Murders in the House of Romanov and mysteries of the House of Romanov Tyurin Vladimir Alexandrovich

Ilya Smirnov The Curse of the House of Romanov

Ilya Smirnov

Curse of the House of Romanov

The Troubles ended when they were finally captured by Moscow people on Bear Island in the middle of the Yaik River: Tsarina Marina Yuryevna with her three-year-old son Ivan Dmitrievich and with them their faithful defender - the most famous Cossack ataman of that time, Ivan Zarutsky. However, in the last days of their wanderings they were no longer free - Zarutsky’s comrade, ataman Trenya Us, who didn’t care who to serve as long as he got “zipunov”, ordered his Cossacks to take into custody the worst enemies of the new government, he even took away Marina’s son and kept him with him - so that, if necessary, he could buy himself a pardon with other people’s heads. And so it happened: when the Cossacks were surrounded on the island, Trenya handed over the prisoners along with the treasury they had taken from Astrakhan, and went on to plunder further. And the queen with the little prince and Zarutsky were sent to Moscow to the new sovereign Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov - under the protection of five hundred archers, who were ordered to immediately destroy them when trying to recapture those arrested. (Like 150 years later - another unfortunate Russian anointed one, Ivan Antonovich.) Marina was taken to Moscow tied up.

With all my sympathy for the Cossacks, I cannot help but note the sad pattern that individual representatives of this brave and proud class sold their most famous atamans. (Only they failed to capture Bulavin alive in order to hand him over to Peter - then he was shot by his own captain...)

Plot outline

The Troubles began in the fall of 1604, when a young man crossed the border with a detachment of adventurers, declaring himself the son of Ivan the Terrible, Dmitry Ivanovich. His chances of success would not have been very great if not for the sudden death of Boris Godunov (apparently from a heart attack). Boris's widow and son, sixteen-year-old Tsar Feodor II, were killed with the general enthusiasm of Muscovites preparing to welcome the new Tsar Dmitry. Dmitry Ivanovich ruled for eleven months in a European manner amid continuous conspiracies and assassination attempts. On May 17, 1606 he was killed.

Prince Vasily Shuisky, who had some rights to the throne - as the “senior” among the Rurikovichs, was “called out” as tsar. But Ivan Bolotnikov with the princes Shakhovsky and Telyatevsky and the leader of the Ryazan servicemen P. Lyapunov immediately opposed Vasily in the south.

They spoke out for “Tsar Dmitry” - it is not clear which one - and reached Moscow, where they were defeated. For the time being, Tsar Vasily was rescued by his nephew, the talented commander Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky. He had enough work: after the surrender of Bolotnikov of unknown origin, the “resurrected” Dmitry gathered an army of Cossacks and Polish-Lithuanian volunteers. Lacking the strength to take Moscow, he set up camp nearby in July 1608. For a year and a half, there were two equal capitals in Russia - Moscow and Tushino - each with its own tsar, duma and patriarch. By the way, the Tushino patriarch was Filaret (Fedor) Nikitich Romanov, the father of the future Tsar Mikhail.

In 1609, the conflict began to “internationalize”: Vasily Shuisky called upon the Swedish army of Delagardie to his aid, after which the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa, whose relations with Sweden were sharply hostile (despite the Swedish origin of the king, or rather, thanks to this origin), besieged Smolensk Let me remind you that Smolensk and the surrounding territory remained controversial for several centuries. At this moment, sensible people from different camps came to a convenient compromise: to offer the Moscow throne to Sigismund’s son, Vladislav. Through the efforts of Filaret and Stanislav Zholkiewski, a brilliant commander and diplomat equally respected on both sides of the border, this idea was established in Russian society. The Tushino camp collapsed. Vasily was overthrown on July 17, 1610 and tonsured a monk. Russia enthusiastically swore allegiance to Prince Vladislav. The terms of his rule were determined in advance by treaty - a kind of rudimentary constitution. However, Sigismund, unexpectedly for everyone, decided to take away the royal crown from his own son - he wanted to become the Moscow Tsar himself, which for the Russians was associated with direct subordination to Poland and was obviously unacceptable. The combination collapsed.

