Boris became court chamberlain in 1676.
His son and successor, Theodore (Feodor), was a weak man of saintly character, very ill fitted to consolidate his father's work and maintain order among the ambitious, turbulent nobles; but he had the good fortune to have an energetic brother-in-law, with no pretensions to sanctity, called Boris Godunov, who was able, with the tsar's moral support, to keep his fellow-boyars in order.
Boris has often been called the creator of serfage in Russia, but in reality he merely accelerated a process which was the natural result of economic conditions.
Having thus gained the support of a large majority of the landed proprietors and the ecclesiastics, Boris Godunov increased his influence to such an extent that on the Boris death of Tsar Feodor without male issue in 1598 he Godunov, was elected his successor by a Great National Assembly.
In reality the younger son of Ivan the Terrible had been strangled before his brother's death - by orders, it was said, of Godunov - and the mysterious individual who was impersonating him was an impostor; but he was regarded as the rightful heir by a large section of the population, and immediately after Boris's death in 1605 he made his triumphal entry into Moscow.
