Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Russia suffered considerable economic and political upheaval in the early seventeenth century as raids by Crimean Tatars and the protracted Livonian War (1558–82) with the Polish-Lithuanian Confederation destabilized Russian society. The agricultural crop failure of 1601–2 caused a great famine: in Moscow alone, 127,000 people starved to death. Against this backdrop of struggle and crisis, Bolotnikov's Rebellion was the first of four peasant wars that shook Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The reign of Tsar Fyodor from 1584 to 1598 marked the end of the Rurick dynasty and ushered in the “Time of Troubles” denoting economic crisis and a political power vacuum. Following Fyodor's death, the crown was turned over to Boris Godunov (1598–1605), then to False Dmitry, an impostor claiming to be the son of Ivan the Terrible and true heir to the throne. This political volatility accentuated rumors that spread quickly to the masses, leading to popular ferment and dissension. When Vassiliy Shuysky ascended to the throne following False Dmitry's assassination in 1606, the foundation for a vast uprising had already been built in southern and southwestern Russia, where Russian fugitives typically fled for asylum. Ivan Bolotnikov , a nobleman who became a serf, fled to the Don River to join Cossacks to organize an insurrection against the tsar. He was captured by Tatars, sold ... log in or subscribe to read full text