Will the Real Tsar Dmitri Please Stand Up? (Part 1)

In 1605, Dmitri — the son of Ivan the Terrible — became the Tsar of Russia. Less than a year leader, he was brutally deposed. But one question remained: was he actually even the real Dmitri? Support Noble Blood: —Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Noble Blood merch https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory/and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 0:35Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised.

• 0:46Dana Schwartz?

  As legend has it, shortly after dawn on May 17, 1606, Tsar Dmitri crouched on a window ledge outside his palace in Moscow. This was not part of the Russian emperor's typical morning routine and was definitely not an activity that he and his new bride, who was hiding inside in an adjacent room, would have had on their ideal post-wedding itinerary. But times were desperate. There were assassins closing in. So Tsar Dmitri gazed down from his window perch.

• 1:27Dana Schwartz?

  The drop was substantial, but over in the direction of Red Square, loyal citizens were streaming onto the Kremlin grounds. If Dmitri could leap to the next building, his supportive subjects would surely be able to arrive in time to protect him from the horde of coordinated assassins who had surrounded his bed chambers and were about to break in at any moment. The next few seconds would prove vital for Tsar Dmitri's life and reign, as well as for the entire course of early modern Russian history. He prepared to make his daring leap.

• 2:12Dana Schwartz?

  But unfortunately for Dmitri, like so many aspects of the period of political turmoil that would become known as the "Time of Troubles," Dmitri's plan took an almost comically dire turn. Dmitri slipped and plummeted to the ground, breaking his leg in the process. He was soon at the mercy of his enemies, and that's where things got even more peculiar. In the heat of a violent coup, plenty of rulers find themselves in the tense and awkward position of needing to beg for their lives.

• 2:51Dana Schwartz?

  But even within that pantheon of impassioned pleas, the back-and-forth that Tsar Dmitri had with his particular group of would-be assassins stands out, because a good portion of his pleading supposedly focused on him trying to convince them that he was, in fact, who he claimed to be. He begged his captors to bring him to his people. They'd embrace him as Tsar Dmitri, their rightful leader. Or they could go ask his mother. She'd certainly vouch for him that he was her son and the heir of former Tsar Ivan. Why not even pray?

• 3:35Dana Schwartz?

  Surely those of ardent faith would receive confirmation from God that he, Dmitri, had been divinely chosen to rule. With the larger crowd fast approaching, however, the assassins chose not to waste time praying and to avoid any further delay by shooting, hacking, and bludgeoning their target, who may or may not have been the rightful Tsar Dmitri, to death. But Dmitri's story was far from over. Whoever he truly was, that young emperor who literally fell from power, kicked off quite a trend.

• 4:17Dana Schwartz?

  Many more so-called "false Dmitri's" would eventually come forward, all claiming to be the one, the only, the original Tsar Dmitri. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

• 4:38Dana Schwartz?

  Unlike other famous characters who probably never existed, such as your King Arthur's or Odysseus', there is evidence that at least at the start of this heightened tale, there was a real person named Dmitri Ivanovich, who had a hereditary link to the Russian monarchy. In 1582, Tsarevich, or son of the Tsar Dmitri, was born to Tsar Ivan Vassilovich, commonly known to the modern world as Ivan the Terrible, and his sixth wife, Maria. Relatively few details seem to be known about Dmitri's earliest years,

• 5:20Dana Schwartz?

  especially since many accounts of this period focused more on the royal succession plan, of which the young Tsarevich was not initially a featured contender. According to some, Dmitri was not even a fully legitimate Tsarevich. His parentage was not necessarily in doubt, but per Russian Orthodox law, the offspring of a man's fourth marriage was typically deemed to be illegitimate. So the child of a sixth marriage? Pretty far down the potential inheritance standings. After Ivan died, his oldest living son became Tsar.

• 6:05Dana Schwartz?

