Stepan Timofeevich Razin is the ataman of the Don Cossacks, who organized the largest popular uprising of the pre-Petrine period, which was called the Peasant War.
The future leader of the rebellious Cossacks was born in the village of Zimoveyskaya in 1630. Some sources point to another place of birth of Stepan - the city of Cherkassk. The father of the future ataman Timofey Razia was from the Voronezh region, but moved from there for unclear reasons to the banks of the Don.
The young man settled down among the free settlers and soon became a homely Cossack. Timofey was distinguished by his courage and bravery in military campaigns. From one campaign, a Cossack brought a captive Turkish woman into his house and married her. The family had three sons - Ivan, Stepan and Frol. The godfather of the middle brother was the ataman of the army, Kornil Yakovlev.
Time of Troubles
In 1649, with the “Conciliar Epistle” signed by the Tsar, serfdom was finally consolidated in Rus'. The document proclaimed the hereditary state of serfdom and allowed the search period for fugitives to be increased to 15 years. After the adoption of the law, uprisings and riots began to break out across the country, many peasants went on the run in search of free lands and settlements.
A time of troubles has arrived. Cossack settlements increasingly became a haven for “golytba”, poor or impoverished peasants who joined the wealthy Cossacks. By unspoken agreement with the “homely” Cossacks, detachments were created from the fugitives that were engaged in robbery and theft. The Turkic, Don, Yaik Cossacks increased at the expense of the “golutvenny” Cossacks, their military power grew.
Youth
In 1665, an event occurred that influenced the future fate of Stepan Razin. The elder brother Ivan, who took part in the Russian-Polish war, decided to voluntarily leave his positions and retire with the army to his homeland. According to custom, the free Cossacks were not obliged to obey the government. But the governor’s troops caught up with the Razins and, declaring them deserters, executed them on the spot. After the death of his brother, Stepan was inflamed with rage towards the Russian nobility and decided to go to war against Moscow in order to free Rus' from the boyars. The unstable position of the peasantry also became the reason for Razin's uprising.
From his youth, Stepan was distinguished by his daring and ingenuity. He never went ahead, but used diplomacy and cunning, so already at a young age he was part of important delegations from the Cossacks to Moscow and Astrakhan. With diplomatic tricks, Stepan could settle any failed case. Thus, the famous campaign “for zipuns,” which ended disastrously for the Razin detachment, could have led to the arrest and punishment of all its participants. But Stepan Timofeevich communicated so convincingly with the royal governor Lvov that he sent the entire army home, equipped with new weapons, and presented Stepan with an icon of the Virgin Mary.
Razin also showed himself as a peacemaker among the southern peoples. In Astrakhan, he mediated a dispute between the Nagaibak Tatars and Kalmyks and prevented bloodshed.
Insurrection
In March 1667, Stepan began to gather an army. With 2000 soldiers, the ataman set out on a campaign along the rivers flowing into the Volga to plunder the ships of merchants and boyars. Robbery was not perceived by the authorities as a rebellion, since theft was an integral part of the existence of the Cossacks. But Razin went beyond the usual robbery. In the village of Cherny Yar, the ataman carried out reprisals against the Streltsy troops, and then released all the exiles in custody. After which he went to Yaik. The rebel troops, by cunning, entered the fortress of the Ural Cossacks and subjugated the settlement.
Map of the uprising of Stepan Razin In 1669, the army, replenished with runaway peasants, led by Stepan Razin, went to the Caspian Sea, where it launched a series of attacks on the Persians. In a battle with the flotilla of Mamed Khan, the Russian ataman outwitted the eastern commander. Razin's ships imitated an escape from the Persian fleet, after which the Persian gave the order to unite 50 ships and surround the Cossack army. But Razin unexpectedly turned around and subjected the enemy’s main ship to heavy fire, after which it began to sink and pulled the entire fleet with it. So, with small forces, Stepan Razin emerged victorious from the battle at Pig Island. Realizing that after such a defeat the Safivids would gather a larger army against the Razins, the Cossacks set off through Astrakhan to the Don.