Russian revolt

We are gradually freeing ourselves from the favorite myth of Soviet historiography, which reduced the Troubles to a “peasant war”: Ivan Bolotnikov, of a noble family, distributed estates with peasants to his associates in the same way as Vasily Shuisky, the “Tushino Tsar”, Sigismund III and other participants in the struggle did for power.

In general, in the historical drama of the Time of Troubles it is not easy to detect any ideological and fundamental contradictions; here the brilliant formula of Stalin’s theater scholars is much more suitable: “the struggle of the good with the even better.” Politicians of that time easily moved from one camp to another, depending on the slightest changes in the conjuncture (people quite accurately called them “flights”), without a shadow of embarrassment they proclaimed the exact opposite of what they said yesterday, and with an ease surprising for the medieval consciousness they crossed and through the kiss of the cross, and through family honor. The closest associates of the applicants did not hide their cynical attitude towards the cause for which they themselves fought: the Moscow Patriarch Hermogenes respected “his” Vasily Shuisky no more than the Tushino hetman Rozhinsky respected his tsar, and only the rank did not allow the clergy to demonstrate contempt with abuse and drunken fights in in the eyes of the king. However, when it seemed beneficial, Vasily was thrown off the throne with no more respect. The widow of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarina Maria Fedorovna, only yesterday recognized “Sovereign Dmitry Ivanovich” as her son, but immediately after his murder she announced that the murdered man was a villain and an impostor, and the real prince had long since died in Uglich. But this “real prince” was proclaimed a saint and his relics were transferred to Moscow by the same person who, during the investigation into the Uglich case, proved that the prince, as a suicide, was not even worthy of burial. Marina’s father, voivode Yuri Mnishek (according to S. Zholkiewski, “an unimportant and insignificant person”, with a character reminiscent of the dissolute father from the famous novel by R. L. Stevenson “Catriona”), sold his own daughter for 300 thousand rubles and, leaving her to her own devices fate, fled to Poland (he didn’t even answer letters). A continuous series of events of this kind created a special socio-psychological atmosphere in which people no longer believed anyone or anything. However, the people were quite worthy of their shepherds. The same Moscow crowd elevated Tsar Dmitry to the throne and mocked his corpse, glorifying Vasily Shuisky, in order to then depose the old man in shame, but not for the crimes of which he was really guilty, but because Vasily was “unhappy in life.” kingdom." Then they swore allegiance to Prince Vladislav and warmly received in Moscow the Polish-Lithuanian army of Zholkiewski - the very “heretics” who were enthusiastically slaughtered on the May night of 1606. It is curious that those compatriots who tried to intercede for those being beaten were told: “you are Jews, just like Lithuania.”

After so many missed opportunities, a conservative reaction must have been inevitable.

V. Kobrin, “Time of Troubles - Lost Opportunities”

Perhaps the only one in this sea of ​​blood and dirt who really had some kind of program was the young man who sowed trouble and became one of its first victims. The name False Dmitry, inherited by the official Soviet historiography from the official pre-revolutionary one, for all its formal justice, has a pronounced negative connotation, so I prefer the version of N. I. Kostomarov.

Now that Kostomarov has begun to be published, it hardly makes sense to retell his famous biographical work, “Called Dimitri.” I will only note: it tells about one of the rarest cases - when open “Westernism” and free-thinking (“Let everyone believe according to his conscience” - a phrase too bold even for Europe!) were combined on the Russian throne with a strong, courageous character and pathological for the above-described environment with the absence of deceit and cruelty.

The behavior of Tsar Dmitry during his short, eleven-month reign serves as a serious argument against the Godunov-Pushkin version, which identifies him with Grigory Otrepyev: the defrocked, former cell attendant of the Moscow Patriarch could hardly think and act like this young man. He forgave his enemies, even those caught red-handed: “There are two models to hold the kingdom - either to favor everyone, or to be a tormentor; I chose the first." The conspiratorial boyars, led by the same professional oathbreaker Vasily Shuisky, who were sentenced to death by the “Moscow people” and pardoned by Dmitry, could not forgive such frivolous generosity and, at the first opportunity, repaid their savior for deviating from the customs of his “called father” » Ivan Vasilievich. Soon after the wedding of Dmitry and Marina, a company of court aristocrats and criminals, specially released from prison, brutally murdered the young Tsar, who dreamed of free trade, religious tolerance and the creation of a university in Moscow. Perhaps, of all his projects over 386 years, only one was fully realized - the university.

