ABSTRACT
The rebellion led by the Cossack Stepan Razin brought about an explosion in a population which was endemically in a state of revolt. Every year the peasants fled, often after destroying the crops, stealing the farm animals, burning down the houses, and massacring the lords with their wives and children. The Cossack Stepan Timofeyevich Razin belonged, apparently, to the upper class of the Old Cossacks, the “housed Cossacks” who were rich merchants. One prisoner, the parish priest Ivanov, said that Razin had proposed to the general assembly of his Cossacks that they sail up the Volga into Russia, to combat those who were betraying the tsar—the boyars, the voivodes, the dyaki—and to give back freedom to the humble people. Stenka Razin, on his island in the Don, was no longer anything but a half-crazy bandit. He fed the flames of his stoves with the bodies of his prisoners.