  The new power dynamic was complicated however, because Ivan's heir purportedly possessed what might be classified today as significant neurodivergence or learning disabilities. Ivan had foreseen his oldest son struggling to rule on his own, and he appointed a council of regents to help run Russia behind the scenes. What could go wrong, right? An ambitious member of that council, named Boris Godunov, soon relished his newfound influence so much that he didn't see why he should stop at being mere regent.

• 6:44Dana Schwartz?

  With a sidelined ineffectual czar, Boris envisioned taking the throne for himself. This path meant weeding out all likely future challengers. So Boris pushed the illegitimate czarvich narrative, while also exiling Dmitri along with his mother and numerous members of their family to the far-off principality of Uglek. Unfortunately, few memorable personal details about Dmitri's upbringing appear to have survived. Sources recount that his grandfather and several relatives, having not taken their banishment very amicably, plotted to topple Boris.

• 7:30Dana Schwartz?

  It is highly unlikely that young Dmitri meaningfully participated in any of that planning, given that he would have been under the age of eight, but it is probable that, on some level, his family's desired retribution triggered his tragic demise. In May of 1591, young Dmitri reportedly died in Uglek. His family members were incensed, certain that the event was a covert murder orchestrated by Boris as retaliation for their opposition to his governmental control. And their argument may very well have been valid,

• 8:15Dana Schwartz?

  as the circumstances of young Dmitri's death were dubious. Boris sent an official delegation, led by a zealous prince named Vasili Shisky, who will become integral later on, so remember that name, to investigate the death. But given the conflicts of interest involved, it seemed like less an act of proper due diligence and more like, let's say, an oil company sending a team to check if they were at fault for an oil spill. Sure enough, the Commission ruled that Dmitri's death was accidental, reporting he had suffered a seizure at the exact time that he had been playing with a knife,

• 9:00Dana Schwartz?

  which had led him to inadvertently cut his own throat. A possible explanation? Sure. Plausible? You be the judge. Nevertheless, despite being sad and a little suspicious—more than a little suspicious— the death of a debatably legitimate Tsarvich did not initially seem to cause that much of a stir in larger Russian society. After all, in those days, individuals in line for the throne frequently died in odd, accidental ways. Years before, Tsar Ivan himself had even been said to have "accidentally" killed his

• 9:44Dana Schwartz?

  own eldest son at the time, which we actually covered in the fittingly titled "Ivan the Terrible and His Oldest Son" episode. In general, to many Russians outside of Moscow, news of Dmitri's passing was likely met with fairly mild reactions ranging from "Who?" to "Well, these things happen." Flash forward to 1602. Boris had successfully become Tsar by outmaneuvering and dispatching all of Ivan the Terrible's remaining descendants. Or at least, he thought he was rid of the lineage.

• 10:28Dana Schwartz?

  Rumblings began that young Dmitri Ivanovich had miraculously survived the attempt to kill him as a boy. After a few months, a man finally came forth in Poland-Lithuania in 1603 and declared that he was, in fact, Dmitri, the rightful claimant to the throne. It was quite the assertion then, and even now, historians continue to debate the origins of this mysterious figure.

• 11:01Dana Schwartz?

  The most widespread theory at the time was that this Dmitri, impostor, was originally a monk named Gregory Otripov, who had been defrocked for dabbling in dark sorcery. Tsar Boris tried to push that idea to undermine his challenger, and for centuries that presumption prevailed, largely due to how the political climate under subsequent regimes dissuaded historians from questioning that theory. However, modern scholars, less fearful of Russian czars threatening their lives and freedoms, have pretty persuasively shown

• 11:44Dana Schwartz?

  that this adult Tsarevich Dmitri impostor could not have been Otripov. Another key theory is that the pretender was someone raised to believe he truly was Dmitri. Contemporary witnesses marvelled at how convincing he was, believing that not even a talented actor could so seamlessly inhabit the role. The proposed timeline is critical here, since producing a Dmitri who so wholeheartedly bought into his backstory would have meant indoctrinating him at a very young age.

