Russia is marking National Unity Day. The events of the Time of Troubles became a turning point in the country's history. They were not the only one, however: Russia has more than once faced threats to its sovereignty and the destruction of its statehood. What enabled it to endure even in the hardest times is the subject of a RIA Novosti article.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the Russian Tsardom found itself in chaos. In Russian historiography this period is called the "Time of Troubles." A dynastic crisis. A succession of impostors. Peasant uprisings. Failed attempts at consolidation. Loss of lands. Finally, foreign intervention.
All of this, as the historian Vasily Klyuchevsky noted, led to the point that by the autumn of 1611 Russia presented a "spectacle of complete visible destruction": "The state was visibly transforming into some formless, turbulent federation."
After the death of the childless Feodor Ioannovich in 1598, the Rurik dynasty came to an end. Popular rumor called Boris Godunov a "tsar-killer." This gave rise to many rumors about the "miraculously saved Tsarevich Dimitri" and made Moscow attractive to numerous impostors, the False Dmitris.
In 1606, Vasily Shuysky, a representative of the Smolensk branch of the Rurikids, briefly took control of the situation. However, a couple of years later he faced a serious external threat from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Hoping for help, he concluded an alliance with Sweden, ceding northwestern territories to it.
This proved a fatal step.
In September 1609, the Poles besieged Smolensk. A month later, the Swedish general De la Gardie captured Veliky Novgorod almost without resistance. The Swedes planned to secure the election of the son of King Charles IX, Prince Carl Philip, to the Moscow throne. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had its own candidate, Prince Wladyslaw Sigismundovich.
The winged hussars (Polish cavalry) meanwhile occupied Mozhaysk and were approaching the capital. On the night of September 21, 1610, the invaders entered the Kremlin. The Seven Boyars (the formal government), after brief hesitation, sent envoys to Wladyslaw asking him to "come and reign."
Moscow Patriarch Hermogenes opposed this. He began sending letters to the cities calling for the liberation of Rus from foreigners. "It is time to lay down one's soul for the House of the Most Holy Mother of God," the hierarch wrote in one of them.
A broad patriotic movement for the liberation of the capital from the Poles unfolded. The First People's Militia was led by the Ryazan voivode Prokopy Lyapunov. But due to disagreements between the nobles and the Cossacks, the army fell apart prematurely, and its leader was killed.
However, already in September 1611, the Nizhny Novgorod zemstvo elder Kuzma Minin addressed the townspeople with a call to create a new people's militia.
"Orthodox people, let us wish to help the Muscovite state, let us not spare our lives, and not only our lives, we will sell our homes, pledge our wives and children, and we will petition that someone become our leader. And what praise will there be for all of us from the Russian land, that from such a small town as ours such a great deed will come," he said at the town assembly.
On Minin's proposal, Prince Dmitry Pozharsky was invited to the post of voivode. Under their banners gathered an army enormous for that time: more than ten thousand serving landed men, nearly three thousand Cossacks, about a thousand streltsy, and many peasants.
Representatives of all estates and all peoples that were part of the Russian Tsardom took part in the liberation of Moscow from foreign invaders.
With the miracle-working Kazan Icon of the Mother of God as a banner of unity, the Nizhny Novgorod army managed on November 4, 1612, to drive the Polish invaders out of the Kremlin. This victory became a powerful impulse for the revival of the Russian state.
The echo of those years is especially relevant today, in the days when the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia is being marked.
"An absolute phenomenon is that during the Time of Troubles it was deep Russia that rose to defend Moscow, and therefore the common Russian statehood, when a militia formed in the Volga region and moved on Moscow to liberate it from foreign invaders, and therefore to protect Russia as a single state for all who live on this territory," Vladimir Putin stressed in a speech on the occasion of the opening of the Year of Unity of the Peoples.
There are many examples of such national unity. For example, in the Patriotic War of 1812; in World War I, on whose fronts the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division became famous; in the Great Patriotic War, when representatives of all republics of the Soviet Union fought against Nazism.
Vladislav Petrushko, a professor at the Department of General and Russian Church History and Canon Law of St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities (PSTGU), points to a historical parallel: the events of the Time of Troubles in many ways echo what is happening today.
"The mood of European politicians has not changed much since the Time of Troubles. The only difference is that then, on behalf of Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth acted against Russia, while now we are, in essence, dealing with a united Europe that is effectively waging a proxy war," he explains.
However, the unique historical experience of coexistence of almost 200 different ethnic groups speaks for itself. At turning points, according to Konstantin Mogilevsky, co-chairman of the Russian Historical Society, the whole people was aware of its responsibility for the country's fate and rose to defend it. This is one of the most important historical sources of Russia's unity.