Russia. A History

The ‘rebellious century’ was not limited to urban revolts: in 1670–1 peasants joined the greatest rebellion of the seventeenth century—a mass insurrection that began on the periphery under the leadership of Stepan (‘Stenka’) Razin. The rebellion sprang from the ranks of the Don Cossacks, who lived south of Muscovy’s ever-expanding border and had their own autonomous military order (military council as well as the election of the ataman as chief and other officials). Through the influx of fugitive peasants, bondsmen, and petty townsmen, the Cossacks had multiplied to the point where they had their own ‘proletariat’—some ten to twenty thousand Cossacks who could no longer support themselves by tilling the land. Their plight was aggravated by Moscow’s decision to reduce its paid ‘service Cossacks’ to a mere 1,000 persons. War with Poland in 1654–67 increased the flight of people to the untamed southern steppes (dikoe pole).

Although the government was not unhappy to see the strengthening of barriers against the Crimean Tatars, it promulgated a statute of limitations on fugitives and ordered the forcible return of 10,000 fugitives. Amidst this unrest, in 1667 Stepan Razin summoned Cossacks to join a traditional campaign of plunder and led some 2,000 Cossacks to the lower Volga, ultimately reaching the Persian coast in 1668–9. Over the next two years, however, the expedition turned into a popular rebellion against landowners and state authorities. With some 20,000 supporters, Razin prepared to strike at Moscow itself. Although he did establish a Cossack regime in Astrakhan and issued radical promises to divide all property equally, he had no coherent political programme and explicitly declared autocracy inviolable. In Simbirsk his forces attracted peasants, some non-Russian peoples, and petty townsmen and service people from the middle Volga. In the spring of 1671, however, Razin was betrayed by his own Cossack superiors: handed over to tsarist authorities, he was later executed in Moscow.

Cossacks and Borderland Politics

Cossacks, certainly those on the Dnieper, exerted a major influence on Alexis’s foreign policy. Indeed, together with the Moscow uprising, their actions made 1648 a watershed in Russian history: under the leadership of hetman Bohdan Khmelnitskii, they rebelled against their Polish-Lithuanian authorities. They had several main grievances: the oppression of Ukrainian peasants by Polish magnates and their Jewish stewards, discrimination against the Orthodox Church by Roman Catholicism, and a reduction in Cossack registration (i.e. the number of Cossacks in the paid service of the Polish king). Khmelnitskii hoped to achieve his goal—formation of a separate Cossack republic of nobles—with the aid of the Moscow tsar. The latter, while sympathetic to the idea of protecting his Orthodox brethren, was nevertheless exceedingly cautious: support for the Cossacks clearly meant war with Poland-Lithuania. Although Moscow yearned to settle old scores (dating back to its defeat in 1634 and above all the forfeiture of Smolensk), as yet it did not feel strong enough for such an undertaking. It was the Orthodox Church, particularly after Nikon’s elevation to the Patriarchate in mid-1652, that induced Moscow to support the Cossacks in February 1653.

For Moscow, of course, this co-operation was conceivable only if it entailed Cossack recognition of the tsar’s sovereignty, and Khmelnitskii duly complied, taking a unilateral vow of loyalty in Pereiaslavl on 8 January 1654. Russian and Soviet historians subsequently portrayed this oath as a merger of Ukraine with Muscovy, even a ‘reunification’ of Muscovy with Kiev Rus. By contrast, Ukrainian historiography depicts this oath as the beginning of an independent ‘hetman state’, which lasted until the time of Catherine the Great. In reality however, the oath merely signified nominal subordination and guaranteed the hetman and his followers a social and legal order with a considerable autonomy, even in foreign affairs (except for relations with Poland and the Ottomans). Although Alexis henceforth proclaimed himself ‘Autocrat of All Great and Little Rus’, incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Empire did not actually come until the eighteenth century.