• 12:24Dana Schwartz?

  Considering the contentious rift between Dmitri's family and Boris Godunov, it's not unthinkable that after the murder of actual Dmitri as a child, his calculating relatives had the foresight to immediately start training a replacement Dmitri to have ready to go when the opportunity arose. There's a third main theory as to who the pretender or false Dmitri was.

• 12:56Dana Schwartz?

  The Real Dmitri. This notion was laughed off by many historians over the years, but there is actually a bit of evidence to possibly bolster that argument. Specifically, there were many suspicious details involved in the aftermath of Dmitri’s young death. For example, there was a highly irregular four-day delay in burying his body. The investigative commission apparently could not confirm that the body was Dmitri, and a few sources at the time declared outright that the real Dmitri had been swapped for a different boy before the alleged murder took place.

• 13:40Dana Schwartz?

  Dmitri’s godfather at one point even apparently swore on a cross that the man claiming to be Dmitri was his true godson, who he’d been hiding from Boris since the assassination ordeal. But again, in terms of conflicts of interest, Dmitri’s close relative insisting that he had outwitted the man he’d been trying to overthrow for a quarter of a century is not exactly the most reliable testimony. Whatever his true identity, this adult Saravich Dmitri was soon making waves, and he amassed

• 14:20Dana Schwartz?

  an impressive army to take the throne as Russia’s reputedly rightful and, if overlooking the church’s debatable fine print on sons of sixth marriages, wholly new ruler. Naturally, at this point, you might be wondering how this adult Dmitri was able to so effectively hoodwink people, or if he was the real deal, how he managed to convince everyone of that. Looks mattered little, since few knew or remembered what Dmitri looked like as a boy. This adult version was apparently not the most striking or handsome.

• 15:02Dana Schwartz?

  He was of middling height and had a distinctive wart by his nose, but he won people over with his demeanor. As a supposedly 22-year-old man, this Dmitri was a skilled horse rider, a brave warrior, smart and very eloquent. In short, he was popular. Still, launching a full-scale rebellion was not as simple as trotting around on horseback and making charismatic speeches. Many elements were involved in winning support from both the Russian people and the nobility.

• 15:41Dana Schwartz?

  One massive tragic factor that greatly aided this Dmitri's case among the people was starvation. One of the worst famines in Russian history arrived in 1602, and it was so devastating that contemporary reports estimate that it ultimately killed roughly one-third of the total population. To Tsar Boris's credit, he desperately tried to help his subjects by distributing food and money. But the situation was so extreme and corruption so rampant that the crisis snowballed, and

• 16:22Dana Schwartz?

  with unceasing hunger, disease, and death being overwhelming obstacles to nuanced reflections on macroeconomics, many surviving citizens predominantly blamed their leader for the horrific state of things. Thus, when this new Tsarevich Dmitri emerged, many disgruntled Cossacks, soldiers, merchants, and townsfolk quickly backed him. Religion was another crucial factor that helped Dmitri. Throughout the 16th century, the major players at the Kremlin had strived to fortify their standing by sacralizing the monarchy.

• 17:04Dana Schwartz?

  Essentially, the goal was to assure the Russian Orthodox masses that it was not worth bothering to question a Tsar's right to rule, since God handed down that right. This effectively laid the groundwork for Dmitri in the sense that his apparent evasion of the assassination attempt against him when he was a child fit with a story that he was divinely selected. It was easy enough to even promote parallels between his grand reappearance and Christ Himself rising from the grave.

• 17:41Dana Schwartz?

