Expulsion of the Poles from the Kremlin in 1612. Battle on the Maiden's Field

Moscow

These years were filled with many tragic, heroic and extremely confusing events.

The state as a single whole ceased to exist. He was robbed and torn to pieces by all kinds of impostors, traitors, invaders and marauders. Power passed from hand to hand.

It got to the point that in 1608-1609... dual power was established in the country.

One tsar (Vasily Shuisky) sat in the Kremlin, and the other (False Dmitry II) sat nearby, in Tushino, near Moscow.

Moreover, each had its own courtyard and its own patriarch. Shuisky’s patriarch was Hermogenes, and False Dmitry II’s was Filaret Romanov.

Then, for more than three hundred years, the Romanovs tried to hide the fact that the father of the founder of the dynasty was the patriarch at the court of False Dmitry II (who in reality was a certain Bogdanka Shklovsky).

However, the worst thing about this was for ordinary people.

Because the situation when “the whites come and rob, the reds come and rob” was typical for the Time of Troubles.

Shuisky decided to defeat the Tushinsky thief with the help of the Swedes.

In February 1609, he concluded an agreement with them, according to which Russia gave the Korelia volost to Sweden.

It soon became clear that by doing this, Shuisky made an unforgivable political mistake.

Swedish assistance brought little benefit, but the entry of Swedish troops into Russian territory gave them the opportunity to capture Novgorod.

In addition, the treaty gave Sweden's enemy, the Polish king Sigismund III, the desired pretext for switching to open intervention.

In September 1609, the troops of Sigismund III besieged Smolensk. The king no longer needed False Dmitry II.

In December 1609, Sigismund III ordered Polish troops to leave the Tushino camp to Smolensk.

The hetman promised the boyars to defeat False Dmitry II on the condition that the Polish prince Vladislav would be elevated to the Moscow throne.

By agreeing to this and holding an oath ceremony to Vladislav at the walls of the Novodevichy Convent, the Seven Boyars committed an act of national betrayal.

In fact, part of the then political elite turned into traitors and accomplices of the Polish-Lithuanian occupiers.

After all, the prince refused to convert to Orthodoxy, and the talk was about Russia’s loss of independence. Patriarch Hermogenes did not oppose what was happening then.

On the night of September 20-21, 1610, the Seven Boyars allowed the Poles into Moscow.

From that moment on, real power in the capital was in the hands of the Polish garrison, which was first commanded by Zolkiewski, and then by Alexander Gonsevski.

In the fall of 1611, a patriotic movement began in Nizhny Novgorod, which gradually consolidated the majority of classes in an effort to liberate the country from the occupiers.

Under the influence of Hermogenes' letters, the patriots agreed that the first priority was the liberation of the capital and the convening of the Zemsky Sobor to elect a new king.

At the same time, it was decided not to invite any of the foreign contenders to the Russian throne and not to choose Ivan Dmitrievich (the son of Marina Mnishek and False Dmitry II) as Tsar.

At the call of the Nizhny Novgorod elder, meat merchant Kuzma Minin, a second militia began to form.

It was headed by Minin himself and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky.

The fees collected on Minin's initiative from townspeople and villagers provided the first cash receipts for the needs of the militia.

Some grumbled, but many understood that money was needed for a sacred cause: it was a question of whether Russia should exist or not.

The leaders of the second militia began to send letters to other cities, calling on people to join the militia.

But in the end they suffered heavy losses and were forced to go home. During the battle, patriots from the first and second militias showed massive heroism, and their leaders showed high military skill and personal courage.

This victory sealed the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian enemy garrison in the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod.

After suffering for another two months, the Poles and traitor boyars capitulated. Moscow was liberated.

Should we now sleep in peace?
Loyal sons of Russia?!
Let's go, let's form a military formation,
Let's go - and in the horrors of war to friends,
To the Fatherland, the people
Let's find glory and freedom -
Fedor Glinka

In Russian history, events that have already occurred in the Russian state are often repeated, and in a painfully similar way, and, apparently, we were not taught intelligence. The actions of anti-national political adventurers have more than once brought our Motherland to the brink of impoverishment, humiliation and despair, and it seemed that only a miracle could save our people. But there are no miracles in the world, but there have always been and acted absolutely amazing wonderful people, patriots of the Fatherland, who went to the people and together with them raised the state desecrated by adventurers and interventionists from its knees, returned it to its former honor and greatness.

