The Nizhny Novgorod Militia, the Second People's (Nizhny Novgorod) Militia, the Second Zemstvo Militia — a militia that arose in September 1611 in Nizhny Novgorod to fight the Polish invaders who had seized Moscow.
Nature of the Phenomenon
It is generally accepted that the initiative to organize the Second People's Militia came from the artisan and merchant community of Nizhny Novgorod, an important economic and administrative center on the Middle Volga. At that time, the Nizhny Novgorod uyezd (district) was home to approximately 150,000 males, with up to 30,000 households in 600 settlements. The city of Nizhny Novgorod itself had around 3,500 male inhabitants, of whom roughly 2,000–2,500 were posad (townspeople) residents.
The surge of the national liberation movement in 1611 culminated in the formation of the First People's Militia, its campaigns, and the March uprising of Muscovites, led by the Zaraisky voivode (military governor) Prince Dmitry Mikhaylovich Pozharsky. The failure of the First Militia did not dampen this surge — on the contrary, it intensified it. Many of the first militiamen already had experience fighting the invaders. This experience was shared by the inhabitants of towns, uyezds, and volosts (rural districts) that had not submitted to the pretenders and invaders.
Victory
On 22 October 1612, Kitay-gorod was stormed and taken by Russian forces, but the Poles who had entrenched themselves in the Kremlin remained. Hunger there had intensified to such a degree that the boyar families and all civilian inhabitants were being expelled from the Kremlin, while the Poles themselves had been reduced to eating human flesh.
The historian Kazimierz Waliszewski wrote about the Poles and Lithuanians besieged by Pozharsky's forces:
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They used Greek manuscripts for cooking, having found a large and invaluable collection of them in the Kremlin archives. By boiling the parchment, they extracted from it a vegetable glue that deceived their agonizing hunger.
When these sources were exhausted, they dug up corpses, then began killing their prisoners, and as the fever-delirium intensified, they came to devour one another — this is a fact not open to the slightest doubt: the eyewitness Budzilo records incredibly horrifying details of the final days of the siege that he could not have invented… Budzilo names individuals and notes dates: a lieutenant and a haiduk each ate two of their own sons; another officer ate his own mother! The stronger preyed upon the weaker, and the healthy upon the sick. They quarreled over the dead, and amid the disputes bred by savage madness, the most extraordinary notions of justice arose. One soldier complained that men from another company had eaten his kinsman, whereas by rights he and his comrades should have fed on him. The accused invoked the regiment's claim to the corpse of a fellow soldier, and the colonel dared not put an end to the dispute, fearing that the losing party might, in revenge for the verdict, eat the judge. |
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Pozharsky offered the besieged free passage with their banners and weapons, but without the plundered treasures. They preferred to feed on their prisoners and one another rather than part with the money. Pozharsky stationed his regiment on the Stone Bridge at the Trinity Gate of the Kremlin to receive the boyar families and protect them from the Cossacks. On 26 October the Poles surrendered and left the Kremlin. Budzilo and his regiment fell into Pozharsky's camp, and all survived. They were later exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. Stroos and his regiment fell to Trubetskoy, and all the Poles were exterminated by the Cossacks. On 27 October a ceremonial entry into the Kremlin was appointed for the forces of Princes Pozharsky and Trubetskoy. When the troops had assembled at Lobnoye Mesto, the archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, Dionysius, performed a solemn thanksgiving service in honor of the militiamen's victory. Thereafter, to the ringing of bells, the victors entered the Kremlin with banners and gonfalons, accompanied by the people.
Thus was completed the liberation of Moscow and the Muscovite state from foreign invaders.
Daily Life and Pay of the Militia
"Russia was saved from the Time of Troubles by faith, wisdom, and courage."
An interview with the writer Shamshurin Valeriy Anatolevich.
