494

Russia and Poland.-Siberia.

[1558-82

Kettler, having in vain sought active help from Poland and the Empire, transferred to Poland the rights of his Order in Livonia and resigned himself to the possession of the duchy of Courland for him and his heirs (1561). But the Russian occupation of Livonia was premature. For the next twenty years there was almost unbroken war with Poland, and, as Sweden and Denmark were interested, the course of events was complicated by a succession of political combinations among the four Powers. It was varied by the candidature of the Tsar for the Polish throne, first on the death of Sigismund Augustus (1572), when Henry of Valois was elected, and again, after his abdication, in 1575, when Stephen Báthory, the Voivod of Transylvania, supported with arms by the Sultan, won the crown. It is said that Ivan was favoured by the lesser nobility, but he threw away whatever chances he had by his want of deference towards the Diet. In the Hungarian, Stephen Báthory, Poland had gained an ambitious master, Russia a formidable foe. He created a powerful army and undid all that Ivan had done. But Livonia was only a minor question in the greater issue involving the very existence of Poland, which, if it was not to be crushed ultimately between German advance on the west and the power of Moscow on the east, must extend over Russia its sway, along with its civilisation and religion. The absence of geographical boundaries rendered the dilemma inexorable: either Russia or Poland must disappear as an independent State. Internal and external circumstances combined to postpone the final solution; but Stephen Báthory had grasped the truth and logically prepared to conquer Muscovy. He besieged and failed to take Pskoff, but he would not have ceased from his enterprise if Rome had not intervened. The Tsar had sought the mediation of Gregory XIII, and the treaty which was concluded in 1582 through the negotiations of the Jesuit Possevino surrendered Livonia to Poland. The Russians had not yet the strength to grasp either the Baltic or the Black Sea.

Besides the expansion of the Muscovite power to the Caspian by the capture of Astrakhan, which secured the command of the Volga from source to mouth and established authority more or less effective over the Cossacks of the Don, the reign of Ivan was also distinguished by a conquest which founded the Asiatic power of Russia. The Tsar had granted (1558) lands on the Kama to Gregory Stroganoff, member of an enterprising family which had done great service as pioneers of civilisation in the deserts north of Viatka. During the next twenty years Stroganoff and his colonists extended the sphere of their operations beyond the Ural and came into conflict with a Tartar kingdom recently founded, of which the capital was named Sibir (near Tobolsk). This State imperilled the enterprises of the Stroganoffs, and they had recourse to the somewhat hazardous expedient of hiring a band of Cossack brigands. With the Tsar's consent they engaged six hundred and forty Cossacks, who had hitherto been accustomed to waylay Russian traders.

1582-4]

Ermak Timotheevich.-Theodore 1.

495

Of their two chieftains one had been condemned to death; the other was Ermak Timotheevich, who showed that he had the qualities of a conquistador. He defeated the Khan, captured Sibir, and carried his arms beyond the Tobol between the rivers Irtysh and Ob. If Ermak had failed, no responsibility would have fallen upon Russia; but Ivan was not slow to reap the fruits of his success. He sent officers to take formal possession of the new acquisitions and recognised the adventurer's services by gifts. Ermak perished almost immediately after this (1584), in a night surprise, it was said, and when trying to swim the Irtysh in a coat of mail which was one of the Tsar's gifts. This Russian Cortes was raised by the people and the Church to the rank of a hero and almost of a saint. But though he helped effectively the eastern advance of Russia at a critical moment, the real task of subjugating Siberia was accomplished by the long and quiet toil of the peaceful colonists who carried on the work of the Stroganoffs.

The death of Ivan the Terrible (1584) delivered Russia from a nightmare of tyranny, but opened a period of unrest and civil strife which lasted for thirty years. The social and political discords threatened the realm with a struggle which could only be averted by a strong tyrant or by an able statesman armed with all the authority of legitimacy. But Ivan left no successor like to or better than himself. He had two sons