  Plenty of lords, influential families, and exiled boyars—members of the highest-ranking nobility—also harbored ample animosity toward Tsar Boris. And so they joined the Tsarevich Dmitri’s cause, hoping to sway the political scene back in their favor. Dmitri’s own mother, Maria, had been stripped of her privileges and forced to go live in cramped confinement as a nun. So when the plucky supposed Tsarevich arrived with his growing army and promised to bring his mother back to Moscow and restore her to status if she confirmed that he was, in fact, her son,

• 18:25Dana Schwartz?

  it likely didn’t take her long to declare something along the lines of “Yep, definitely, this guy is my son, everyone!” Meanwhile, in Moscow, Tsar Boris grew increasingly paranoid about the man leading a military campaign through the country against him, thus inciting the first civil war in early-modern Russian history. Harsh punishments awaited anyone deemed to be a supporter of the “imposter Dmitri.” Boris tried to counter his rival’s popularity by continuing to espouse the idea

• 19:03Dana Schwartz?

  that this imposter was the disgraced monk Otrapov, who was disgraced since he was clearly debauched and evil. However, it should be noted that accusing a political foe of being a “wicked heretic” was pretty standard practice in those days, and in this case, it does not appear to have significantly helped Tsar Boris’s cause. Far less helpful to his cause was an illness that killed him before Tsarevich Dmitri even reached Moscow. So, faced with a magnetic young warrior prince leading a sizable army toward them, the noble classes at the Kremlin were suddenly also offered a relatively easy choice

• 19:49Dana Schwartz?

  over whether to acknowledge this Dmitri’s legitimacy or call him out as a sacrilegious poser. To loosely paraphrase their general response: “Hi, the long-lost Dmitri! Welcome back! We are your loyal supporters, and we always thought so!” "Dmitri" was crowned on July 21, 1605. Historians would later refer to him by names such as False Dmitri I, the Pretender Dmitri, and the "First False Dmitri." But for now, since he did undeniably attain the title of Tsar, I think we can simply call him Tsar Dmitri.

• 20:33Dana Schwartz?

  But after riding Russia's first civil war to the highest seat of power, did he actually have a plan for ruling? It's tricky to get a complete sense of Tsar Dmitri's short reign, since his successor ordered numerous court documents be destroyed, and he vigorously tried to discredit his predecessor through an intense propaganda campaign. Nonetheless, in spite of being frequently labeled a conniving impostor or evil runaway monk, perhaps the biggest shock of all is that, gasp, this Dmitri may have been a deserving

• 21:18Dana Schwartz?

  and effective monarch. Many of his contemporaries, including some avowed enemies, agreed that he possessed many outstanding qualities. He was apparently well-educated, adept at statecraft, and highly resourceful and wise. Tsar Dmitri was also an ambitious military leader who sought to greatly improve Russia's army. Unlike countless other rulers who eschewed the nitty-gritty of battle preparation in favor of lounging around and bragging about the size of their conquered territories, Dmitri enjoyed immense popularity with his soldiers because he actually trained with them.

• 22:03Dana Schwartz?

  Fun fact: He was also the first Russian Tsar to use the title of emperor. So, yeah, he was feeling himself a little, but still, many biographers point out how, rather than fully descending into egomania once he gained power, Tsar Dmitri actually apparently tried to use his platform to improve Russia's government.

• 22:28Dana Schwartz?

  For example, he ushered in more progressive laws, promoted plans to further education and scientific research, and even tried to cut down on bribery of public officials. That last one may sound basic to the point of obvious, but it was a decidedly rare stance for 17th-century Russia. Former czars were extremely reliant on their "private" police forces to terrorize enemies and extort peasants. So the idea of even proclaiming that someone would want to limit corruption, much less taking any relevant action, would have been likely laughable to them.

• 23:10Dana Schwartz?

  Dmitri was no old-school czar, and he went a step further. To try to ensure timely justice for average citizens, he allowed them to come and petition him in person twice a week. Impostor or not, you have to give the guy credit for his dedication. Dmitri's different ruling style started to rub a few at court the wrong way, however. He reportedly cut back on traditional ceremonies and dressed in informal "western" ways. He supposedly scorned certain entitled or uneducated high-born lords.

• 23:52Dana Schwartz?