Nizhny Novgorod writer Valery Shamshurin devoted several decades to studying the history of the Time of Troubles. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, his trilogy about the salvation of the Fatherland by the people's militia of Minin and Pozharsky was published: "Stone Salt," "The Tocsin over the Volga," and "The Altar of the Fatherland." We met with him in Nizhny Novgorod on the eve of the annual event "The Altar of the Fatherland," organized by Valery Anatolyevich: for several years now, enthusiasts — residents of the towns through which the people's militia passed four centuries ago — have been retracing the route of their great forebears.
— Valery Anatolyevich, we know from history that during the final period of the Time of Troubles the country stood on the brink of destruction: Moscow was occupied by the Poles, Russia was gripped by famine and devastation. And at the moment when nothing, it seemed, could save the country, Patriarch Hermogenes sent out an appeal from his prison cell in the Chudov Monastery, calling on the people to defend the faith. And the response to that appeal appeared in Nizhny Novgorod. Why here, of all places — what do you think?
— Well, I think, first of all, that everything comes to pass by God's will, and without it nothing is done. And secondly, it seems that conditions had developed such that Nizhny Novgorod was untouched by the Time of Troubles. I mean the treachery, the strife, and the brigandage that had spread across almost all of the western part of Russia and to the north. Just imagine: from the north came the Swedes, who were essentially laying claim to the fullness of power in Russia; the English were already devising their own intervention — their King James was contemplating it. From the west came the Poles, as they were then called — the lyakhi — and the Lithuanians. To the south lay Crimea, with the Crimean Tatars, who were also trying to push as close as possible to Moscow, to the capital.
As you can see, everywhere, all the regions were engulfed in this Time of Troubles. The only thing that remained unshaken — in a relative sense, of course, because when one part of the state is shaking, the tremors inevitably affect another — were the lands connected with the Volga Region. And Nizhny Novgorod found itself at the center of this relatively calm area.
Secondly — Minin and Pozharsky were not to be found everywhere! Such heroes were not everywhere! Both men were devout and without greed for silver; they were convinced non-possessors, both adhered to the ideas of Nil Sorsky. So it is no wonder that the merchant and cattle-dealer Kuzma Minin donated all his property to the militia. That was entirely in keeping with his character and his habits.
And besides, it was God's work, which he believed it was his duty to carry out. We know that the Venerable Sergius of Radonezh appeared to him several times. And in the last dream, he spoke to him very sternly, urging Minin to set about the task of organizing resistance to the enemy that had come to Rus. And Kuzma Minin — a devout man, respected by all in the city, an elected zemstvo elder (a very important position: for the posad people he was the foremost man) — resolved to issue an appeal. He was friends with Savva Yefimyev, the protopriest of the Transfiguration Cathedral, and had spoken with him more than once about the need to rouse the people, saying that it was no longer possible to endure — the state was in mortal danger: Moscow had been seized! Foreigners had entered the Kremlin! It was the holy of holies!
And Protopriest Savva ardently supported Minin. As the story goes, first came a sermon by Protopriest Savva in the Transfiguration Cathedral. The people gathered at the sound of the bell, which he rang in the middle of a weekday. And then Minin spoke.
They were supported by all: the posad people, the local Nizhny Novgorod authorities, and of course the Church. It was obvious that if they did not rise up, no one else would. And so the militia began to be formed in Nizhny Novgorod.
And from Nizhny Novgorod, appeals flew to other cities as well — to Vologda, further into the trans-Moscow lands, to the south and north, and even beyond the Urals — and they found a response. It was a great undertaking.
And there was one more great thing: Pozharsky, who had been wounded in Moscow during the fighting and was staying in his village of Ugreevo — a few dozen versts from Nizhny Novgorod — did not immediately, but eventually did respond to the Nizhny Novgorod residents' call. He agreed to lead the militia, to lead the host. The Nizhny Novgorod residents had placed their hopes in no other voivode, knowing that the others, even if they agreed, might betray them. Whereas Pozharsky was fully trusted.
