A Return from the Dead in Unstable 17th Century Russia?

Here is a fascinating history from early 17th century Russia, featuring somebody who apparently returned from the dead and a coup to take control of the country. This the story of Prince Dmitri. Lanny Cotton, who wrote the below for a podcast originally, explains.

Ivan the Terrible. By Hans Weigel.

Today, I would like to tell you a story. A story about a sinister conspiracy, a lost and noble prince, an evil tyrant, and a war over the soul of an empire. Or, more likely, a story about a crazed conspiracy theory, a deceitful imposter, an unfortunate monarch, and a chaotic civil war which brought death and destruction to said empire. Along the way we’ll play knife games with the boys, mutilate a poor, innocent church bell, and perform history’s first and only reverse sled-by shooting. I hope you enjoy the ride.

PART ONE

Our story begins with Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia. Ivan is himself a fascinating figure, but here our story concerns itself with what happened after his death. Oh, and a side note: the epithet “the Terrible” is somewhat misleading. The Russian word “grozny” is translated into “terrible” in the sense of something “inspiring terror”, rather than being of low quality. It wasn’t a pleasant nickname, but it wasn’t an insult either, and it suited the paranoid Tsar who had thousands of his subjects murdered on the slightest provocations. Ivan’s first wife was a woman named Anastasia Romanovna, who he chose out of a lineup of a few hundred other eligible maidens. It seems that Anastasia and Ivan got along fairly well, and she managed to keep his more violent tendencies at bay. The couple had six children, four of which would die in infancy. This left Ivan with an heir and a spare, Prince Ivan Ivanovich and Prince Feodor. In the summer of 1560, Anastasia died of a sudden illness. Ivan was convinced that his beloved wife was poisoned and began a purge against the boyars, the Russian nobility, having many noblemen tortured and executed. Was this pure paranoia? In 2001, Anastasia’s body was examined by Russian scientists, who discovered a high buildup of mercury in her bones, a sign that the Tsar’s wife may have actually been poisoned. 

Ivan took at least five more wives after Anastasia, though there are later reports of another two which historians doubt. Technically, this was illegal under the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church, which only permitted three marriages in a lifetime. Ivan was Tsar, though, and didn’t have to care about the rules. The next two wives, Maria and Marfa, also died suddenly, kicking off another couple rounds of purges. The two after that, both named Anna, eventually bored their imperial husband and found themselves shipped off to nunneries. The sixth and final of Ivan’s canonical wives was named Maria Nagaya. Ivan and Maria didn’t get along well, and she almost got nunneried like the Annas, but then she got pregnant. Maria gave birth on October 19, 1582 to little Prince Dmitri, Ivan’s third son.

So let’s talk about the sons. First is Prince Ivan Ivanovich. This Ivan seems to have been a good heir, intelligent and capable, and he might have made a good Tsar. But we’ll never know, because on November 15th, 1581, the two Ivans got into a heated argument which ended in the Tsar striking his son and heir with his scepter. The blow broke the prince’s skull and sent him into a coma. Four days later he died without waking up. This left Feodor as heir, which was problematic because Feodor was kind of useless. Feodor was weak and sickly since childhood, and while personally nice he never showed interest in rulership, preferring to spend his days in prayer and meditation. Some historians believe he may have suffered from some sort of learning disorder, in particular placing him somewhere on the autism spectrum, though we’ll never know for sure. When Ivan died in March of 1584, Feodor was crowned Tsar. However, Feodor didn’t actually reign. The responsibilities of government were turned over to a council of boyars, led by a man named Boris Godunov. The Godunov family was not powerful or influential, Boris had only gotten into the Muscovite court because his father-in-law was the head of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terrible’s infamous secret police.  Feodor was at this time 27 years old, though it was clear that he would never make a good Tsar, and that his regency would be in effect perpetual. And since Feodor didn’t have any children of his own, the technically illegitimate Dmitri stood to inherit the empire. This meant that he could pose a threat to Boris’ regency, should he grow up to be a better ruler than his half-brother. 

Shortly after Ivan’s death and Feodor’s ascension to the throne, Boris had the sixteen month old Dmitri and his mother Maria sent off to the town of Uglich on the Volga River. The young prince seemed to have suffered from epileptic seizures, but other than that was healthy. His hobbies are said to have included watching cows be slaughtered and beating chickens to death with sticks, which maybe aren’t the most wholesome activities for an eight year old, but who am I to say? He also seemed to have enjoyed a game which consisted of throwing a marlinspike into the ground. What happened next isn’t quite clear. On May 15th, 1591, the eight year old Dmitri was found dead of a neck wound. There are two theories about what happened. The official story, published soon after, was that Dmitri had a seizure while playing the game and ended up falling onto his marlinspike. This was the conclusion of an inquiry led by a boyar by the name of Vasily Shuisky. Remember that name. But the other theory was much sexier. This theory stated that Boris Godunov, the tsar in all but name, had murdered the rightful heir in order to seize the throne for himself. His death was rather convenient for the regent. Incidentally, Maria Nagaya was sent to a nunnery after all, once her son was dead.

