The 17th century began with three years of severe frosts and heavy snows that led to crop failures and massive starvation. Hungry bands roamed the countryside, and rumors spread that all this suffering was a punishment from God because a bad tsar sat on the throne: Boris, it was said, had killed the boy Dmitrii to assure himself the crown. All segments of the population—boyars, serfs, villagers, townspeople—were disaffected, and the discontent needed only a banner.

The Poles, hoping for territory, backed the claim of Grigorii Otrep'ev (ca. 1582–1606) that he was Dmitrii of Uglich, and they succeeded in taking Moscow; Boris died of a heart attack, and his family perished in an orgy of mob violence. Otrep'ev—the first False Dmitrii—was deposed after a little less than a year, and Vasily IV (Vasily Shuiskii, the Boyar Tsar, r. 1606–10), followed him on the throne. His rule was challenged by a host of other false Dmitriis, while a peasant named Ivan Isaevich Bolotnikov (d. 1608) led a revolt of the lower classes that inflamed the country. The Muscovite Tsardom was in chaos, and Russia’s neighbors, Sweden and Poland, were eager to seize adjoining territories and perhaps even partition the country out of existence.