Vasily Shuysky

Czar of Russia (r. 1606-1610)

• Born: 1552
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: September 12, 1612
• Place of death: Gostynin, near Warsaw, Poland

As Czar Vasily IV, Shuysky was the ineffectual ruler of Russia for much of the period known in Russian history as Smutnoe Vremya, or the Time of Troubles.

Early Life

Prince Vasily Shuysky (vuhs-YEEL-yuhih SHEW-ihs-kuhih) was born in Moscow in 1552, in the family residence of the Shuyskys, one of the most distinguished of Muscovite boyars and a cadet line of the Rurik Dynasty (the legendary ruling family that reigned in Novgorod and Muscovy from 862 until the death of Fyodor I in 1598). Nothing is known of Vasily’s upbringing except that he received the education and military training suitable to the scion of a boyar family. The Shuyskys had come into prominence during the reign of Vasily III (r. 1505-1533), and during the minority of his son, Ivan the Terrible (r. 1547-1584), they had displayed unfettered ambition. The family was suspected of poisoning Ivan’s mother, and they exiled or killed their rivals at court. The young Ivan feared and hated them.

In September, 1543, Prince Andrei Shuysky physically assaulted a favorite of the thirteen-year-old Ivan right in front of him. Ivan subsequently ordered Andrei’s seizure by the kennel-keepers, who either beat him to death or fed him to the dogs. Vasily Shuysky was the grandson of this Prince Andrei.

In the light of these events, it is surprising that Vasily survived Ivan’s bloodletting of the boyars and seemingly even enjoyed the favor of the tyrant. Vasily was to be found, as a teenager, in Ivan’s Oprichnika, the pseudo-Tatar “knightly order” that also constituted Russia’s first secret police. There, between 1564 an 1572, along with such notorious figures as Alexander Basmanov, Matvei Skuratov, and Boris Godunov (the future czar), he participated in Ivan’s exaggerated religious ceremonials, insane cruelties, and orgies at Aleksandrova Sloboda.

During the reign of Fyodor I (r. 1584-1598), Vasily was a prominent member of the boyar council, and in 1591, he led a commission of inquiry to Uglich to investigate the mysterious death of Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible. Contrary to rumor, Shuysky’s commission reported that there had been no foul play and that Dmitry, a mere six-year-old, had stabbed himself during an epileptic fit.

Life’s Work

At Czar Fyodor’s death, his able brother-in-law Boris Godunov had himself elected czar. Vasily considered himself a more appropriate candidate, but Godunov’s position was unassailable, despite Vasily’s best efforts: When Vasily several times intrigued against Godunov in the Boyar Duma (council of nobles), he found himself repeatedly sent into exile. His hopes were raised, however, during the last years of Godunov’s reign, when northern Russia, in particular, was swept by famine. Popular discontent mounted, and it was unclear whether Godunov could ride out the storm. Then, toward the end of 1604, an incredible rumor reached Moscow: the supposedly dead Prince Dmitry Ivanovich was marching on the capital from the west, supported by a Polish army.

Godunov prepared to repel the invaders and sent an army commanded by Vasily, which the pretender defeated near Kromy, forcing Vasily to fall back to Moscow. Events now moved quickly: The czar died in 1605, and Vasily instigated the murder of Godunov’s young son, Fyodor II, and the rape of his sister Xenia, who was relegated to a nunnery, accompanied by her mother. As the False Dmitry (as he became known) approached Moscow, Vasily, reversing his earlier position, declared that the pretender was in fact the true czar and participated in his coronation on July 21, 1605. Ironically, when the False Dmitry displayed signs of great energy and shrewdness, Vasily’s jealousy was aroused, and he began to intrigue against the pretender. When his intrigues were found out, Vasily was arrested for treason and sentenced to death, but he was granted a last-minute reprieve. Sent into exile yet again, he was soon brought back and restored to his estates.

Vasily had not abandoned his resolve to get rid of the False Dmitry. For all the latter’s intelligence and vigor, he made a fatal mistake: In 1606, Marina Mniszech, the daughter of the new czar’s Polish patron, arrived in Moscow with a large force of Poles, whose entry into the city unleashed Muscovite xenophobia, always simmering below the surface of events. On May 8, the False Dmitry and Marina were married in the Kremlin, but they were married in a Catholic ceremony that made no concessions to Russian Orthodox tradition. Unwittingly, the new czar had signed his own death warrant. Vasily organized a mob, which broke into the Kremlin on May 17 and lynched the False Dmitry, after which his body was burnt and his ashes scattered.

Vasily now put himself forward as a candidate for the throne and was accepted by a consensus of boyar families. He was crowned Czar Vasily IV on June 1, 1606. Apart from his inner clique, however, his rule lacked solid support. He was seen as a “boyar-czar,” the agent of an oppressive aristocracy, and among the population at large (especially the Cossacks), he was detested. Among his foremost opponents were members of the Romanov family, whom the False Dmitry had restored to favor after their disgrace at the hands of Boris Godunov. More serious than these court opponents of Vasily, however, was the Cossack rebel Ivan Bolotnikov, who would seriously threaten Vasily IV’s rule. Formerly a boyar slave, Bolotnikov had fled to join the Cossacks but was captured by Crimean Tatars, who sold him into the Ottoman navy as a galley-slave. Rescued by a German vessel, he made his way via Venice and Poland back to Russia, where he raised the Cossacks against the government. Bolotnikov’s force now marched on Moscow, and laid it under partial siege during 1606.