  Dmitri also flummoxed many of his nobles by essentially being a bit too chummy. Many nobles were used to living in fear of provoking vitriol and retribution, and they were apparently confused as to why Dmitri sometimes seemed to "want to hear them talk" without first threatening them or commanding them to do so. Perhaps far more consequentially, Dmitri was unusually welcoming of foreign intellectuals, and he did not follow many of the same religious rites as former czars. Supposedly, he was reluctant to spend hours in church every day.

• 24:36Dana Schwartz?

  He ate food seen as unclean by the Russian Orthodox Church, and he was relatively tolerant of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.

• 24:47Dana Schwartz?

  The friction between Tsar Dmitri and some members of the aristocracy all came to a head with his planned marriage. Marina Menichek was a Polish Catholic princess, daughter of the commander who had led Dmitri’s forces during his rebellious military campaign. Many higher-ups in the Russian church eventually signed off on the marriage agreement, but there were fanatical holdouts who saw this as proof of a plan to secretly convert Russia to Catholicism. While there is essentially no convincing evidence that a “religious overhaul” was

• 25:28Dana Schwartz?

  ever Tsar Dmitri’s goal, his plan to marry Marina gave his usurpers the ammunition and opportunity they needed. His primary usurper would be Vasily Shvisky, who, if you’ll recall, was the power-hungry prince who happened to be the man who once oversaw the dodgy investigation into the death of Dmitri the Child back when he was eight years old. In an ironic turn of fate, all these years later, Vasily’s ascension to the throne

• 26:05Dana Schwartz?

  hinged on him covertly gaining enough allies to oversee a deadly coup of Dmitri the Grown Man. Despite some of the initial wariness regarding Tsar Dmitri marrying a Polish Catholic woman, Russians living in the capital were still clearly suckers for a big glamorous royal wedding. Marina was reportedly given a warm public welcome in Moscow on May 2, 1606, and over the course of two celebratory weeks there, there were grand processions, lavish festivities,

• 26:47Dana Schwartz?

  and, on the wedding day itself, huge crowds who gave the bride enthusiastic ovations. However, cross-cultural tensions all Also ratcheted up between certain resident Russian factions and incoming Polish wedding guests. Behind the scenes, Vasily sought to maximize this chaos by fanning the flames of xenophobia. While it is again difficult to separate the truth from rumors that he perpetuated, there were multiple reports of thefts, vandalism, and even the alleged murder of a Russian by a Polish visitor.

• 27:28Dana Schwartz?

  But rather than put his assassination plan into action as fights spilled onto the streets, when Dmitri and his security forces were on highest alert, Prince Vasily waited. Finally, cunningly, Vasily struck at a time when Dmitri was most vulnerable: the direct aftermath of all the wedding celebrations. By then, Dmitri was feeling confident that most of the discord and danger had passed. So, seemingly ever striving to be a thoughtful boss, he told half his guard to stand down to rest.

• 28:07Dana Schwartz?

  In the wee hours of May 17, 1606, Vasily snuck his amassed group of over 200 armed horsemen, merchants, clerics, and relatives into the Kremlin. At the same time, he played up the idea around Moscow that the Polish were attacking, so that angered crowds would storm the gates and inadvertently block reinforcements from coming to Tsar Dmitri's aid. Dmitri still had enough time to retreat through his chambers and try to leap out the window to safety, but we now know how that turned out.

• 28:48Dana Schwartz?

  Even for an athletic guy who loved military training exercises, he likely never practiced specific window escapes. After he fell and unsuccessfully tried to reason with his attackers, who clearly did not buy into his identity and overall hype, he was murdered.

• 29:10Dana Schwartz?