Peasants' War
The year 1670 began with the preparation of Stepan Razin’s army for a campaign against Moscow. The chieftain went up the Volga, capturing coastal villages and cities. To attract the local population to his side, Razin used “charming letters” - special letters that he distributed among the city people. The letters said that the oppression of the boyars could be thrown off if you joined the rebel army.
Not only the oppressed strata went over to the side of the Cossacks, but also Old Believers, artisans, Mari, Chuvash, Tatars, Mordvins, as well as Russian soldiers of government troops. After widespread desertion, the tsarist troops were forced to begin recruiting mercenaries from Poland and the Baltic states. But the Cossacks treated such warriors cruelly, subjecting all foreign prisoners of war to execution.
Stepan Razin spread a rumor that the missing Tsarevich Alexei Alekseevich, as well as an exile, was hiding in the Cossack camp. Thus, the ataman attracted more and more dissatisfied with the current government to his side. Over the course of a year, residents of Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan, Saratov, Samara, Alatyr, Saransk, and Kozmodemyansk went over to the side of the Razins. But in the battle near Simbirsk, the Cossack flotilla was defeated by the troops of Prince Yu. N. Baryatinsky, and Stepan Razin himself, after being wounded, was forced to retreat to the Don.
For six months, Stepan took refuge with his entourage in the town of Kagalnitsky, but the local wealthy Cossacks secretly decided to surrender the ataman to the government. The elders feared the wrath of the tsar, who could fall on the entire Russian Cossacks. In April 1671, after a short assault on the fortress, Stepan Razin was captured and taken to Moscow along with his close entourage.
Personal life
There is no information preserved in historical documents about the ataman’s private life, but all that is known is that Razin’s wife and his son Afanasy lived in the Kagalnitsky town. The boy followed in his father's footsteps and became a warrior. During a skirmish with the Azov Tatars, the young man was captured by the enemy, but soon returned to his homeland.
The legend about Stepan Razin mentions a Persian princess. It is assumed that the girl was captured by the Cossacks after the famous battle on the Caspian Sea. She became Razin’s second wife and even managed to give birth to children for the Cossack, but out of jealousy the ataman drowned her in the abyss of the Volga.
Death
At the beginning of the summer of 1671, guarded by the governors, the steward Grigory Kosagov and the clerk Andrei Bogdanov, Stepan and his brother Frol were taken to Moscow for trial. During the investigation, the Razins were subjected to severe torture, and 4 days later they were taken to execution, which took place on Bolotnaya Square. After the verdict was announced, Stepan Razin was quartered, but his brother could not stand what he saw and asked for mercy in exchange for secret information. After 5 years, having not found the stolen treasures promised by Frol, it was decided to execute the ataman’s younger brother.
After the death of the leader of the liberation movement, the war continued for another six months. The Cossacks were led by atamans Vasily Us and Fyodor Sheludyak. The new leaders lacked charisma and wisdom, so the uprising was suppressed. The people's struggle led to disappointing results: serfdom was tightened, the days of transition of peasants from their owners were abolished, and it was allowed to show extreme cruelty towards disobedient serfs.
Memory
The story of the uprising of Stepan Razin remained in the memory of the people for a long time. 15 folk songs are dedicated to the national hero, including “Because of the island on the river”, “There is a cliff on the Volga”, “Oh, it’s not evening”. The biography of Stenka Razin aroused creative interest among many writers and historians, such as A. A. Sokolov, V. A. Gilyarovsky,.
The plot about the exploits of the hero of the Peasant War was used to create the first Russian film in 1908. The film was called "Ponizovaya Volnitsa". The streets of St. Petersburg, Tver, Saratov, Yekaterinburg, Ulyanovsk and other settlements are named in honor of Razin.
The events of the 17th century formed the basis for operas and symphonic poems by Russian composers N. Ya. Afanasyev, A. K. Glazunov,.
Who is Stepan Razin?
