Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / The Romanovs and the End of the Time of Troubles
Transcript
- Lucas: So last time we left off with the Time of Troubles — Smutnoye Vremya — basically a fifteen-year collapse of the Russian state. But we ended right at the point where Moscow had just been liberated from Polish occupation in 1612. The question everyone was asking was: who's going to be tsar now? Luna: The throne's empty, the country's in ruins, and every boyar family thinks they have a shot. Lucas: Exactly. And the stakes couldn't be higher. Russia had been burned by False Dmitrys, by foreign intervention, by a boyar government that invited the Poles in. So when the Zemsky Sobor — that's the national assembly — met in January 1613, they weren't just picking a ruler. They were trying to pick someone who wouldn't tear the country apart again. Lucas: The leading candidates were all from old boyar families — the Golitsyns, the Trubetskoys, the Mstislavskys. But they had baggage. Some had collaborated with the Poles. Others had backed the wrong False Dmitry. So the Sobor kept looking. Luna: And that's where the Romanovs come in. Lucas: Right. The Romanovs at this point weren't the ruling family. They were a boyar clan with a complicated history. Mikhail Romanov's father, Fyodor Nikitich Romanov, had been forced into a monastery by Boris Godunov — took the name Filaret — and later became a patriarch. But during the Troubles, Filaret was captured by the Poles and held prisoner. So his son, sixteen-year-old Mikhail, was relatively clean — he hadn't made deals, he hadn't collaborated. Lucas: But it wasn't just about being clean. The Romanovs were also connected by marriage to the old Rurikid dynasty. And there was a powerful faction pushing for them — the Cossacks, who had fought in the liberation army, and some of the conservative boyars who saw Mikhail as a figure they could control. Luna: A teenager who's never ruled — sounds like the perfect compromise candidate. Lucas: That's exactly what he was. On February 21, 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected Mikhail Romanov as tsar. According to the chronicles, the news was greeted with cheers in Red Square. But the reality was more complicated. A delegation had to travel to the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma — that's about 200 miles northeast of Moscow — to actually tell him. And Mikhail reportedly burst into tears. He didn't want the job. Luna: He refused at first? Lucas: Yes — and it's not hard to see why. The treasury was empty. The country was overrun by bandits and foreign armies. Sweden still held Novgorod. Poland still claimed the throne. And there was no guarantee the boyars would actually support him. His mother, Martha, was reportedly against it. She knew what happened to tsars who failed. Lucas: But eventually, after hours of persuasion, he accepted. One of the stories that comes out of this period — and it's probably more legend than fact — is the tale of Ivan Susanin. Susanin was a peasant who supposedly led a Polish raiding party into a swamp to save the young tsar's life. It became a national myth later, especially in the 19th century. But it captures the real danger Mikhail was in. Luna: So the new tsar is a teenager, his father is a prisoner in Poland, and the country is basically a failed state. Where do you even start? Lucas: You start by making peace — or at least stopping the war. The first order of business was Sweden. In 1617, Mikhail's government signed the Treaty of Stolbovo. Russia gave up its claim to Livonia and the Baltic coast, but got Novgorod back. Sweden kept the Gulf of Finland, which cut Russia off from the sea — that would sting for a century, until Peter the Great. Lucas: With Poland, it was harder. The Polish king, Sigismund III, still insisted his son Władysław was the legitimate tsar. There was a war that dragged on until 1618, when the Truce of Deulino was signed. Russia lost Smolensk and a big chunk of territory, but at least the fighting stopped. And importantly, the truce included a prisoner exchange — which brought Filaret back to Russia. Luna: So the patriarch comes home. That must have changed the balance of power. Lucas: Changed everything. Filaret was a strong-willed, politically savvy figure — and he was the tsar's father. As soon as he returned in 1619, he was named Patriarch of Moscow and effectively became co-ruler. The chronicles call him 'the great sovereign' right alongside Mikhail. So you had a dyarchy: the young tsar handled ceremonial duties, while his father ran the government. Lucas: Filaret's policies were about rebuilding state authority. He reformed the tax system, tried to recover lands lost to Poland, and cracked down on the bandit gangs — the so-called 'vory' — that had terrorized the countryside. He