Happiness does not always follow one path. It does not end where it begins, but is arranged as God himself directs it.

Marina Mnishek

Such is the fate of good kings in Rus'.

It is interesting that Marina was first crowned and only then, as a queen, she married Dmitry. Perhaps Dmitry had a presentiment of fate and wanted, if possible, to protect his chosen one from vicissitudes, providing her with an “independent” legal status. Although who cared about law at that time?

Queen and Cossack

The most dangerous enemies of the state that Minin and Pozharsky restored in 1613 made an unusual couple - a twenty-five-year-old Polish aristocrat, anointed to the kingdom of All Rus', and a peasant son from near Tarnopol (in those days - “Rusin”, now he would be called “ Ukrainian”, and even “Western”, but at the beginning of the 17th century few people were interested in such subtleties, and in the sources he appears either as a “Russian commander” or as a “brave leader of the Don Cossacks”). Contrary to all local traditions, Ivan Zarutsky won his boyar status with a saber. His combat comrade in the Tushinsky camp, the Pole N. Markhotsky, left memories of him: “Our entire army fled, and if Zarutsky had not been here, who rode up with several hundred Donets and repelled Moscow with rifle fire at the Khodynka River, it would have driven us into the very camp ..." S. Zholkiewski, who almost united the Russians and Poles into a single people, wrote: "Prince Rozhinsky (Tushino hetman. - I.S.) was almost always drunk,” so Zarutsky “was in charge of guards, reinforcements, and delivery of news.” In addition to these advantages, the ataman was “handsome and well-proportioned” - qualities that were not so important for the outcome of the war for the Moscow inheritance, but were probably not indifferent to the heiress Marina. However, icons should not be painted from Zarutsky: at the end of the Time of Troubles, he ruled in Astrakhan according to the model of Ivan Vasilyevich: “many good people were tortured in the night and burned with fire, and they were thrown from the stump into the water, and throughout the whole day incessantly blood is being shed."

Our audience knows a little more about Marina Mnishek thanks to the opera “Boris Godunov”. “A calculating, arrogant and frivolous beauty” - it is said in a good pre-revolutionary textbook of Russian history by Trachevsky (how is it “calculating” and “frivolous” at the same time?)

What is less known is that this little lady rode on horseback, armed with a saber and pistol, and in hussar garb entered the military council to make claims to the rebellious Landsknechts. When the best Moscow commander, young Skopin-Shuisky, besieged one of the best Tushino commanders, the “Polish daredevil” Jan Sapega, in Dmitrov, Marina led the defense on the ramparts, inspiring the soldiers with the words: “I, a woman, have not lost my courage!”

Their relationship with Sapega constitutes a separate bizarre plot. They began with the fact that the “daring man” with the hussars recaptured the young widow of the murdered Tsar Dmitry and her father, governor Mnishka, from the Moscow guards (who, however, did not even think about resistance). After the joint defense of Dmitrov, they quarreled, and the fearless queen said that she had three and a half hundred Donets and, “if it comes to that, she will give him battle.” Marina personally instructed Russian ambassadors and received foreign ones, even during the life of her second husband, the “Tushino Tsar,” who was not distinguished by either intelligence or education. When the Polish king Sigismund, her former sovereign, offered the Tushino couple “out of mercy” the Sanocka land and income from the Sambir economy for abandoning the Russian throne, she asked him for Krakow, promising for this “out of mercy to yield to the king of Warsaw.” She signed the letters “Empress Marina.”

Agree, a person very far from the female ideal proposed by Domostroy, even if we consider Sylvester’s work to be certainly progressive compared to usual practice.

Ivan Tsarevich

The fate of Tsarevich Ivan is an adventurous novel from the day of his birth. And even before birth.

His father is the “Tshin Tsar”, also known as False Dmitry II, the second husband of Marina Mnishek.

