Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 194, the Time of Troubles.

Last time we reviewed the Life and Times of the first three Romanovsars.

Today we'll go over one of the most difficult and precarious years of Russian history,

the time of troubles.

Unlike most historians, I will start this era a little bit earlier

and it will begin with the death of Ivan the Terrible.

Why might you ask would I begin in 1584 instead of the traditional start of the time of troubles 1598?

The reason is who became ZAR with the death of Ivan the fourth.

Fiore the first, the sixth child and only surviving son from Ivan's first wife Anastasia Romanovena Saharina Jureva

was by most accounts a simple pious man, not very interested in politics and certainly not groomed to be the czar.

His older brother Ivan Ivan Ivanovich was the heir apparent until his father, when fit of rage murdered him in 1581.

After seeing what he had done, Ivan the terrible lamented,

May I be damned, I've killed my son. I've killed my son.

While doing my research for this episode, I came across one historian who thinks my timeline as to the start of the time of troubles,

maybe even too late.

Interestingly, I found the one such assertion in a book authored by my late Russian history professor Dr Paul

Averich in his book Russian rebels 1600 to 1800. In it he quotes an outsider looking in to post Ivan the

terrible's death and into Russia. Quote, God hath a great plague in store for this people.

Such was the gloomy prediction which Jerome Horsy,

England's chief commercial agent in Moscow,

entered into his notebook near the close of the 16th century.

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