To understand why Razin’s personality worried many, you need to find out who this outstanding person was. In popular memory and its exponent - folklore - Stenka Razin is a hero and rebel, a kind of “noble robber”. Without a doubt, Razin was a bright and strong personality. A good soldier and organizer. Most importantly, Razin was able to combine two images in himself: the leader of the people, a real hater of serfdom and the tsar, and, of course, Stenka Razin is a daring Cossack chieftain. A real Cossack with all Cossack customs and habits is no match for those who will later serve the serf-kings.
Stenka Razin - leader of the people and a real Cossack rebel
To understand who Stepan Razin is, you need to know what the Cossacks of the 17th century actually did. For food, in addition to the famous raids, the Cossacks were engaged in fishing, beekeeping and hunting. In addition, they kept livestock and grew vegetables in the garden. Interestingly, until the end of the 17th century, the Don Cossacks did not sow grain. They believed that serfdom would come with arable farming.
B. M. Kustodiev. "Stepan Razin"
The way of life of the Don had elements of archaic democracy: its own power with a military circle, elected atamans and Cossack elders. Moreover, all atamans and foremen were elected. All the most important issues were discussed at the general meeting of the Cossacks (“circle”, “rada”, “kolo”).
Raiding is the only way to survive
With the tightening of serfdom in the 17th century, a huge number of golutvenny Cossacks, that is, those who did not have their own land and home, accumulated on the Don. They lived in the upper reaches of the Don, while the “homely” Cossacks lived in the lower reaches. By the way, they surrendered Razin when he failed to take Simbirsk. It is noteworthy that the head of the “homely” Cossacks was Stepan Razin’s godfather Kornila Yakovlev.
The Razins destroyed everything from Derbent to Baku
The Golutven Cossacks, whose leader was Razin, had to go on raids or trips “for zipuns” to get food. We went to Turkey, Crimea, Persia. The same campaign was the campaign of 1667-1669 to Persia, which was led by Razin. In Soviet historiography it is called the first stage of the uprising, but it was not so. The campaign of 1667–1669 was an ordinary unpunished manifestation of Cossack freemen.
17th century engraving from a book by Jan Streis. The atrocities of the Cossacks of Stepan Razin in captured Astrakhan
On the way to Persia, the Razins plundered the royal and patriarchal caravans of ships on the Volga, and then committed a bloody massacre in the Yaitsky town, ravaged cities and villages from Derbent and Baku to Rasht. As a result, the Cossacks returned with rich booty, their plows were filled with expensive eastern goods. A distinctive feature of Razin’s campaign “for zipuns” is that he sent ambassadors to the Shah with a request to give the Cossacks land to settle. But most likely it was just a ruse. The Shah thought so too, so the ambassadors were hunted down with dogs.
Personal qualities of Stepan Razin
So, Razin was from a dashing, daring and truly free Cossack environment. It is not surprising that his image was romanticized and largely idealized. But what about Razin’s family? He was born around 1630. Perhaps Stepan's mother was a captured Turkish woman. Father Timofey, who had the nickname Razya, was from the “homely” Cossacks.
Stepan Timofeevich Razin
Stepan saw a lot: he visited Moscow three times as part of Cossack embassies, participated in negotiations with Moscow boyars and Kalmyk princes - taishas. Twice I went on pilgrimage to the Solovetsky Monastery. By the age of forty, when Razin led the Golytba, peasants and Cossacks, he was a man with military and diplomatic experience, and, of course, he was a man with inexhaustible energy.
According to Streis, Razin was called nothing more than dad
The Dutch sailing master Jan Streis, who met Razin in Astrakhan, described his appearance this way: “He was a tall and sedate man, with an arrogant, straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity. He looked forty years old, and it would have been completely impossible to distinguish him from the others if he had not stood out for the honor that was shown to him when, during a conversation, they knelt down and bowed their heads to the ground, calling him nothing more than dad.”
The story of the Persian princess
The song “Because of the island, to the core” is dedicated to how Stepan Razin drowned the Persian princess. The legend of Razin’s cruel act dates back to 1669, when Stenka Razin defeated the Shah’s fleet. The son of commander Mamed Khan Shaban-Debey and, as legend says, his sister, a real Persian beauty, were captured by the Cossacks. Razin allegedly made her his mistress, and then threw her into the Volga. Well, Shaban-Debey was indeed brought by the Razins to Astrakhan. The prisoner wrote letters addressed to the king asking him to be released home, but did not mention his sister.
