by Andrei BOGDANOV, Dr. Sc. (Hist.), Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

In 2004, the State Duma (lower house of parliament) of the Russian Federation established annual holiday - Day of National Unity (November 4) - in honor of the unity of Russian society in the face of deadly danger for Motherland. On that day (October 25, Old Style) 395 years ago, in 1612, the country's Territorial Army together with Cossack units took by assault Kitaigorod, a fortified district next to the Moscow Kremlin where the Polish and Lithuanian invaders and treacherous boyars took cover.

Back in 1601 - 1603 during the reign of Boris Godunov, Russia was struck by famine. Even monasteries began hiding food and letting common parishioners starve. The poor sold themselves to slavery for a morsel of bread, crowds of rebels trekked to Moscow. Thus the "Time of Troubles" - called so by Russian writers of the 17th century - began. According to eye witnesses, the root of all evil was not in the economy or religion like it was in West European countries, it lay in the destruction of ties among people: a landowner who was obliged to be "fatherly" to peasants, now had an absolute right over them*. As a result, in the year of hardships he let them starve, though formerly a villein had been regarded not just as a factotum but almost as a member of the family who often supported his master in battle campaigns. Having thrown him out into the street, both the master and the czar who let that be, put themselves above the law, not only in the eyes of the offended but of society as a whole.

It was not by chance that when in 1605 another czar - Lzhedmitry (False Demetrius), who was accepted by common people, troops, nobility, clergy and even by his allegedly "own" mother Mariya Nagaya**, - entered Moscow on a white horse, many united under the imposter's banner, thus, denying the right of existence to former immoral power. Actually, the imposter's person did not matter. It did not matter either that he brought foreigners

* At the end of the 16th century an absolute and harsh form of peasant dependence on feudal lords - serfdom - was legalized in Russia. - Ed.

** Her real son Dmitry (Demetrius) of Czar Ivan IV, died (probably was killed) in 1591 at Uglich. - Ed.

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in Ms coat-tails. What mattered was that civil strife came to an end, favors and rewards flowed as if from the horn of plenty (though the new ruler used the wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church for that).

Meanwhile, for Rzeczpospolita (a state which appeared in 1569 as a result of the union of the Great Lithuanian Principality with Poland) False Demetrius, who had been originally supported by it, turned out to be a deadly threat. This Polish "republic" of the gentry (a king was elected by Sejm - institution of nobility representatives) where landlords were equal, while commoners were regarded as cattle and the Orthodox - as savages, was ruled by Sigizmund III Vasa of Sweden. In 1606, many nobles who were unhappy with him arrived in Moscow together with the wives and children to the imposter's wedding with the Polish princess Maryna Mniszech. False Demetrius dreamt of uniting the Russian lands under his power. However, the cunning Russian boyar Vassily Shuisky took advantage of the situation. Having come to an arrangement with the Polish and Swedish authorities, he announced that the arrived foreign "dissidents" wanted to kill the Lord's Anointed! While the Muscovites rushed to smash them, Shuisky killed the might-have-been "caesar" having ascribed his own sins to him, and seized the throne. Thus, Czar Vassily IV appeared in Russia.

While the Lithuanians and Polish burning with revenge saddled horses, Russia rose against yet another czar elected "by Moscow alone". People refused to believe in their czar's death: even a year and a half after the impostor's death the peasant armies of Ivan Bolotnikov, Prokopy Lyapunov and others fought for him. Meanwhile in 1608 Lzhedmitry (False Demetrius) II encamped at Tushino near Moscow; apart from Russian noblemen, townsfolk and Cossacks, there were Poles and Lithuanians fighting against King Sigizmund together with him.

There was much bloodshed all around the country from the White Sea to the Caspian Sea, from Smolensk to the Urals, with gangs robbing on behalf of some self-styled "czar". However, patience of the parties to civil war was exhausted when the havoc came to be aggravated by intervention of Swedes and then of Poles and Germans recruited by Vassily IV. Noblemen seized Vassily IV by the beard and made him take monastic vows in a monastery. The Tushino camp dispersed, and the second imposter was killed. The gentlefolk and the people demanded that "a czar should be elected by the whole land", and called deputies to Moscow so as to put an end to fratricide by general council.

In July 1610, people rejoiced: in each church an appeal by seven Moscow boyars was read out by the blessing of Patriarch of whole Russia Germogen. For the first time in

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seven years of bloodshed most of the Russians made up their mind to "be in union and stand for Orthodox belief all together" protecting their own right to elect a czar without resigning either to believers of alien faith or imposters.