And Minin knew that Pozharsky was a non-possessor.
This is something researchers fail to take into account when they wonder how Minin and Pozharsky came together. They were of one spirit, they were men of one orientation, they loved their land deeply, they knew their people because they lived among them. Pozharsky grew up in his estate, alongside the peasants. He knew all the burdens of the people — of the tiaglovye muzhiki (tax-bearing peasants) and the chernososhnye (state peasants). And he proved this in the final years of his life, when he began building churches. There is the mark of a true man — he gave all his money to building churches! And yet great estates had been granted to him for his victories, and he certainly had money.
As for Minin, he was a man of stern fiber and stern character, and he knew how to count every kopek, as any merchant does. And he borrowed. When he borrowed a very large sum from the Yaroslavl merchants — the militia was short of money for weapons — he was facing a debtor's prison for life. And he borrowed the money and said: when victory comes, we will repay you. Even then he was certain of victory!
And so one by one, drop by drop, from essentially the last remaining people in the state, the militia was assembled. And one had to have very great courage and valor, and resolve and deep faith, to assemble a militia. So none of this was accidental.
This was no freewheeling band like Stenka Razin's. It was a regular army, assembled in Yaroslavl, where it stood for three months in order to properly prepare the warriors for battle. For the Poles in those days, led by Hetman Chodkiewicz, had the best army in Europe. And the Polish cavalry was considered unbeatable at that time.
— It had already proved itself in the time of the First False Dmitry...
— Yes, and in fighting the Crimean Tatars, and in battles against our own forces led by Vasily Shuisky. They were very powerful troops.
— And our Second Militia — the one that, at Minin's appeal, received quite generous provisions and equipment — how did it assemble in Nizhny Novgorod? It couldn't have happened overnight, with Minin's appeal going out and everyone immediately turning out...
— No, of course not. Well, Minin's appeal was first of all a call to gather money for the host. And then, when Pozharsky agreed to become the military voivode and arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, things began to move: a military chancellery that sent these appeals in all directions. Of course it was not all at once, of course it was done cautiously, with people's counsel — there were many messengers sent from Nizhny Novgorod in every direction... Minin was well known throughout Rus. There had been the First Militia, as we know — Lyapunov's — and it had failed; people who had gone into that militia had been burned, had made mistakes. So here one needed to have great authority. Kuzma Minin was already well known in those times, before the militia was assembled — primarily among the merchant community. And beyond that, he was known throughout the Volga region, the Urals, and Moscow. Known for his integrity, his honesty, his practical business acumen. That is why the response was so wide. And besides, he had good assistants.
— Who were these people who made up the fifteen hundred warriors assembled in Novgorod? Were there that many?
— Yes, that was approximately the number. They were mainly serving nobility, boyars' sons — that is, fighting men — Cossacks, and then volunteers who came from among the same posad people. The first to arrive in Nizhny Novgorod were the Smolensk men, who had been left homeless because Smolensk had been taken by the Polish King Sigismund. They had settled in Arzamas, not far from Nizhny Novgorod, and when they heard Minin's appeal, they responded at once. First their envoys arrived, then everyone came — about a thousand of the finest warriors. These Smolensk men formed the core of the militia, and it was they who upheld all military discipline, military custom, and regulations. Right away an atmosphere of a fighting camp, a fighting detachment was created — one that could be assembled, mobile, and ready to enter battle at once.
— We cannot easily imagine today what those 15 rubles (plus another 5–10) that the militiamen received meant. What could one buy with that money, what did it go toward?
— A horse cost about a ruble and a half at the time. Fifteen rubles was, in essence, all the equipment: a chainmail coat, a helmet, weapons, fodder for the horse. It was a very large sum of money. You could build not just a house but even several houses with it. Such wages were not paid even under the tsar — it was above the tsar's pay. Minin borrowed from the Stroganov merchants, from the salt industrialists. And Kuzma consciously took on this burden so that the host would want for nothing. He understood that if a warrior was clothed and shod, had two horses (that is, a spare mount), and had everything he needed for life and for fighting, then that warrior could be relied upon. Minin was a practical, sensible man, a true manager; he understood that the host had to be equipped to the very highest standard, properly.
