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so ras Welcome to the Russian rulers podcast episode number 23.

1 Dimitri 2 Dimitri 3-Dimitri more.

Last week we had Boris Goodenoff ascending the throne, finally becoming Tsar and name.

He had already been the real ruler with Ivan the terrible's feeble-minded son Fyodor holding the titular title.

Goodenoff had at last achieved the position, he yearned for so long, but this was not the time of wine and roses that he had expected.

1598, the year Boris ascended the throne, was known to history as the beginning of a 15 year period known as the Smotno-Vremy or Time of Troubles.

When Boris took over, he had to get rid of two families, the Nagoys, who were the of Ivan the fourth's slain son Dimitri, and the

Romanovs, the family of Ivan's beloved first wife, Anastasia.

One of the Romanovs Horace had banished was the eldest member of the clan,

Fyodor, who would later change his name to Philarett when he became a monk.

He had already had a child, one Michael Romanov, who is exiled to the monastery of Saint Cyril in Belo

Ziro with his mother.

Of the two males, we will hear much about them prominently in the not so distant future.

Boris proceeded to give the people a tax holiday to win their favor, along with giving money

to widows and orphans is back on the country as in 1599 the weather began to turn ugly.

First the summer of 1599 was exceedingly hot and dry.

Cropes failed and the price of bread soared. Boris opened the government granaries and helped feed the people,

but this was no ordinary stretch of bad weather as in 1600 another bad harvest hit Russia.

In 1601, heavy rains and floods devastated the north, causing tens of thousands of

hazards to abandon the Gentry's estates despite laws against their movement.

Russia was in the grips of a famine whose vastness had never been seen before.

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