After Russia's conquest of Kazan in 1552, some northern and western Bashkirs swore loyalty to Russia (1557), but they regarded the relationship, in typical steppe fashion, as one of equals in which rebellion was always possible if their Russian partners crossed their interests. Conflict soon arose. Russian landlord and peasant settlement moved steadily eastwards into the more fertile Bashkir lands as Middle Volga iasak people—Tatars, Mordva, Chuvash, Cheremis—and runaway East Slavic peasants fled Russian control. Russia founded a fortress at Ufa in 1586, inviting continued colonization and forcibly transferring exiles and servitors. The state forcibly moved in serfs to staff new mines and metallurgical works in the Urals. Groups of Bashkirs revolted regularly: against Stroganov towns and fortresses on the upper Kama in the 1570s and 1580s and against the fortification of Ufa in 1587. Bashkirs joined Middle Volga peoples in mass uprisings against Russia in the Time of Troubles (1605-13). Russia responded brutally and decisively, steadily tightening control in the seventeenth century.
Bashkirs also had reason to cooperate with Russia, since they themselves were harassed from the steppe by Nogais and their steppe successors the Kalmyks. To protect against such attacks in the 1650s Russia constructed the Trans-Kama fortress line south of the Kama River and paralleling it from the Volga (at Belyi Iar south of Simbirsk) east to Menzelinsk in the Urals. Russia recruited local Bashkirs to defend the line; these, and other Bashkir elites who rendered service to Russia, came to be called the "loyal Bashkirs," splintering such unity that Bashkiria might have had and providing valuable military support to Russia.
Other ways in which Russia tried to co-opt the Bashkirs involved social privileges as an ethnic group and to their elites. Russia allowed Bashkirs to maintain lands and privileges: as iasak payers, Bashkirs did not pay the direct taxation due from Russians or participate in conscription; none were enserfed. As landholders, Bashkirs subjugated immigrant Middle Volga iasak people, creating a group of dependent laborers called teptiars. Nevertheless, revolts broke out. In 1662, when Russia raised the iasak as part of measures to increase income across the empire (coinage devaluation in the center sparked massive "copper riots"), Bashkirs revolted, motivated also by illegal Russian seizures of their grazing lands and by the corruption of Russian officials. When the Bashkirs turned to the Crimean Tatars for help, the Kalmyks, caught in between Crimea and Bashkiria, tightened their 1655 alliance with Russia and helped to put down the Bashkirs. Oppression against Islam was often one of many factors of revolt, as in 1681-3 when Bashkirs rose up against a short-lived Christianization campaign and in 1705-11 when oppressive new taxes were applied to mosques and mullahs (more than seventy-five Orthodox churches were burned in this uprising). Russia responded to Bashkir revolts with harsh reprisals and then conciliatory gestures such as lowering the iasak and forbidding Russians to settle Bashkir land. Russia's goal was to establish equilibrium in Bashkiria, slowly drawing them into subjection so that Russia could deal with the persistent raids from unsubjugated steppe peoples, the Nogais, Kalmyks, and eventually Kazakhs.
NOGAIS, KALMYKS
Russia encountered Nogais and Kalmyks in the steppe of the lower Volga and forged with them a complex interdependency. As a rule, they remained autonomous of formal Russian administration. But Russia established a sort of middle ground interaction with them, even occasionally drawing them in to cooperate with Russia's goals. The seventeenth century was a waiting game for Russia: unable to pacify or control the steppe, it pursued compromise.
As Michael Khodarkovsky has described, in interactions in Eurasia—in Siberia, with Kalmyks, Nogais, and other steppe nomads—Russia followed Chinggisid customs. Assuming the role ofuniversal, superior ruler, it observed rituals ofmutual respect and exchange. Russia signed treaties (shert') recognizing each other as fraternal allies; both sides exchanged annual gifts (which Russia regarded as tribute). The parties also participated in amanat, or hostage taking, in which one side sent sons of elites in return for gifts perceived as tribute. The receiving side was obliged to treat the hostages well. In the fourteenth century, for example, princes of Moscow and Tver' sent their sons to the Qipchaq capital at Sarai, where they learned Mongol ways. Evidencing its upper hand on steppe borderlands, Moscow took scions of tribal elites as hostages. As its bureaucratic and military power improved in these regions (generally in the eighteenth century), Russia abandoned subterfuges in favor of more straightforward taxation, cessation of gift giving, and assertions of the natives' subordinate status. Russia shrewdly turned the hostage practice to their advantage by educating these native young men in Russian culture and service.
Both sides regarded these alliances pragmatically, even cynically, and they were further weakened by the fluidity of nomadic confederations. Muscovy, in turn, manipulated or misinterpreted the alliances: Russian translators inserted language in treaties that described nomads' relationships to Moscow as subjugation, even while providing copies to the nomads that maintained the language of fraternal alliance. Nomads saw annual gifts as evidence of reciprocity, while the Russian side interpreted them as tribute and tax. Nevertheless, this pragmatic approach bought
Russia the stability it required on the borderlands through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the early sixteenth century the Turkic-speaking, Islamic Nogais moved into the lower Volga lands of the Great Horde who had been decimated by Crimean Tatars; they were not a cohesively organized federation. Renowned as horse breeders, the Nogais brought huge herds to sell as far as Moscow in the summer season. In the wake of the Kazan conquest, caught between Muscovy and the Crimean Tatars, the Nogais swore subservience to Moscow in 1557, but the relationship was always volatile. When Kalmyks moved into the left bank of the Volga in the 1630s, most Nogais moved east of the Sea of Azov to place themselves under the Crimean Tatars. There they remained a thorn in Russia's side as it later approached the North Caucasus steppe.
From the 1630s the Kalmyks were the force that Muscovy had to deal with on the lower Volga and Caspian steppe. These were Mongolian tribes who had been pushed westward in Central Asian steppe infighting. Lamaist Buddhists, the Kalmyks founded monasteries and became an outpost of eastern Buddhism. In 1655 they allied with the Muscovite tsar and participated in Russian military campaigns in return for gifts of food, weapons, and the like. But they did not relinquish their raiding economy and borders with the Kalmyks remained turbulent in this century.
One expedient that Russia relied upon to protect against Kalmyk attack were the Iaik and Don Cossacks. Unlike the small bands ofCossacks scattered across Siberia, Cossacks on the great rivers of the western end of the Silk Road (the Dnieper, Don, Iaik) could be populous and powerful, often attracting peasant settlers around them. Cossack communities are cited on the lower Iaik up to southern Bashkiria since at least 1591, when some joined in a Russian campaign. Iaik Cossacks were a typical multi-ethnic and multi-confessional band, with many Muslims and even a few Buddhist Kalmyks. A register of the early eighteenth century shows that they hailed from Don, Zaporozhian, and northern Caucasus Cossack communities, from Crimean, Nogai, and Astrakhan Tatars and included Bashkirs, Chuvash, Mordva, Kalmyks, Swedes, and Poles. By the late seventeenth century Old Believers had joined the group and the Host became identified with their conservative beliefs. The Iaik Cossacks played a middle ground role with Russia, guarding the border against the Kalmyks, but maintaining great military and political autonomy. In addition to raiding, they lived off fishing the Iaik and benefited from grain, weapons, and other subventions from the Russians.