The church bell rang to signal the death of the prince. Can you imagine which of the two theories the people of Uglich believed first? That’s right, as soon as the bell rang they knew that their beloved prince had been murdered by the cruel tyrant in Moscow. And so they rioted, led by Boris’ political enemies. The citizens of Uglich did usual riot stuff, murdered tax collectors, burned buildings, stole stuff, the whole thing. Soldiers from Moscow soon arrived to put down the rioting, and many of those who took part were exiled to Siberia. One of these exiles was the bell which had begun the riot by announcing the prince’s death. In addition to being exiled, the bell had its “tongue” removed and was whipped through the streets. In 1892, three hundred years after its heinous crime, the bell was pardoned by Tsar Alexander III and allowed to return to Uglich. It was even given a new tongue. So Dmitri is dead. But his story isn’t over, it’s just beginning. Because in the years after his death, a third theory emerged. This theory stated that the prince was not, in fact, dead. He had been replaced by another poor child who died in his place, and was spirited away from Uglich just before the regent’s agents arrived to carry out their scheme. 

Tsar Feodor died in February of 1598, less than seven years after his brother. The incompetent tsar had only one child, a daughter who died in childhood four years earlier. Without a clear heir, Boris Godunov declared himself Tsar, breaking a dynastic line that had ruled Russia, according to legend, since the Viking chief Rurik of Novgorod seven hundred years earlier. Things went bad for Tsar Boris pretty quickly. The rumors of his role in the prince’s death had not gone away in the intervening years, if anything they had just spread further. The older and wealthier boyars, those that had survived Ivan’s purges at least, resented Boris for his low birth, which meant from the beginning he was surrounded by potential enemies. During Boris’ tenure as imperial regent he had strengthened the power of the aristocracy at the expense of the peasants, in 1592 ending the traditional practice of serfs being able to move freely for the two weeks surrounding St. George’s Day. Without this privilege serfs were effectively made a part of the land itself, to be bought and sold with the land they worked. This would long outlive Boris and remained law until the 19th century. This was done in a desperate attempt to reverse the economic downturn which plagued Russia during the regency. So Boris was unpopular with both the nobility and the peasantry. This would only get worse, because of events taking place on the other side of the planet, in Peru.

PART TWO

In February of 1600, the volcano Huaynaputina, in modern day Peru, erupted. The eruption spewed thousands of tons of ash and debris into the atmosphere, where it partially blocked sunlight across the planet for years to come. Russia was among the hardest hit. 1601 was cold and wet, bad news for agriculture. Winter came early that year, ruining harvests across the empire. Food became scarce, prices skyrocketed, and the imperial treasury was stretched to breaking point. The result was perhaps the harshest famine in Russian history. It’s impossible to put an exact number on the death toll, but historians believe that about one third of the entire Russian population died during the next ten years, from starvation or disease or violence. The situation had spiraled far out of control, and the Tsar was powerless to stop it. What popular support he had dissolved. In the superstitious 17th century, this famine was taken as a sign of God’s wrath. A low-born had schemed his way to the throne by murdering Dmitri, the rightful heir, and possibly the pious Feodor as well. But if the tyrant was overthrown, who would replace him? 

Remember that third theory I mentioned? Well, in 1603 Dmitri returned from the dead. We still don’t know who exactly this man was, but he was about the same age and looked fairly similar to the dead prince, only a decade older. He first emerged in Poland, under the protection of a powerful Ukrainian nobleman by the name of Adam Vishnevetskii. Poland was the main rival of the Russian Empire, a powerful kingdom to the west. Unlike Russia, Poland had a weak ruler and a powerful aristocracy. The Sejm, the Polish parliament, could veto any of the king’s decisions. Unlike just about every other monarchy in Europe, the Polish monarchy was non-hereditary. When the King died, the next king was elected by the Sejm. The Polish nobility saw the weakness of Russia and supported Dmitri in order to further destabilize their mortal enemies. In October of 1604, Dmitri crossed the border at the front of a Polish army. Boris was unable to organize an effective defense. The Russian army was scattered and mostly under the control of local magnates, many of whom opposed the Godunov regime. The food shortages had hit the army hard, desertion was rampant as hungry soldiers left their posts to become bandits or just return home to protect their families. As word of Dmitri’s return spread across Russia, the peasantry rose in support of their true Tsar, the long-lost prince. Boris waged a war of propaganda against the Pretender, claiming to have “discovered” that his true name was Grigory Otrepev and that he was a disgraced former monk. Boris’ health continued to decline amidst famine and civil war, and in April of 1605 he suddenly died. He was succeeded by his son, the sixteen year old Feodor. Feodor II didn’t last long. Two months into his reign, the teenage Tsar was overthrown and assassinated by Dmitri’s supporters in Moscow. Dmitri himself showed up a few weeks later to enter the city, and was proclaimed Tsar Dmitri I. His “mother”, Maria Nagaya, was brought back from the nunnery and publicly acknowledged him as her lost son. For all intents and purposes, this rando was now the son of Ivan the Terrible and the true Tsar. The evidence? Trust me bro.

Almost immediately Dmitri messed it up. His alliance with the hated Poles caught up to the Pretender, and rumors spread that he was a secret Catholic, bent on subverting the holy Orthodoxy and twisting Russia towards damnable Catholic heresy. Oh, and remember that name I told you to remember earlier? I’m sure you do, intelligent and wise listener. Vasily Shuisky, the man who had led the inquiry which concluded that Dmitri had died in an accident, changed his story once Dmitri arrived in Moscow. Now he backed Dmitri’s version of the story, admitting that he lied in his initial report due to pressure from Godunov. But Vasily personally hated the new Tsar. And his once messianic reputation among the peasantry began to fade as conditions failed to improve in the countryside. Not only that, but tensions began to grow between the citizens of Moscow and the new Polish arrivals, soldiers and noblemen supported by Dmitri. This situation was not eased when Dmitri announced his plan to marry a Polish woman, the daughter of one of the noblemen who supported his invasion. On the morning of May 17th, 1606, a week after the wedding and a year after his ascension to the throne, an angry mob stormed the palace. Dmitri tried to flee by jumping out a window and running along the rooftops to safety, but he slipped and fell, breaking his leg. The assassins found the Tsar in the alleyway and killed him, presumably telling him to stay dead this time. Dmitri’s body was stripped naked and dragged through the city, while Vasily Shuisky proclaimed him as a heretic and an imposter. His body was publicly displayed in Red Square for three days, before being loaded into a cannon and fired in the direction of Poland. Two days later, Vasily Shuisky proclaimed himself Tsar Vasily IV, ending the reign of False Dmitri… the First. That’s right, we’re not done yet.

