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The continuing period of abnormal weather precipitated not only famine and disease, but also a social and demographic crisis. Marginal farmers, peasants no longer able to pay their rents and taxes, or even feed themselves, abandoned their holdings and took to the road. The number of beggars, vagabonds and robbers multiplied, and they became more desperate. There was another, relatively sharp, population shift — this time from north to south, and particularly to the frontier lands. And it was from the southwest frontier that the first political challenge emerged in the autumn of 1604: a claimant to the throne who called himself Dmitrii and said he had escaped death at Uglich. From then on Boris’s days were numbered.

In July 1604 the Tsar received an ambassador from England, Sir Thomas Smith, who subsequently reported to Sir Robert Cecil on his reception. Great care had been taken to hide any sign of social distress from him, and Boris treated him warmly and ‘in great state, [seated] in a throne of gold, with his Imperiall Crowne on his head, his sceptre in his hand, & many other ornaments of state … his sonne [Fedor] who sat by him, inquired of the healthe of my King James I], and invited me to dine with them together with Fedor.’ After dinner and taking wine with the Tsar, Smith was dismissed, but was informed that ‘I should have … very shortly audience, agayne, for ye dispatche of businesse, but in ye meane time, newes came of certaine rebels risen in armes, against ye Emperor, in his borders towards Poland, which hath hindered my speedy dispatch [of business], and therfor must stay here, and returne ye same way I came.’ ²⁰

Quite how a popular political rebellion got under way in a country governed by a relatively efficient, centralized monarchy, among a people that was largely illiterate, has never been satisfactorily explained. It has been suggested, however, that rumour served as a substitute for modern media in early modern Russia, and that many if not most of the political rumours that gained currency were started by politicians anxious to manipulate popular opinion and, indeed, to trigger popular protests. ²¹ But several elements were needed to get the rebellion started.

As we have seen, a series of natural disasters was disrupting the Russian economy and society. It was also bleeding the state of funds and raising doubts about the legitimacy of its government. But a rebellion against a God-sanctioned emperor had somehow to be justified. Hence the appearance of a pretender - someone claiming to be the Tsarevich Dmitrii miraculously rescued from death in 1591 and therefore Russia’s legitimate God-given ruler in this time of troubles. Who the pretender actually was is disputed. Tsar Boris thought he was a defrocked monk from the Miracle Monastery in Moscow, called Grigorii Otrepev. Chester Dunning, in his recent, massive study of the subject, suspects he was a protege of the Nagois, who brought up a child to believe he really was the infant Dmitrii. Whoever he was, the role he was cast in required ambition, nerve, intelligence and histrionic skills. ‘Dmitrii’ possessed them all. He had all the bravado of a chancer.

But personal qualities were not enough. He also needed sponsors — people to train and brief him, to provide contacts for him, and to fund him. Circumstantial evidence suggests that these backers were prominent Russians, enemies of Boris. The finger of suspicion has pointed not only to the Nagois but, among others, to the Romanovs as well. The pretender soon gained a powerful backer in Poland-Lithuania too: the wealthy magnate Adam Vyshnevetski who had extensive property interests in the frontier area near Seversk and was in dispute with the Muscovite government. It was Vyshnevetski who provided the pretender with a base, helped him recruit the nucleus of an army (a few hundred Cossacks, many of them recent immigrants from Muscovy), and introduced him to other helpers, notably Jerzy Mniszech, the Polish palatine (governor) of Sandomir, who agreed to serve ‘Dmitrii’ as military commander. ²²

The pretender Dmitrii’s invasion was launched against the frontier fortress of Moravsk in October 1604. The garrison mutinied, and the place surrendered without a fight. The invaders moved on to the substantial town of Chernigov. Here there was resistance, but, thanks again to a rebellion by servicemen and townspeople, the city was captured and the troops in the citadel soon surrendered. News of these successes, and of ‘Dmitrii’ gaining more support, encouraged further defections from the Muscovite side — particularly from discontented servicemen, for the government was by now critically short of cash to pay them.