After the coup on May 17, 1606, Vasily Shuisky sent the widow of the murdered tsar along with her father, governor Mnish, into exile in Yaroslavl. In those days when photography and television had not yet been invented, the exiles could not confidently judge what kind of person was once again gathering supporters of Dmitry Ivanovich - was it really their sovereign, whom fate had already repeatedly saved from certain death, or an impostor of the “second order” . Marina’s personal meeting with her “resurrected” husband confirmed her worst fears. A man of unknown, but clearly not aristocratic origin, he was distinguished by “rude and bad morals” and made an extremely unfavorable impression on Marina - for a long time she did not want to recognize him, despite all the persuasion of her father, who was financially interested in such recognition.

However, politics turned out to be more powerful than personal likes and dislikes. Or maybe it's not just about politics. The “Tushinsky Tsar” personified the only alternative to the government of Vasily Shuisky - the only opportunity to avenge the man whom Marina, apparently, really loved. And return the Moscow throne. Let us remember that she was only 19 years old at the time.

On September 5, 1608, her secret wedding with the “Tushino king” took place in Sapieha’s camp. From a formal legal point of view, their marriage was completely legal, as was the child born in this marriage.

According to V.B. Kobrin, Marina’s second husband “inherited the adventurism of his predecessor, but not his talents.” Having an army of one hundred thousand, he not only failed to restore order in its ranks and drive Vasily out of Moscow, but he was even unable to maintain the prestige of the royal title among the drunken outrages of the Cossacks and mercenaries. This situation was humiliating for Marina. Nevertheless, she shared with her husband all the vicissitudes of his fate: riots, the collapse of the Tushino camp, flight to Kaluga.

There, the former “Tushinites” for some time restored the government, which fought both against Moscow and against the Polish king. Until the December day of 1610, when the head of this bizarre court was stabbed to death by Prince Urusov. And at the beginning of January of the new year, 1611, Marina gave birth to a son, who was baptized in the Orthodox faith and immediately recognized by the two most powerful military leaders - Zarutsky and Lyapunov, who recognized him as the legitimate heir to the throne.

You bowed to him (Boris Godunov) when he was alive, and now that he is dead, you blaspheme him. Someone else would be talking about him, not you.

Called Dimitri

Without knowing it, the newborn was already taking part in big politics, and parties and armies clashed around his cradle.

Internationalists of the 17th century

The second big myth about the Troubles explains it as “foreign intervention.” It all goes back to the same Vasily Shuisky, who successfully turned the hatred of the Moscow mob towards foreigners and people of other faiths against Dmitry. Later, the same xenophobic instincts were used by the victorious Romanov party to exalt their own victory.

Unfortunately, the facts somewhat contradict this construction. And its artificiality was well understood by the free-thinking scientists of the 19th century. Firstly, the “Called Dimitri” was not a “Polish protege” at all. Sigismund III did not provide him with official support, and the participation of individual lords in his expedition, from the point of view of the prevailing customs in the Polish-Lithuanian state, was the same private matter as the purchase and sale of an estate. Having come to power, the young tsar did not even think about satisfying territorial and religious claims on the part of the king and the pope, and at the first unfriendly gestures from Sigismund, he entered into an agreement with the armed opposition of the Polish gentry - a confederation organized by J. Radziwiel and L. Poniatowski, and was preparing to support them with an army of forty thousand. The historian A. Girshberg directly writes about the plans of both Dmitrievs - both Moscow and even Tushino - to seize the Polish throne.

Ah, the dashing side

No matter how much I search for you -

You're red in the forehead

Yes, a slimy rope.