PART THREE

Word of the coup spread through Russia, triggering a new wave of unrest and resentment. While the sheen had started to fade from the Pretender, he was still fairly popular in the provinces. Vasily worked out a pretty clever way to discount the legend of Dmitri’s survival. He sent agents to Uglich to dig up the prince’s body, and these agents “discovered” that the body was miraculously undecomposed. In Russian Orthodoxy, if a body fails to decay that means that the soul of its former inhabitant has ascended to Heaven and been made a saint. So the eight year old princeling who enjoyed torturing farmyard animals had been worthy of sainthood. He could not be on Earth, he had ascended to Heaven, and Vasily had proof. The prince’s coffin was taken from Uglich to Moscow in a grand procession. The coffin, however, was closed. It did smell nice, apparently. The sainted prince was taken to Archangel Cathedral in Moscow where his coffin was displayed for several days, until even incense could no longer cover up the smell. Then the body was quietly buried. The trick didn’t work. A new rumor emerged in Moscow. Not only did Dmitri survive the first assassination, he also survived the second one. The body dragged through the streets of Moscow and displayed in Red Square was another imposter, and the true Dmitri had escaped once more. 

The unrest that began with the assassination of Dmitri had by this time escalated into full scale rebellion in western and southern Russia. But these rebels didn’t have a claimant to the throne, so even if they overthrew the government in Moscow they would still struggle to find a Tsar. Into this scene comes a traveling beggar claiming to be Andrei Nagoy, a cousin of Prince/Tsar Dmitri, who claimed to have secret information on his cousin’s whereabouts. His true identity is still unknown, though tradition holds that he was either a priest’s servant banished after sleeping with the priest’s wife, or a Jew who had converted to Christianity to escape persecution. Either way, he was captured by the rebels in July of 1607 in order to reveal Dmitri’s whereabouts. Under threat of torture, this man revealed himself to be the missing prince, escaped from Moscow as he had with Uglich, returned once again to take his rightful throne. Upon this shocking declaration, the rebels pledged their allegiance to their Tsar once more, and suddenly the beggar had an army of thousands at his back. But this Tsar would never make it to Moscow. Like the first false Dmitri, Dmitri number two’s army had a large contingent of foreign mercenaries, largely Polish. But this Dmitri didn’t get along quite as well with the Polish nobility, which meant he lacked the funding to pay those mercenaries. Dmitri II made progress in his campaign northeast, but met with heavy resistance along the way, and his army was hemorrhaging men due to desertion from lack of pay. He received the endorsement of the first False Dmitri’s Polish wife, who recognized the pretender as her lost husband. 

In 1609, King Sigismund of Poland personally intervened in Russia, officially declaring war on the Moscow government and laying siege to the strategic city of Smolensk. His goal was to place his son, Vladislav, on the Russian throne, effectively making it his vassal. This was a complete disaster for Dmitri. His Polish soldiers preferred to fight on the side of their king rather than a Russian pretender, and those nobles that had supported Dmitri defected to the Polish side, declaring Vladislav the new Tsar instead of the pretender. Another faction defected from both sides. These were those patriotic boyars who opposed the Polish invasion on principle, and saw both Vladislav and Dmitri as foreign interlopers. Back in Moscow, the pro-Polish faction staged a coup against Tsar Vasily in July of 1610, forcing him to become a monk while they established a council of Seven Boyars, turning over control of the capital to the Polish army in September. False Dmitri II didn’t outlast his nemesis for long, though. Pushed back and weakened, Dmitri lashed out at his inner circle. On forged evidence he had one of his bodyguards, Peter Usanov, whipped and fired in December of 1610. The former bodyguard then went out and got drunk with his friends, wandering around the city. Then he stumbled upon his former boss on a sleighride, and being drunk and pissed off, pulled out his pistol and shot Dmitri to death. This is the end of False Dmitri II. Two down, one to go.

It’s a cliche at this point that Russia is not a good place to invade, and by 1612 the war had started to go the other way. The Patriotic boyars, led by Dmitri Pozharsky, consolidated their power in what part of Russia remained free and negotiated an alliance with Sweden, then a major military power on the rise in central Europe. Incidentally, the king of Sweden was the uncle of the King of Poland. The Polish soldiers in Moscow were now essentially under siege, much of the city was controlled by rebels and their forces outside the city walls were constantly being raided.

It’s about this time that Dmitri returns from the dead for the third, and final, time in the border city of Pskov. We don’t know a lot about this guy, just that he showed up in Pskov and said he was Dmitri. His support outside that city was limited to a handful of rebels sitting outside Moscow and harassing random Poles. The first False Dmitri was a big deal, the second was an occasion, but the third was just redundant. And besides, this Dmitri lacked the charisma of the first and the timing of the second and quickly wore out his welcome. He was overthrown by his subjects and turned over to Moscow, where he was executed in May of 1612. And so ends the time of the False Dmitris. Finally, on October 27th, 1612, Prozharsky retook Moscow from the Polish occupation force. The anniversary is still celebrated as National Unity Day. With the last pretender defeated and the capital liberated, the boyars assembled a grand council to decide, once and for all, who was going to be Tsar. They settled on the sixteen year old Michael Romanov, the son of the Patriarch of Moscow and the great-nephew of Anastasia Romanovna, Ivan the Terrible’s beloved first wife. Despite his young age, Michael managed to hold onto power until his death thirty-two years later, kicked the Poles out of Russia, and established a dynasty which would rule Russia until the Russian Revolution in 1917. 