After the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who annexed the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates and lands in the Baltic states to Muscovy, who was distinguished by his strategic courage and determination in strengthening the Russian state, troubled times began. The suppression of a dynasty in the history of monarchical Russia has always resulted in great national troubles, although similar phenomena in other countries of the world are avoided without much shock and destruction. If a dynasty fades away, another will be chosen, and order quickly falls into place. We have...

The origin of Russian unrest, as a rule, arises at the top. The people standing at the helm of power, some by cunning, some by force, some by arrogance and treachery, try to gain power for themselves or, by supporting others in this matter, to snatch and secure personal gain. Those who come to power always promise that their rule will be the fairest, based on the aspirations and thoughts of the people. It's easy to say. Implementation is difficult and sometimes impossible. If people come to management with no talent, they are gray.

On the threshold of the seventeenth century there was a desperate struggle for the Moscow throne. After Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov, False Dmitry, Vasily Shuisky tried to rule Russia... The latter set out on paper his oath “Record”, placing the holy cross on which he kissed him for loyalty, that he would judge and judge by the “true righteous court”, according to law, and not at discretion, “he must certainly judge not individually, but with his boyars...” “And I should not listen to false denunciations, but firmly find them with all sorts of investigations, and confront them eye to eye...”, but for punish a false denunciation according to the investigation, depending on the guilt attributed to the slandered person. Don’t lay your disgrace on anyone without guilt..."

This did not satisfy the Boyar Duma. After all, before this, the motto of Tsar Ivan the Terrible was: “We are free to favor our slaves and we are free to execute them...” Swornly shaking off these royal prerogatives, Vasily Shuisky turned from a ruler of slaves into a legitimate king of his subjects, ruling according to the law.

But the chronicler says that Tsar Vasily, after kissing the cross, immediately went to the Assumption Cathedral and said to the people there: “I kiss the cross to the whole earth for the fact that no one was done to me without the cathedral, no harm...” With this oath, Shuisky hoped to get rid of from boyar tutelage, to become a zemstvo tsar, for the sake of form limiting his power to the Council - an institution, the essence of which at that time no one really understood or perceived.

The weakening of centralized power in Rus' has always led to confusion and vacillation in society, to extortion and theft, and arbitrariness. All this began after the death of Ivan the Terrible. Following the upper classes, the lower classes began to seek their truth and benefit. No one wanted to obey anyone.

The world is so structured that only a lazy person would not try to profit at the expense of a weakened neighbor. Western countries, seeing Muscovy mired in civil strife, lit up their eyes with a greedy passion for profit. Following the failed henchmen of False Dmitry, the Polish king Sigismund III, with the help of military force and traitorous boyars, installed his son Vladislav on the Moscow throne. On the night of September 21, 1610, Polish troops entered Moscow and settled in its heart - the Kremlin and Kitai-Gorod. They behaved here like full-fledged owners, they did not take into account not only the slaves, but also the boyar nobility. The Swedish king Charles IX, under the pretext of helping Russia, brought his troops into Novgorod and began the seizure of Russian lands in the Baltic states.

The newly-minted “helpers and patrons” were not concerned about the integrity and prosperity of the Russian state. Poland sought to annex the ancestral Russian lands, right along with Smolensk. True, its governor Mikhail Shein gathered an army and did not give Smolensk to the Poles. The invaders behaved brazenly on Russian soil, robbed, raped, and imposed unbearable taxes on the Russians.

The liberation movement, directed against Russia's subordination to Polish royal power, began at the end of 1610, when relations between Muscovites and Poles became strained. A state of siege was introduced in Moscow. Fear among the Polish gentry caused an influx of Russian people to Moscow, the secret delivery of weapons to the capital, which indicated the preparation of a popular uprising. Under the leadership of the nobleman Prokofy Lyapunov, the first militia began to form, which found support in the country. Nizhny Novgorod, Murom, Suzdal, Vladimir and other cities joined the general movement. The main force of the militia were the Ryazan people and the Cossack detachments of Prince Trubetskoy and Zarutsky. But they were unable to develop a unified plan to combat the invaders.