Vasily appointed his able nephew, Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuysky, to defend the capital, and the latter decisively defeated Bolotnikov in December, 1606, forcing him to withdraw his forces to Kaluga, where he remained for the next six months. Vasily remained the master of Moscow during this time, but Bolotnokov’s fortunes improved when the Cossacks advanced a new pretender, the so-called Czar Peter, claiming he was the son of Fyodor and Godunov’s sister Irina. Czar Peter, however, soon abandoned Bolotnikov and established himself at Tula. Throughout this period, Vasily remained holed up in the Kremlin, beleaguered and essentially passive. He did, however, seek to win support from the pomeshchiki (middle-ranking service cavalry) by issuing a decree in March, 1607, allowing landowners a fifteen-year limit for recovering runaway serfs, a further stage on the inexorable road to serfdom.

In May, 1607, Bolotnikov broke out of Kaluga and joined Czar Peter at Tula. Here, the rebels were attacked and dispersed by Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuysky (June, 1607). In October, 1607, both Czar Peter and Bolotnikov were captured. Czar Peter was hanged (January, 1608), and Bolotnikov was blinded and drowned (March, 1608). At Vasily’s instigation, the rebellious nobles were sent into exile, and the rank and file were massacred or handed over to loyalists as slaves. Meanwhile, a Second False Dmitry had appeared, with renewed assistance from the Poles (June, 1607).

Failing to take Moscow, the Second False Dmitry established himself at Tushino. Meanwhile, Philaret (Fyodor Nikitich Romanov), a Romanov who had been forced by Godunov to take monastic vows, had become the metropolitan of Rostov. He was now captured by the troops of the Second False Dmitry, brought to Tushino, and proclaimed patriarch of Moscow. The Tushino regime proceeded to consolidate its position, reinforced by further Cossack contingents. A degree of legitimacy was conferred upon the pretender when Marina Mniszech fell into the rebels’ hands (September, 1608). Presumably under duress, she formally recognized the pretender as her former murdered husband and married him. In effect, there were now two governments, that of the Second False Dmitry at Tushino and that of Vasily IV in Moscow.

In the preceding months, Vasily had accomplished little except the elimination of Bolotnikov. Desperate now, he looked abroad for assistance. In February, 1609, he made an agreement with Charles IX of Sweden (r. 1604-1611), who promised fifteen thousand Swedish troops to join Skopin-Shuysky in expelling the Second False Dmitry’s forces from northwestern Russia. In return, Vasily was to cede Karelia to Sweden. News of this agreement galvanized the Poles. In September, 1609, Sigismund III Vasa besieged and took Smolensk. Dmitry, exposed to attack by Vasily’s troops and now abandoned by his Polish allies, who preferred to join their king at Smolensk, fled from Tushino to Kaluga. Now a fugitive, he was murdered on December 11, 1610.

Meanwhile, however, many Muscovite boyars, unable to stomach Vasily’s rule, joined with Sigismund instead. On reaching the Polish camp, they offered the throne to Sigismund’s son, Władysław (the future King Władysław IV Vasa ), if he would convert to Orthodoxy. In April, 1610, the one man who had kept the Moscow regime afloat, Prince Skopin-Shuysky, died—murdered, it was said, by Vasily himself, who was jealous of the prince’s popularity. In June, 1610, came the final disaster for Vasily when his troops were defeated by the Poles at Klushino (June 24, 1610). Thereafter, the boyars, still in Moscow, engineered a riot on July 17, 1610, which led to the seizure of Vasily and his forced abdication, his reign ending as it had begun, in mob violence. He, with his brothers, was now removed to Smolensk and handed over to Sigismund, who took him to Warsaw, where he died two years later. The Time of Troubles dragged on, but in November of 1612, a patriotic army took Moscow and expelled the Poles. In February, 1613, the election of Michael Romanov as czar inaugurated a new dynasty.

Significance

Vasily Shuysky reigned during four of the most turbulent years in Russian history. Ambitious and unscrupulous but devoid of talent, vision, and any qualities of leadership, he was a despised figurehead in a Russian regime that encapsulated all the problems that had been festering since the time of Ivan the Terrible. He left no significant mark on his troubled times, surviving only as a sinister vignette in Alexander Pushkin’s tragedy, Boris Godunov (wr. 1824-1825, pb. 1831, pr. 1870; English translation, 1918).

Bibliography

Bussow, Conrad. The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm. Translated by G. Edward Orchard. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. A German mercenary, Bussow’s account is that of an astute, informed eyewitness.

Dunning, Chester S. L. Russia’s First Civil War. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. A magisterial narrative of this complicated phase of Russian history.

Kollmann, N. S. Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987. Essential for the origins of the Shuysky family.

Margeret, Jacques. The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy: A Seventeenth-Century French Account. Translated by Chester S. L. Dunning. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983. The eyewitness account of Margaret, a French mercenary, is invaluable.

Massa, Isaac. A Short History of the Muscovite Wars. Translated by G. Edward Orchard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Massa, a Dutch merchant, wrote a detailed eyewitness account of the period.

Perrie, Maureen. Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. A penetrating and detailed analysis.