Stenka Razin's Rebellion (1670-1671): Cossack Revolt on the Volga

Stenka Razin’s Rebellion of 1670 to 1671 was one of the largest popular uprisings in Russian history before the 18th century. Led by the Don Cossack Stepan Razin, rebels seized Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn, Saratov and Samara along the Volga and drew in tens of thousands of peasants and non-Russian peoples. The revolt was crushed after its defeat at Simbirsk, and Razin was executed in Moscow, but he lived on as a hero of song and legend.

Background

In the 17th century the Don Cossacks were free communities of warriors on Russia’s southern steppe frontier. Many were former serfs who had fled their masters. The Law Code of 1649 bound peasants permanently to the land and made fugitives liable to be returned at any time, which drove more runaways south and swelled the ranks of poor, landless Cossacks.

The Russian state under Tsar Alexis was also burdened by long wars with Poland-Lithuania, high taxes and a debased coinage that sparked the Copper Riot in Moscow in 1662. Along the Volga, Tatars, Chuvash, Mari and Mordvins resented Russian landlords, officials and the spread of Orthodox Christianity.

The Caspian expedition

Stepan Razin, born around 1630 into a well-established Cossack family, first won fame as a raider. In 1667 he led a band of poor Cossacks down the Volga to the Caspian Sea, capturing the fortress of Yaitsky Gorodok on the Ural River.

Over the next two years his band plundered towns on the Persian coast of the Caspian and defeated a Persian fleet near Pig Island in 1669. Razin returned to Astrakhan in August 1669, where the governors allowed him to keep his loot in return for a pardon. His wealth and daring made him a legend among the poor of the Don.

The rebellion of 1670

In the spring of 1670 Razin moved openly against the state. He took Tsaritsyn on the Volga in April, and on 22 June his forces captured Astrakhan, the key port at the river’s mouth, where the governor, Prince Ivan Prozorovsky, was thrown from a tower and many nobles and officials were killed.

Razin then moved up the Volga, taking Saratov and Samara. His agents spread so-called “charming letters” calling on the people to rise against boyars, landlords and officials. He claimed falsely that the tsar’s son Alexei, who had in fact died in January 1670, and the deposed Patriarch Nikon were travelling with him. Peasant risings broke out across a wide area of the middle Volga region.

Defeat at Simbirsk

In September 1670 Razin besieged Simbirsk, a fortified town on the middle Volga, with a large but poorly armed force. Government troops under Prince Yuri Baryatinsky, including regiments trained in the Western style, relieved the town in early October. Razin was wounded and fled south down the Volga to the Don, leaving many of his followers behind.

Fighting continued for months in the forest regions to the north and west, where local leaders, among them a former nun known as Alena of Arzamas, kept up resistance. Government forces responded with mass executions. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of rebels and suspected supporters died during the suppression, though figures are uncertain.

Capture and execution

On the Don, the wealthier Cossack elders, led by Ataman Kornila Yakovlev, feared that Razin would bring the tsar’s wrath on the whole Cossack community. In April 1671 they seized Razin at his stronghold of Kagalnik and handed him over to the authorities. He was brought to Moscow, interrogated under torture and executed by quartering on 6 June 1671. Astrakhan, the last rebel stronghold, surrendered in November 1671.

Timeline

• 1649: The Law Code permanently binds Russian peasants to the land.
• 1667: Razin begins his Caspian raiding expedition.
• 1669, August: Razin returns to Astrakhan and is pardoned.
• 1670, April: Razin captures Tsaritsyn.
• 1670, 22 June: Rebels take Astrakhan.
• 1670, early October: Razin is defeated at Simbirsk.
• 1671, April: Don Cossack elders capture Razin.
• 1671, 6 June: Razin is executed in Moscow.
• 1671, November: Astrakhan surrenders to government forces.

Legacy

Razin’s revolt was followed a century later by the even larger Pugachev Rebellion, and both became symbols of Russian popular resistance to serfdom. Like the earlier Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine, it showed how Cossack frontier societies could become the core of mass rebellions.

Razin became a folk hero in songs and stories. The legend that he threw a captive Persian princess into the Volga, told by the Dutch traveller Jan Struys, inspired the song “From Beyond the Island to the Midstream”, written by Dmitry Sadovnikov in 1883. Razin was also the subject of a tone poem by Alexander Glazunov, a painting by Vasily Surikov, and the first Russian narrative feature film, Stenka Razin, in 1908. Soviet historians portrayed him as a leader of a peasant war against feudal oppression.

Why it matters

Stenka Razin’s Rebellion revealed the deep tensions created by serfdom, frontier freedom and state expansion in 17th-century Russia. Its defeat strengthened the hold of the tsarist state over the Cossacks and the Volga, but the memory of Razin kept alive an ideal of popular freedom that later rebels and revolutionaries invoked.