OTREPEV, GRIGORY

(c. 1580–1606), Russian monk who supposedly became the false Tsar Dmitry.

Yuri Bogdanovich Otrepev, the son of an infantry officer, became the monk Grigory as a teenager and eventually entered the prestigious Miracles Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin. There he became a deacon, and his intelligence and good handwriting soon brought him to the attention of Patriarch Job (head of the Russian Orthodox Church), who employed Grigory as a secretary.

In 1602 a group of monks, including Grigory and the future Tsar Dmitry, fled to Poland-Lithuania. Their departure greatly upset Tsar Boris Godunov and Patriarch Job. When one of the runaways identified himself as Dmitry of Uglich (the youngest son of Tsar Ivan IV who supposedly died as a child), the Godunov regime launched a propaganda campaign identifying "False Dmitry" as Grigory Otrepev. Stories were fabricated that Grigory had become a sorcerer and tool of Satan or that he had committed crimes while in the service of the Romanov family (opponents of Tsar Boris). Although no credible witnesses ever came forward to verify that Grigory and "False Dmitry" were the same person, Tsar Dmitry's enemies never tired of claiming that he was really Otrepev.

The sensational image of the evil, debauched, and bloodthirsty monk Grigory pretending to be Tsar Dmitry continues to haunt modern scholarship. Many historians have accepted at face value the most lurid propaganda manufactured by Dmitry's enemies, but careful study of the evidence reveals that it is impossible to merge the biographies of Grigory and "False Dmitry." Grigory Otrepev was last seen by an English merchant shortly after the assassination of Tsar Dmitry in 1606; then he disappeared.

See also: dmitry, false; godunov, boris fyodor ovich; time of troubles

bibliography

Dunning, Chester. (2001). Russia's First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Perrie, Maureen. (1995). Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Chester Dunning