The Poles in Moscow felt like they were on a volcano. To protect themselves, they carried out a massacre in Kitay-Gorod, where more than 7 thousand unarmed Muscovites died, and then set Moscow on fire in different places. Muscovites tried in vain to stop the arson. Moscow burned to the ground. In place of a rich and populous city, only ashes remained. The news of the destruction of Moscow spread throughout the country.

Internal disagreements began within the 1st Militia, which ultimately led to its collapse. Almost simultaneously with this, the fall of Smolensk occurred. The situation in the country has deteriorated even further.

At the end of 1611, the Moscow state presented a spectacle of complete visible destruction. The Poles took Smolensk. The Polish detachment burned Moscow and fortified itself behind the surviving walls of the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod. To replace the murdered second False Dmitry, a third settled in Pskov - some Sidorka. The first noble militia was upset with the death of Lyapunov. The country was left without a government. The Boyar Duma, which became its head after the tonsure of Vasily Shuisky as a monk, was abolished by itself after the capture of the Kremlin by the Poles. True, some of the boyars, with their chairman, Prince Mstislavsky, sided with the Poles.

The state, having lost its center, began to disintegrate into its component parts, almost every city acted independently, only being sent with other cities. The state was transformed into some kind of shapeless, restless federation.

Towards the end of 1611, when political forces were exhausted in confrontations, religious and national forces began to awaken, seeing Rus' dying.

From the Trinity Monastery, Archimandrite Dionysius and cellarer Abraham began to send letters of conscription to the people through Orthodox churches asking them to rise up to save the faith and the Fatherland. The experience of the first militia showed that in order to liberate the country from invaders, it is necessary to unite all patriotic forces, their consolidation under a single banner.

The initiative in this noble cause of liberating the homeland from the Polish gentry belongs to the townspeople of Nizhny Novgorod. Under the leadership of their headman Kuzma Minin, a second Russian militia began to gather in the fall of 1611, when Kuzma Minin was elected zemstvo headman in Nizhny Novgorod. The creation of the new militia was officially proclaimed in a solemn ceremony in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Archpriest Savva gave a speech, and then Kuzma Minin addressed the assembled people. Calling on his fellow citizens to rise up against the interventionists, Minin said: “After all, I know well that if we start this business, many cities will help us. Do not spare yourself and your wives and children, and not just your property.”

The courageous and noble call of Kuzma Minin was widely supported. According to a contemporary chronicler, “everyone loved his advice.”

During the formation of the militia, an important question about military leadership arose. What was needed was a special commander and, at the same time, a person who would put the interests of the homeland above his own. Minin also found the leader of the patriotic movement, Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky. The main goal of the second nascent militia was the liberation of Moscow from the invaders and the expulsion of the interventionists from Russian soil. Fundraising began for the maintenance of the troops and their weapons. Many people gave their last. The militia was formed for about four months, and then moved towards Moscow, replenished along the way with crowds of volunteers, service people who asked to be accepted on the zemstvo salary.

Near Moscow, the militia, on the advice and negotiations of Minin, merged with the Cossack detachment of Prince Trubetskoy. This strengthened his fighting ability.

In July 1612, news reached the militia that Sigismund was preparing a 12,000-strong army under the command of Jan Karol Chodkiewicz for Moscow. The king gave him several infantry detachments that had previously participated in the battles for Smolensk. Khodkevich went on a campaign to help the Poles, who were entrenched in the Kremlin and Kitai-Gorod.

Dmitry Pozharsky understood that the connection of Polish forces could not be allowed. Therefore, he sent a detachment of Prince V. Turgenev to Moscow, which was supposed to stand at the Chertolsky Gate of the capital. The main forces of the militia stood at the Arbat Gate. The path to Khodkevich’s troops to Kitay-Gorod and the Kremlin was covered.

Khodkevich's forces and his huge convoy approached the Russian capital and began crossing the Moscow River, but were repulsed. The next morning, the Poles decided to break through again to the Moscow River from the Donskoy Monastery through Zamoskvorechye, but Cossack detachments were waiting for them on Pyatnitskaya Street near the Church of St. Clement. In the ensuing battle, the Cossacks not only defeated the Polish invaders, but also recaptured more than four hundred carts with provisions and weapons from them. The Cossacks, inflamed by success, wanted to pursue the surviving Polish forces retreating to the Vorobyovy Gory, but the governors restrained them, saying: “Enough, Cossacks! There are no two joys in one day! As if after the joy and bitterness you won’t taste it.” Kuzma Minin himself distinguished himself in the fight against Khodkevich. He took four companies and successfully attacked Chodkiewicz's forces. After these failures, the hetman had to move away from Moscow.

