Current Moscow Time: 21:35:1322 May 2013
The world’s biggest country, in a magazine. Since 1956.
False Dmitry I
Author: Tamara Eidelman
Translator: Nora Favorov
Russian Life: Jul/Aug 2005
Department: Russian Calendar
Page: 18 ( 2) pages
Summary: A look at the tsar with an unlikely past and a short but eventful reign during the Time of Troubles, crowned 400 years ago.
On July 30, 1605, according to the Julian calendar (at the beginning of August, according to the Gregorian calendar — the one we use now), one of the most unusual rulers to ever ascend the Russian throne was crowned Tsar.
He was crowned Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich. The people — for whom barrels of medovukha [Russian mead or honey wine] had naturally been rolled out and for whom a celebratory feast had been laid — were happy that a true ruler had finally taken the throne, the son of Ivan the Terrible himself.
All the horrors and atrocities that had characterized the reign of Ivan had been forgotten during the 21 years since his death. Such is the people's collective memory that they did not recall the blood-drenched city of Novgorod, the strangled Metropolitan Filipp, the looted villages, the unsuccessful wars. But they did remember....