Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on transliteration, names and dates
- Chronology of events
- Glossary of Russian terms
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: Tsarevich Dimitry and Boris Godunov
- Part 1 The First False Dimitry
- Part 2 Rebels in the name of Tsar Dimitry
- Part 3 The final stages of the Troubles
- Epilogue: After the Troubles: pretence in the later seventeenth century
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Note on transliteration, names and dates
- Chronology of events
- Glossary of Russian terms
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: Tsarevich Dimitry and Boris Godunov
- Part 1 The First False Dimitry
- Part 2 Rebels in the name of Tsar Dimitry
- Part 3 The final stages of the Troubles
- Epilogue: After the Troubles: pretence in the later seventeenth century
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
More than a dozen impostors, all claiming to be long-lost tsars or tsareviches, appeared in Russia in the early seventeenth century, in the period of civil strife that is generally known as the ‘Time of Troubles’ (smutnoe vremya). The Troubles were sparked off by the invasion of Russia in 1604 by the First False Dimitry, a pretender proclaiming himself to be the youngest son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1533–84). Tsarevich Dimitry of Uglich had died in 1591, in mysterious circumstances; seven years later, the old dynasty of the Muscovite rulers came to an end, with the death of Dimitry's elder half-brother, Tsar Fedor Ivanovich. The throne passed to Boris Godunov, Tsar Fedor's brother-in-law, who was widely believed to have plotted against the heirs of Ivan the Terrible in order to gain power for himself. Godunov had been tsar for five years when the pretender appeared in Poland. ‘Dimitry’ defeated Boris's armies, succeeded in obtaining the throne, and occupied it for almost a year. The overthrow and murder of the pretender in May 1606 led to a further period of civil war and foreign invasion, in which there appeared not only new false Dimitrys, but also various other ‘tsareviches’ who professed themselves to be descendants of Tsar Ivan. Order was restored only in 1613, when a new dynasty was established with the election of Michael Romanov as tsar.
Pretence was not an exclusively Russian phenomenon. Royal imposture, indeed, may be regarded as an occupational hazard of any hereditary monarchical system.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern RussiaThe False Tsars of the Time and Troubles, pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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