Peruvian Volcano Unseats Russian Tsar

Nobody knows exactly how many people died in Muscovy during the autumn of 1601 and the year that followed. Even for Rus, which was accustomed to drought and crop failures, the situation at the dawn of the seventeenth century was extraordinary. Contemporary sources describe the meteorological events that led to the catastrophe: frigid temperatures, constant downpours, and a heat wave in April that caused seeds to sprout early, only to be covered by summer snows. And we now may know the direct cause: In 2008, geologists at the University of California Davis concluded that the famines and cold summers of 1601-1602 were the result of the eruption of the volcano Huaynaputina in Peru in 1600.

Hungry throngs wandered the countryside, desperately seeking some way to feed themselves and their families. The government even took the extraordinary step of allowing serfs to leave their masters if the latter were unable to feed them. In the cities, free food was distributed. But these measures did little to help. Serfs leaving their landowners had no place to go, and the crowds of villagers streaming toward the cities in the hope of finding food created shortages in the cities as well. Street vendors of kalachi (loaves of white bread) were afraid to set foot outside, since they were immediately beset by unruly hoards that took what they could by force and then fought over the takings among themselves.

By some accounts, two million Russians died of starvation in 1601-2 — one-third of the population. Over 125,000 were buried in mass graves near Moscow.

All of Europe experienced this severe, two-year-long cold spell. So why were there not similar catastrophes in, for example, France, which was only just recovering from years of religious wars, or in Spain, whose population was much less accustomed to cold than the Eastern Slavs? One possible explanation is that the potato, introduced from North America and much more frost-resistant than grains, had already become an established crop in Western Europe. Other countries did experience cold and hunger, but nothing nearly as dramatic as in the Principality of Moscow, where natural cataclysms were quickly interpreted as divine retribution against an illegitimate tsar.

This is a sad irony of history. The famine came during the reign of one of the most wise and effective rulers to sit on the Kremlin throne: Boris Fyodorovich Godunov. Boris had risen through the ranks of the Oprichniki* to become a boyar and prominent advisor to Ivan the Terrible, yet he managed to remain untainted by the brutality of Ivan's bloody reign. The marriage of Godunov's sister to Fyodor, Ivan's oldest son, elevated Boris to membership in the royal family.

Ivan IV died in 1584 and his son Fyodor was not well suited to rule the principality. So, when he ascended the throne, the actual task of governing fell to his brother-in-law Boris. Godunov led the country, which was worn out by Ivan's bloodletting, with calm and good sense. He encouraged trade and industry, built new cities and, after two years of cunning negotiation, managed to acquire from Sweden a stretch of Baltic coast that Ivan the Terrible had not been able to win through 25 years of warfare. Godunov even sent members of the nobility to study abroad, something that was utterly unheard of in conservative, insular Rus.

Then, in 1598, Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich died without leaving an heir, and Muscovy found itself tsar-less, a truly frightening turn of events for the populace. Boris was a natural candidate for the job, and the Zemsky Sobor (an assembly that included representatives from each of the estates of Rus) offered him this honor. For a long time, Boris refused. He secluded himself in the convent to which his sister, the widowed tsaritsa, had withdrawn, and when the crowds came to implore him to relent, he wrapped a scarf around his neck to demonstrate that he would sooner die than become tsar. We will probably never know what finally changed his mind – the people's pleas or perhaps his own thirst for power – but Boris overcame his reluctance, and beginning in 1598 he was not just regent, but the anointed and lawful sovereign. Upon ascending the throne, he ceremoniously swore never to resort to executions.

Then the famine arrived. To many, the cause of this calamity was obvious: the man ruling Rus was not the true tsar, and the people would all have to pay the price for this transgression. Rebellions erupted, and the tsar was forced to go back on his word and execute rebel leaders.

Around this time, a monk by the name of Grigory Otrepyev fled Moscow for Poland and suddenly proclaimed himself to be the true tsar, Dmitry, son of Ivan the Terrible who, despite being presumed dead for a decade (dying at the age of 9 from a self-inflicted knife wound during an epileptic fit, the most reasonable account has it), turned out to have miraculously survived.

The people believed the False Dmitry, and the cities opened their gates to him without resistance. Peasants, Cossacks, and merchants all cried out in jubilation, "Long live Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich! Death to Godunov!"

Godunov managed to remain on the throne, but his position was tenuous. He worried that after his death his young son Fyodor would not be able to hold on to power, or even his life. And he was right. In 1605 Boris Godunov died, and practically the entire country went over to the side of the pretender. After less than two months of rule, sixteen-year-old Fyodor II was murdered in the palace, and the False Dmitry entered Moscow in triumph, only to be himself killed within a year. The country descended into what is now known as the Smuta, the Time of Troubles, one of the most tumultuous and bloody periods in all of Russian history.

But what if…?

What would have happened if there had been no famine in 1601? Would Godunov have retained power? Would he have been able to pass the throne on to his descendants?

Historians debate the causes of the Smuta. The country had been ravaged by Ivan the Terrible, the state was allowing landowners to tighten control over their peasants and burdening urban populations with crushing taxation while limiting their ability to relocate. Perhaps there would have been a rebellion in any event, but the fact is that people endured all these hardships until they started to grow desperate with hunger, and until the false pretender appeared.

Some contend that the pivotal moment was the mysterious death of the young Tsarevich Dmitry. There have always been those who believed Godunov was responsible for Dmitry's death and that the collective conscience of the people drove them to overthrow this "regicide" and right a terrible evil – an interesting point of view, given that Ivan the Terrible slaughtered thousands and suffocated his own newborn children. Nobody felt the need to overthrow him. In fact, Ivan remained an object of reverential fear. Furthermore, Godunov was supposedly toppled based solely on the unsubstantiated suspicion of his role in the tsarevich's murder, a crime that had purportedly taken place in 1591 – 10 years before the famine and 13 years before the appearance of False Dmitry. During the intervening years the people did not seem to be troubled by a nagging conscience.** Does this suggest that perhaps it was the famine that was pivotal, rather than Dmitry's supposed murder? Perhaps if hunger had not swept across Rus, the Godunov dynasty might have continued to calmly rule and show increasing deference to the Zemsky Sobor. As an elected tsar, Godunov might have had a more open mind toward this parliamentary precursor than his fellow rulers. Furthermore, he might have continued the practice of sending the nobility to study in Europe a full century before Peter the Great began to Westernize Russia. He might also have built more cities where merchants would have been able to pursue commerce in peace without having to contend with the insanity of civil war. The peasants would have stayed home to till the soil rather than partaking in rebellions. How much more stable and prosperous the Principality of Moscow might have been had it not been for this ill-fated famine.

Or was it really that the Russian people were so troubled by the fact that Boris Godunov was elected, that he ascended to power based on competence and experience, rather than ties of blood to the ruling dynasty?

Whether it was the famine, suspicions over Boris' role in Dmitry's death, or the fact that he was not a member of the Rurik Dynasty that turned the people against Godunov, one cannot help but wonder how the course of Russian history was changed by the eruption of a Peruvian volcano.

* Oprichniki – in many ways Russia's first secret police force. Created by Ivan IV in 1565 to root out, torture and kill the tsar's enemies.

** One additional caveat: Dmitry was the child of Ivan IV's seventh marriage, to Maria Nagaya, a marriage not sanctioned by the Orthodox Church thus making Dmitry "canonically illegitimate."