Causes:
Ivan the Terrible(1533-1584) kills off most of the house of Rurik and most
ancient boyar families. When he murders his only healthy adult son and heir
during a fit of rage in 1582, two years before his own death, he can be succeeded
as tsar by the sole remaining royal candidate: his retarded son Fedor I,
who rules until 1598. The vacuum caused by the destruction of the old aristocracy
cannot be filled quickly with any native Russian authority. Also, the peasantry
has been left destitute by Ivan's murderous oprichnina (1565-72), constantpillaging
and slaving traids from the unguarded south by the Crimean Tatars, and
heavy taxes needed to pay for Ivan's disastrous Livonian war (1558-82)
with Sweden and Poland, which he loses, along with Russia's outlet to the Baltic
Sea. The stage was set for a complete social breakdown.
Chronology:
1584 - Death of Ivan the Terrible from natural causes.
1584 - The retarded Fedor I becomes tsar, with Boris Godunov as Regent. During Fedor's reign, the peasants' rights to move from place to place are severely restricted to prevent total depopulation of areas in central Russia severely affected by Ivan's terror.
1591 - Mysterious knifing to death of Ivan's youngest (nine-year old) son, Dmitry, in the town of Uglich. Later, Boris gets the blame, but nothing is ever proven.
1598 - Fedor dies of natural causes. The House of Rurik goes extinct. Godunov elected tsar.
1601-03 - Terrible famine (due to bad weather), epidemics of bubonic plague and a new virulent type of smallpox. Peasant rebellions in the south under Khlopko.
1603 - Defrocked monk Gregory Otrepyev declares himself to be Tsarevich (heir to the tsar) Dmitry. He is supported by Dmitry's mother, Martha, as well as by many Cossacks, peasants and Poles. This First False Dmitry marches on Moscow.
1605 - Godunov suddenly dies (of natural causes). His wife, as well as his son and heir Fedor II, are brutally murdered by a Moscow crowed within six months.
1606 - Fiasco reign of False Dmitry I in Moscow. He marries a Polish Catholic woman, Marina Mniszek, flaunts all Russian Orthodox traditions, and is soon deposed and murdered by the Moscow boyars.
1606-10 - Reign in Moscow of Vasily Shuisky, the "Boyar Tsar" elected by the Boyar Duma to prevent total anarchy. Shuisky's reign is marred by almost every catastrophe imaginable. Famines, plagues and foreign invasions continue, plus several major challenges to Shuisky's royal authority.
1606-07 - Peasant rebellion in the south by Ivan Bolotnikov, who advocates slaughtering all the upper classes and redistributing their land to the peasants. He is captured, exiled, then assassinated.
1607- Rebellion by a peasant claiming to be Peter, the son of Fedor I (who died childless). This imposter (a "False Peter"?), whoever he was, was soon captured and hanged.
1608- The Second False Dmitry, a Polish imposter nickamed "The Brigand," declares himself and invades Russia supported by many Polish soldiers. He sets up "court" in a town near Moscow called Tushino. Although everyone knows he is a phony, the real Dmitry's mother declares him too to be her son; and Maria Mniszek, the wife of ill-fated False Dmitry I, marries him and bears him a son, known as "The Little Brigand". False Dmitry II is eventually murdered by a disgruntled follower.
1610 -Shuisky is deposed by the Poles, who occupy Moscow and much of the country, attempting to place the son of the Polish king on the Russian throne.
1610-12 - Spontaneous war of national resistance agains t the Poles. Two commoners, Minin and Pozharsky, organize an army that drives the Poles from the Kremlin.
1613 - The Zemsky Sobor (rural council) elects Mikhail Romanov as tsar. Everything reverts to the way it had been before all of the turmoil. The Romanov dynasty endures until 1917.
Winners and losers:
Russian nationalism wins out over Polish nationalism, Russian Orthodoxy over
Catholicism, the landed aristocracy over the peasants, authority over chaos,
serfdom over freedom, the Russian northeast over the Lithuanian and Cossack
borderlands in the southwest.