V. Vysotsky

When encountering the words “Polish” and “Poles” in historical literature, we must remember that the “national question” and the terminology associated with it at the beginning of the seventeenth century meant something completely different from what it meant at the end of the twentieth. Sigismund’s “Poland” is the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy, and its half immediately adjacent to Moscow Rus', Lithuania, was not Lithuania at all in the sense that V. Landsbergis puts into this word today. It was initially built as a Lithuanian-Russian state, and by no means a Catholic one. “Two states appeared in Rus',” writes N.I. Kostomarov, “Moscow and Lithuania... Rus' was thus divided into two halves.” And those “knights” and “dares” of the Time of Troubles, whom we habitually call “Poles,” in reality very often turn out to be representatives of Russian noble families, and even of the Orthodox faith. The princes of Ostrog and Vishnevetsky are called “zealots of Orthodoxy.” Sigismund's ambassadors to Moscow A. Balaban and St. Domaradsky - people of the “Greek faith”. Sapieha - from the boyars of the Smolensk region. True, the aforementioned John Peter formally converted to Catholicism, but patronized both churches. And in his detachment, in his own words, “more than half consists of Russian people.” Tushino Hetman Prince Rozhinsky in a letter to the Pope praises a certain Fr. Vincent, thanks to whom he nevertheless leaned toward Catholicism, but considering that the main topic of the letter is requests for help, one can hardly take his pathos seriously.

On the other hand, “Moscow”, with which they all fought, is represented by the Hungarians, Tatars, the French led by de la Ville, the British (!) and, according to Sapieha’s diary, a whole unit of the same Poles, “who had their own banner and your captain." Finally, the Swedish army fought on Shuisky’s side.

Thus, it would be more correct to talk not about organized intervention, but about the fact that some citizens of neighboring (and even non-adjacent) countries took part in the internal turmoil of the Russian state, and this participation was initially of a purely unofficial nature. However, official intervention from the Polish and Swedish kingdoms was caused by an equally official invitation from Muscovite Rus'. And this invitation did not contain any “national treason.” Russia could have had Tsar Vladislav of Polish origin, just as Poland itself had King Sigismund of the Swedish Vasa dynasty, and, for example, England had the Scots King Stuart. In general, a foreign monarch is more the norm for feudalism than the exception. The idea of ​​uniting Russia around Vladislav was already practically realized by Stanislav Zolkiewski, if not for the absurd stubbornness of Sigismund III. If the king had been smarter, the Troubles would have ended three years earlier and today’s “patriots” would have glorified the Vaza dynasty.

Foreign intervention was not the root cause of events. Historians see the reasons in the ruin of the country by Ivan the Terrible, the consequences of this ruin - serfdom - and the natural disaster - a three-year famine that befell the country during the reign of Boris and forced the Godunovs to pay for the sins of others. But “intervention” cannot be considered the driving force of the Troubles either.

This driving force, support and basis of the “party of disorder” should most likely be sought in the Cossacks.

With great attention I read discussions about the Cossacks in the modern party press. “From ancient times, the Cossacks prioritized the defense of Orthodoxy... and for a believer, a monarchy on earth is a kind of “tracing copy” of the heavenly structure” (“Put”, newspaper of the Russian Christian Democratic Movement). “To the ideals of serving the “Faith” and the “Fatherland”, the Cossack necessarily added a third, indissoluble member - the “Tsar”... True “freedom” was perceived as the realization of the ultimate personal right to cut off one’s own will, and “autocracy” as a free expression God's truth and mercy through the monarch" (Kuban magazine).

The early Cossacks corresponded very little to this ideal. Both the Don people and the Cossacks did not bother themselves with clarifying the “fifth point” or social origin, and at first, even in religious matters, they showed the same free-thinking with which their beloved Tsar Dmitry horrified patriarchal Moscow. (It is interesting that with the beginning of religious persecution, “freethinkers” will become the most persistent defenders of the persecuted church - Orthodoxy in Ukraine and Old Believers in the Don.) “Cossacks are people of various tribes, from the lands of Moscow, Tatar, Turkish, Polish, Lithuanian, Karelian and German ... they speak mainly Moscow” (I. Massa, early 17th century). In addition to serfs and runaway peasants, we also meet aristocrats in the “companionship”, such as the legendary Zaporozhye hero Baida - Prince Vishnevetsky or his Don colleague Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy.

The Cossacks also freely treated all “autocrats” without exception, through whom “God’s truth” was freely expressed, as well as “the truth of Allah” - they constantly balanced between neighboring powers: Russia, Poland and Turkey, since they felt independent from everyone and they respected (did not respect) the king, the king and the sultan exactly as much as each of the monarchs could be useful (or harmful) to them at the moment.

