Stenka Razin - Open Rebellion

Open Rebellion

In 1670 Razin, while ostensibly on his way to report himself at the Cossack headquarters on the Don, openly rebelled against the government, captured Cherkassk, and Tsaritsyn. After capturing Tsaritsyn, Razin sailed up the Volga with his army of almost 7000 men. The men traveled toward Cherny Yar, a government stronghold between Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan. Razin and his men swiftly took Cherny Yar when the Cherny Yar streltsy rose up against their officers and joined the Cossack cause in June 1670. On June 24 he reached the city of Astrakhan. Astrakhan, Moscow’s wealthy “window on the East,” occupied a strategically important location at the mouth of the Volga River on the shore of the Caspian Sea. Razin plundered the city despite its location on a strongly fortified island and the stone walls and brass cannons that surrounded the central citadel. The local streltsy’s rebellion allowed Razin to gain access to the city.

After massacring all who opposed him (including two Princes Prozorovsky) and giving the rich bazaars of the city over to pillage, he converted Astrakhan into a Cossack republic, dividing the population into thousands, hundreds and tens, with their proper officers, all of whom were appointed by a veche or general assembly, whose first act was to proclaim Stepan Timofeyevich their gosudar (sovereign).

After a three-week carnival of blood and debauchery Razin quit Astrakhan with two hundred barges full of troops. His aim was to establish the Cossack republic along the whole length of the Volga as a preliminary step towards advancing against Moscow. Saratov and Samara were captured, but Simbirsk defied all efforts, and after two bloody encounters close at hand on the banks of the Sviyaga River (October 1 and 4), Razin was ultimately routed by the army of Yuri Baryatinsky and fled down the Volga, leaving the bulk of his followers to be extirpated by the victors.

But the rebellion was by no means over. The emissaries of Razin, armed with inflammatory proclamations, had stirred up the inhabitants of the modern governments of Nizhny Novgorod, Tambov and Penza, and penetrated even so far as Moscow and Novgorod. It was not difficult to stir the oppressed population to revolt by promising deliverance from their yoke. Razin proclaimed that his object was to root out the boyars and all officials, to level all ranks and dignities, and establish Cossackdom, with its corollary of absolute equality, throughout Muscovy.

Even at the beginning of 1671 the issue of the struggle was doubtful. Eight battles had been fought before the insurrection showed signs of weakening, and it continued for six months after Razin had received his quietus. At Simbirsk his prestige had been shattered. Even his own settlements at Saratov and Samara refused to open their gates to him, and the Don Cossacks, hearing that the patriarch of Moscow had anathematized Stenka, also declared against him. The tsar sent troops to suppress the revolt. As Paul Avrich notes in Russian Rebels: 1600-1800, “The brutality of the repressions by far exceeded the atrocities committed by the insurgents.” The tsar’s troops mutilated the rebels’ bodies and displayed them in public to serve as a warning to potential dissenters.

In 1671 he and his brother Frol Razin were captured at Kaganlyk, his last fortress, and carried to Moscow, where, after tortures, Stepan was quartered alive in the Red Square at the Lobnoye Mesto. However, the rebellion did not end with Razin’s death. The rebels in Astrakhan held out until November 26, 1671, when Prince Ivan Miloslavsky restored government control.