BASIL IV., SHUISKY (d. 1612), tsar of Muscovy, was during the reigns of Theodore I. and Boris Godunov, one of the leading boyars of Muscovy. It was he who, in obedience to the secret orders of Tsar Boris, went to Uglich to enquire into the cause of the death of Demetrius, the infant son of Ivan the Terrible, who had been murdered there. Shuisky reported that he had died in a fit of apoplexy, by falling on a knife. Nevertheless, after the death of Boris and the murder of his young son and successor, Theodore, Shuisky first acknowledged the pretender, the "false Demetrius" and then secretly denounced him. This came to Demetrius' ears who pardoned Shuisky in the hope of winning him over. But in May 1606 Shuisky procured Demetrius' death, and had himself proclaimed tsar. His authority was never generally acknowledged, and even in Moscow his authority was small. He was deposed on July 19 1610. Only the popularity of his heroic cousin, Prince Michael Skopin-Shuisky, who led his armies and fought his battles for him, and soldiers from Sweden, whose assistance he purchased by a disgraceful cession of Russian territory, kept him for a time on his unstable throne. In 1610 he was deposed, made a monk, and finally carried off as a trophy by the Polish grand hetman, Stan islaus Zolkievski. He died at Warsaw in 1612.
See R. Nisbet Bain, Slavonic Europe, ch. viii. (Cambridge, 1907).