On the other hand, the early Cossacks did not have time to develop any social program (it would appear on the Don only during the religious reformation), so the fight against the unjust order that pushed them into the “wild field”, even with the most sincere rejection of it, actually came down to change roles within the same system.

In the spontaneous militias of the Time of Troubles, be it the army of Bolotnikov, or the “Tshin Tsar”, or the so-called “first Russian militia” of Lyapunov - Zarutsky - Trubetskoy, all the good and bad properties of the then Cossacks manifested themselves with extraordinary force. “Rampant Cossack nomadism” in Tushino became the capital of Russia for a while. Here, classes and religions mixed democratically, the “illiterate man”, revered by the tsar, installed Filaret Romanov as patriarch, and the nobles and the Don youths had fun drinking and gambling. Unfortunately, the only source of existence for the colorful “Slavic knighthood” was the more, and often less, legalized robbery of all those who still continued to work and, despite political cataclysms, earned their daily bread.

Gallows outside the Serpukhov Gate

In the end, people were mortally tired of the outrages, and the eight-year Troubles ended with the “victory of the forces of order and mediocrity” (V.B. Kobrin) - the election to the kingdom of the young Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, “quiet and incapable by nature,” who was ruled first by his mother, and then father, Patriarch Filaret.

But to establish order we had to pay a high price - to abandon progress. That embryonic serfdom, when the peasant was “strong” not to the master, but to the land on which he worked - a kind of “registration” in the medieval manner - was shaken by the “permissive” decrees of Boris and Dmitry during the period of famine and the Time of Troubles, and it is unlikely In general, it could be seriously observed in the midst of anarchy, but it was precisely under Mikhail Romanov that it was established in a new, unprecedentedly harsh and inhuman guise, in which the peasant (“Christian”) was equated to a slave, to a thing, to a beast. Those elements of the rule of law - the Magna Carta - that were present in the cross-kissing record of Tsar Vasily and in the agreements inviting Vladislav to the Russian throne were buried, and Russia returned to the eastern despotic rule of Ivan III. “Westernism” was anathematized along with Grishka Otrepyev and reasserted itself seriously only many decades later, but not in a soft and liberal form, but in such a way that progress and enlightenment only strengthened the archaic social order.

They set it up as a team - it was covered in a blizzard.

Vodka for a week, and a hangover for a year.

Darned on the body, sewn to the ribs,

They sweated for exactly a year and chewed for exactly an hour.

A. Bashlachev

Forced to choose between order and progress, the Russian people ended up losing in any case. Stabilization has occurred, but at a much lower level. This is what distinguishes unrest from real revolutions.

However, in order to turn the last page in the history of the Time of Troubles, the “party of order” had to finally solve the problem of possible rivals of the seventeen-year-old tsar, the heir of a not-crowned or even princely family.

Zarutsky was destined to burn in hell for many things, and it is unlikely that he was still more constant in political preferences than other participants in civil strife, but the desperate chieftain remained faithful to Marina and her son to the end.

His army retreats to the south - to the original Cossack “field”, which nurtured and fed the Troubles. The Don refuses to help the son of the “Cossack king” and his ataman.

The most furious and irreconcilable of the Cossacks had already laid down their heads under different banners, others had earned themselves warm positions at the tavern farm, and even estates, and those who remained on the Don preferred Moscow salaries and their farms to unfaithful military luck. Zarutsky, constantly pursued by the governors of the new tsar, turns to the Volga - “shows the way to Razin,” as the historian S.I. Tkhorzhevsky would later say.

Astrakhan was recently subjugated to Moscow and still retains the memory of its own independent kingdom - under the rule of Marina and Zarutsky, it acquired its last short-term “sovereignty” in the fall of 1613. Zarutsky's army is replenished by Volga Cossacks, whom Moscow does not favor for robberies on trade routes. In search of allies, they turn to the Persian Shah Abbas - frankly speaking, one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in world history. However, promiscuity still distinguishes Russian revolutionaries. However, the Shah hesitates to help. The Cossacks quarrel with the merchants, Zarutsky himself quarrels with the governor Khvorostinin. Finally, in April 1614, in Astrakhan, with Moscow troops approaching from all sides, battles began between the townspeople and the Cossacks. Saving Marina and the prince, the ataman trusts Trena Us and runs with him to Yaik...

