The Russian Empire
Question & Answer

Who Was the First Romanov Tsar?

On 21 February 1613 (11 February O.S.), the Zemsky sobor of Moscow, a national assembly of 800 delegates from the dvoriane of the okolnichnye ranks, the duma boyar, the dukhovenstvo, the gosty of the trading guilds, and the posadskie liudi, elected Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov as Tsar of All the Russias. The boy was sixteen. He was at the Ipatiev Monastery of Kostroma with his mother, Xenia Ivanovna Shestova, and the archimandrite of the monastery, the boyar deputies of the sobor, and the svechennik Abbot Feodorit of the local Afanas’yevskaya chapel, had made a chelobitnaya (formal petition) to accept. The zemskii sobor sent a deputation to Kostroma led by the Kostroma voevoda Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, and Mikhail was confirmed. The new dynasty was the House of Romanov, and the dynasty would rule the Russian Empire until 1917 — 304 years (Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 1998; Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War, 2001; Skrynnikov, The Time of Troubles, 1988).

The Romanov pedigree

The House of Romanov had risen to prominence through the nakazanie (favour) of Tsar Ivan IV, who had married Anastasia Romanovna Zakharyina-Koshkina, daughter of the boyar Roman Yurievich Zakharyin-Koshkin, on 3 February 1547. The Zakharyin-Koshkin were a cadet branch of the Kostromskoy starshinoy family of the Suzdal’. Anastasia’s brother, Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev, was a boyar and the dvoryanin of the Moskovskii dvor under Ivan IV. Nikita’s son Fyodor Nikitich Romanov (the future Patriarch Filaret of Moscow) was a dvoryanin of the gosudarev dvor under the Tsar Feodor I (1584–1598) and was married to Xenia Ivanovna Shestova. Their son Mikhail was the gosudarev plemyannik (the Tsar’s cousin-german) on Anastasia’s side, and was the first cousin once removed of the last Rurikid Tsar Feodor I. The Romanovs were, in the language of the sabornik, “nearest of kin” to the extinguished Rurikid line (Dunning, 2001; Skrynnikov, 1988; Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1987).

The election

The Zemsky sobor had been convened on 6 January 1613 (27 December 1612 O.S.) at the Kirg Troitsa starets in the Moscow Kremlin, under the predsedatel’stvo of the Kostroma noble, the boyar Prince D. T. Trubetskoy, and the burgomistr (mayor) of the posad, the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Kuzma Minin. The first session of the sobor rejected the Polish prince Władysław Vasa (then Tsar-elect of Poland), the Swedish prince Karl Philipp, and the Rurikid pretender Mikhail Vasilyevich Son of Tsar Vasily Shuysky. The vote was unanimous: Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov. The official record reads: “We are not the counselors of the gosudar’; the gosudar’ must be of the gosudarskii rod” (Dunning, 2001; Skrynnikov, 1988).

The reign

Mikhail was coronated on 11 July 1613 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. His father Fyodor Nikitich Romanov — the future Patriarch Filaret — was still in Polish captivity (at Marienburg in Royal Prussia) and would not return to Moscow until 14 June 1619. Filaret, on his return, was elected Patriarch of Moscow and was given the title of “Great Sovereign.” The patriarkh gosudar’ ran the government with the boiarska duma and the prikazy until his death on 1 October 1633. The reign was dominated by the resolution of the Smuta:

  • The 1617 Treaty of Stolbovo with Sweden (signed in the village of Stolbovo on the Tikhvin–Karelia road) ended the Swedish intervention of 1609–1617, recovered Novgorod, Porkhov, Ladoga, and Gdov, and paid Sweden 20,000 silver roubles in reparations.
  • The 1618 Truce of Deulino, signed in the village of Deulino near Smolensk, halted the war with Poland-Lithuania. Smolensk, Chernihiv, and the Severia lands remained in Polish hands. Prince Władysław Vasa renounced his claim to the Russian throne only with the 1634 Treaty of Polyanovka.
  • The 1632–1634 Smolensk War, an attempt to recover the lost territories by the voivoda M. B. Shein, ended in the surrender of Shein at Smolensk on 1 March 1634. Shein was executed in Moscow on 15 April 1634 (Hughes, 1998; Dunning, 2001; Skrynnikov, 1988).

The codifications

Mikhail’s reign was the period of the recovery of the Muscovite kanatelnaya system. The state revenue of 1613, 1.4 million silver roubles, doubled to 2.8 million by 1628; tripled to 4.2 million by 1638. The Mikhail’s strel’tsy (the Muscovite musketeer regiments) of 1,500 men in 1613, expanded to 7,000 by 1624, 12,000 by 1634, 23,000 by 1644. The Mikhailovskaya-Tikhvinskaya Code, the first complete re-codification of the Sudebnik of 1550, was begun in 1626 and finished in 1629, and the 1649 Sobornoye Ulozheniye of his son Alexis would be the next codification (Hughes, 1998; Dunning, 2001).

Death and succession

Mikhail I died on 13 July 1645 in Moscow. The pristol (the throne) was empty for one year. The Zemsky sobor of 1645 confirmed the succession of Mikhail’s 16-year-old son, Alexis, who would reign until 1676 and would hand the throne to his son Feodor III, and to his other son Peter I. The 304-year Romanov era began with a 16-year-old at Kostroma and ended with a 50-year-old at Pskov (Skrynnikov, 1988; Dunning, 2001).