Stenka Razin throws the Persian princess into the Volga. Engraving from the book of Streis, published in Amsterdam, 1681
There is also evidence from Jan Streis about this: “He had a Persian princess with him, whom he kidnapped along with her brother. He gave the young man to Mr. Prozorovsky, and forced the princess to become his mistress. Having become furious and drunk, he committed the following rash cruelty and, turning to the Volga, said: “You are beautiful, river, from you I received so much gold, silver and jewelry, you are the father and mother of my honor, glory, and ugh on me because I still haven't sacrificed anything for you. Okay, I don’t want to be any more ungrateful!” Following this, he grabbed the unfortunate princess by the neck with one hand, the legs with the other and threw her into the river. She wore robes woven with gold and silver, and she was adorned with pearls, diamonds and other precious stones, like a queen. She was a very beautiful and friendly girl, he liked her and was to his liking in everything. She also fell in love with him out of fear of his cruelty and in order to forget her grief, but still she had to die in such a terrible and unheard of way from this rabid beast.”
V. I. Surikov. "Stenka Razin"
Streis's words must be treated very carefully. In those years, travel books with detailed descriptions of places were popular in Europe, and authors often mixed facts with rumors. Strace was not a traveler; by the way, he was a hired worker. Nesho had a friend and future savior from Persian slavery, Ludwig Fabritius, a hired officer who served in Astrakhan. Fabricius describes a similar rumor, but without the romantic flair (“Persian maiden”, “Volga River”, “menacing and angry man”).
Floodplain of sturgeon in the Volga in the 17th century. Engravingfrom the book of Streis, published in Amsterdam, 1681
So, according to Ludwig Fabricius, in the fall of 1667, the Razins captured a noble and beautiful “Tatar maiden” with whom Stenka Razin shared a bed. And before sailing from the Yaitsky town, the “water god Ivan Gorinovich” allegedly appeared in a dream to Razin, who controls the Yaik River. God began to reproach the chieftain for not keeping his promise and not giving him the most valuable booty. Razin ordered the girl to put on her best outfits, and when the canoes floated out onto the river expanse of Yaik (not the Volga), he threw the beauty into the river with the words: “Accept this, my patron, Gorinovich, I have nothing better that I could bring you as a gift.” ..."
In 1908, the film “Stenka Razin” was made based on the plot of the song “Because of the Island to the Rod”. The song, by the way, is based on a poem by D. M. Sadovnikov:
Europe is watching Razin's uprising
The peasant war, led by Stenka Razin, attracted the attention of, if not all of Europe, then certainly the trade attention. The fate of the most important trade routes along the Volga depended on the outcome of the battle. They brought goods from Persia and Russian bread to Europe.
Stenka Razin. Engraving accompanying a Hamburg newspaper from 1670
Even before the uprising was over, entire books about the rebellion and its leader had appeared in England, the Netherlands and Germany. And, as a rule, it was fiction, but sometimes they provided valuable information. The main European evidence of the uprising of the Cossacks and peasants is the book “Three Journeys” by Jan Streis, quoted above.
They defended their dissertation on the Razin uprising in 1674
Many foreigners who were in Moscow during the execution of Razin witnessed the quartering of the main enemy of the state. The government of Alexei Mikhailovich was interested in the Europeans seeing everything. The Tsar and his entourage sought to assure Europe of the final victory over the rebels, although at that time the victorious end was still far away.
Title page of the dissertation by I. Yu. Marcius “Stenko Razin Donski Cossack traitor id est Stephanus Razin Donicus Cosacus perduellis” (Wittenberg, 1674)
In 1674, a dissertation on the uprising of Stenka Razin in the context of all Russian history was defended at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The work of Johann Justus Marcius was then republished many times in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even Alexander Pushkin was interested in her.
The myth of Stenka Razin
“So he, the first, lit freedom with a wide fire / In the heart of a slave”
Razin’s personality, despite the evidence and actions, is still mythologized, you can’t escape it. In Russian folk songs, the cruel chieftain is often mixed with another famous Cossack - Ermak Timofeevich, who captured Siberia.