However, the boyars who had assumed the burden of power till the election of the czar as if by the will of the people did not believe in that - how much better was Sigizmund's son Wladislav with foreign regiments: "It's better to serve the king's son, than to be beaten down by their own villeins and suffer from everlasting work!" In August they swore allegiance to the new sovereign having signed a treaty to preserve their privileges with him, while already in September they surrendered Moscow to the Poles who had already besieged Smolensk. For several months common people were horrified at such kind of "impudent betrayal". Towns and voivodes wanted to believe that the king, as boyars promised, would withdraw his troops from the country, and Wladislav adopt Orthodoxy and become a called czar, arbitrator and warlord.

Meanwhile, Sigizmund, judging by the documents of his office, was happy that he had "brought war into the very heart of the immense country". He aimed at expanding Rzeczpospolita and "spreading Catholic belief among the savages and impious northern peoples". Lithuanian Polish gentleman Gonsewski assumed power in Moscow to rule on behalf of the king's son but actually, on the king's orders. The king relied on the support of his servants - boyar Saltykov, merchant and leather dresser Andronov who was put in charge of the treasury, and clerk Gramotin.

In Moscow the Polish gentry behaved the same way as in the Polish and Lithuanian cities under their domination: they killed, raped, paid "not at the price" (i.e. much below the price). Three months later Muscovites sent appeals for help all over Russia. The country still regarded itself as Muscovy and went to save the "regnant city". In February of 1611, crowds of noblemen, streltzi soldiers, townsfolk, Cossacks, peasants who had served different czars and imposters earlier, hurried to the capital. Unfortunately, most of them came too late.

In the morning of March 19, Prince Dmitry Pozharsky who had slept in his Moscow mansion in ulitsa (street) Sretenka was roused by sounds of the alarm. Eight thousand German mercenaries with pikes and muskets attacked the market stalls in the Red Square, the Polish and Lithuanian cavalry cut people with sabres in the streets. The prince with his villeins, streltsi and artisans of the Pushkarsky (artillery) yard built barricades and rolled out cannons into the streets. His soldiers with shields drove occupiers to Kitaigorod; near the Yauza gates they were stopped by detachment led by voivode Buturlin; the Cossacks under the command of Koltowski dislodged the enemy from Zamoskvorechye (part of Moscow on the right bank of the Moskva), while the streltsi (units of the host) - from Tverskaya street.

"Seeing that the outcome of the battle was doubtful, I ordered to set fire to Zamoskvorechye and Bely gorod" (a fortified district around the Moscow Kremlin. - Auth.)", - Gonsewski recalled. "We acted according to the advice of the boyars who were benevolent to us, - colonel Maskewicz

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echoed in his memoirs, - they considered it necessary to reduce Moscow to ashes in order to deny the enemy any means of retrenching himself... The fire was so strong that even at night it was as light in the Kremlin as on the brightest day. Moscow could be likened to hell". From the narrow streets enveloped in flames, came cries of those being killed as well as the weeping, and waitings of women and children. The foe attacked taking shelter behind the wall of flames, while the Polish king's regiment struck from the rear.

Being unable to fight both the fire and the enemy at the same time, Moscow was wiped off the face of the earth within a few days. Villeins rushed Pozharsky, wounded in the head, to his estate. And only then members of people's volunteer corps came to the capital and saw only stone frames of churches, fortress walls and towers, and heaps of ashes with gaunt chimneys rising up. Proceeding boldly, they seized Bely Gorod on the night of April 6, having locked the enemy in the walls of the Kremlin and Kitaigorod.

Muscovy fell with a crash. All its houses vanished as if into thin air together with the smoke of horrible fire. Nobody could appoint a voivode or any other clerk. Nothing remained to consolidate the country at least formally. When all this cinder fell off, the core of Russia came to light - a powerful democratic body politic for which it was difficult to find analogues in the 17th century. However, there were attempts to save the situation "from above": the Territorial Army detachments united under the command of men most unlike in their characters and view-points - Prince Trubetskoy, Ataman Zarutsky of the Don and Duma nobleman Lyapunov. They were at the head of the Assembly of the Whole Land created to restore statutory authority, and set up central departments instead of those gone.

Representatives of 25 towns signed documents on a new "provisional government". However, they were only military men who were encamped in Moscow but not common citizens. As appears from these documents, the noblemen were eager to get hold of the captured estates and peasants, while the highest ranks of the Cossacks - to get lands and money as reward. Russia could not obey such leadership. This was the message of the letters which the assembly of Nizhni Novgorod exchanged with the towns of Volga region, Tatar and Mari authorities; the assembly of Kazan - with the elected administration of the region inhabited by the Komi people (from the Urals to the rivers Pechora, Kama, Volga); the administration - with the towns of Veliky Ustyug (now in the Vologda region), Solvychegodsk (in Arkhangelsk region), and so on. As a result, they agreed on the main thing: "we all should be in chime and union... we should neither kill each other, nor rob, nor do anything wrong to each other... we should not let new voivodes, clerks, heads and any petty officials into towns ... but we should elect a czar of the whole Russian land".

