Michael I (Russian: Михаил Фёдорович Романов, romanized: Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov; 22 July [O.S. 12 July] 1596 – 23 July [O.S. 13 July] 1645) was Tsar of all Russia from 1613 after being elected by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 until his death in 1645. He was the first tsar of the House of Romanov, which succeeded the House of Rurik following the Time of Troubles.
He was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov (later known as Patriarch Filaret) and of Xenia Shestova. He was also a first cousin once removed of Feodor I, the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty, through his great-aunt Anastasia Romanovna, who was the mother of Feodor I and first wife of Ivan the Terrible.
His accession marked the end of the Time of Troubles. The Ingrian and Polish–Muscovite Wars were brought to an end in 1617 and 1618 respectively, with continued Russian independence confirmed at the expense of territorial losses in the west. Polish king Władysław IV Vasa finally agreed to formally give up his claim to the Russian throne with the Treaty of Polyanovka in 1634. To the east, Cossacks made unprecedented advances in the conquest of Siberia, and Russian explorers had reached the Pacific Ocean (Sea of Okhotsk) by the end of Michael's reign.
Michael's grandfather, Nikita, was brother to the first Russian Tsaritsa Anastasia and a central advisor to Ivan the Terrible. As a young boy, Michael and his mother had been exiled to Beloozero in 1600. This was a result of the recently elected Tsar Boris Godunov, in 1598, falsely accusing his father, Feodor, of treason. This may have been partly because Feodor had married Ksenia Shestova against Boris's wishes.
Michael was eventually chosen for the throne of Muscovy due to his father's martyr-like captivity in Polish detention, as the patriotic mood swept the Russian elite after the expulsion of the Poles during the Time of Troubles. Michael's youth also contributed to his election as he was seen as easily manipulated. On 21 February 1613, 700 delegates reached a consensus for Michael to be chosen as a compromise candidate as Tsar of Russia by the Zemsky Sobor of 1613.
The delegates of the council did not discover the young Tsar and his mother at the Ipatiev Monastery near Kostroma until 24 March. He had been chosen after several other options had been removed, including Polish prince Vladislav, Austrian Archduke Maximilian III and the Swedish prince Carl Philip. Initially, Martha protested, believing and stating that her son was too young and tender for so difficult an office, and in such a troublesome time.
According to Dunning, "The sixteen-year-old boy did not impress the boyars at all; he was poorly educated and not particularly intelligent. Nonetheless, those great lords consoled themselves with the knowledge that Trubetskoi would not become tsar and that Mikhail's ambitious and highly intelligent father, Filaret, was still in Polish captivity. One of the boyars allegedly said at the time, 'Let us have Misha Romanov for he is young and not yet wise; he will suit our purposes.' In fact, under the strong influence of reactionary boyars, even in preparation for his coronation, the deeply conservative new tsar revealed his true feelings about his subjects by snubbing many patriots simply because they were commoners." The tsar's family relationship with False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II, and Prince Władysław was covered up, even the two years Mikhail spent in the Polish-occupied Kremlin with his collaborator uncle Ivan Romanov.
Michael's election and accession to the throne form the basis of the Ivan Susanin legend, which Russian composer Mikhail Glinka dramatized in his opera A Life for the Tsar.
In so dilapidated a condition was the capital at this time that Michael had to wait for several weeks at the Troitsa monastery, 75 miles (121 km) off, before decent accommodation could be provided for him at Moscow. He was crowned on 21 July 1613, on his seventeenth birthday. The first task of the new tsar was to clear the land of the countries occupying it. Sweden and Poland were then dealt with respectively by the peace of Stolbovo (17 February 1617) and the Truce of Deulino (1 December 1618).
The most important result of the Truce of Deulino was the return from Polish captivity of the Tsar's father, Patriarch Filaret. Filaret became the effective ruler of Russia until his death in 1633.
In the Treaty of Stolbovo (1617) that ended the Ingrian War with Sweden, Russia gave up Ingria and parts of Karelia as well as claims on the duchies of Estonia and Livonia, but in return Sweden recognised Michael as the rightful ruler of Russia. The Truce of Deulino of 1618 (which ended the Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618) in which Polish forces had once entered Moscow in 1610 and declared Władysław Vasa as Tsar of Russia) saw the loss of Smolensk in exchange for the release of Michael's father Feodor from Polish captivity. A year later, Feodor became Patriarch Filaret of Moscow, or rather was confirmed in the position to which he was previously controversially named by the pretender False Dmitriy II. Filaret subsequently began to play a large role in the ruling of Russia, lasting until his death in 1633. Russia failed to recover Smolensk from the Poles in a later war from 1632 to 1634, but did achieve Władysław Vasa's renunciation of his long-standing claims to the Russian throne. Smolensk would officially remain part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until it was recovered with the conclusion of another war under Michael's son and successor Alexis in 1667.
Michael's reign saw some of the greatest territorial expansion in Russian history. During his reign, the conquest of Siberia continued, largely accomplished by the Cossacks and financed by the Stroganov merchant family. In 1638, Michael made Pyotr Golovin the first governor (voivode) of Lensky Ostrog, a Russian frontier fortress in what is now the Sakha Republic, the largest federal subject of Russia by area.
Tsar Michael suffered from a progressive leg injury (a consequence of a horse accident early in his life), which resulted in his not being able to walk towards the end of his life. He was a gentle and pious prince who gave little trouble to anyone and effaced himself behind his counsellors. Sometimes they were relatively honest and capable men like his father; sometimes they were corrupted and bigoted, like the Saltykov relatives of his mother.
Tsar Michael fell ill in April 1645, with scurvy, dropsy, and probably depression. His doctors prescribed purgatives which did not improve his condition; and after fainting in church on 12 July, he died on 23 July 1645.
He was married three times. He first became engaged to Maria Ivanovna Khlopova via a brideshow in 1616, where she changed her name to Anastasia. She quickly grew ill and after six weeks of marriage, was deported to Siberia. Michael maintained a strong affection towards her and vowed to never marry.
He was married off to Princess Maria Vladimirovna Dolgorukova in 1624, but she became ill, and died in early 1625, only four months after the marriage.
In 1626, he married Eudoxia Streshneva (1608–1645), who bore him 10 children, of whom four reached adulthood: the future Tsar Alexis and the Tsarevnas Irina, Anna, and Tatyana. Michael's failure to wed his eldest daughter, Irina, with Count Valdemar Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, a morganatic son of King Christian IV of Denmark, in consequence of the refusal of the latter to accept Orthodoxy, so deeply afflicted him as to contribute to bringing about his death.
The two government offices (prikazes) that were most important politically were the Posolsky Prikaz ("Foreign Office") and the Razryadny Prikaz (a Duma chancellery and a personnel department for both central and provincial administration including military command). Those offices could be pivotal in struggles between boyar factions, so they were traditionally headed not by boyars but by dyaki (professional clerks).