— It seems to me that many people today perceive the figures of Minin and Pozharsky — the saviors of the Fatherland, as in Martos's sculpture — as heroic and... faceless. But if you think about it: one of them was barely past 30! The other was over 50. They were completely different, from different social estates. What united them?
— Well, in 1612 Pozharsky was 33 years old. Yes — and Pozharsky was around 50, or just past 50. And I think that these men certainly did not look so monumental. They were ordinary people. And the point is not their outward appearance. They were very devout men, and faith helped them make decisions. They never began any undertaking without prayer. So: faith, wisdom, and the experience of life and of war — all that they possessed — is what shaped their characters.
I personally think they were very wise men, both of them; they understood their people, and understood that without faith and without a tsar the country would simply perish at that time. And their conviction and faith, I believe, was communicated to many.
They were constantly among the militia; they did not stand apart as commanders. Yes, there was a voivode's tent, but during the Yaroslavl standstill a traitor stabbed Pozharsky with a knife — the prince had calmly gone out to inspect the artillery without any bodyguard, and that was why the traitorous Cossack was able to attack him.
And Minin even more so — he was among the people at all times. That is to say, they were close to their men; they did not set themselves apart from the host. They ate the same food, went to the same churches, and did not disdain to pick up an axe if something needed to be built...
Remember how Dmitry Donskoy went onto the field of Kulikovo as a simple warrior? That image was very close to them. As were the holy men who had inspired them — Metropolitan Alexius, who was constantly at Dmitry Donskoy's side, and the Venerable Sergius of Radonezh — these were the men who inspired Minin and Pozharsky.
Records have survived from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra: the learned archimandrite Dionysius conversed with Minin for a very long time, and marveled at how experienced and seasoned Kuzma was. And how well he knew his business and the goal he was pursuing. And Dionysius was one of the most enlightened men of his time.
— Were there other people worthy of mention in the Nizhny Novgorod militia?
— I can recall the abbot of our Pechersky Monastery, Archimandrite Feodosy, who led the Nizhny Novgorod delegation to Pozharsky. There was also a man close to Minin, who after him became zemstvo elder — Markov. There were other people too... The merchants and agents of the Stroganovs, the Yaroslavl merchants, Voivode Alyabyev: by the time the militia had set out he had already died, but at the outset he helped Minin a great deal. And other voivodes helped greatly as well.
In his essays "On the Way to the Trinity," Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin noted that a special harmony had established itself within the militia — it was not simply a fighting force, but a fellowship. One in which everyone knew that without each other they would all be lost. That if one fell, another must fight for two. This unity of thought and spirit was created by the example of those people who brought together the common, humble folk with men of influence — princes, boyars, noblemen — and fused them all into one. That is precisely the "national unity" we all speak of today. For the salvation of Russia, for its good, so that Russia might not only be saved but afterward flourish. That is what we lack in our own time. Unity. Dostoyevsky spoke well of this: the mission of our Russian people is to unite humanity. And this was present in the militia.
And this, I believe, is the most important lesson we must take from what we know about the militia, and from what we think about it.
— Tell me, why did the militia not march directly on Moscow, but took the long way around? After all, there were cities ahead that had betrayed: Kostroma, Yaroslavl itself. From today's vantage point, it seems the difference was not great. They could have waited for the detachments that would come to help, right there in Nizhny, and then marched on Moscow. But they went around.
— This is connected to purely military reasons. The fact is that when the militia was gathering in Nizhny Novgorod, the enemy assumed they would certainly take the usual route — through Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod. Outposts had already been placed along that road; Zarutsky, who by that time had married Marina Mniszech, had blocked the routes with his Cossacks. He wanted to place Ivanka, the son of the Second False Dmitry and Marina Mniszech, on the throne.
