The Russian tradition of rebellion

During the 16th and 17th centuries, farmers in Eastern Europe were enslaved to produce cheap grain for Western European industrial societies. Russia, which was a little outside, and was very vast and capital-poor, had difficulty maintaining the same control over the peasants that existed in e.g. Poland, the Baltics and Hungary. Therefore, it happened several times that the Russian peasants could launch large-scale rebel movements against the increasingly oppressive laws.

The first uprising took place in the shadow of the so-called Great Disorder in the 1610s, when several royal candidates fought against each other. A peasant army could almost occupy Moscow before the warring aristocratic parties could agree to defeat the peasants.

The next movement in the 1670s had its origins in the Cossacks at Don, peasants who were given tax exemption and lordship in return for contributing to the kingdom’s defense as soldiers. These now met with increased control and responded with a revolt which more and more peasants on the outskirts of the kingdom joined. It took a year to shut down.

The largest movement took place in the 1770s when the laws had reached their most oppressive perfection, e.g. farmers had been banned from complaining about the treatment. This time, too, it was the Cossacks, at the Urals, who started the uprising, but this time it spread throughout the Volga region. The purpose this time was to abolish serfdom. An insurgent government with officials was set up, with organized propaganda, and the insurgency received support from all kinds of people on the outskirts. Samara and Kazan were conquered in 1773 and government armies were defeated. But next year the empire gathered strength and was able to crush the movement militarily.

However, the Russian rebellion tradition survived and between 1826 and 1856, over 500 peasant uprisings were registered. In 1861 the government had found that servitude did not pay off and abolished it.

Reading
Paul Avrich: Russian rebels 1600-1800, Schocken Books 1972.