After this, the militia surrounded Kitay-Gorod, dug a deep ditch, woven a fence into two walls, poured earth between them, installed cannons and began shelling the Poles who had settled there.

On September 15, Dmitry Pozharsky sent a written proposal to the Poles to surrender: “... You will soon perish from hunger. Your king has no time for you now... Do not destroy your souls in vain for the king’s lies. Surrender!”

But the dashing warrior Nikolai Struyev, who commanded the besieged Poles, responded to the offer of surrender with obscene language.

And Pozharsky’s prophecies came true. The besieged hungry Poles not only ate their horses, but also caught and ate all the dogs and cats.

On October 22, Russian militias attacked the besieged. The hungry Poles could not resist, retreated and locked themselves in the Kremlin, but not for long. Two days later they sent envoys asking for surrender.

On October 25, Russian militias entered the Kremlin. A solemn prayer service was served in the Assumption Cathedral for the deliverance of the reigning city from the enemy.

The Poles still tried to stay on Russian soil, but, inspired by their successes, the militia drove the invaders home everywhere.

The Russian people highly appreciated the patriotic and organizational initiative of Minin and Pozharsky to expel Polish invaders from Russian soil and during their lifetime gave praise and honor to the patriots of the Fatherland.

In 1804, work began to perpetuate the memory of the victory of 1612. In February 1818, grateful descendants opened the first monumental monument in Moscow on Red Square - a monument to the liberators of the Fatherland Minin and Pozharsky. It is interesting that work on its creation did not stop even during the Patriotic War with Napoleon.

For the successful construction of the monument, its author, Ivan Petrovich Martos, was awarded the rank of full state councilor with a high personal pension, and the foundry master Ekimov was awarded the Order of Anna, 2nd degree and a bonus of 20,000 rubles.

And it was worth it! Even today, for each of us, this monument evokes high patriotic feelings for the Russian people and our dear Fatherland.

Vladimir Ushakov

The time of troubles, which began with the appearance in the spring of 1605 in Russia of the impostor False Dmitry I (he was in fact the fugitive monk of the Kremlin Chudov Monastery Grigory Otrepiev, who pretended to be the miraculously saved son of Ivan IV the Terrible, Tsarevich Dmitry) and the death of Tsar Boris Godunov, lasted about eight years (according to other estimates, much longer). These years were filled with many tragic, heroic and extremely confusing events. The state as a single whole ceased to exist. He was robbed and torn to pieces by all kinds of impostors, traitors, invaders and marauders. Power passed from hand to hand.

It got to the point that in 1608-1609... dual power was established in the country. One tsar (Vasily Shuisky) sat in the Kremlin, and the other (False Dmitry II) sat nearby, in Tushino, near Moscow. Moreover, each had its own courtyard and its own patriarch. Shuisky’s patriarch was Hermogenes, and False Dmitry II’s was Filaret Romanov. Then, for more than three hundred years, the Romanovs tried to hide the fact that the father of the founder of the dynasty was a patriarch at the court of False Dmitry II. However, the worst thing about this was for ordinary people. Because the situation when “the whites come and rob, the reds come and rob” was typical for the Time of Troubles.

Shuisky decided to defeat the Tushinsky thief with the help of the Swedes. In February 1609, he concluded an agreement with them, according to which Russia gave the Korelia volost to Sweden. It soon became clear that by doing this, Shuisky made an unforgivable political mistake. Swedish assistance brought little benefit, but the entry of Swedish troops into Russian territory gave them the opportunity to capture Novgorod. In addition, the treaty gave Sweden's enemy, the Polish king Sigismund III, the desired pretext for switching to open intervention. In September 1609, the troops of Sigismund III besieged Smolensk. The king no longer needed False Dmitry II.