by his first wife, Anastasia Romanova (from whose brother the present dynasty is descended). The eldest son Ivan was slain by his father's hand in a fit of fury (1582), a tragedy which produced a deep effect on the popular imagination, echoed in the popular lays. The second son Theodore was a weakling. By the latest of his other wives (he had no fewer than seven, though some were not recognised by the Church), Maria Nagaia, he had a son Dimitri who was an infant at the time of his death. The throne passed at once to Theodore, whose feeble intellect was unable to cope with, or even realise, the difficult problems of government and organisation which demanded the ruler's care, while his delicate constitution suggested disturbing uncertainties as to the continuation of the dynasty. He proved in fact the last of his line; but it may almost be said that the dynastic crisis began at his accession. The peculiar way in which the course of this important period of Russian history shaped itself was due to the circumstance that the catastrophe of the old dynasty coincided with a crisis of general social disorganisation. The unrest (smuta) which ushered out the old dynasty and ushered in the rule of the Romanoffs is marked by three stages, which have been designated as dynastic, social, and national. The first is a struggle for the throne among various claimants representing different interests; the second, a civil war between social classes complicated by the intervention of foreign Powers; the third, a national struggle with foreigners, issuing in the organisation of a new national Government.

Throughout the reign of Theodore, his brother-in-law, Boris Godunoff,

496

Boris Godunoff.

[1585-97 one of the new boiars of the Oprichnina, was the real ruler. At first he seems to have acted more or less in harmony with certain others who were naturally marked out to form the inner council of advisers and conduct the government of the fainéant sovran-Prince Mstislavski, Prince Shuiski, and Nikita Romanovich Jureff, the Tsar's uncle. All these were alike responsible for sending the Empress-Mother and the infant Tsarevich Dimitri to Uglich- -a measure which was not due to any actual conspiracy in the infant's favour, but intended as a precaution against possible intrigues on the ground that Theodore was incapable. Till his death (1585) Nikita seems to have united this inner circle by the ascendancy of his influence; but after his death a struggle between Boris and Mstislavski ended in the speedy disgrace of the latter, and two years later an attempt of the Shuiskis to overthrow Godunoff's power was followed by their exile. Special titles which were bestowed on Godunoff gave him a place apart in the Court; he had precedence over all dignitaries, and was officially empowered to conduct negotiations with foreign potentates. Foreign Courts recognised him as the actual ruler; the English called him Lord Protector of Russia.

The talents of Boris were confessed by his foes. Personally amiable, he was thoroughly honest and earnest in his purpose to govern well. Foreigners testify to a marked improvement during his régime; the country breathed again after the wars and atrocities of the Terrible. But he was faced by social problems, too complicated and radical to be solved by the alleviations to which he resorted, and which only postponed the civil struggle to which the profound antagonisms within the social organism pointed as inevitable. He could not conciliate the conflicting interests of the richer landed proprietors, the ecclesiastical owners, the middle and small classes of fiefholders, the free peasant proprietors, the vagrants who lived like Cossacks in the southern provinces. The general note of his policy was to favour the middle class. He inherited and continued Ivan's policy of depressing the old nobility and raising new men like himself to power and influence. He consulted the interests of the general mass of the men of service, and sacrificed to them the interests of the peasants. What the men of service wanted was to have not only a secure hold on their land, but also a guarantee that they should have men to till it. Accordingly his regency was marked by the formal introduction of serfdom (1597). To support and strengthen the middle class-this was his policy as Regent and afterwards as Tsar.

When Theodore's only child Theodosia died (1594), and it was recognised that he had no hope of leaving issue, it was clear that on his death the reigning dynasty would terminate. For his step-brother, Dimitri, had been found with his throat cut at Uglich in 1591. Mystery encompassed the child's death; a commission of inquest returned a verdict that it was a case of epileptic suicide; but there is little doubt

1591-1604] Dimitri Ivanovich murdered.-The false Dimitri. 497

that he was murdered, and the opponents of Boris held him responsible for the crime. In anticipation of the vacancy of the throne they were not inactive; the idea of electing an Austrian Archduke was even ventilated. The Romanoffs were at this juncture the most formidable rivals of Boris, and it was said that the Tsar before his death (1598) expressed the wish that his cousin Theodore Romanoff should be his successor. There were other candidates, Bielski and Mstislavski; but probably the real conflict lay between Romanoff and Godunoff. The charge of having procured the murder of Dimitri was used as a weapon by the adversaries of Boris; but he succeeded in carrying through his own unanimous election at the Sobor which assembled to choose a tsar in 1598. The disgust of the great boiars at this election may be measured by the fact that they got up an agitation in favour of Simeon Bekbulatovich, the Tartar whom Ivan IV had decked with the brief semblance of sovereignty. Boris took the precaution of forcing Theodore Romanoff to become a monk, though no charge of conspiring seems to have been brought against him. We shall meet him again under the name of Philaret. His brother and the whole family were then disgraced and banished on a charge of sorcery; but other reasons must have lurked behind.

