SERFDOM CREATED--THE FIRST ROMANOFF
Occasionally there arises a man in history who, without distinction of
birth or other advantages, is strong enough by sheer ability to grasp
the opportunity, vault into power, and then stem the tide of events.
Such a man was Godwin, father of Harold, last Saxon King; in England;
and such a man was Boris Godunof, a _boyar_, who had so faithfully
served the terrible Ivan that he leaned upon him and at last confided
to him the supervision of his feeble son Feodor, when he should succeed
him. The plans of this ambitious usurper were probably laid from the
time of the tragic death of Ivan's son, the Tsarevitch. He brought
about the marriage of his beautiful sister Irene with Feodor, and from
the hour of Ivan's death was virtual ruler. Dmitri, the infant son of
the late Tsar, aged five years, was prudently placed at a distance--and
soon thereafter mysteriously died (1591). There can be no doubt that
the unexplained tragedy of this child's death was perfectly understood
by Boris; and when Feodor also died, seven years later (1598), there
was not one of the old Muscovite line to succeed to the throne. But so
wise had been the administration of affairs by the astute Regent that a
change was dreaded. A council offered him the crown, which he feigned
a reluctance to accept, preferring that the invitation should come from
a source which would admit of no question as to his rights in the
future. Accordingly, the States-General or _Sobor_ was convened, and
Boris Godunof was chosen by acclamation.
The work of three reigns was undone. A _boyar_ was Tsar of Russia--and
a _boyar_ not in the line of Rurik and with Tatar blood in his veins!
But this bold and unscrupulous man had performed a service to the
state. The work of the Muscovite Princes was finished, and the
extinction of the line was the next necessary event in the path of
progress.
Boris had large and comprehensive views and proceeded upon new lines of
policy to reconstruct the state. He saw that Russia must be
Europeanized, and he also saw that at least one radical change in her
internal policy might be used to insure his popularity with the Princes
and nobles. The Russian peasantry was an enormous force which was not
utilized to its fullest extent. It included almost the entire rural
population of Russia. The peasant was legally a freeman. He lived
unchanged under the old Slavonic patriarchal system of _Mirs_, or
communes, and _Volosts_. These were the largest political
organizations of which he had personal cognizance. He knew nothing
about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy. No crumbs
from the modern banquet had fallen into his lap. With a thin veneer of
orthodoxy over their paganism and superstition the people listened in
childish wonder to the same old tales--they lived their old primitive
life of toil under the same system of simple fair-dealing and justice.
If their commune owned the land it tilled, they all shared the benefit
of the harvests, paid their tax to the state, and all was well. If
not, it swarmed like a community of bees to some wealthy neighbor's
estate and sold its labor to him, and then if he proved too hard a
taskmaster--even for a patient Russian peasant--they might swarm again
and work for another.
The tie binding them to special localities was only the very slightest.
There were no mountains to love, one part of the monotonous plateau was
about like another; and as for their homes, their wooden huts were
burned down so often there were no memories attached to them.
The result of this was that the peasantry--that immense force upon
which the state at last depended--was not stable and permanent, but
fluid. At the slightest invitation of better wages, or better soil or
conditions, whole communities might desert a locality--would gather up
their goods and walk off. Boris, while Regent, conceived the idea of
correcting this evil, in a way which would at the same time make him a
very popular ruler with the class whose support he most needed, the
Princes and the landowners. He would chain the peasant to the soil. A
decree was issued that henceforth the peasant must not go from one
estate to another. He belonged to the land he was tilling, as the
trees that grew on it belonged to it, and the master of that land was
his master for evermore!
Such, in brief outline, was the system of serfdom which prevailed until
1861. It was in theory, though not practically, unlike the institution
of American slavery. The people, still living in their communes, still
clung to the figment of their freedom, not really understanding that
they were slaves, but feeling rather that they were freemen whose
sacred rights had been cruelly invaded. That they were giving to hard
masters the fruit of their toil on their own lands.
Now that Russia was becoming a modern state, it required more money to
govern her. Civilization is costly, and the revenues must not be
fluctuating. Boris saw they could only be made sure by attaching to
the soil the peasant, whose labor was at the foundation of the
prosperity of the state. It was the peasant who bore the weight of an
expanded civilization which he did not share! The visitor at Moscow
to-day may see in the Kremlin a wonderful tower, 270 feet high, which
was erected in honor of Ivan the Great by the usurper Boris; but the
monument which keeps his memory alive is the more stupendous one
of--Serfdom.
The expected increase in prosperity from the new system did not
immediately come. The revenues were less than before. Bands of
fugitive serfs were fleeing from their masters and joining the
community of free Cossacks on the Don. Lands were untilled, there was
misery, and at last there was famine, and then discontent and
demoralization extending to the upper classes, and a diminished income
which finally bore upon the Tsar himself.
Suddenly there came a rumor that Dmitri, the infant son of Ivan the
Terrible, was not dead! He was living in Poland, and with
incontestable proofs of his identity was coming to claim his own. In
1604 he crossed the frontier, and thousands of discontented people
flocked to his standard with wild enthusiasm. Boris had died just
before Dmitri reached Moscow. He entered the city, and the infatuated
people placed in his hand and upon his head the scepter and the crown
of Ivan IV.; and after making sure that the wife and the son of Boris
Godunof were strangled, this amazing Pretender commenced his reign.
An extraordinary thing had happened. A nameless adventurer and
impostor had been received with tears of joy as the son of Ivan and of
St. Vladimir, the seventh wife of Ivan the Terrible even recognizing
and embracing him as her son! But Dmitri had not the wisdom to keep
what his cunning had won. His Polish wife came, followed by a suite of
Polish Catholics, who began to carry things with a high hand. The
clergy was offended and soon enraged. In five years Dmitri was
assassinated, and his mutilated corpse was lying in the palace at the
Kremlin, an object of insult and derision; and then, for Russia there
came another chaos.
For a brief period Vasili Shuiski, head of one of the princely
families, reigned, while two more "false Dmitris" appeared, one from
Sweden and the other from Poland. The cause of the latter was upheld
by the King of Poland, with the ulterior purpose of bringing the
disordered state of Russia under the Polish crown, and making one great
Slav kingdom with its center at Cracow.
So disorganized had the State become that some of the Princes had
actually opened negotiations with Sigismund with a view to offering the
crown to his son. But when Sigismund with an invading army was in
Moscow (1610), and when Vasili Shuiski was a prisoner in Poland, and a
Polish Prince was claiming the title of Tsar, there came an
awakening--not among the nobility, but deep down in the heart of
orthodox Russia. From this awakening of a dormant national sentiment
and of the religious instincts of the people there developed that
event,--the most health-restoring which can come to the life of a
nation,--a national uprising in which all classes unite in averting a
common disaster. What disaster could be for Russia more terrible than
an absorption into Catholic Poland? The Polish intruders and
pretenders were driven out, and then a great National Assembly gathered
at Moscow (1613) to elect a Tsar.
The name of Romanoff was unstained by crime, and was by maternal
ancestry allied to the royal race of Rurik. The newly awakened
patriotism turned instinctively toward that, as the highest expression
of their hopes; and Mikhail Romanoff, a youth of 16, was elected Tsar.
It was in 1547 that Anastasia, of the House of Romanoff, had married
Ivan IV. At about the same time her brother was married to a Princess
of Suzdal, a descendant of the brother of Alexander Nevski. This
Princess was the grandmother of Mikhail Romanoff, and the source from
which has sprung the present ruling house in Russia.