The period between the death of Feodor I and the ascension of Michael I is known in Russia as the “Time of Troubles”. In fifteen years over one third of the population of Russia had died, the empire had been torn apart by famine and civil war, and central authority had completely collapsed. The Empire that arose from this chaos was more authoritarian than the one that had fallen. The vast majority of the population were serfs, in effect slaves tied to the land. After fifteen years of chaos the nobility accepted Tsarist autocracy as a restoration of proper order. The Tsar became a quasi-religious figure, chosen by God to guide Russia and prevent a second Time of Troubles. The legacy of this autocratic turn still lingers in Russia to this day.

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References

The main source here is A Short History of Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty by Chester S.L. Dunning, if you want to know more go read it. It's a good book.

Three Times Russia was Invaded in History

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the conflict continues to this day, with many commentators predicting it will last well into 2024 and maybe even beyond that. But Russia has been involved in a number of invasions of its territory - here, Michael Thomas Leibrandt looks at 3 times that Russia was invaded in history.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow by Adolph Northen, painting from 1851.

The Ukrainian counter-offensive against the Russian military continues. Last month, the Ukranian military launched a counter strike in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The counter-offensive is in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine which began with a Russian invasion. On February 24, 2022, Russian forces supported by tanks began an invasion of Ukraine from northeastern, southeastern, and southern fronts. Underestimating the resolve of the Ukrainian people, the support of the western powers, and major military tactical mistakes all had effectively stalled the Russian invasion.

Russia has a long history of repelling invaders themselves.

Invasions of Russia

Genghis Khan had long planned to invade Russia before he ordered his grandson, Batu Khan to make it a reality. In the late months of 1236 AD, Khan led approximately 40,000 mounted archers across the Volga Bulgaria and conquered Kievan Rus.

By the end of 1241 AD, the Mongols had conquered almost all Russian cities, including Kiev. The Mongol army was adept at withstanding the Russian winter conditions, and only supply issues prevented them from conquering all of Russian territories at that time.

The Mongols who settled in Russia became known as the Golden Horde and ruled for almost 250 years. The Mongol invasion led to the construction of mighty stone castles all over Russia, many of which still stand today.

In 1380 AD at the Battle of Kulikovo, the Russian army defeated the Mongol Horde. The victory led to the expulsion of the Mongols in Russia. Over time, Russia would reclaim territory controlled by the Mongol Golden Horde.

But Khan was not the only famous invader of Russia.

French invasion

On June 24, 1812 and leading the largest invasion force that Europe had ever seen, Napoleon Bonaparte (Emporer of France and the Master of Europe) crossed the Nieman River into Russia with nearly 600,000 men.

Over the course of the next six months, Russian forces baited the massive invading army into a war of attrition. After capturing a deserted Moscow, Napoleon’s army would suffer horribly during a retreat that exposed his troops to supply shortages, severe winter weather conditions, and calculated guerrilla tactics by Russian Cossacks.

Of the original invading force, 380,000 of Napoleon’s troops would perish before the last of the his army crossed the Berezina River into French territory and burned the bridges behind them on November 28th. Invading Russia was the beginning of the end for the man who conquered almost all of Europe. In October of 1813 in Germany at the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon suffered a defeat by a coalition army that included Russian forces.

World War II

One hundred and twenty-nine years later on June 22, 1941 nearly 4,000,000 troops from Germany and its allies under Operation Barbarossa began their attack on Russia around the Caspian Sea. Just like in 1812, it was the largest invasion force that Europe had ever seen including over 7,000 artillery pieces, 2,500 aircraft, and around 3,000 tanks.

Culminating in February 1943 and the Russian victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, Operation Barbarossa suffered through multiple brutal winters, was rife with logistical problems, and a failed vision of a short campaign without clear and attainable capitulation.

All very similar oversights that Emporer Napoleon would make a century earlier.

And like the French retreat in freezing temperatures in 1812, the surviving German soldiers who had not surrendered to the Red Army, killed, or captured, were pushed back across the Dneiper River in 1943 and eventually into Prussia and Germany. The Russian Red Army would take Berlin in May 1945.

Of the three major world powers that have invaded Russia since 1236 AD, all have eventually been repelled. Germany and Napoleonic France were forced into eventual capitulation in part by Russian forces.

Russia’s vast history will loom large as their military prepares for defense against Ukrainian forces. They have only to look at their own ancient, defensive stone castles built centuries ago when Russia needed to defend itself, much like Ukraine.

What do you think of the article? Let us know below.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington, PA.

Russia’s 4 Great Resets: From the Romanovs to the End of the Cold War

Russian history has been beset with a number of seismic changes. Here, Daniel McEwen considers four key ‘resets’ in Russian history – the start of the Romanov dynasty, two early 20th century revolutions, and the end of the Cold War.

Vladimir Lenin, a beneficiary of one of Russia’s ‘resets’. A 1920 depiction by artist Isaak Brodsky.

“Reset” was the buzzword on speakers’ lips this past January during [an online version of] the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In words as lofty as the Alps in the background, Klaus Schwab, the event’s impassioned founder hailed the Covid pandemic as “a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, re-imagine, and reset our world." 

