Boris Godunov
- For the opera please see Boris Godunov (opera).
Boris Feodorovich Godunov (Бори́с Фёдорович Годуно́в) (c. 1551 – April 13, 1605) was de facto regent of Russia from 1584 to 1598 and then the first non-Rurikid tsar from 1598 to 1605.
Early years
Boris was the most famous member of an ancient, now extinct, Russian family of Tatar origin, which migrated from the Horde to Kostroma in the early 14th century. Boris's career of service began at the court of Ivan the Terrible. He is mentioned in 1570 as taking part in the Serpeisk campaign as one of the archers of the guard.
In 1571 he strengthened his position at court by his marriage with Maria, the daughter of Ivan's abominable favorite Malyuta Skuratov. In 1580 the Tsar chose Irene, the sister of Boris, to be the bride of the Tsarevich Feodor, on which occasion Boris was promoted to the rank of boyar. On his deathbed Ivan appointed Boris, together with the Romanovs, as guardians of his son and successor; for Feodor, despite his 27 years, was of somewhat weak intellect.
Years of regency
The reign of Feodor began with a rebellion in favor of the infant Tsarevich Dmitry, the son of Ivan's fifth wife Maria Nagaya, a rebellion resulting in the banishment of Dmitry, with his mother and her relations, to their appanage at Uglich. On the occasion of the Tsar's coronation (May 31, 1584), Boris was given honors and riches, yet he held the second place in the regency during the lifetime of the Tsar's uncle Nikita Romanovich, on whose death, in August, he was left without any serious rival.
A conspiracy against him of all the other great boyars and the metropolitan Dionysius, which sought to break Boris's power by divorcing the Tsar from Godunov's childless sister, only ended in the banishment or tonsuring of the malcontents. Henceforth Godunov was omnipotent. The direction of affairs passed entirely into his hands, and he corresponded with foreign princes as their equal.
His policy was generally pacific, but always most prudent. In 1595 he recovered from Sweden the towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Tatar raid upon Moscow, for which service he received the title of konyushy, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of boyar. Towards Turkey he maintained an independent attitude, supporting an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea, and furnishing the emperor with subsidies in his war against the sultan.
Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from tolls. He civilized the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Russia by building numerous towns and fortresses to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. These towns included Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, Tsaritsyn and a whole series of lesser towns. He also re-colonized Siberia, which had been slipping from the grasp of Russia, and formed scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk and other large centres.
It was during his government that the Russian Orthodox Church received its patriarchate, which placed it on an equal footing with the ancient Eastern churches and emancipated it from the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This reform was meant to please the ruling monarch, as Feodor took extraordinary interest in church affairs.
Boris's most important domestic reform was the 1587 decree forbidding the peasantry to transfer themselves from one landowner to another, thus binding them to the soil. The object of this ordinance was to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most grinding form.
The sudden death of the Tsarevich Dmitry at Uglich on May 15, 1591 has commonly been attributed to Boris, because it cleared his way to the throne; but there is no clear proof that he was personally involved. The same may be said of the many, often absurd, accusations subsequently brought against him by jealous rivals or ignorant contemporaries who hated Godunov's reforms.
Years of tsardom
On the death of the childless tsar Feodor (January 7, 1598), self-preservation quite as much as ambition forced Boris to seize the throne. Had he not done so, lifelong seclusion in a monastery would have been his lightest fate. His election was proposed by the Patriarch Job of Moscow, who acted on the conviction that Boris was the one man capable of coping with the extraordinary difficulties of an unexampled situation. Boris, however, would only accept the throne from a Zemsky Sobor, or national assembly, which met on 17 February, and unanimously elected him on 21 February. On 1 September he was solemnly crowned tsar.
During the first years of his reign he was both popular and prosperous, and ruled excellently. He fully recognized the need for Russia to catch up to the intellectual progress of the West, and did his utmost to bring about educational and social reforms. He was the first tsar to import foreign teachers on a great scale, the first to send young Russians abroad to be educated, the first to allow Lutheran churches to be built in Russia. Having won the Russo-Swedish War, 1590-1595, he felt the necessity of a Baltic seaboard, and attempted to obtain Livonia by diplomatic means. He cultivated friendly relations with the Scandinavians, in order to intermarry if possible with foreign royal houses, so as to increase the dignity of his own dynasty.
Undoubtedly Boris was one of the greatest of the Russian tsars. But his great qualities were overshadowed by an incurable suspiciousness, which made it impossible for him to act cordially with those about him. His fear of possible pretenders induced him to go so far as to forbid the greatest of the boyars to marry. He also encouraged informers and persecuted suspects on their unsupported statements. The Romanov family especially suffered severely from this behaviour. He also declined the personal union proposed to him in 1600 by the diplomatic mission led by Lew Sapieha from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Boris died suddenly on April 13, 1605, leaving one son, Feodor II, who succeeded him for a few months and then was murdered by the enemies of the Godunovs.
Arts based on Boris Godunov
Boris's life was fictionalized by Alexander Pushkin in the famous play inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth. Modest Mussorgsky based his great opera Boris Godunov upon Pushkin's play. Sergei Prokofiev later wrote incidental music to the play. His name was also the basis for that of the cartoon character Boris Badenov, the Pottsylvanian villain of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty|title=(help)
External links
- Boris Godunov: a drama in verse at Project Gutenberg
- Godunov to Nicholas II by Saul Zaklad
- The ancestors Boris Godunov, tsar of Russia (in the Russian languages)