Stepan Razin is being taken to execution
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was interested in the fate of Stepan Razin, wrote three songs stylized as folk songs. Here is one of them:
What is not a horse's top, not human rumor,
It is not the trumpeter's trumpet that is heard from the field,
And the weather whistles, hums,
It whistles, hums, and floods.
Calls me, Stenka Razin,
Take a walk along the blue sea:
“Well done, daring, you are a dashing robber,
You are a dashing robber, you are a riotous brawler,
Get on your fast boats,
Unfurl the linen sails,
Escape across the blue sea.
I'll bring you three boats:
On the first ship there is red gold,
On the second ship there is pure silver,
On the third ship there is a maiden soul."
S. A. Kirillov. "Stepan Razin"
In 1882 - 1888, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a famous writer of everyday life in Moscow, wrote a poignant poem “Stenka Razin”, ending, of course, with the execution of the legendary man:
The head on the platform sparkles,
Razin's body is chopped into pieces.
They cut down the captain behind him,
They carried them to the stake,
And in the crowd, among the noise and roar,
A woman can be heard crying in the distance.
Know her with your own eyes
The ataman searched among the people,
To know her, at that moment, as if with her lips,
He kissed those eyes with fire.
That's why he died happy,
What her gaze reminded him of
The distant Don, dear fields,
Mother Volga free space.
And he reminded me that I didn’t live in vain,
But even though I couldn’t do everything,
So freedom is a wide fire
In the slave's heart, he was the first to ignite.
Stenka Razin is the hero of the song, a violent robber who, in a fit of jealousy, drowned the Persian princess. That's all most people know about him. And all this is not true, a myth.
The real Stepan Timofeevich Razin, an outstanding commander, political figure, the “dear father” of all the humiliated and insulted, was executed either on Red Square or on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on June 16, 1671. He was quartered, his body was cut into pieces and displayed on high poles near the Moscow River. It hung there for at least five years.
"A sedate man with an arrogant face"
Either from hunger, or from oppression and lack of rights, Timofey Razia fled from near Voronezh to the free Don. Being a strong, energetic, courageous man, he soon became one of the “household”, that is, rich Cossacks. He married a Turkish woman he himself captured, who gave birth to three sons: Ivan, Stepan and Frol.
The appearance of the middle of the brothers was described by the Dutchman Jan Streis: “He was a tall and sedate man, strongly built, with an arrogant, straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity.” Many features of his appearance and character are contradictory: for example, there is evidence from the Swedish ambassador that Stepan Razin knew eight languages. On the other hand, according to legend, when he and Frol were tortured, Stepan joked: “I heard that only learned people are made priests, you and I are both unlearned, but we still waited for such an honor.”
Shuttle diplomat
By the age of 28, Stepan Razin became one of the most prominent Cossacks on the Don. Not only because he was the son of a homely Cossack and the godson of the military ataman himself, Kornila Yakovlev: before the qualities of a commander, diplomatic qualities manifest themselves in Stepan.
By 1658, he went to Moscow as part of the Don embassy. He fulfills the assigned task in an exemplary manner; in the Ambassadorial Order he is even noted as an intelligent and energetic person. Soon he reconciles the Kalmyks and Nagai Tatars in Astrakhan.
Later, during his campaigns, Stepan Timofeevich will repeatedly resort to cunning and diplomatic tricks. For example, at the end of a long and ruinous campaign for the country “for zipuns”, Razin will not only not be arrested as a criminal, but will be released with an army and part of the weapons to the Don: this is the result of negotiations between the Cossack ataman and the tsarist governor Lvov. Moreover, Lvov “accepted Stenka as his named son and, according to Russian custom, presented him with an image of the Virgin Mary in a beautiful gold setting.”