Ironically, his idea was swept overboard by Covid’s next wave and hasn’t returned, perhaps because its advocates have since checked their history books. Resets have a chequered track record at best, with the 1789 French Revolution revered as the most notable, the Russian Revolution as the most execrable. And it was only one of that country’s four attempts to exploit a “rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, re-imagine, and reset their world ". Their failure explains why journalist Vladimir Pozner arguing Russia has never really been a democracy.

Reset #1 - 1613

Ivan the Terrible is dead. One third of the fledgling nation’s population has been wiped out in the internecine warfare known as “The Time of Troubles”. Weak and leaderless, the country is beset by enemies on all borders. Desperate to end the violence, the Zemsky Sobor, an assembly of the realm’s elites, gather to reset their system of governance. 

This was a mountaintop moment in the country’s history, never to be repeated; a singular chance for Russians to shrug off the yoke of autocracy and rule themselves. But not one of the gathered could spell democracy let alone run one. Self-rule sounded like a lot of work. Had Fyodor Dostoevsky lived then, no doubt he would have been heard telling his countrymen that: “to go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.” Not that anyone would have listened. Instead of a reset, they rebooted the old system. 

Historian Abraham Pailtsyn listened in on this assembly and was struck by what he didn’t hear – there was nobody speaking up for running the country for the people. Easier to just hand things over to the Romanov clan, the least objectionable of several candidates for the job. It was led by a 16 year-old teenager. His first official act was to hang a rival for the throne and his eight-year-old son, setting the tone for the next three hundred years.

Pailtsyn blamed this fateful lethargy on a deep national apathy.

Indeed it was. The appalling inhumanity of serfdom under the Romanov’s thumb approached can be compared to slavery. Nine tenths of the population lived in squalor, worked like beasts of burden to generate the unconscionable wealth enjoyed by the other one tenth. Little wonder the largest country in the world could do no better than a GDP barely equal to Spain’s! Quaintly embarrassing at first, this state-sponsored feudalism threatened the empire’s very survival when the forces of technological, social and political change began shifting the tectonic plates of world power. 

Had it been the best of times, czarist Russia would still have needed Paladins of Enlightenment to guide it along the perilous path to modernization. But it was the worst of times - disingenuous czars, amply aided and abetted by motley crews of corrupt cabinet ministers, sadistic secret police and a supine nobility used brutality and repression to manipulate modernization to their exclusive benefit.  

Typical of their tactics was the subverting of the abolition of serfdom, often depicted as the country’s ‘Great Leap Forward‘ to social and economic modernity. Some leap. Russia’s Emancipation Act of 1860 improved the quality of life for serfs about as much as the American Emancipation Act three years later improved the quality of life of slaves there. The czar and his minions retroactively limited, diluted and prolonged their people’s emancipation. At least freed American slaves did not have to pay compensation to their owners for the loss of their labor as was required of Russian serfs. In the end, emancipation offered the overwhelming majority of Russians basically two career options: over-worked, underpaid farmer or over-worked, underpaid factory worker.

Reset #2 - 1905

Still considered by many to be the ‘real’ Russian Revolution, this aborted reset was the high-water mark of Romanov duplicity. Japan had sent Czar Nicholas’ grand vision of a Pacific Empire to the bottom of Tsushima Bay in a naval defeat so shameful it nearly cost him his throne. Humiliated, he was forced to agree to a constitutional monarchy. Bells rang throughout the kingdom, people partied in the streets, and newspaper editors rhapsodized about the dawning on a new age of freedom. 

All the man had to do was keep his word and he, his family and some hundred million Russians would have lived happily ever after, never having heard of Vladimir Lenin. But always more a ruler than a leader, Nicholas stayed true to his family colors and cravenly reneged on the deal, dismissing the reformers behind it as deluded dreamers. Egged on by a witless wife in the thrall of a charlatan monk, Nicholas all but dedicated the last twelve years of his reign to giving those dreamers even more reasons to want to him gone – dead or alive!

Reset #3 - 1917

Three years into World War One, two million Russian soldiers are dead and five times that number of peasants have died of starvation or disease. Millions more face the same fate, caught between the scorched earth policy of their own retreating soldiers and the pillaging by the advancing German troops. In the cities, people are starving to death, if they don’t freeze first, awaiting trains of wheat that rarely arrive. Ever bereft of empathy or wisdom, Nicholas felt not the slightest obligation to feed his own people, breaking their three-hundred year near-religious faith in the Czar as an all-knowing, all-caring ‘Little Father’. Not surprisingly, none of them felt the slightest obligation to save him when mutinous troops stopped his train. He went without a whimper. The bang was still to come.

Free at last of their Romanov masters, there was none of the apathy of 1613 and no going back like in 1905. This time rank and file Russians knew exactly what they wanted: participation in power, a fairer share of the nation’s wealth and no more czars! Unlike 1613, this time there was lots of talk. And talk. And talk. And so enters a man author/historian Edward Crankshaw described as “one more bacillus let loose to spread infection in a tottering and exhausted Russia.” 

How Russians ended up with Vladimir Lenin and the tyrannical czars of Bolshevism is a question a library of books have attempted to answer. The most charitable explanation seems to be that a destitute, disillusioned people were simply too cold and too hungry to read the fine print on their deal with the Devil. 