also reined in the Cossacks, who had become a lawless force after the Troubles. Luna: It sounds like he was exactly the strong hand the country needed. Lucas: He was. But it came at a cost. The Romanovs' legitimacy was fragile. They had to constantly show that they were the 'good tsars' restoring order — and they did that by leaning on the Church and the myth of the pious, merciful ruler. But the reality was a police state in the making. The Zemsky Sobor met less and less frequently as the 17th century went on. The boyars lost influence. Autocracy tightened. Luna: So the dynasty that was born from a compromise candidate ended up consolidating absolute power — classic. Lucas: And it took decades. Mikhail ruled until 1645, but it was really Filaret who set the course until his death in 1633. After that, Mikhail ruled alone, but he never had his father's ruthlessness. The real hardening of Romanov rule came under his son, Alexei Mikhailovich — who we've talked about in earlier episodes, the one who dealt with the Old Believers. Lucas: One thing I want to emphasize: the election of 1613 wasn't a clean democratic moment. It was a desperate compromise among elites — the boyars, the clergy, the Cossack leaders — who were exhausted by war and scared of more chaos. The Romanovs didn't seize power; it was thrust on them. And they held onto it by making sure the chaos never came back. Luna: Which means they had to be pretty ruthless in the end. Lucas: Eventually, yes. But at the start, what saved them was the perception that they were different — that they weren't the boyars who sold out to Poland, or the Cossacks who ran wild. The Romanovs wrapped themselves in the idea of the 'good tsar' — the tsar who listens to the people, who prays for Russia. And for a while, that image worked. Lucas: You know, it's interesting — the way we talk about this today, it's easy to forget how close Russia came to just disappearing as a state. If the Poles had held Moscow, if the Swedes had kept Novgorod, if another False Dmitry had arisen... The Romanovs weren't inevitable. They were a last-ditch choice. Luna: And that makes what they built — 300 years of dynasty — even more remarkable. Lucas: For anyone coming with us through these conversations — about Eastern Europe, about the tsars, about how empires rise from the brink of collapse — we're able to do this kind of deep dive because we keep the show free and ad-free. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just an option for anyone who finds value in what we do. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to say 'this matters to me.' We appreciate every bit of support. Lucas: Absolutely. So back to the 1610s — one thing that doesn't get enough attention is the economic devastation. The Time of Troubles wasn't just political chaos; it was a demographic catastrophe. Famine in the early 1600s had killed maybe a third of the population in some regions. Fields lay fallow, villages were abandoned. The new tsar's first task was just getting people fed. Luna: How did they even begin to rebuild an economy from that? Lucas: Slowly. Filaret's government issued new land grants to service nobles — the 'pomeshchiki' — to encourage them to resettle empty lands. They also granted tax exemptions for new settlements. And they minted new coins, though the silver shortage was brutal. Russia had no domestic silver mines, so they relied on foreign trade, especially through Arkhangelsk with the English and Dutch. Lucas: Another key move was the expansion of serfdom. In the 1590s, Boris Godunov had restricted peasants' right to move. After the Troubles, the Romanovs tightened that further. By the 1649 Law Code — under Alexei — serfdom became hereditary. It was a deal: the nobles got a stable labor force, and in return they supported the tsar. Luna: So the dynasty's stability was built on the backs of millions of serfs. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the tragic arc. The Romanovs saved Russia from collapse, but the system they created was brutally oppressive. The 'good tsar' myth could only last so long. By the 19th century, the serfs were restless, the intelligentsia was radicalized, and the dynasty was out of options. Lucas: But in 1613, none of that was visible. What people saw was a young tsar who prayed at the Ipatiev Monastery, who wept at his own coronation, who seemed to embody the suffering of his people. And that emotional connection — that sense that the tsar shared your pain — that's what held Russia together for the next three centuries. Luna: It's a powerful origin story, even if it's partly a myth. Lucas: Every dynasty needs its founding myth. The Romanovs got theirs in Kostroma, in the snow, with a weeping teenager and a legend about a peasant who died to save him. And they made it last as long as they could.