonsured him as a monk. He was later captured by Polish invaders, and Shuisky became the only sovereign in the history of Russia to die in captivity.
In many ways, the Russian nobility was inspired by the memory of the horrors and tyranny of Ivan the Terrible in limiting the tsar's power. After ascending the throne, Shuisky was forced to write the "Kissing Record", a kind of oath, which resulted in a promise not to "expose the boyars in a true trial" and not to execute anyone. The trial guaranteed arbitrary protection for all classes, the persecution of relatives of criminals was prohibited, and the consideration of cases had to be based on specific evidence.
It can be assumed that Vasily himself became entangled in his own intrigues, as happened in his time with the executed Louis XVI and Charles I.
It is also possible that the image of the "boyar tsar" was demonized. Soviet textbooks stigmatized all university institutions that were not socialist universities.
Meanwhile, Shuisky lived to be 60 years old, and when he died in Polish captivity, Sigismund III solemnly transferred the coffin to Warsaw, to a specially built mausoleum. Only under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich were the remains of Vasily IV transferred to Moscow.