The Time of Troubles
The death of the childless Fyodor I in 1598 ended the seven-century Rurikid line and opened the Time of Troubles (Smuta). Boris Godunov's contested election, the catastrophic famine of 1601-03 (which killed perhaps a third of the population), and a succession of False Dmitris claiming to be the murdered tsarevich combined with boyar factionalism to collapse central authority. Poland-Lithuania occupied Moscow (1610) and Sweden seized Novgorod, while Cossack and peasant risings spread. A national militia under Minin and Pozharsky expelled the Poles in 1612, and a Zemsky Sobor elected Mikhail Romanov tsar in 1613, founding the dynasty that would rule until 1917.
- Year: 1598 CE
- Category: Political