Fighter against bureaucracy and tyranny
A brilliant career awaited Stepan Razin if an event had not happened that radically changed his attitude towards life. During the war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in 1665, Stepan’s elder brother Ivan Razin decided to take his detachment home from the front, to the Don. After all, a Cossack is a free man, he can leave whenever he wants. The sovereign's commanders had a different opinion: they caught up with Ivan's detachment, arrested the freedom-loving Cossack and executed him as a deserter. The extrajudicial execution of his brother shocked Stepan.
Hatred for the aristocracy and sympathy for the poor, powerless people have finally taken root in him, and two years later he begins to prepare a large campaign “for zipuns,” that is, for booty, in order to feed the Cossack bastard, already within twenty years, since the introduction serfdom, flocking to the free Don.
The fight against the boyars and other oppressors would become Razin’s main slogan in his campaigns. And the main reason is that at the height of the Peasant War there will be up to two hundred thousand people under his banner.
Cunning commander
The leader of the Golytba turned out to be an inventive commander. Posing as merchants, the Razins took the Persian city of Farabat. For five days they traded previously looted goods, scouting out where the houses of the richest townspeople were located. And, having scouted, they robbed the rich.
Another time, by cunning, Razin defeated the Ural Cossacks. This time the Razinites pretended to be pilgrims. Entering the city, a detachment of forty people captured the gate and allowed the entire army to enter. The local chieftain was killed, and the Yaik Cossacks did not offer resistance to the Don Cossacks.
But the main one of Razin’s “smart” victories was in the battle of Pig Lake, in the Caspian Sea near Baku. The Persians sailed on fifty ships to the island where the Cossacks camp was set up. Seeing an enemy whose forces were several times greater than their own, the Razinites rushed to the plows and, ineptly controlling them, tried to sail away. The Persian naval commander Mamed Khan mistook the cunning maneuver for an escape and ordered the Persian ships to be linked together in order to catch Razin’s entire army, like in a net. Taking advantage of this, the Cossacks began to fire at the flagship ship with all their guns, blew it up, and when it pulled the neighboring ones to the bottom and panic arose among the Persians, they began to sink other ships one after another. As a result, only three ships remained from the Persian fleet.
Stenka Razin and the Persian princess
In the battle at Pig Lake, the Cossacks captured the son of Mamed Khan, the Persian prince Shabalda. According to legend, his sister was also captured, with whom Razin was passionately in love, who allegedly even gave birth to a son to the Don ataman, and whom Razin sacrificed to Mother Volga. However, there is no documentary evidence of the existence of the Persian princess in reality. In particular, the petition that Shabalda addressed, asking to be released, is known, but the prince did not say a word about his sister.
Lovely letters
In 1670, Stepan Razin began the main work of his life and one of the main events in the life of all of Europe: the Peasant War. Foreign newspapers never tired of writing about it; its progress was followed even in those countries with which Russia did not have close political and trade ties.
This war was no longer a campaign for booty: Razin called for a fight against the existing system, planned to go to Moscow with the goal of overthrowing, not the tsar, but the boyar power. At the same time, he hoped for the support of the Zaporozhye and Right Bank Cossacks, sent embassies to them, but did not achieve results: the Ukrainians were busy with their own political game.
Nevertheless, the war became nationwide. The poor saw in Stepan Razin an intercessor, a fighter for their rights, and called them their own father. The cities surrendered without a fight. This was facilitated by an active propaganda campaign conducted by the Don Ataman. Using the love for the king and piety inherent in the common people,
Razin spread a rumor that the Tsar’s heir, Alexei Alekseevich (in fact, deceased), and the disgraced Patriarch Nikon were following with his army.
The first two ships sailing along the Volga were covered with red and black cloth: the first was supposedly carrying the prince, and Nikon was on the second.
Razin’s “charming letters” were distributed throughout Rus'. “Let’s get to work, brothers! Now take revenge on the tyrants who have hitherto kept you in captivity worse than the Turks or the pagans. I came to give you all freedom and deliverance, you will be my brothers and children, and it will be as good for you as it is for me, just be courageous and remain faithful,” Razin wrote. His propaganda policy was so successful that the tsar even interrogated Nikon about his connection with the rebels.