However it happened, Vladimir Lenin played a ghastly game of bait-and-switch, promising ‘Peace, Bread, Land’, but delivering war, terror and death. For this unwitting lapse of judgment, another ten million citizens would perish in the civil war that followed World War One. Its hapless survivors were condemned to seventy years in the gulag of Soviet-style socialism, notorious for short trials and long bread lines. Tellingly, the USSR’s GDP did not rise above a third that of arch-rival America’s.

Reset #4 - 1991

The catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 opened Russians’ eyes to the true magnitude of the corruption and incompetence inherent in the Soviet system. Profoundly shocked, they began publicly questioning their leaders’ fitness for office. Five years later the Berlin Wall fell, burying Leninism in the rubble. At that time, per capita GDP was $23,000 in the United States, $16,000 in Western Europe and $6,800 in the rapidly dissolving ‘workers’ paradise’.

The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991 but much to their dismay, the long-suffering proletariat were no sooner free of the iron grip of communism than Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to shackle them to unregulated capitalism – and barely escaped with his life for his trouble! When the dust of Glasnost had settled, Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends had installed themselves in the Kremlin. While he labors mightily to restore the nation to a dubious former glory, its inglorious GDP has now shrunk to one-fifteenth that of United States.

What’s next?

Speculation about when and how Reset #5 will occur keeps pundits’ tongues wagging. Incredibly, the notion persists that Russians actually like strongman rulers. No one likes being bullied, surely the Russians least of all.  

What do you think of Russia’s ‘resets’? Let us know below.

Tsar Peter the Great of Russia’s Visit to England

Russia had followed a different path to much of Western Europe for centuries. However, in the 1690s, Tsar Peter I of Russia wanted to learn more about the region and its navies. This led him to mount the Grand Embassy to Western Europe, in particular England. While there he would learn a lot – and one day that learning would help bring him to greatness. Brenden Woldman explains.

Peter the Great in Holland during the Grand Embassy. Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, 1910.

Like many young Russian students, twenty-five year old Peter Mikhailov left the confines of his homeland in 1697 to “both learn and experience” the culture and technological advances of Western Europe.[1] However, Peter’s joining of “The Grand Embassy” was one of intrigue and mystery for one major reason. “Peter Mikhailov” was nothing more than the alias of Russian Tsar Peter I. Peter, a man who appreciated the European ethos, wanted this incognito trip to bring back not only practical knowledge of Western Europe but also obtain ideas to turn Russia into a modern European nation.

The undercover aspect of his trip was quickly exposed, as the young Tsar was famously one of the tallest men in Europe, standing around six feet, ten inches. The physical reputation of Peter coincided with his social reputation, as Peter, who was known as a rambunctious “merrymaker”, left any place he visited in good spirits through a copious amount of alcohol consumption and partying. Nevertheless, the majority of the European populace did not notice that the leader of the Russian Empire was walking the streets of Europe as a commoner. These adventures led Peter to the Dutch Republic where he learned the art of merchantry and classical ship building while his ventures in Sweden led to the hiring of naval personnel and the sending of ambassadors to Russia.[2] Though the Grand Embassy was considered a success, one of the most important relationships was forged 10 years prior in 1687, when Russian ambassadors were treated coldly by the French government during a treaty signing.[3] After this treatment, Peter had a personal vendetta against the French, which led to an unlikely but resilient bond between Tsar Peter I of Russia and King William III of England.

Peter in England

William of Orange, the King of England since 1688 and the Dutch stadtholder, was a lifelong cynic toward the French. Once hearing of Peter’s hatred of the French (and his want to reopen economic relations with the Russians), the Prince of Orange was overjoyed to allow Peter to sail from the Dutch Republic and across the English Channel. With this most welcome invitation, Peter set sail and landed in England on January 10, 1698.

Peter’s love of Western culture only advanced during his time in England. His admiration of both England and the West was nothing new, as the young Tsar would send the sons of Russian noblemen to acquire a European education.[4] Peter was no different. During his time in England, Peter was given private tours of English historical and economic sites such as the Royal Society and the Tower of London to view the Royal Mint.[5] The young Tsar also viewed the English military Arsenal, as well as learning about English culture through artistic excursions in places such as Oxford, London, and Windsor.[6] In the realm of science, Peter visited the Royal Observatory at Greenwich due to his interest in using the stars for navigation.[7] However, Peter was shocked with the social and economic relations throughout England.

For the Tsar, England was home of a flourishing merchantry, a free press, an open government, and a cosmopolitan ambiance, which were all things Peter wanted to strive for in his own empire.[8] Hearing open debate among the people upon his visit to the English Parliament left the Tsar feeling elated, stating, “It is good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their King. This is what we must learn from the English”.[9] Yet, with all of the Tsar’s interests in Westernization, it was in fact one particular aspect of English culture that brought Peter there: the Royal Navy.

Learning about the Royal Navy

Peter left Holland having learned much about the art of shipbuilding but believed that the Dutch had no original theories about naval construction, unlike the English.[10] The young Tsar’s obsession with shipbuilding stemmed from the simple fact that Russia established a national navy in 1696, only two years prior. Needless to say, Peter needed advice on how to build a navy. King William III sent and subsequently gave Peter the Royal Transport, a ship used to carry prestigious guests from Holland to England and one of the most modern ships in the world.[11] This gift became a key example for Russian engineers to build up-to-date ships.

When Peter arrived in England, he moved into writer John Evelyn’s home in Deptford, south-east of London. The reason for Peter moving to a small house in Deptford was that it was close to the dockyards of King’s Wharf, where Peter regularly visited and studied the ships that were being built.[12] Moreover, the Tsar would repeatedly sketch the ships at the Deptford dockyards whilst also studying the “blueprints” of English naval architecture. However, the Russian Emperor did not spend his entire time studying English ships at King’s Wharf. To hone in on naval tactics for military conflict, Peter traveled to Portsmouth.