  Thus ended the life of an enigmatic figure, who had ruled for a little under a year, been married for a little over a week, had played a starring role in Russia’s first civil war, and ostensibly became the only czar to take over the throne thanks to popular uprisings and a military campaign. It’s worth taking a moment here to recognize just how influential this young man’s unprecedented reign potentially was, even though it was so brief. From czar Dmitri’s legal reforms to his incentives that improved many citizens’ livelihoods, to his military innovations,

• 29:55Dana Schwartz?

  czar Dmitri demonstrably backed up his purported goal of “governing as a fair-minded emperor, rather than a ruthless tyrant.” Historian Richard Helly went so far as to call czar Dmitri, “one of the few really enlightened rulers Russia has ever had.” Several scholars have even argued that czar Dmitri’s short but productive rule made him a clear forerunner to Peter the Great. The flipside of his legacy is that, while he was a potential role model for future czars, Dmitri also served as an excellent “proof of concept”

• 30:38Dana Schwartz?

  for subsequent royal pretenders. Following czar Dmitri’s assassination, Vasily immediately began fretting over his victim’s legendary popularity and “hold on Russia’s collective imagination.” He ordered that Dmitri’s body be dragged through the street in a horrific manner to show everyone that he was not some “divinely-selected monarch,” and that he was very clearly dead. But if there was one thing that Vasily had not prepared for in all of his scheming, it was having to deal with a czar who would not remain dead.

• 31:20Dana Schwartz?

  A czar whose ghost would insist on haunting him throughout the rest of his life. Really, this oversight was silly of Vasily. Having led the investigation of Dmitri's murder back when Dmitri was a child, Vasily knew as well as anyone that this wasn't the first time that Dmitri had "died" and returned from beyond the grave. The last time Dmitri had been murdered, hm, had accidentally slit his own throat as an unsupervised, knife-wielding, seizure-prone child, it took over a decade for rumors to start spreading

• 32:03Dana Schwartz?

  that Dmitri had miraculously survived. This time, though, whispers that Dmitri Ivanovich had somehow yet again cheated death would begin circulating within a matter of days.

• 32:20Dana Schwartz?

  That's the first part of the wild and duplicitous story of the false Dmitri's, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about another key slip-up that helped to seal czar Dmitri's fate.

• 32:40Dana Schwartz?

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• 34:04Dana Schwartz?

  to multiple members of my family that I will not be naming on this podcast in case they listen and want to be surprised. I just love a cashmere sweater. I live in Los Angeles, and so the second that I get to wear an actual sweater, it feels like Christmas to me. And when it comes to gifting, Quince has more than just clothing. Think leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Basically, something for literally everyone on your list. I, as a gift to myself, actually just bought a Quince duvet. So as the weather gets a little cooler, my bed will stay very cozy. So give the gift of quality this holiday season.

• 34:45Dana Schwartz?

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• 35:39Dana Schwartz?

  The intriguing duality of Tsar Dmitry was such that some of the same traits that won him favor, like his thoughtful approach to doling out justice, also directly contributed to his own downfall. Specifically, this was the case with an early assassination attempt on the Tsar’s life. The assassination attempt was easily sniffed out right after Tsar Dmitry took over in Moscow, and guess who was behind it? One Vasili Shusky. That’s right, good old Vasili tried to pull off a murderous plan with his two brothers, but this time, early on, he was caught and put on trial.

• 36:21Dana Schwartz?

  In what basically played out like a riveting “Time of Troubles” era episode of Law and Order, Tsar Dmitry himself acted as prosecutor. He reportedly wowed the crowd with his eloquent argument against Vasili’s “family history of traitorous behavior,” and Vasili was sentenced to death. Several days later, in Red Square however, Dmitry allegedly halted Vasili’s execution at the last second. In a dramatic reversal likely intended to foster unity, Dmitry mercifully exiled Vasili to a far-off town, where we know now Vasili spent time strategizing about how to return

• 37:06Dana Schwartz?

  for his next assassination attempt. So as strategic as his eventual successful usurping was, Vasili perhaps does not deserve too much credit, considering it was his second try. He bungled his first attempt and was still granted a second chance to go, perfect his plan, and return once he was ready to fully step into a “ahem, sorrying” role.

• 37:45Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hight, and Julia Maloney. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 38:26Speaker 03

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• 38:52Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.