Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible”). His father died when he was three years old and his mother died when he was eight (might have been poisoned by Boyars). During six years Boyar advisers ruled the Empire. At age sixteen Ivan pushed his advisors aside - and he took the title Tsar. He then married Anastasia of the Romanov family. Ivan is famous for several different things;

Feodor I – the “Bellringer”: Said to be a very weak leader (he received his name from traveling around in the country and ring church bells… - he was extremely religious). He left the governing to his brother-in-law Boris Godunov who then became the real leader of Russia. When Ivan IV died Feodor had his little brother Dmitri and the boys mother (Ivan’s seventh wife) sent into exile in Uglitj (about 120 miles north of Moscow). Dmitri died there in 1591. Dmitri’s mother and some contemporary Boyars accused Boris of having him killed (he was found with a cut throat). Other Boyars spread the rumors that the boy was not dead which caused confusion Russia would experience four “false Dmitri’s” who all the claimed throne after Boris Godunov’s death.

Now started the Time of Troubles (Russian: Смутное время, Smutnoye Vremya) which would last to the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty in 1613.

Boris Godunov (1598-1605). He was a strong leader but when he took over the reign several of the Boyar families started to intrigue against him. Boris Godunov was still elected by the Great National Assembly. One of the reasons he received their support was his generous policies towards the Orthodox Church. It was during his government that the Russian Orthodox Church received its patriarchate, which placed it on an equal footing with the ancient Eastern churches and emancipated it from the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Boris continued Ivan IV’s policy against the Boyars (Boris Godunov had made his career in Ivan’s secret police so he was well educated in this kind of business…). He built a lot of forts along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders and he re-colonized Siberia. Boris Godunov also made a law that banned peasants to move between landowners. This led to the institution of serfdom even for the former peasants. He wanted Russia to modernize and benefit from western education so he imported foreign teachers on a great scale. He was also the first to send young Russians abroad to be educated. To further open up towards the west Boris Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from tolls. Famine and widespread starvation led to civil war 1604. During this war Boris died of a stroke after a period of illness.

False Dmitri. One of the leaders behind the “removing” of Feodor II. He claimed that he was Ivan IV’s youngest son (who had been murdered 1591 – see above). The reign of Dmitri was short. Before a year had passed a conspiracy was formed against him by an ambitious Rurikid prince (knyaz) called Vasily Shuisky.
The false Dmitri was murdered soon after his marriage in the Moscow Kremlin, together with many of his supporters – especially Poles. The reaction to the massacre in Poland was strong, but it was decided to postpone revenge against those events.

Vasili IV. The chief conspirator, Vasily Shuisky, seized power and was elected tsar by an assembly composed of his faction, but neither the Muscovite boyars, nor the Commonwealth magnates, nor the pillaging Cossacks, nor the German mercenaries were satisfied with the change. He only avoided deposition by the dominant boyars because they had no-one to put in his place.
Only the popularity of his heroic cousin, Prince Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, who led his armies, and soldiers from Sweden, whose assistance he purchased by the cession of Russian territory, kept him for a time on his unstable throne. After the combined Russo- Swedish forces were destroyed at the Battle of Klushino, Shuisky was forced to abdicate. False Dmitrii II wasn't able to gain the throne, however, because the Polish commander, hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski put forward a rival candidate in the person of Sigismund III’s son, Władysław.

Russia was now in a very critical condition. The throne was vacant; the great nobles (boyars) quarrelled among themselves; Orthodox Patriarch Hermogenes was imprisoned; Catholic Poles occupied the Moscow Kremlin and Smolensk; the Protestant Swedes occupied Novgorod; and enormous bands of brigands
swarmed everywhere.
The severity of the crisis produced a remedy, in the form of a patriotic rising of the nation under the leadership of Kuzma Minin, a Nizhny Novgorod merchant, and Prince Pozharsky. After battle for Moscow on October 22, the invaders retreated to the Kremlin, and on 24-27 October the nearby Polish army was forced to retreat. The garrison in the Kremlin surrendered to the triumphant Pozharsky. November 4 Russia officially celebrates the anniversary of this event as a Day of National Unity.
A Grand National Assembly elected Ivan's sixteen-year-old grandnephew Michail Romanov to be the new hereditary Tsar!

Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov - Michail I was the first Russian tsar of the house of Romanov, being the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov,. He was crowned on the 22nd of July 1613. The first task of the new tsar was to clear the land of the robbers infesting it. Sweden and Poland were then dealt with respectively by the peace of Stolbovo (February 17, 1617) and the Truce of Deulino (December 1, 1618). The most important result of the Truce of Deulino was the return from exile of the tsar's father, who henceforth took over the government till his death in October 1633, Michael occupying quite a subordinate position. Tsar Michael suffered from a progressing 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. Alexei I acceded to the throne at the age of sixteen after his father's death on 13 July 1645… He
Michael was the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty but he was also the grandnephew of Ivan the Terrible. This dynasty would last until the revolution in Russia 1917.