At Portsmouth, Peter reviewed the English warships, diligently noting the number and caliber of the guns on the ships while also studying mock naval battles tactics, logistics, and strategies, all of which the English specially arranged for the young Tsar just off the Isle of Wight.[13] With the new information about Western culture, naval architecture, and tactics learned in England, Tsar Peter I would return back to Russia and implement them in an attempt to make Russia a modern, European country.

What did Peter the Great take back to Russia?

Peter’s time in England came to an end on April 22, 1698. The immediate reaction by the English government of Peter after he left was one that supported the Russian stereotypes of the time. For the English, Peter was unintelligent, backwards, and frequently drunk. Even on his travels Peter’s party lifestyle could not subside, as he would regularly write about how he “stayed at home and made merry” to such a magnitude that John Evelyn made the British government pay compensation for three hundred and fifty pounds to cover the damage made by Peter’s “merrymaking”.[14] However, though the English may have thought Peter had learned nothing, the Tsar took his newfound knowledge and advanced Russia in profound ways.

The open policies and social relations between the government and the people in England highly influenced Peter in his later years when he implemented his highly influential Table of Ranks. Furthermore, English and Western culture helped shape the young Russian nobility for generations to come - throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. However, the knowledge of shipbuilding that Peter brought back to Russia helped change the country. When Peter returned to Russia, the Tsar established a large shipbuilding program in the Baltic Sea which, by his death in 1725, had 28,000 men enlisted in a Navy of nearly 50 large ships and over 800 smaller vessels.[15] It is also important to note that in Peter’s greatest fight, the Great Northern War against Sweden, the newly established Russian Navy was a key component to the Russian victory in the war. For Peter, the Grand Embassy and his travels in England were more than a mere adventure for a young ruler. They were instrumental in making Peter I into Peter the Great.

What do you think of the article? How important was Peter the Great’s time in England for his later successes? Let us know below.

[1] V. O. Kli︠u︡chevskiĭ, Peter the Great (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 24.

[2] Lindsey A. J. Hughes, Russia in the age of Peter the Great (Hew Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 23-24.

[3] Hughes, Russia in the age of Peter the Great, 25.

[4] Kli︠u︡chevskiĭ, Peter the Great, 29.

[5] "Peter the Great," Royal Museums Greenwich | UNESCO World Heritage Site In London, July 21, 2016, http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/peter-great.

[6] Hughes, Russia in the age of Peter the Great, 25.

[7] "Peter the Great," Royal Museums Greenwich | UNESCO World Heritage Site In London, July 21, 2016, http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/peter-great.

[8] Hughes, Russia in the age of Peter the Great, 23.

[9] Kli︠u︡chevskiĭ, Peter the Great, 28.

[10] Ibid., 29.

[11] "Peter the Great," Royal Museums Greenwich | UNESCO World Heritage Site In London, July 21, 2016, http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/peter-great.

[12] Ibid.,

[13] Kli︠u︡chevskiĭ, Peter the Great, 28.

[14] Ibid., 29.

[15] "Peter the Great," Royal Museums Greenwich | UNESCO World Heritage Site In London, July 21, 2016, http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/peter-great.

The Truth about Vladimir Lenin – The Father of Post-Truth Politics?

Just who was Vladimir Lenin? While we know that he came to power after the Russian Revolution, much of his life is shrouded in myths and lies. Author Tanel Vahisalu explains all.

PS - you can find out about Tanel’s latest project on Russian history here.

A painting of Lenin by Isaak Brodsky - Lenin in front of Smolny.

Ninety-three years after his death, Vladimir Lenin continues to make headlines. During 2017’s commemoration of the Russian Revolution, a poll conducted by the independent Levada Center demonstrated that 56 per cent of Russians believe Lenin played a positive role in history. What’s more, many of the remaining 44 per cent of Russians fail to see that Lenin was actually a supreme master of using fake news and mass manipulation.

The question becomes: How much do we actually know about Vladimir Lenin?

Despite a massive collection of history books, we still know surprisingly little about the man lining the pages. Perhaps that is because each of the 653 million volumes of Lenin’s published works – dated through to 1990 – contain fake biographies.

According to Russian historian, Dmitry Volkogonov, during Soviet times, there were at least 3,725 documents that were carefully collected and sealed within the cellars of Party archives that nobody was permitted to see. Many of these documents were said to be classified because they reveal the actual cause of Lenin’s death. Furthermore, many of the documents contain information about the true Ulyanov family tree, which was kept secret within the Soviet Union.

Bearing that in mind, let’s now turn to the most prevalent “alternative facts” of Vladimir Lenin.

Contrary to his official biography, Lenin was neither a Russian by ethnicity nor was he a peasant by descent.

Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, had Jewish-Swedish roots. His great-grandfather, Moshe Blank, was known as a “mad Jewish merchant,” who had once set fire to 23 houses in his home village. Lenin’s grandfather, Alexander Blank, was a highly respected doctor and wealthy landowner, who bought an entire village near Simbirsk (today’s Ulyanovsk, Russia), along with 39 peasants and their farms.

The Ulyanov family was relatively affluent in local Simbirsk. Lenin’s father, Ilya was a high state official in the field of education. When he unexpectedly died, while Vladimir was 16, the family had sufficient income to easily support themselves. In fact, they even had servants.

Lenin was neither a kind-hearted, modest child nor was he a devoted revolutionary from a young age.

