The risings of 1650 in Pskov and Novgorod, in the north-west of Russia, had a specific context of their own. In i649 a Russian embassy to Stockholm agreed to pay compensation to the Swedes for fugitives who had settled in Muscovy from territory ceded to Sweden in the Peace of Stolbovo of 1617. Part of the payment was to be made in the form of rye, and the Pskov merchant Fedor Emel'ianov was entrusted by the Moscow government with the task of buying up this grain. As a result of Emel'ianov's transactions the price of rye soared, creating severe hardship and subsequent discontent in both Pskov and Novgorod. The unrest in Pskov came to a head when the Swedish agent Login Nummens arrived in the town on 28 February to collect the grain; the appearance in Novgorod on 15 March of the Danish envoy Evert Krabbe, who was suspected of being a Swedish agent, triggered a similar reaction. In both towns the homes of rich merchants were raided and the city governors were placed under house arrest. The Moscow authorities dispatched the military commander Prince I. N. Khovanskii against the rebellious cities. Novgorod surrendered on 13 April, but Pskov remained defiant and withstood a siege from Khovanskii's troops until a settlement was negotiated in August.[246]
The next major uprising in the capital, the 'copper riot' of 1662, occurred against the background of the protracted war with Poland (which had been under way since 1654), exacerbated by a conflict with Sweden in 1656-8. In its search for revenue to fund its military operations, the government resorted not only to increased taxation, but also to a currency reform which substituted copper coinage for silver. Counterfeit coins also came into circulation, adding to price inflation. Measures taken by the government against the forgers, many of whom occupied prominent positions in the chancelleries, did little to appease the citizens; rather, they simply fuelled suspicion of treason in high places. On 25 July the musketeer Kuz'ma Nagaev summoned the citizens to assemble on Red Square. A large contingent marched to the village of Kolomenskoe, on the outskirts of Moscow, where the tsar and his court were in residence. Alexis managed to persuade the protestors that their allegations would be fully investigated, and they returned to Moscow. In the capital, meanwhile, attacks had already begun on the homes of the wealthy merchants Vasilii Shorin and Semen Zadorin. The tsar sent Prince I. A. Khovanskii to calm the situation in the city centre, but his mission was unsuccessful and another crowd of insurgent Muscovites headed for Kolomenskoe. Alexis again tried to appease them with promises, but when words failed he used loyal troops to disperse and bloodily repress the rebels.[247]
The 'copper riot' lasted for only a single day, and was confined to Moscow; but the next major upheaval - the Razin revolt - was much more protracted and extensive.[248] After the legal enserfment of the peasantry in 1649 the government took active measures to prevent peasants from fleeing to the southern and eastern frontier regions, where they had traditionally found refuge with the cossack bands who frequented the basins of the rivers Don, Volga, Terek and Iaik. Pressure was exerted on the Don cossacks, in particular, to return peasant fugitives to the centre. The government cut its supplies of food, money and weaponry to the Don host. This policy resulted in considerable hardship for the poorer cossacks, and symptoms of their distress soon appeared. In 1666 a detachment of several hundred Don cossacks, led by Vasilii Us, rode northwards; from their encampment near Tula they sent a delegation to Moscow with a request that they be taken into state service. While they awaited the tsar's response, their ranks were swollen by runaway peasants and bondsmen from the Tula and Voronezh regions, and even from Moscow itself. In order to obtain provisions, they raided and looted landowners' estates. The government mustered regular troops against them, and the cossacks retreated to the Don, accompanied by significant numbers of their new recruits from the central districts. Many ofthem, including Vasilii Us himself, were to participate in the Razin revolt which broke out soon afterwards.
In 1667, on the conclusion of the prolonged war with Poland, the situation on the Don deteriorated further, as cossacks returned from fighting in the Ukraine, and there was a further influx of refugees. It was in this context that the ataman (chieftain) Stepan Timofeevich (Sten'ka) Razin organised a piratical expedition in which several hundred cossacks crossed to the Volga above Tsaritsyn and sailed downstream to the Caspian Sea, where their raids went north to Iaitsk at the mouth of the Iaik River, and then south into Persian waters. In the late summer of i669 Razin left the Caspian and returned to the Don by the Volga route, having been allowed to pass through Astrakhan' and Tsaritsyn unmolested by the tsarist authorities. He wintered on an island in the Don near Kagal'nik, where he attracted a host of impoverished and discontented followers.
In the spring of 1670 Razin decided on a much bolder enterprise than his primarily piratical expedition of 1667-9: an attack on the Russian heartland to eradicate the 'traitor-boyars' in Moscow. In May Razin and his cossacks crossed again from the Don to the Volga, and captured Tsaritsyn. But instead ofheading up the Volga towards Moscow, they decidedto consolidate their rear, and moved downriver to take Astrakhan'. The cossacks' capture of the fortress was facilitated by a popular uprising in the city. There ensued a massacre of the privileged elites of Astrakhan': the governor, Prince I. S. Prozorovskii, was thrown to his death from the top of a tower, and his two young sons were tortured. In July Razin again headed upstream, the mid-Volga towns of Saratov and Samara surrendering to him without resistance. As the cossacks moved up the Volga, they distributed 'seditious letters' in the surrounding villages, provoking a widespread peasant revolt. Estates were looted, manor houses burned and landowners murdered. Some of the non-Russian peoples of the Volga were also drawn into the rising, especially the Mordva, the Mari and the Chuvash. The rebels' triumphant advance was eventually arrested at Simbirsk. The town's garrison held out against the rebel siege for more than a month, before being relieved by fresh troops from Kazan', who defeated Razin at the beginning of October. At about the same time Sten'ka's brother Frol, who was sailing up the Don in a parallel enterprise, was halted south of Voronezh by government troops. By the winter of 1670-1, although the rebellion continued to spread in some regions, its back had been broken, and the government was on the offensive. Punitive expeditions were sent down the Volga and the Don, brutally repressing the revolt. Razin himself was captured on the Don by service cossacks in April 1671 and executed in Moscow in June.
A major uprising, often known as the 'Khovanshchina' (and depicted in Musorgskii's opera of that name) occurred in the capital in 1682.[249] Although the eponymous Khovanskii princes played an important part in the events, the main role in the revolt belonged to the strel'tsy, nearly 15,000 of whom were stationed in Moscow at the beginning of the year. The musketeers had complained about harsh treatment by their officers in the winter of 1681-2, but they failed to obtain satisfactory redress from the authorities. The situation was exacerbated by a dynastic crisis. On 27 April Tsar Fedor died childless, creating a problem for the succession to the throne. The choice lay between Ivan, Fedor's only surviving full brother (from their father's first marriage to Mariia Miloslavskaia), and Peter, the only son of Tsar Alexis's second wife, Natal'ia Naryshkina. Ivan was sixteen, but physically and mentally handicapped; Peter was intelligent and healthy, but not yet ten years old. On the day of Fedor's death, a hastily convened Assembly of the Land chose the younger brother as tsar; custom therefore dictated that his mother should be regent. This resolution of the succession issue was controversial, however, and the grievances of the strel'tsy against their commanders were soon extended to the Naryshkins and their supporters, who had - it was claimed - usurped the throne from Ivan, the rightful heir, in order to establish boyar rule during Peter's minority.
246
M. N. Tikhomirov,
247
V I. Buganov,
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VI. Buganov