Execution
On the eve of the Peasant War, Razin seized actual power on the Don, making an enemy in the person of his own godfather, Ataman Yakovlev. After the siege of Simbirsk, where Razin was defeated and seriously wounded, the homely Cossacks, led by Yakovlev, were able to arrest him, and then his younger brother Frol. In June, a detachment of 76 Cossacks brought the Razins to Moscow. On the approach to the capital, they were joined by a convoy of one hundred archers. The brothers were dressed in rags.
Stepan was tied to a pillory mounted on a cart, Frol was chained so that he would run next to him. The year turned out to be dry. At the height of the heat, the prisoners were solemnly paraded through the streets of the city. Then they were brutally tortured and quartered.
After Razin's death, legends began to form about him. Either he throws twenty-pound stones from a plow, then he defends Rus' together with Ilya Muromets, or else he voluntarily goes to prison to release the prisoners. “He’ll lie down for a little while, rest, get up... Give me some coal, he’ll say, write a boat on the wall with that coal, put convicts in that boat, splash it with water: the river will overflow from the island all the way to the Volga; Stenka and the fellows will sing songs - yes to the Volga!.. Well, remember what their name was!”
The uprising of Stepan Razin of 1670-1671 is shrouded in the most incredible stories to this day. To the point that learned historians indicate two dates for the start of the uprising. There is also no consensus about the place and time of birth of the leader of the “peasant-Cossack war,” just as there is no single definition of what it was.
A war of liberation or a spontaneous and extremely brutal revolt with the aim of overthrowing state power and satisfying the insane ambitions of the Cossack chieftain?
Difficult times
It must be said that the uprising broke out in difficult times for the Russian state, and this largely explains why so many different people went over to Razin’s side, right down to individual tsarist rifle regiments. The uprising itself took place in the last years of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, nicknamed the Quietest. Russia then took a long time to recover from the troubled times, while also constantly participating in conflicts on its western borders.
In 1649, the Council Code was adopted, which increased taxes and finally enslaved the peasants. The only way out for them was to escape to areas inhabited by Cossacks. And since “there is no extradition from the Don,” the peasants there became Cossacks. Just not ordinary ones, but “golutnye,” or the poorest layer of the Cossacks. They practically did not have land and adequate property, so this part of the Cossacks, in fact, lived by robbery.
By the way, not without the support of wealthy Cossacks, who secretly sponsored such expeditions, having their share of the robbery booty. This “Golut Cossacks” became the striking fist of Razin’s uprising. In the years immediately preceding the uprising, as if there weren't enough problems already, the country was hit by a pestilence epidemic and famine.
Cossacks against
But for Razin himself it all began in 1665, when during the conflict between the Cossacks and the tsarist army, governor Yuri Alekseevich Dolgorukov ordered the execution of Ivan Razin’s older brother. This has already become a personal motive for Stepan to oppose the tsarist power in the most brutal way.
And the beginning of the uprising can be considered the so-called “campaign for zipuns” of 1666-1669, when Razin and his “Golut Cossacks” blocked the Volga, at that time the most important trade artery not only of Russia, but also of a number of European countries that did their business in Persia. Razin’s people robbed everyone: Russian merchants, Persians, and Europeans, if they came across them.
This partly explains Europe’s close attention to Razin’s uprising, and the second reason is the truly unprecedented scale of military operations and territories that Razin’s Cossacks were able to occupy.
By the way, the first scientific work, a dissertation on the uprising of Stepan Razin, was defended already in 1674, three years after the end of the uprising, at the German University of Wittenberg, by Johann Justus Marcius. Which once again confirms the close attention of Europeans to this riot.
Letters to Muslims
In 1669, the Razins took the town of Kagalnitsky, which became a kind of “military headquarters”. There Razin began to actively gather people and announced a campaign against Moscow. In the spring of 1670, the military campaign began. At the same time, surprisingly, Razin actively used the “information technologies” of that time. He and his supporters wrote “charming” letters to cities and villages, telling them that they were going to establish Cossack freemen everywhere, abolish serfdom, “burn the rich and distribute to the poor.” Letters were written to a variety of social groups and even Muslims, to whom Razin promised “all kinds of zeal.”
