Troubles, Time

Troubles, Time of

(1606–13) Period of political crisis in Russia. After the death of Fyodor I and the end of the Rurik dynasty (1598), the boyars opposed the rule of Boris Godunov and after his death placed the nobleman Vasily Shuysky (1552–1612) on the throne in 1606. Shuysky's rule was weakened by revolts, challenges by the second False Dmitry, and the invasion of Russia by the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa in 1609–10. The Russians finally rallied against the Polish invaders and succeeded in ousting them from their control of Moscow in 1612. A new representative assembly met in 1613 and elected Michael Romanov as tsar, commencing the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty.