Boris Feodorovich Godunov (; Russian: Бори́с Фёдорович Годуно́в, pronounced [bɐˈrʲis ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪdʑ ɡədʊˈnof]; 12 August [O.S. 2 August] 1552 – 23 April [O.S. 13 April] 1605) was the de facto regent of Russia from 1585 to 1598 and then tsar from 1598 to 1605 following the death of Feodor I, the last of the Rurik dynasty. After the end of Feodor's reign, Russia descended into the Time of Troubles.
Boris was the son of Feodor Ivanovich Godunov "Krivoy" (lit. 'the one-eyed', died c. 1568–1570) and his wife Stepanida Ivanovna. His older brother Vasily died young and without issue. There is a version according to which the Godunovs were descended from the Tatar murza Chet, who came to Russia in 1330 during the reign of Ivan Kalita. This version was included in later editions of the 16th-century Gosudarev Rodoslovets, but historians have raised doubts about this version of Godunov's ancestry due to various chronological and genealogical issues.
Godunov's career began at the court of Ivan the Terrible. He is mentioned in 1570 for taking part in the Serpeisk campaign as an archer of the guard. The following year he became an oprichnik – a member of Ivan's personal guard and secret police. In 1570–1571, Godunov strengthened his position at court by his marriage to Maria Grigorievna Skuratova-Belskaya, the daughter of Malyuta Skuratov-Belskiy, head of the oprichniki.
In 1580, Ivan chose Boris Godunov's sister Irina Godunova (1557–1603) to be the wife of his second son and eventual heir, Feodor Ivanovich (1557–1598). On this occasion, Godunov was promoted to the rank of boyar. On 15 November 1581, Godunov was present when Ivan murdered his own eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan. Godunov tried to intervene but received blows from the tsar's sceptre. The elder Ivan immediately repented, and Godunov rushed to get help for the tsarevich, who died four days later.
Three years later, on his deathbed, Ivan IV appointed a council whose members consisted of Godunov, Feodor Nikitich Romanov, Vasili Shuiski and others to guide his son and successor of Russia Feodor I, who was feeble in both mind and body: "he took refuge from the dangers of the palace in devotion to religion; and though his people called him a saint, they recognized the fact that he lacked the iron to govern men."
At the time of his death, Ivan also had a three-year-old son, Dmitry Ivanovich (1581–1591), from his seventh and last marriage. This son (and his mother's family) had no claim to the throne because the Eastern Orthodox Church only recognized Ivan's first three marriages as legitimate. Shortly after Ivan's death, the council had both Dmitri and his mother, Maria Nagaya, moved to Uglich, some 120 miles north of Moscow. Dmitri died there in 1591 at the age of ten under suspicious circumstances.
When Dmitri's death was announced by the ringing of the church bell, the population of Uglich rose up in order to protest against the suspected assassination, which it believed was commissioned by Boris Godunov. Troops swiftly quelled the rebellion. Godunov ordered the removal of the Uglich bell's clapper (the bell's "tongue"). He had the offending bell ringer flogged in public and exiled to Siberia along with the townspeople who had not been executed.
An official commission which was headed by Vasili Shuiski was sent to determine the cause of the boy's death. The official verdict was that the boy had cut his throat during an epileptic seizure. Ivan's widow claimed that her son had been murdered by Godunov's agents. Godunov's guilt was never established and shortly thereafter, Dmitri's mother was forced to take the veil. Dmitry Ivanovich was laid to rest and promptly, though temporarily, forgotten.
At the coronation of Feodor Ivanovich as Tsar Feodor I on 31 May 1584, Boris received honors and riches as a member of the regency council, in which he held the second place during the life of the Tsar's uncle Nikita Romanovich. When Nikita died in 1586, Boris had no serious rival for the regency.
A group of other boyars and Dionysius II, Metropolitan of Moscow, conspired to break Boris's power by divorcing the Tsar from Godunov's childless sister. The attempt proved unsuccessful, and the conspirators were banished or sent to monasteries. After that, Godunov remained supreme in Russia and he corresponded with foreign princes as their equal.
His policy was generally pacific and always prudent. In 1595, he recovered from Sweden some towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Turkic raid upon Moscow, for which he received the title of Konyushy, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of Boyar. He supported an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea and gave the Khan subsidies in his war against the sultan.
Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from duties. He built towns and fortresses along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Russia to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. These included Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, as well as other lesser towns. He colonized Siberia with scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk.
During his rule, the Russian Orthodox Church received its patriarchate, placing it on an equal footing with the ancient Eastern churches and freeing it from the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This pleased the Tsar, as Feodor took a great interest in church affairs.
In Godunov's most important domestic reform, a 1597 decree forbade peasants from transferring from the land of one landowner to another (which they had been freely able to do each year around Saint George's Day in November), thus binding them to the soil. This ordinance aimed to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most oppressive form. (See also Serfdom in Russia.)
Upon the death of the childless tsar Feodor on 7 January 1598, self-preservation as much as ambition constrained Boris to seize the throne. Had he not done so, the mildest treatment he could have hoped for would have been lifelong seclusion in a monastery. His election was proposed by Patriarch Job of Moscow, who believed that Boris was the only man who would be able to cope with the difficulties of the situation. Boris, however, would only accept the throne from a Zemsky Sobor, or national assembly, which met on February 17 and unanimously elected him on the 21st. On September 1, he was solemnly crowned tsar.
During the first years of his reign, he was both popular and prosperous, and ruled well. He recognized the need for Russia to catch up with the intellectual progress of the West, and he did his best to bring about educational and social reforms. He was the first tsar to import foreign teachers on a large scale, the first tsar to send young Russians to be educated abroad, and the first tsar to allow Lutheran churches to be built in Russia. After the Russo–Swedish War (1590–1595), he attempted to gain access to the Baltic Sea and he also attempted to obtain Livonia by diplomatic means. He cultivated friendly relations with the Scandinavians in order to intermarry with foreign royal houses and thereby increase the dignity of his own dynasty.
As he did during his regency, Boris received support from various groupings of boyars, including those of the top princely aristocracy. He took advantage of the jostling for precedence among the aristocracy to advance his interests. The result was that a fairly broad circle of boyars came to court and were favored by the tsar, but they did not form a coherent party, and few of them were skilled politicians. According to historian Andrei Pavlov, this was the source of the internal weakness in the Godunovs' government which became apparent after the tsar's death. The main threat to Boris's rule came from the Romanov clan, which was still displeased with being passed over for the tsardom in the election. Boris moved against them in November 1600: the eldest Romanov brother, Feodor Nikitich, was tonsured and exiled to a monastery in the north, and his brothers and followers were exiled or imprisoned in various places, where many of them died. Ruslan Skrynnikov suggests that the repression of the Romanovs was prompted by Boris's illness; he eliminated his main rivals to secure the succession of his son after his death.