In December 1609, Sigismund III ordered Polish troops to leave the Tushino camp to Smolensk. However, not all Poles obeyed the king’s order. Many, together with False Dmitry II, went to Kaluga. From that moment on, the Pretender turned from a protege of the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into his competitor in the struggle for the Moscow throne.

And something unimaginable was happening to the throne itself. On July 17, 1610, boyars and nobles, led by the famous Ryazan governor Zakhary Lyapunov, burst into the Kremlin and demanded that Shuisky abdicate the throne. It is important that one of the motivating reasons for the conspiracy was that some supporters of False Dmitry II promised in turn to depose the Tushino thief in order to then assemble the Zemsky Sobor and jointly elect a new king and thereby end the Troubles. In the meantime, power passed into the hands of the so-called Seven Boyars, led by Fyodor Mstislavsky. One of its members was Ivan Romanov, Filaret’s younger brother and uncle of the future Tsar Mikhail.

Soon, the Cossacks of False Dmitry II and the Polish army of Hetman Stanislav Zolkiewski approached Moscow almost simultaneously. In a situation of choice between two evils, the Seven Boyars gave preference to the Poles. The hetman promised the boyars to defeat False Dmitry II on the condition that the Polish prince Vladislav would be elevated to the Moscow throne. By agreeing to this and holding an oath ceremony to Vladislav at the walls of the Novodevichy Convent, the Seven Boyars committed an act of national betrayal. In fact, part of the then political elite turned into traitors and accomplices of the Polish-Lithuanian occupiers. After all, the prince refused to convert to Orthodoxy, and the talk was about Russia’s loss of independence.

On the night of September 20-21, 1610, the Seven Boyars allowed the Poles into Moscow. From that moment on, real power in the capital was in the hands of the Polish garrison, which was first commanded by Zolkiewski, and then by Alexander Gonsevski. Moreover, the Poles behaved in Moscow as if they were in a conquered city, which excited wide sections of Russian society. And after False Dmitry II was killed in December, there was one less key player in the political arena. The question arose: either the Seven Boyars and the Poles will finally bring the country to complete collapse, or there will be a sufficient number of patriots in society capable of rising up to defend the Motherland.

From that moment on, Patriarch Hermogenes also took an active patriotic position. He began sending letters to cities calling on them to rise up to liberate Moscow. Since February 1611, armed detachments of patriots reached the capital. By mid-March, a large people's militia had formed here, led by the Ryazan nobleman Prokopiy Lyapunov, Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy and the Cossack ataman Ivan Zarutsky. The first militia consisted of nobles, Cossacks, Astrakhan archers and militias from Murom, Vologda, Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal, Vladimir, Uglich, Galich, Kostroma, Yaroslavl.

The battle that took place on March 19 was long, bloody and did not end in favor of the Russians. The Poles set Kitai Gorod on fire, which forced the militia to retreat from the Kremlin walls. Many Muscovites, having lost their housing and food, were forced to leave the city. Voivode Dmitry Pozharsky, who fought with the Poles at Lubyanka, especially distinguished himself in battle. He received several wounds and was taken away near Nizhny Novgorod.

Having failed to drive the Poles out of the Kremlin, the militia began its siege. In fact, from that moment until the expulsion from Moscow, the Polish garrison and the Seven Boyars controlled only the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod. After the accession of the Romanov dynasty, they tried not to remember that the siege was waged by the first militia for more than a year. Of course, the social composition of the first militia was varied, and its leaders, to put it mildly, did not always find a common language. The squabbles between the Cossacks of Zarutsky and Lyapunov reached the point that the nobles drowned 28 Cossacks, and on July 22, 1611, the Cossacks called Lyapunov to their “circle” and killed him there. But for all that, it was the siege that caused famine in the quarters of Moscow occupied by the Poles and the Seven Boyars, which created favorable conditions for its liberation.

In the fall of 1611, a patriotic movement began in Nizhny Novgorod, which gradually consolidated the majority of classes in an effort to liberate the country from the occupiers. Under the influence of Hermogenes' letters, the patriots agreed that the first priority was the liberation of the capital and the convening of the Zemsky Sobor to elect a new king. At the same time, it was decided not to invite any of the foreign contenders to the Russian throne and not to choose Ivan Dmitrievich (the son of Marina Mnishek and False Dmitry II) as Tsar.

At the call of the Nizhny Novgorod elder, meat merchant Kuzma Minin, a second militia began to form. It was headed by Minin himself and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky. The fees collected on Minin's initiative from townspeople and villagers provided the first cash receipts for the needs of the militia. Some grumbled, but many understood that money was needed for a sacred cause: it was a question of whether Russia should exist or not.

The leaders of the second militia began to send letters to other cities, calling on people to join the militia. These actions excited the Poles and were approved by Hermogenes. In retaliation, the patriarch was arrested. And at the beginning of 1612, Hermogenes died of starvation in Polish dungeons. And for this crime, by the way, Polish politicians, who love to talk about Katyn and really don’t like to remember the tens of thousands of Red and White Guards tortured in Polish concentration camps in 1919–1922, have still not apologized to Russia! Perhaps they will do this at least for the 400th anniversary of the death of the patriarch...

In March 1612, the second militia set out from Nizhny Novgorod and headed along the route Balakhna - Yuryevets - Reshma - Kineshma - Kostroma - Yaroslavl, where a temporary “Council of the Whole Earth” was formed - a government body. The second militia was constantly replenished with people, weapons, and supplies. Soon Trubetskoy and Zarutsky entered into negotiations with Minin and Pozharsky about coordination of actions.

The main forces of the second militia reached Moscow in August 1612. Almost simultaneously with them, the Polish-Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz approached the capital, with the goal of lifting the siege of the Kremlin and delivering food there. For three days, August 22, 23 and 24, Hetman Khodkevich's troops stubbornly and bravely tried to break into the Kremlin. But in the end they suffered heavy losses and were forced to go home. During the battle, patriots from the first and second militias showed massive heroism, and their leaders showed high military skill and personal courage.

This victory sealed the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian enemy garrison in the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod. After suffering for another two months, the Poles and traitor boyars capitulated. Moscow was liberated.

False Dmitry II. While Vasily Shuisky was besieging I.I. Bolotnikov in Tula, a new impostor appeared in the Bryansk region (Starodub). By agreement with the Vatican, the Polish nobles, opponents of King Sigismund III (hetmans Lisovsky, Ruzhitsky, Sapieha), united with the Cossack ataman I. I. Zarutsky, and nominated False Dmitry II (1607-1610) as a contender for the Russian throne. In appearance, this man resembled False Dmitry I, which was noticed by the participants in the adventure of the first impostor. Until now, the identity of False Dmitry II causes a lot of controversy. Apparently, he came from a church background.

False Dmitry II, in response to the call of I.I. Bolotnikov, moved to Tula to unite with the rebels. The connection did not take place (Tula was taken by Shuisky’s troops), and in January 1608 the impostor launched a campaign against the capital. In the summer of 1608, False Dmitry approached Moscow, but attempts to take the capital ended in vain. He stopped 17 km from the Kremlin, in the town of Tushino, and received the nickname “Tushino Thief”. Soon Marina Mnishek also moved to Tushino. The impostor promised her 3 thousand gold rubles and income from 14 Russian cities after his accession to Moscow, and she recognized him as her husband. A secret wedding took place according to Catholic rites. The impostor promised to help spread Catholicism in Russia.

False Dmitry II was an obedient puppet in the hands of the Polish nobles, who managed to take control of the north-west and north of Russian lands. The fortress of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery fought valiantly for 16 months, in the defense of which the surrounding population played a significant role. Protests against the Polish invaders took place in a number of large cities of the North: Novgorod, Vologda, Veliky Ustyug.

If False Dmitry I spent 11 months in the Kremlin, then False Dmitry II unsuccessfully besieged Moscow for 21 months. In Tushino, under False Dmitry II, from among the boyars dissatisfied with Vasily Shuisky (the people aptly called them “Tushino flights”), their own Boyar Duma and orders were formed. Metropolitan Filaret, captured in Rostov, was named patriarch in Tushino.

The government of Vasily Shuisky, realizing that it was not able to cope with False Dmitry II, concluded an agreement with Sweden in Vyborg (1609). Russia renounced its claims to the Baltic coast, and the Swedes provided troops to fight False Dmitry II. Under the command of the talented 28-year-old commander M.V. Skopin-Shuisky, the Tsar’s nephew, successful actions began against the Polish invaders.