The struggle in which Boris was the leading actor had hitherto been purely dynastic; it did not touch the nobles as a class, only particular families were involved; and it did not directly affect the rest of society. With the rise of the famous Pretender, who impersonated the murdered Tsarevich Dimitri, the question at issue was still dynastic, but the interest in it spread to society at large, and soon created a movement in which the succession to the throne became secondary. The deeper rifts in the community widened into chasms, which threatened to engulf the State.

The identity of the Pretender, who appeared in Poland in 1603 and gave himself out as Dimitri, son of the Tsar Ivan, is held to be one of the unsolved mysteries of history. But a strong case has been made out for believing that the Tsar Boris was right in identifying him with Grishka Otrepieff, an unfrocked monk, who had formerly been in the service of the Romanoffs. He had carefully informed himself of the circumstances connected with Dimitri's death, and he told an ingenious story, which will not however sustain a critical examination, that a devoted tutor, foreseeing the evil design of Boris, had rescued him by substituting another child. The impostor gained the credence of influential persons in Little Russia, and became betrothed to Marina Mniszech, daughter of a Polish noble who took an active part in propagating Roman Catholicism. The influence of this atmosphere induced him to change his faith, and at Cracow, where he presented himself in March, 1604, he secretly joined the Roman Church. He had become the protégé of the Jesuits and wrote an ardent letter to the Pope.

C. M. H. V. CH. XVI.

32

498

Dimitri the Pretender.

[1602-5

It is not prob

King Sigismund was disposed to espouse his cause. able that the King was really convinced at any moment that the Pretender was the Tsarevich, but if Russia could be brought to accept him as such, the interests of Poland might be as well promoted as if he were genuine. The forcible policy of Stephen Báthory had been abandoned under Sigismund, who sought to bring his eastern neighbours under Polish influence by compassing a close union in commerce and religion. He found Boris resolutely determined (as Ivan IV had been, when similarly approached by Possevino) not to open any door to Latin propaganda in Russia. The result of his efforts was the conclusion of a truce for twenty years (1602). In the face of this treaty it seemed difficult to support in arms the rival of Boris. The two Great Chancellors of Poland and Lithuania were opposed to the idea; the nation was disinclined for a new war; and the Diet rejected the proposal to assist the Pretender. But the King succumbed to the temptation. He hoped to recover some of the territories which had been wrested from Lithuania, and to obtain Russian help for executing his cherished plan, the conquest of Sweden, his father's kingdom. He entered into a secret engagement with the Pretender, who readily promised what was asked; and on his part, although he could give no open or official help, he connived at the recruiting of Polish volunteers. Both the King and the Roman Church saw in Dimitri's enterprise a great chance for bringing about an ecclesiastical union. The Jesuits and the papal Nuncio Rangoni threw themselves enthusiastically into his cause, and played an important part in these events.

The Pretender took the field with an insignificant miscellaneous army of some 4000 men. The success which crowned his enterprise was due not to Polish help (his Poles deserted him in the middle of the campaign), but to the inhabitants of the southern and south-western provinces, which were ready to welcome any pretender, and to the enlistment in his cause of the Cossacks of the Don. The population of the south, consisting largely of emigrants from the north, peasants who had been raised to the rank of Imperial service, were thoroughly discontented with the new conditions, finding their last state as evil as their first. While Dimitri advanced from the south-west, the Cossacks moved simultaneously on the south. Without following the course of the campaign (1604-5), we may note the mistake which the generals of Boris made in fixing the base of their operations too far west, with the idea that their enemy had all Poland behind him, and thus leaving the way open for the rapid successes of his Cossack allies. The issue might have been different but for the sudden death of Boris in April, 1605, which led to a new development. The evidence does not justify the suspicion that the Pretender had originally been suborned or supported by boiar princes of Moscow; it is significant that the Galitsins, the Shuiskis, and Mstislavski were employed by Boris against him. But