After Fyodor Ivanovich’s death, Boris Godunov (1598–1605) sought to maintain an active foreign policy. However, with the extinction of the Moscow branch of the Rurik dynasty, Russia gradually descended into turmoil, which intensified sharply after Godunov’s death in 1605. The crisis was fueled by the intervention of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in support of the pretender, False Dmitry I. Vasily Shuisky (1606–1610) attempted to rely on an alliance with Sweden in his struggle against False Dmitry II and the Polish–Lithuanian invasion, but this effort ended in failure.
During these tragic years, Poland and Sweden—despite their mutual enmity—occupied large portions of Russia’s western and northwestern territories. A Polish garrison took Moscow, and the country’s international prestige collapsed catastrophically. Only after the expulsion of Polish–Lithuanian forces from Moscow in 1612 and the enthronement of the new Romanov dynasty in 1613 did Russia resume an independent foreign policy.
The end of the Time of Troubles was consolidated internationally by the Treaty of Stolbovo with Sweden (1617) and the Deulino Truce with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1618). The turmoil had cost Russia dearly: it lost significant territories in the northwest (the Ingria region) and in the west (Smolensk). Their recovery became the central goal of the foreign policy pursued by the first Romanov tsars in the seventeenth century.