Thus, the land authorities overstepped their powers: from time immemorial they had been bodies of self-government, "not a tool of the sovereign's cause." Indeed, town

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clerks nominated by townspeople and free peasants as well as senior men were engaged in administration; publicans - in the collection and allocation of taxes, including those for local needs; judges - dispensed justice for tax-paying estates (barring death penalty); "lip" officials were responsible for the capture of thieves, robbers and preliminary investigation, and so forth.

Autocracy did not suppress, but supported self-government. Even Ivan IV the Terrible (1533 - 1584), notorious for his reprisals and for the stiffening of villein cabala of the peasantry, broadened the functions of "land" institutions and tried to abrogate "feeding" of central civil servants from the public trough (in fact, only Czar Fedor Alekseyevich succeeded in that in 1679). Moreover, the Russian state was initially built on the basis of local autonomy, while the public authority of princes, czars was only a superstructure. When in the 10th century the Norsemen called Russia Gardarik (the Country of towns), they did not mean the number of towns (not more than in France) or wealth (which yielded to the Byzantine towns) but their political power - to call princes with troops to defend people, and if need be, expel them; such cases were common everywhere.

"The best people", who informed their prince that he had been "rejected" or "sent packing" for non-compliance with the requirements of the town and its precinct, were nominated (as in the Roman republic of the 6th century B. C.) by landowners, merchants and heads of workshops. This "gold belt" (in Nogorod the Great, for example, there were approximately 1,000 people) set up a city council - veche - which, if need be, appealed, as in the Roman republic, to a popular assembly, and manhood (as to women, only those who had children and widows had the franchise). In time a cohort of princes, which had increased in number, also created a similar body - a congress, or "snem" - to discuss All-Russian affairs. Even in villeinage districts in the center of Russia the authorities were elected only by noblemen from amongst themselves because they acted as "fathers" to their peasants, while at the very bottom a village community approved of a warden's candidature. Quite often the great princes called themselves czars, but Ivan IV was the first who officially got this title in 1547 by decision of the Land Assembly, a body of representatives of nobility which, by the way, in the 16th century was convened more often than the Etats generaux of France and played a more prominent part than English Parliament did, rubberstamping decisions of kings.

In a word, in the summer of 1611, democracy did not establish itself but just showed its worth in the situation when Russia was perishing. Meanwhile Smolensk fell after the heroic 20-month defense against the Polish troops; villein Ivan Shval opened the gates of Novgorod the Great to Swedish invaders; and the Lithuanian hetman Chodkiewicz marched on Moscow. To stop him, the hierarchs of the Troitse-Sergiyev (St. Trinity and Sergius) monastery near Moscow appealed to towns. In Nizhni Novgorod they also received that appeal, but nobody hurried to fight. Only one country elder, the meat dealer Kuzma Minin (Kuzma Minich Ankudinov) insisted on reading it out publicly.

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This stirred up the people, but the matter was left at that. The patriot urged wealthy townsmen to donate one third of the property to raise troops, but all in vain. Only 2,500 merchants of his corporation contributed 1,700 roubles, a widow brought a larger part of her inheritance, and old women - icon-settings, and that was all! Meanwhile, a professional army was needed, and it could be raised on money that a special tax department could collect.

Minin persuaded the country elders to elect Prince Pozharsky a voivode. He went to see Pozharsky in his estate and told him of the seriousness of the intentions of Nizhni Novgorod citizens. The prince said he would raise an army if Minin took care of the treasury. The latter told him humbly: "I will agree if you sign the deed." Funds were to be collected by every means, including sales of wives and children. Thus, they agreed on that. Many were sorry that they had signed the deed but the muskets of the streltsi somehow stirred up patriotic consciousness among the malcontents. And when they were out to rebel, Pozharsky with his host, which had just got its salary, entered the town.

Local resources were exhausted soon. Meanwhile, representatives of the state authorities of the Volga region rallied in Minin's support. They bought arms, equipment and food on money they had collected. They formed a Russian Territorial Army: "Now we don't need hired people from other countries, - Prince Pozharsky said, - we serve and fight for our native land." On February 23, 1612, the people's army moved from Nizhni Novgorod to Yaroslavl, clearing at the same time the Volga region of the Polish and Lithuanian invaders. Marching forward, the prince received new detachments, while his trusted treasurer, Minin, collected money. Each district elected two people from among the clergy, nobility, citizens and townspeople, and sent them with writs to Yaroslavl where in April a new Assembly of the Land was formed. It was a legal supreme government which rested upon elected country authorities: their voivodes entered towns only if received "by all and everyone".