In response, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was at war with Sweden, declared war on Russia. The troops of King Sigismund III in the fall of 1609 besieged the city of Smolensk, which defended itself for more than 20 months. The king ordered the nobles to leave Tushino and go to Smolensk. The Tushino camp crumbled, the impostor was no longer needed by the Polish gentry, who switched to open intervention. False Dmitry II fled to Kaluga, where he was soon killed. The embassy of the Tushino boyars went to Smolensk at the beginning of 1610 and invited the king’s son, Vladislav, to the Moscow throne.

In April 1610, M. V. Skopin-Shuisky died under mysterious circumstances. According to rumor, he was poisoned. In the summer of 1610, leaving struggling Smolensk in the rear, the Polish army moved towards Moscow. In June 1610, Russian troops under the command of their brother, the tsar, the cowardly and mediocre Dmitry Shuisky, were defeated by Polish troops. The path to Moscow was open. The Swedes thought more about the capture of Novgorod and other Russian lands than about their defense: they left Shuisky’s army and began to plunder the northwestern Russian cities.

In the summer of 1610, a coup took place in Moscow. The nobles, led by P. Lyapunov, overthrew Vasily Shuisky from the throne and forcibly tonsured him as a monk. (Shuisky died in 1612 in Polish captivity, where he was sent as a hostage along with his brothers). Power was seized by a group of boyars led by F. I. Mstislavsky. This government, consisting of seven boyars, was called the “seven boyars”.

In August 1610, the Seven Boyars, despite the protests of Patriarch Hermogenes, concluded an agreement to call Vladislav, the son of King Sigismund, to the Russian throne, and allowed intervention troops into the Kremlin. On August 27, 1610, Moscow swore allegiance to Vladislav. This was a direct betrayal of national interests. The country faced the threat of losing its independence.

The first militia. Only by relying on the people could it be possible to win and preserve the independence of the Russian state. In 1610, Patriarch Hermogenes called for a fight against the invaders, for which he was arrested. At the beginning of 1611, the first militia was created in the Ryazan land, led by the nobleman P. Lyapunov. The militia moved to Moscow, where an uprising broke out in the spring of 1611. The interventionists, on the advice of the traitorous boyars, set fire to the city. Troops fought on the outskirts of the Kremlin. Here, in the Sretenka area, Prince D. M. Pozharsky, who led the advanced detachments, was seriously wounded.

However, the Russian troops were unable to develop their success. The leaders of the militia spoke out in favor of returning the fugitive peasants to their owners. Cossacks did not have the right to hold public office. Opponents of P. Lyapunov, who sought to establish a military organization of the militia, began to sow rumors that he allegedly wanted to exterminate the Cossacks. * They invited him into the Cossack “circle” in July 1611 and killed him.

The first militia disintegrated. By this time, the Swedes had captured Novgorod, and the Poles, after a months-long siege, had captured Smolensk. The Polish king Sigismund III announced that he himself would become the Russian Tsar, and Russia would join the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Second militia. Minin and Pozharsky. In the fall of 1611, the townsman of Nizhny Novgorod, Kozma Minin, appealed to the Russian people to create a second militia. With the help of the population of other Russian cities, the material base for the liberation struggle was created: the people raised significant funds to wage war against the interventionists. The militia was headed by K. Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky.

In the spring of 1612, the militia moved to Yaroslavl. Here the provisional government of Russia, the Council of All Earth, was created. In the summer of 1612, from the direction of the Arbat Gate, the troops of K. Minin and D. M. Pozharsky approached Moscow and united with the remnants of the first militia.

Almost simultaneously, Hetman Khodkevich approached the capital along the Mozhaisk road, moving to help the Poles holed up in the Kremlin. In the battle near the walls of Moscow, Khodkevich’s army was driven back.

On October 22, 1612, on the day of the discovery of the icon of the Kazan Mother of God, who accompanied the militia, Kitay-Gorod was taken. Four days later, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin surrendered. In memory of the liberation of Moscow from the interventionists, a temple in honor of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan was erected on Red Square at the expense of D. M. Pozharsky. The victory was won as a result of the heroic efforts of the Russian people. The feat of the Kostroma peasant Ivan Susanin, who sacrificed his own life in the fight against the Polish invaders, forever serves as a symbol of loyalty to the Motherland. Grateful Russia erected the first sculptural monument in Moscow to Kozma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky (on Red Square, sculptor I. P. Martos, 1818). The memory of the defense of Smolensk and the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, of the struggle of the inhabitants of the city of Korela against the Swedish invaders, has been preserved forever.