Secondly, the Poles were also expecting an attack from that direction, because it was the shorter, easier route — a well-worn, well-traveled road. Moreover, the militia had not yet been fully assembled. Many forces were still to arrive from the North and the Urals, and marching on Yaroslavl was considerably easier. Once they were firmly established in Yaroslavl, a great many troops arrived over three months. Training and equipping of the army was carried out there. It was a more advantageous position. And from Yaroslavl there was a direct road to Moscow. Through Rostov the Great — familiar territory. There they of course stopped at the monastery of the Venerable Irinarchus. The Trinity Monastery lay ahead, and Dionysiy — along the final stretch of the journey he accompanied and blessed them. And do you remember the story that the wind blew against their chests the whole time, as the militia set out on its final march to Moscow? Dionysiy was greatly troubled — it was a bad omen when the wind hindered the militia. And then suddenly the wind shifted and began blowing at their backs, and the militia moved toward Moscow. And it won the battle against Khodkevich, and ultimately liberated the Kremlin and achieved victory.
Alternative Perspectives
The Soviet Historiographical Interpretation
The early Soviet interpretation of those events (1934) is noteworthy:
«As the democratic revolution grew, the upper strata of the Cossack host began to feel <…> uneasy. The Nizhny Novgorod merchant Minin began assembling a militia "to liberate Moscow from the Poles and the infidels" and — herein lay his brilliant invention — began promising those who joined the militia wages such as the royal guard had never received in former times. <…>
Small wonder that such a measure led, as contemporaries recount, to complete agreement between the landowners and merchants on the one hand, and the lesser servicemen and the more prosperous Cossacks on the other. The latter saw that serving the propertied classes was far more profitable than consorting with the popular masses and supporting the democratic revolution, which clearly benefited the poor and promised no one any wealth. <…> Little by little, the entire staff of the Tushino camp went over to the side of Minin and Pozharsky, appointed by the merchant class as commander-in-chief of the army he had raised.
The insurgent masses, left without leaders, could offer no resistance. <…> Before the merchant-landowner militia there now stood only one organized adversary — the Polish force in the Kremlin — but dealing with it, with the help of the Cossacks who had gone over to the propertied classes, proved not difficult. <…> Thus the Romanov dynasty came to power in Russia. The fruit of the betrayal of the revolutionary forces' rank and file by their superiors.»
The English as the Principal Beneficiaries of the Victory over the Time of Troubles
The revolution of Kuzma Minin and Prince Pozharsky was carried out with English money. The English were the principal beneficiaries of the victory over the Time of Troubles.
According to this paradigm, the sequence of events is as follows.
In 1605–1620, a desperate struggle for power and property rights unfolded on the territory of Muscovy between the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish factions (the former represented by the False Dmitrys, the latter by Vasily Shuisky and the Novgorod nobility).
In 1611, a third force appeared on the scene — the English.
One of the principal English footholds was Nizhny Novgorod itself, 15 km from which the English held salt deposits. The book "On the Origins of Wars and Troubles in Muscovy" (1997) states plainly: only Stroganov and the English king James I Stuart gave money to the militia of Minin and Pozharsky — 20,000 pounds. The rest of what would today be called the Russian "elite," including the Orthodox Church, was making contributions either to the Polish-Lithuanian or the Swedish faction, or simply burying its money in the ground. Incidentally, the authors cited above refer to the book "The Sovereigns of the House of Romanov," p. 56 (1913), which states that Pozharsky initially conducted negotiations for financial assistance with the Austrian Emperor Matthias Habsburg. But nothing came of it.
