Vasilii Perov, Pugachev Administering Justice to the Population
(1875. Oil on canvas. The History Museum, Moscow)
(1875. Oil on canvas. The History Museum, Moscow)
Religious traditionalists abhorred Peter I,
identifying him as the Antichrist. The several revolts of his reign all
included some elements of antagonism toward foreigners and foreign innovations
such as shaving and Western dress, along with more standard and substantive
complaints about the encroachment of central authority, high taxes, poor
conditions of service, and remuneration. The most serious were the musketeer
revolt of 1698, the Astrakhan revolt of 1705, and the rebellion led by the Don
Cossack Ivan Bulavin in 1707–1708.
The revolts began in outlying areas among
Cossack communities and also involved townspeople and non-Russians. Each
successive revolt, however, began further from the centre of Russia, and rebel
activities were increasingly restricted to outlying regions. In 1606–7 the
rebels led by Bolotnikov (among whom there were few peasants) reached Moscow,
but this was the last time the old capital was threatened by a revolt from
outside the city. There were peasant uprisings and mass murder of noble
landowners in the mid-Volga region, 400 miles east of Moscow, during final
stages of the Razin and Pugachev revolts in 1670–1 and 1773–4. The Don Cossack
rebellion led by Bulavin in 1707–8 sparked off some peasant revolts in
adjoining parts of southern Russia, but was mostly a Cossack affair. Old
Believers who lived in outlying regions figured among the rebels under Razin,
Bulavin and Pugachev. Ukrainian peasants also joined with Cossacks in massive
revolts in 1648 and 1768. All the revolts, especially that lead by Pugachev,
provoked considerable alarm and panic among the nobility and state authorities,
but all were put down by military force and mass repression. By the end of the
seventeenth century, and certainly after the suppression of the Pugachev
revolt, most peasants in central Russia recognised the futility of mass
violence.
PEASANT UPRISINGS
Also known as “Peasant wars”; peasant
uprisings in broad usage, were a number of rural-based rebellions from the
seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, a typical form of protest in Russia
against socioeconomic, religious, and cultural oppression and, occasionally,
against political power holders.
Peasant uprisings in the narrow sense
belong to the period of serfdom. Most of them followed a significant worsening
of the conditions of the peasantry. The four major rebellions of this period
were led by: 1) Ivan Bolotnikov, 1606–1607; 2) Stepan (“Stenka”) Razin,
1667–1671; 3) Kondrat Bulavin, 1707–1708; and 4) the largest of all, by
Yemelyan (“Yemelka”) Pugachev, 1773–1775. The leadership in each case was
largely symbolic, as an inherent feature of peasant wars was anarchic
spontaneity with little organization, subordination, and planning.
The geographic center of the uprisings was
in Southern Russia, between the Don and the Volga rivers and between the Black
and the Caspian seas. However, they spread over wider territories and, in the
case of the Bolotnikov rebellion, involved a battle in the vicinity of Moscow
(which the rebels lost, in December 1606). The key initiative was played by
Cossacks (Razin and Bulavin were Cossack atamans, and Pugachev a prominent
Cossack as well). The rank and file included serfs and free peasants, as well
as ethnic and religious minorities (e.g., Tatars in the Razin rebellion and
Bashkirs in the Pugachev rebellion; ethnically Russian Old Believers in the
Razin, Bulavin, and Pugachev rebellions). The Bolotnikov uprising, as part of
the Time of Troubles, also involved impoverished or discontented gentry, some
of whom, however, parted company with the rebels at a crucial stage. The
religious and cultural aspect of the uprisings reflected discontent with
top-down autocratic reforms along foreign patterns. Some also view the
uprisings as a cultural response of the Cossack frontier to excess regulation
by the imperial center.
Rebel demands are known from their own
documents (e.g., “Seductive Letters” issued by Razin) and government reports.
These demands involved land redistribution, the change of peasants’ status from
serfs to Cossacks, and often the elimination of the privileged classes. None of
the uprisings was directed against the institution of monarchy; some rebels
allied themselves with contenders to the throne (e.g., Bolotnikov with one of
the Pseudo- Dmitrys and then with another self-styled tsarevich, Peter), while
Bulavin and Pugachev claimed their own rights to the tsar’s scepter. On the
territories occupied by rebels, peasants were declared free of servitude and
debt, and Cossack-style self-rule was decreed. The uprisings were characterized
by mass casualties and brutality on both sides. All of them were violently
suppressed and their leaders executed; in the longer run, they may have spurred
policy changes and reform efforts emanating from the top.
The most famous Pugachev rebellion was
distinguished by the fact that its leader claimed to be Tsar Peter III (the
actual tsar was murdered a decade earlier, in 1762, in a coup that brought his
wife, Catherine II, to power). He issued his first manifesto in this capacity
in September 1773. Pugachev promised to give peasants “back” their freedom
“stolen” from them by the gentry, making them into Cossacks. The army of his
followers counted about twenty-five thousand people. This rebellion was the
first one of the manufacturing era, and was joined by serfs laboring at the
manufactures in the Urals. Its suppression was followed in the short run by the
strengthening and further spread of the institution of serfdom, as well as the
incorporation of Cossacks into the state bureaucracy. During the nineteenth
century, peasant uprisings never rose to the scale of wars. A major uprising in
1861 in the Kazan region reflected discontent with the conditions attached to
the emancipation of the serfs.
Peasant guerrilla culture in Russia (as in
some other countries) involved the operation of a parallel, or shadow community
beyond the reach of the state, abruptly revealing itself in mass action.
Guerrilla tactics followed by peasant rebels played a role in the
twentieth-century revolutions (both on the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik side),
due to the numerical and cultural influence of peasantry (or recent peasants
among urban workers and the intelligentsia). These tactics were also employed
in defense against foreign invasions (the 1812 Patriotic War and World War II).
Scholars emphasizing the continuity of
peasant resistance over centuries view the revolutions of 1905–1907 and 1917 as
a resumption of peasant wars, in a different socioeconomic environment. Some of
them consider the 1917–1933 period as “the Great Peasant War” suppressed by
Josef Stalin through artificially organized famine and collectivization of the
peasantry.
Peasant wars figured prominently in Russian
folklore and modern arts. Alexander Pushkin, in characterizing a “Russian
rebellion” as “senseless and merciless,” perpetuated the view of peasant wars
as destructive explosions, characterized by savage brutality on both sides,
after seemingly endless patience of the oppressed. Revolutionary democrats of
the Populist tradition cultivated a heroic image of peasant rebels, while
orthodox Marxists dismissed them as anarchists and enemies of the modernizing
state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Avrich, Paul (1976). Russian
Rebels, 1600–1800. New York: Norton. Graziosi, Andrea. (1997). The Great Soviet
Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. Longworth, P. (1973). “The Last Great Cossack Peasant
Rising.” Journal of European Studies 3. Pushkin, Alexander. (1987). Captain’s
Daughter. New York: Hyperion. Pushkin, Alexander. (2001). The History of
Pugachev. London: Phoenix. Raeff, Marc. (1970) “Pugachev’s Rebellion.” In
Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe, eds. Robert Forster and
Jack P. Greene. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. Wolf, Eric (1969). Peasant Wars
of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper & Row.
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