ABSTRACT
The most notable 'popular' uprisings in early modern Russia were led by soldiers, such as the Cossacks and musketeers, the minor nobility and military slaves. Although there were many other uprisings, the majority of the popular verse and folk songs collected by anthropologists and historians since the nineteenth century deal with the revolts led by Sten'ka Razin (1670-1671) and, to a lesser degree, Emel'jan Pugachev (1773-1775). This chapter focuses on these two uprisings, both of which proved influential in popular oral culture. It also focuses on Pugachev's revolt, but the memory of the events cannot be understood without taking into account the ways they echoed Razin's earlier uprising. The chapter begins with some comments about the idiosyncrasies of Cossacks as social actors in this period, and explores the importance of folklore about uprisings to Soviet historiography and its interest in the Cossack revolts as examples of 'class conflict' and 'peasant wars'.
