The Tradition of Pretenders in Russia: Why Was it Impossible in Ukraine?
The most mysterious pages of political history are perhaps those describing the phenomenon of pretenders (impostors), i.e., people who claimed they were tsars, emperors, or other kind of rulers. And we often have to rack our brains over who those pretenders were in reality and why they enjoyed such a success. In sixth century BC Persia there was False Bardia, the false son of Cyrus, “the king of kings.” The history of Rome knows the colorful figure of false Nero. There also were false Louis XIVs, false Pope Leos, and even a false Joan of Arc.
The phenomenon of pretenders has an interesting aspect which has been up to now of little interest for researchers, for some reason. Why did some nations have pretenders — and very many at that — and others did not? For example, it is common knowledge that pretenders were quite common in Russia, as if its tsars had been under a terrible curse. At the same time, another Slavic nation, the Ukrainians, had none. Nor were there any pretenders in Poland or, say, Ancient Greece. It should be noted that even in Russia itself too, but only in the times of princes, there were no pretenders recorded: they came out on the political arena only after the first anointment of a Muscovite tsar.
Thus the roots of this tradition should be sought in the special features of national character or collective mentality. What was in common between the Persians of the times of King Cyrus and post- Augustus Romans? What was in common was autocracy and almost mystical adoration of the official rulers. The latter were crowned with a charisma of sanctity. In Muscovy, too, the supreme ruler, tsar, was considered almost a holy man who stood above secular law: his only judge was God who had authorized the Orthodox tsar to keep in eternal thrall not only the flesh but also the immortal soul of his subjects. In fact, the tsar was looked upon as a living icon or even the reincarnation of Christ himself.
The beginning of such a perception of a political leader must perhaps date to the times of Ivan III who entered into a marriage with the Byzantine Princess Sophia Palaeologus, a pure-blood royal descendent. The formation of a Tsar’s divine charisma was completed under Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. This must be for this reason that the epoch of pretenders begins after his death. To the subjects of the Muscovite Tsardom, the deaths of the righteous Tsar Ivan and then of his son Fiodor were a heavy psychological blow. And when Ivan the Terrible’s son Dmitry, the last of the Riurik dynasty, was killed perfidiously, this seemed to have shaken the world and shattered he eternal laws of existence.
Indeed, state harmony instantly disappeared, and the hierarchic pyramid collapsed. Owing to highly wise perfidy, Boris Godunov ascended the Moscow throne. The slave tsar created a precedent, having encroached on the sacred seat. This strained the sociopolitical mentality. Meanwhile, the news about the mysterious death in Uglich of the underage heir to the Riurik dynasty triggered an avalanche of legends and incredible rumors. People would tell each other, without being heard by servants of the autocrat, that in reality the Tsarevich was reliably sheltered from Tsar Boris. This version was successfully taken advantage of by a pretender known by historians as Grigory Otrepiev. Having proclaimed himself Dmitry Ivanovich, he mustered quite a large army and enlisted Polish support, which could have subjugated Muscovy to Poland. Russia sank into its Time of Troubles. Although False Dmitry did manage to occupy the coveted throne for a time, this scheme finally crumbled and the pretender tsar found a tragic end. And after Mikhail Fiodorovich was elected tsar “of all the Russias” in 1613, the Time of Troubles were over and the political order began to normalize.
Nothing of the sort happened, and could hardly happen, for example, in the neighboring Rzeczpospolita which at that time included the Ukrainian Cossack people. There, the collective mentality had been formed on an entirely different basis, and the idea of the unquestionable authority of a crowned head chosen by God was not accepted. The Polish king was elected by the General Sejm represented (in theory) by all social strata. Moreover, after being elected, the king was to take the oath of allegiance to his subjects. It is according to this pattern that the Ukrainian Hetman was vested with supreme power. Thus there was no question of any pretenders. This was impossible in principle. What would have happened if, for example, somebody had proclaimed himself the “resurrected” son of the Polish King Wladyslaw IV after his sudden death, when Warsaw received news of the Cossacks’ uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky? Such an idea would have gone flat in Rzeczpospolita.
Thus, the emergence of a certain pretender, like Khmelnychenko, the so-called son of Hetman Tymofiy who tragically died during the siege of Iasi in Moldavia, would have caused no ripples. To have a kind of charisma in Ukraine or in Poland, one had to show personal merits. It will be recalled that even Yuri Khmelnytsky, the great Hetman’s second son, enjoyed no popularity among the Cossacks by force of his personal traits of character. In the consciousness of Ukrainians, his father’s charisma did not embrace him. This was forgotten, incidentally, by both Moscow Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and Turkish Sultan Muhammad IV, who unsuccessfully used the son of the famous Cossack leader to their political ends: both monarchs failed to take into account the different mentality of Ukrainians.