Furthermore: having initially assembled a small militia (500 Russian streltsy and 200 foreigners — mainly representatives of Baltic towns and countries, as well as Englishmen), Pozharsky marched not on Moscow, as might have been expected, but on Kazan. There the militia first killed the governor Belsky, a former member of the council under Fyodor Ioanovich, and then traveled up the Volga to Yaroslavl. It is presumed that in Kazan the militia seized the treasury and also recruited around 1,000 Tatars. In the spring of 1612 the English established a headquarters in Yaroslavl, where some 200 more Englishmen arrived. This contingent — most importantly — brought not only money but also cannons. The authors cited above state that these cannons are to this day preserved in a museum in Pereslavl-Zalessky. Thereafter, part of the Don Cossacks joined the militia for pay (while the Zaporozhian Cossacks remained loyal to the Pole Żółkiewski until the very end).
«In the liberation army outside Moscow, formed from two regiments, common-zemstvo and effectively state-wide organs of power were reconstituted — a central chancery administration. A coalition government was formed with the participation of the "commanders" and chancery officials of both camps. The First Militia was represented in it by: Prince D. T. Trubetskoy, the Duma clerk S. Z. Sydavny-Vasilyev, and the clerks I. Tretyakov, N. Novokshenov, and M. Pozdeev. Entering the Zemstvo government from the Nizhny Novgorod Militia were: Prince D. M. Pozharsky, the "elected man" K. Minin, Prince D. M. Cherkassky, V. I. Buturlin, I. I. Sheremetev, and I. V. Izmaylov.
In foreign policy, the new provisional Zemstvo government continued to orient itself toward Sweden, linking the resolution of the dynastic question to the candidacy of a Swedish prince. The militia leaders considered the prince's speediest possible arrival in Novgorod and his election as sovereign at a Zemsky Sobor to be indispensable conditions for the final acceptance of Karl Philip in Moscow. "And when the princeling Karl Philip Karlovich comes to Great Novgorod: then we, having taken counsel with all the realms of the Russian Tsardom, shall send to the princeling Karl Philip Karlusovich our ambassadors, with a full agreement (!) on matters of state and of the land."
What did the English receive for financing the Minin and Pozharsky operation? As N. I. Ulyanov writes (The Historical Experience of Russia. An Essay from the collection "Scripts," Ann Arbor, 1981), the Royal Council in London resolved that the lands along the Northern Dvina and the lower Volga — with the cities of Arkhangelsk, Kholmogory, Ustyug, Totma, Vologda, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and Astrakhan — were to pass under the protectorate of King James I.
As a result of the Romanovs' final victory in the Time of Troubles in 1619, the English received everything they wanted: their monopoly on Muscovy's foreign trade remained inviolable right up to Cromwell's English Revolution of 1648, when they, in the words of Alexei Mikhailovich, "killed their own lawful king Karlus to death."
In the Folklore of Nizhny Novgorod Residents
Song: "The Nizhny Novgorod Militia. 2012"
The Nizhny Novgorod Militia. 2012
I live on the Volga River and the Oka,
And since childhood I've dreamed of a great war.
Over the years I saved a serious stash
And "through the right channels" acquired a whole arsenal.
Chorus:
Cruisers, destroyers, and torpedo boats,
We'll torpedo them from the Cape Strelka, to bloody hell!
Planes and missiles strike like birds in flight,
Thirty-three anti-aircraft guns and a machine gun.
I spoke on the radio — a call to the nation,
Declared to the people a full mobilization.
Nizhny Novgorod fell in line as if on parade
On Lenin Square, on Gorky Square and where the enlistment office stood
Chorus
Volunteers came marching in from Kirov,
From Kazan, Ufa, and Vladimir.
The Capital surrenders to us without a fight —
For we are no barbarians, we are the Militia!
Chorus
Our goal — to save civilization,
To blow up all their globalization.
Rise up, Russia, against them all,
For Kuzma Minin, Prince Pozharsky, and the marines!
Chorus
User Ovechkin (Andrey Konchalin), NNRU