History decreed it so that the country's name was changed then and there. With Muscovy in enemy hands, a

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new power was born - Great Russia. It was thus called in the official writ of multinational and multi-confessional Assembly of the Land, which it (the Assembly) sent from Yaroslavl to all cities on April 7 (17), 1612, and then in the follow-up documents.

At the end of July the national Territorial Army entered Moscow and stopped the troops of hetman Chodkiewicz rushing to rescue the Polish and Lithuanian garrison ensconced in the city's heart. Meanwhile, on orders of the garrison's commander colonel Strus, the wives and children of boyars, noblemen, merchants lodged in the Kremlin were set free. Pozharsky received them and under escort took them to the houses of his friends, the voivodes, despite the threats of the Cossacks of Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy (he was also an organizer of the fight with invaders) to kill him because he did not let them "rob boyars".

When on October 25, 1612 after a long siege the Cossacks, roused by a fighting horn, moved to assault Kitaigorod, members of the people's volunteer corps rushed after. The enemy, who did not expect such an attack, fled to the Kremlin leaving his food supplies - boilers with human meat, and salted and smoked dead bodies which had been stored for preservation. Cannibalism helped the Polish garrison, three thousand men strong and halved by starvation, keep discipline. At that ghastly sight the Cossacks, climbing the walls under fire to take revenge on the rich and enrich themselves thereby, dropped their sabres in horror - they who had seen so much. Land corps soldiers - supporters of law, order and private property - became "democrats" in a twinkling. Their captains, who hurried to the Red Square to prevent fighting between these two detachments, did not have to part them. Popular unity against the cannibals hiding behind brick battlements was an accomplished fact.

Seizing the Kremlin meant doing away with the upper crust who had called in invaders. Princes Pozharsky and Trubetskoy belonged to this upper crust - the backbone of the empire - and they could not permit that. On October 26, surrender terms were signed, and the treacherous boyars, merchants and noblemen who had been on the enemy's side could leave the Kremlin. The land corps protected them in a fighting line, while the Cossacks, letting off steam, went back to their camp. Saving Moscow nobility was Pozharsky's great feat in the reconciliation of society after the expulsion of foreigners. The prince and his supporters insisted that the parties which had fought on different sides should forget mutual hatred and bury in oblivion their sins.

The winners did not enter the Kremlin then and there, they had to clear the horrible traces of war. They moved into the Kremlin five days later. In the meantime the liberators of Moscow were on the point of clashing in internecine strife, and the life of the "liberated" hung by a thread. There was no other way out but reconciliation, and a holiday staged by Prince Pozharsky became a symbol of this reconciliation. On Sunday, November 1, his soldiers got together at the church of Ioann Milostivy (John the Merciful) in Arbat, the Cossacks of Trubetskoy - at the Church of Our Lady of Kazan near the Pokrovka town gates. Holding crosses and icons, the soldiers and townspeople moved to the Red Square with prayers. In Lobnoye Mesto (the place of execution) they were met by the clergy coming from the Kremlin with Bishop Arsseny at the head (the boyars elevated him as church hierarch after the invaders had thrown into prison Patriarch Germogen and starved him to death because he had called for an uprising against the foe). The clerical procession carried the relic of Moscow Russia - Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. As eyewitnesses say, everybody fell to their knees before the icon, thanking for the salvation of the "regnant city" from Catholics and Lutherans. In tender emotion the people entered the Kremlin, where in the Dormition (Assumption) Cathedral a liturgy was officiated to celebrate the end of the nine-year war.

There were only 8 - 10 thousand liberators, a small part of the once powerful troops of the Russian state. But there was no state, and no capital: nearly all of Moscow lay in ashes. Great Russia without its capital city, Moscow? How could that be? But many said yes, suggesting to elect a czar of "the whole land" elsewhere, in Yaroslavl, even before the Territorial Army's march on Moscow, and only then clear Moscow of the enemy. Pozharsky was against that decision and after the expulsion of foreigners he persuaded Moscow nobles and the clergy to take part in electing their czar together with 800 delegates from the estates of all 50 districts (uyezds).

It was not so easy to convene people's representatives - the Land Assembly - in a country where the hostilities were not over yet. Only on February 21, 1613, after protracted debates Mikhail Romanovich was elected a czar. Still, this body (Land Assembly) continued for another nine years, i.e. in three convocations: in 1613 - 1615, 1616 - 1618 and 1619 - 1622 (a similar procedure took place only after a revolution in the Netherlands where the General States stayed on to strengthen that country even after Prince William of Orange had been elected governor of the north states in 1572). Besides, the land assembly delegates gathered at crucial moments all through the 17th century, which, of course, could not save the country from uprisings staged by deprived serf peasants and Cossacks not represented in the Assembly. However, this helped settle dangerous conflicts which threatened the very existence of the Russian state. Thus, the system of elected councils and land assemblies became instrumental in Russia's renaissance as a power.