Different interpretation of the role of a crowned head in popular consciousness was also manifested during the Pereyaslav Rada or, to be more exact, when the Moscow envoy Buturlin and Bohdan Khmelnytsky, accompanied by the senior Cossack figures, went to church to seal the Rada’s decision with a common oath. But, unexpectedly, they reached an impasse. The Hetman hoped that, under the Polish and Ukrainian tradition, both sides would swear allegiance: the Ukrainians to tsar, and Buturlin, on behalf of the tsar, to the Ukrainians. But the Moscow envoy refused point-blank on the grounds that, unlike the Polish king or the Cossack Hetman, the tsar was an autocrat and never swore allegiance to his subjects. Irritated by the refusal, Khmelnytsky proudly left the church and threatened to cancel the agreement altogether. However, this did not affect Buturlin — in fact he even did not understand the point. At last, fearful of losing Moscow’s support because of a seemingly simple formality, the Hetman agreed to swear allegiance to the Tsar.
This fact vividly shows how zealously the Russians cared about the charisma of their autocrat, even if a change of dynasties brought about the problem of the divine right of the new tsar: for the Romanovs did not belong to the noble tribe of Riurik whose origins Ivan IV’s servile historians referred back to Prusus, the brother of Augustus. The newly-elected Tsar’s opponents would grumble of him: “He is on the throne, but he doesn’t deserve it.” And this, of course, was fertile ground for the growth of pretenders.
So in September 1649, a Tsarist intelligence agent, who was accompanying Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem, learned in Iasi that a certain unknown person, portraying himself as a son of the late Tsar Vasily Shuisky, was hiding in a dugout near the Hungarian Mountains. He sealed his letters with red wax, which had been the sole privilege of tsars since Ivan the Terrible.
The pretender’s true name, Timofei Akundinov, was identified rather quickly. He was the man of a broad outlook and turned out to be an exceptionally gifted poet. The mysterious and elusive false Shuisky would meet the crown- bearers in Moldova, Turkey, Venice, Austria, Rome, Ukraine, Poland, Denmark, and Holstein. Hetman Khmelnytsky also maintained some relations with the pretender; the former even conceived some plans about him in the diplomatic game with Moscow, trying to draw Moscow into the war against the Poles.
A new constellation of pretenders came out in the next, eighteenth, century. This time, the impostors tried to pass off as doubles of the dead tsars. Even Peter I had such a posthumous double. But the role of the famous tsar, who turned Russia around, turned out to be too difficult. Thus pretenders opted for the figure of Peter III who had left a barely visible trace. The most well-known of these was, of course, Yemelian Pugachov.
What is more, the divine charisma of Russian tsars had an impact not only on Russia. It also made the required impression on another Slav Orthodox state — Montenegro. Of all pretenders, a certain Stefan made by far the most breath-taking career on this. Having learned that the people of a remote Balkan country needed a king, he immediately arrived there and declared himself Peter III. When rumors about a tsar from fraternal Russia gained wide currency, false Peter III was visited by a delegation of the most influential Montenegrins who invited him to reign in their country. In January 1768, at a public rally in the town of Cetinje, Stefan proclaimed himself Russian Tsar Peter III and ruled Montenegro for six years. He turned out to be a good ruler: he stopped internecine fighting and successfully repelled Turkish attacks. But a bribed Greek servant of his killed the “tsar” and took his head to the Turkish pasha. Later on, there also were other pretenders, but they never achieved any serious success. Yet, the mystical charisma of a Russian tsar has reached even our days.
From this angle, of rather a great interest is the re-burial of the remains of Russia’s last tsar Nicholas II. However, as is known, the Orthodox Church, particularly Patriarch Aleksiy II, stayed away from the sumptuous funeral, fearing that the remains belonged to a pretender. For Russia cannot imagine itself without a tsar.
Mystical icon-worshipping may also lie behind an almost literal adoration of Boris Yeltsin in Russia and behind the fact that Russian subjects pin all their hopes on his personality in an almost mystical way. Hence the practically unlimited dictatorial powers of now ex-president of Russia and the quaint, all-national, way of adopting the Constitution which guarantees these rights. And on the last day of 1999 the world saw that Russia was not prepared to replace the old pattern of throne-succession with a democratic one, based on the expression of people’s will. Now the March 26 presidential elections are most likely to look like a most commonplace farce.
In Ukraine, as is known, the attitude toward the supreme political personality is traditionally a bit different. This is why it is very doubtful that a charismatic person will ever mount the summit of the state hierarchic pyramid: here the traditions and mentality are different.