And these letters were often very effective. For example, this is how Astrakhan submitted to Razin. And subsequently the archers also surrendered Tsaritsyn to him. With these same letters, the rebellious ataman attracted huge crowds of the peasant poor to his side. It is also characteristic that Razin surrounded himself and his army with the most incredible rumors. Thus, there was persistent and completely unreliable information that surrounded by the ataman were Patriarch Nikon (who was in exile at that time) and Tsarevich Alexei Alekseevich, who was already deceased at that time (died in January 1670).
The real goal
These rumors added political legitimacy to Razin. Well, and, in part, they solved the problem that he was quickly excommunicated from the Church, including for atrocities. By the way, the official declared goal of the ataman was not at all to overthrow the tsar, but to destroy the unfaithful tsar’s servants.
However, given the manner of actions of Razin and his supporters, the truth of these declared goals raises serious doubts. Rather, Razin, if it had been his will, would have destroyed the Tsar; his supporters acted too cruelly towards representatives of both the authorities and the Church. Indirect proof of this is the fact that when the ataman was executed, he bowed to three sides, pointedly ignoring the side of the Kremlin and the monarch.
Why did Razin win?
But, nevertheless, Razin’s riot was the largest uprising in Russia since the Time of Troubles. And in the early stages, the Cossacks won victories over the tsarist troops. The logical question is: why? The fact is that in terms of training, the tsar’s army of that time was not very superior to the free Cossacks, but the numerical superiority very soon appeared precisely on the side of the Razin Cossacks and poor peasants.
The mobilization of the service people who made up the sovereign’s army was a slow and unhurried affair. Whereas Razin had already managed to assemble some semblance of an army by 1671. And yet, in the end, Razin’s uprising was broken, although this took another six months after his execution in June 1671.
Razin, who was excommunicated from the Church, was not buried for a long time. The remains of his chopped body until about 1676 remained “hung up on tall trees” on Bolotnaya Square. And then they “mysteriously disappeared.” According to one version, Razin was secretly buried by representatives of the Muslim community of Moscow not far from their cemetery. However, this does not mean that the Muslims considered the ataman a fellow believer; rather, they remembered that there were many Muslims in the rebel troops, and the ataman himself promised the Muslims “special zeal.”
On March 10, a tragedy occurred in the family of the producer of the musical group “Tender May”. Andrei Alexandrovich's son Sasha went for a walk with his girlfriend. In the middle of the capital, the young man became ill. His girlfriend called an ambulance, but the doctors were powerless, the 16-year-old boy died of cardiac arrest.
The grief-stricken parents could not believe what had happened. Those around him were also perplexed. Sasha grew up as a healthy, strong guy, was fond of various sports - and then suddenly such a diagnosis!
Andrei Razin learned only now about the true reasons for the sudden death of his son.
“Doctors have finally established the cause of my son’s death. The cause of death was an acute respiratory viral infection (03/04/2017), which led to acute myocarditis (instant cardiac arrest),” the producer wrote and accompanied the post with a certificate from the clinic. The document stated that Sasha, after illness, could attend school starting on March 6. And on March 10 he was gone.
Alas, myocarditis is a complication from which no one is immune. Even a person who leads a completely healthy lifestyle, even if he is an Olympic athlete. This disease does not spare people of all ages. That’s why it’s so important not to strain yourself during a cold and take care of yourself.
“By neglecting bed rest, you may be laying the groundwork for inflammation of the heart muscle—myocarditis,” writes German cardiologist Johannes Hinrich von Borstel in his book “Knock, Knock, Heart.” - With myocarditis, pathogens attack not only the heart muscle itself, but also the coronary arteries. Because of this, our beating organ can weaken so much that irreversible heart failure develops with all the unpleasant consequences that arise. Alas, myocarditis is very difficult to diagnose, and it does not spare any person, regardless of age. If the patient does not comply with bed rest, the virus can quietly spread throughout the body, affect the heart, and then any significant physical activity will become an additional burden for him and the last straw... That is why it is so important to take care of yourself and treat colds at home - this is the best prevention of myocarditis.”