In 1613, a Zemsky Sobor was held in Moscow, at which the question of choosing a new Russian Tsar was raised. The Polish prince Vladislav, the son of the Swedish king Karl Philip, the son of False Dmitry II and Marina Mnishek Ivan, nicknamed "Vorenko", as well as representatives of the largest boyar families were proposed as candidates for the Russian throne. On February 21, the cathedral chose Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov, the 16-year-old great-nephew of Ivan the Terrible’s first wife, Anastasia Romanova. An embassy was sent to the Ignatievsky Monastery near Kostroma, where Mikhail and his mother were at that time. On May 2, 1613, Mikhail arrived in Moscow and was crowned king on July 11. Soon the leading place in governing the country was taken by his father, Patriarch Filaret, who “mastered all royal and military affairs.” Power was restored in the form of an autocratic monarchy. The leaders of the fight against the interventionists received modest appointments. D. M. Pozharsky was sent by the governor to Mozhaisk, and K. Minin became the Duma governor.

End of the intervention. The government of Mikhail Fedorovich faced the most difficult task - eliminating the consequences of the intervention. The greatest danger to him was posed by the Cossack detachments that wandered around the country and did not recognize the new king. Among them, the most formidable was Ivan Zarutsky, to whom Marina Mnishek moved with her son. The Yaik Cossacks handed over I. Zarutsky to the Moscow government in 1614. I. Zarutsky and “Vorenok” were hanged, and Marina Mnishek was imprisoned in Kolomna, where she probably died soon.

The Swedes posed another danger. After several military clashes and then negotiations, the Peace of Stolbovo was concluded in 1617 (in the village of Stolbovo, near Tikhvin). Sweden returned the Novgorod land to Russia, but retained the Baltic coast and received monetary compensation. After the Peace of Stolbov, King Gustav Adolf said that now “Russia is not a dangerous neighbor... it is separated from Sweden by swamps, fortresses, and it will be difficult for the Russians to cross this “trickle”” (Neva River).

The Polish prince Vladislav, who sought to gain the Russian throne, organized in 1617-1618. march on Moscow, He reached the Arbat Gate of Moscow, but was repulsed. In the village of Deulino near the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in 1618, the Deulino truce was concluded with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which retained the Smolensk and Chernigov lands. There was an exchange of prisoners. Vladislav did not give up his claims to the Russian throne.

Thus, basically the territorial unity of Russia was restored, although part of the Russian lands remained with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. These are the consequences of the events of the Time of Troubles in Russian foreign policy. In the internal political life of the state, the role of the nobility and the upper classes of the town increased significantly.

During the Time of Troubles, in which all layers and classes of Russian society took part, the question of the very existence of the Russian state and the choice of the path of development of the country was decided. It was necessary to find ways for the people to survive. Troubles settled primarily in the minds and souls of people. In the specific conditions of the beginning of the 17th century. a way out of the Troubles was found in the regions and the center realizing the need for strong statehood. The idea of giving everything for the common good, rather than seeking personal gain, has won in people's minds.

After the Time of Troubles, a choice was made in favor of preserving the largest power in eastern Europe. In the specific geopolitical conditions of that time, the path of further development of Russia was chosen: autocracy as a form of political government, serfdom as the basis of the economy, Orthodoxy as an ideology, class system as a social structure.

Russia emerged from the Troubles extremely exhausted, with huge territorial and human losses. According to some estimates, up to a third of the population died. Overcoming economic ruin will be possible only by strengthening serfdom.

The country's international position has sharply deteriorated. Russia found itself in political isolation, its military potential weakened, and for a long time its southern borders remained practically defenseless.

Anti-Western sentiments intensified in the country, which aggravated its cultural and, ultimately, civilizational isolation.

The people managed to defend their independence, but as a result of their victory, autocracy and serfdom were revived in Russia. However, most likely, there was no other way to save and preserve Russian civilization in those extreme conditions.