Already as a baby, Volodya – as he was called – stood out from his siblings. He began speaking at three and had trouble standing up on his weak feet. His head was larger than normal and he used to bang it against the floor in fits of rage. Lenin’s mother was sincerely worried about his cognitive development.

Lenin’s sister recalled - when their parents gave him a toy horse for his birthday – that he creeped away to a solitary space to tear its legs off, one by one. Volodya was a troublesome child, always fighting with his little brother, Dmitry, and purposely frightening his sister, Maria. It was documented that his parents found his behavior very disturbing.

Although Volodya grew up to be an extremely bright child, and was awarded a gold medal upon graduation, there is no evidence that he took any particular interest in revolutionary ideas prior to moving to Saint Petersburg in 1893.

In 1887, Lenin was neither expelled from university, nor was he detained in a Siberian prison camp.

A good example of “alternative facts” in Lenin’s official biography is the story about how the young revolutionary was expelled from Kazan University to a remote village of Kokushkino because of his revolutionary activity.

Truth be told, Volodya had only taken part in a peaceful student meeting and, when confronted about this, he wrote a voluntary resignation letter to the university. It is also worth mentioning that the village of Kokushkino was the same village that Lenin’s grandfather had bought. The Ulyanov family used it as their summer estate. So technically, he was “deported” to a nice vacation at his grandfather’s place.

While in Switzerland, Lenin was neither struggling to make ends meet nor did he have a happy marriage.

Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya lived as refugees in Western Europe for seventeen years, though neither of them had to work. They had several bank accounts in Zürich, and Lenin’s family regularly sent them money and packages of goods.

“In Zürich I messed around quite a bit an ended up in a … Swiss health resort”, Lenin joked in a letter he had written.

History has also revealed that Lenin had many relationships prior to Krupskaya, and he continued to have them during their marriage. The most famous of which was his affair with Inessa Armand, a political activist and family friend.

The cause of Lenin’s death was not cerebral atherosclerosis.

During his final years, Lenin suffered from loss of consciousness, paralysis, hallucinations, and epileptic seizures. His official death certificate stated his cause of death was cerebral atherosclerosis, yet two of his closest personal doctors refused to sign it.

No doubt that is because he likely died of syphilis, contracted at an early age and left untreated. In 1922, a number of doctors prescribed him salvarsan, which is a medication used only for treating syphilis. Additionally, a German physician who specialized in syphilis was summoned and commented: “Everyone knows for which brain disorder I am called”.

Taken together, if we look at Lenin’s life story, there is not too much that can be viewed as factual. Many of these “alternative facts” were perpetuated by Lenin during his lifetime, and were bolstered, posthumously, by Joseph Stalin and his successors to create a god-like cult figure for the Soviet Union.

Quite simply, Vladimir Lenin is the sad embodiment of the very problems that we face today – “post-truth politics” and manipulation based on “alternative facts”.

Learning from history, we would do well to question what we are told, and hold our political leaders accountable by calling truth to power.

Find out more about Tanel’s book, History of Russia in 100 Minutes, here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

References

Volkogonov, Dmitry. Lenin: A New Biography. The Free Press, 1994.

Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. Harvard University Press, 2002.

Kolata, Gina. Lenin’s Stroke: Doctor Has a Theory (and a Suspect). The New York Times, 2012.

Roig-Franzia, Manuel. Medical Sleuths Discuss the Forensics of Death. The Washington Post, 2012.

Cold War History - The Complete History – From World War 2 to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War to Reagan and Gorbachev – 1945-1991 (Required History)

Do you know why the world nearly destroyed itself in a catastrophic nuclear war?

Two words – ‘Cold War’.

Get the book on Amazon

The Cold War was international affairs for the second half of the 20th century. Nuclear weapons testing, civil wars in all corners of the globe and the race for economic dominance were all key spheres of the Cold War, although they were just a few elements of an intriguing global puzzle. More so than the great battles between Carthage and Rome in Ancient times or the Napoleonic Wars, the Cold War defined our world. But, there was one key difference between the Cold War and earlier major wars. Due to advances in technology and communications, the Cold War touched most countries on earth.

This introduction to the Cold War tells the story of the great clash between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA. It covers the period from 1945 to 1991 in one combined edition, neatly breaking the Cold War up into three parts.

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The book starts by describing how two super-powers emerged out of the rubble of World War Two and includes the following:

·      How the Soviet Union and the USA quickly went from war-time allies to enemies

·      Events in East Asia - the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War

·      The most dangerous event of the early Cold War years, the Cuban Missile Crisis

·      The Vietnam War and its impact on the Cold War

·      The shocking power of nuclear weapons – and attempts to control them

·      Uprisings on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain

·      The super-powers as friends? Détente, Richard Nixon, and Leonid Brezhnev

·      The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

·      The rise of Ronald Reagan and his aggression in the early 1980s

·      How Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader

·      Glasnost, Perestroika, and how the Cold War ended

The approximately 250-page book is the perfect complement to the Cold War History audio series that is available as part of the ‘History in 28-minutes’ podcasts.

So come and join the past – get the book now!

Required History

The aim of the 'Required History' book series is to create approachable, succinct written introductions to some of the most interesting topics in history. They are designed for those:

·      That want to quickly learn about some of the world’s major historical events

·      Studying history. The books act as a perfect complement and overview to those undertaking high school and introductory college courses in history

·      Who enjoyed the audio podcasts and want to reinforce and further their knowledge

·      Learning English. The language and level of detail in the books are perfect for those in advanced English classes

All of the Required History books are designed to build on the audio podcasts available on the publisher’s website. They provide an extra layer of detail to the major historical events that the audio podcasts cover.