Here they are overtaken by the growing hand of the new government. “No matter how tight the rope is, you’ll get caught in a noose...”

Zarutsky was interrogated by the tsar himself. We will never know what the timid young man and the chieftain talked about; it can be assumed that, as usual, his advisers spoke for Mikhail. But, obviously, Zarutsky’s answers did not suit them too much. After all, almost all the prominent associates of both Dmitrievs, including the prince-ataman Dmitry Trubetskoy, remained nobles under the new government.

After torture, Zarutsky was impaled.

And Marina’s three-year-old son, Tsarevich Ivan, was hanged on the gallows outside the Serpukhov Gate.

The killing of children who may grow up and lay claim to their parents' inheritance is not uncommon during feudal strife. What is not entirely usual is that the execution of a small child was held in public, as if it were some kind of folk festival.

“Many trustworthy people saw how this child was carried with his head uncovered to the place of execution. Since there was a snowstorm at that time and the snow was hitting the boy in the face, he asked several times in a crying voice: “Where are you taking me?” But the people carrying the child, who had not harmed anyone, calmed him down with words until they brought him to the place where there was a gallows, on which they hanged the unfortunate boy, like a thief, on a thick rope woven from sponges. Since the child was small and light, it was impossible to properly tighten the knot with this rope due to its thickness, and the half-dead child was left to die on the gallows.”

E. Gerkman,

"Tales of Massa and Herkman about the Time of Troubles in Russia."

Moscow, 1874.

From the very beginning, supporters of the Romanovs tried to convince and convinced the country that the prince was not a prince at all - the son of the impostor, the “Tushino king” had no legal rights to the throne. But it seems to me that the best consultant in this matter for young Mikhail Fedorovich could be his father Filaret Nikitich, who was made Metropolitan of Moscow by Dimitri, and Patriarch by Tushinsky, that is, the father of the unfortunate boy. According to the unanimous opinion of his contemporaries, Filaret stood at the head of the “Tushino party” of the boyars until the moment when he considered it more profitable for himself to go over to the side of Sigismund of Poland, and at that time he, it seems, did not express any doubts about the legal rights of “Sovereign Dmitry Ivanovich " That is why Tsarevich Ivan was not poisoned, like Mikhail Skopin-Shuiskogr, and was not drowned, having previously gouged out his eyes, like Bolotnikov, and was not tortured in prison along with his mother, the proud Queen Marina, because he was more than a real rival for the new dynasty. And only by killing him “publicly” could they, to some extent, protect themselves from the resurrected “princes Ivanov”, that is, from what Boris Godunov had to experience at the end of his days and what A. S. Pushkin described so well in the tragedy of the same name .

I don’t believe in mystical coincidences and treat history quite rationally. But there is a frightening pattern in the fact that the Romanov dynasty began with the villainous murder of a child and ended with the same villainous murder...

And to answer the provocative questions of foreigners, our diplomats received the following official information from their Christian government:

« And Ivailko(Zarutsky) for his evil deeds, and Marinka’s son was executed, and Marinka died in Moscow from illness and longing for her whiteness».

CHRONOLOGY

End of October 1604 - Dmitry's speech.

End of June 1605 - the first conspiracy of Vasily Shuisky against Dmitry.

Summer 1606 - speech of Bolotnikov and Lyapunov against Vasily for “Tsar Dmitry”.

February 1609 - invitation of the Swedish army to Russia by Vasily Shuisky.

Mid-September 1609 - invasion of the Polish army of Sigismund III.

December 1609 - collapse of the Tushino camp.

January 1611 - birth of Tsarevich Ivan.

February 1611 - the militia of Lyapunov, Zarutsky and Trubetskoy against Sigismund.

Autumn 1611 - the second militia of Minin, Pozharsky and Trubetskoy against Sigismund. From the book To the beginning. History of the Russian Empire author Geller Mikhail Yakovlevich

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