Stenka Razine
Stepan (Stenka) Timofeïevitch Razine (Степан (Стенька) ТимофеевичРазин in Russian) (1630-1671) was a chief Cosaque who carried out a rising against the nobility and the bureaucracy tsarist in the South of the Russia.
Life of Stenka Razine
Its beginnings
The first trace of Stepan Razine goes up with 1661, during diplomatic exchanges between the Cosaque S of the Don and the Kalmouk S Tatar S, during which it took part in several embassies of the Troop of the Gift in the Muscovites. The same year, Razine carried out a long pilgrimage to the monastery (sometimes called convent) Solovetski, located on the White Mer, because he thought that would purify its heart. He was then made know as a chief of a community of established robbers with Panshinskoye, between the rivers Tishina and Ilovlya, where he carried out blackmails and flights.
Resulting from a rich family, Razine was described by its contemporaries like a man of experiment, energetic and intelligent. The Dutch traveller Struys, for example, describes it as follows: " It was a large and calm man, firmly built, with the honest and proud face. Its maintenance was at the same time modest and imposant"
A war against the Poland (of 1654-1667) and against the Sweden (1656-1658) required heavy sacrifices of the Russian people. The taxes increased and the Conscription was done stronger. Enormously of peasants hoped to escape that by joining the Cossacks directed by Stepan Razine who were also joined per many representatives of groups excluded by the Russian government, the such lowest classes of the company and the oppressed nonRussian ethnos groups.
The first considerable exploit of Razine was to destroy the large water caravan made up of many boats of transporting freight of great richnesses belonging in particular to Muscovite commercial rich person or the patriarch. Razine descended the the Volga with a fleet from forty five galères, capturing the important forts of this way and devastating the country. With the beginning of the year 1668 it overcame the Voïvode Yakov Bezobrazov, sent against him since Astrakhan, and during spring it embarked for a punitive forwarding in Persia which lasted ten eight months.
Persian forwarding
Sailing on the Caspian Sea, it devastated the Persian coast since Derbent until Bakou, massacring the inhabitants of the Empire of Rasht and, lasting the year 1669, is established on the island of Suina then beat in July a Persian fleet launched against him. Stenka Razine, as it was generally called, consequently became a potentate which the princes could not be unaware of. After this victory, Razine and its men seized abundant spoils as well as son and the girl of Mendy-shah.
In August 1669 it reappeared with Astrakhan and accepted an advantageous offer of forgiveness formulated by the Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich. The people were then fascinated by his adventures. The Russian areas least prone to the law, close to Astrakhan, where the atmosphere was dangerous and where many people were still wandering, were favourable with a rebellion like that of Razine.
In September 1669, frightened by the power of Razine, the voïvodes of Astrakhan opened to him the doors of the city in exchange of a share of its spoils. This same month, the detachments of Razine went up the Volga and occupied Tsaritsyne. After having released the prisoners, they returned, accompanied by hundreds of workers of Astrakhan and Tsaritsyne, on the Gift. Multiple acts of armed robbery characteristic of the cossacks took place then.
The countryside of Razine
In 1670, Razine, during its return towards the general headquarter cossack located on the Gift, began an open rebellion against the government, capturing Cherkassk, Tsaritsyne and other places. It even penetrated on June 24th in Astrakhan, with an especially made up army of 7000 men poor cossacks and fugitive peasants. After having massacred all those which were opposed to him, including two princes Prozorovsky, and plundered the rich person bazaars of the city, it made of Astrakhan a republic cossack, dividing the population into thousands, hundreds and tens, with their own officers. Directed by Veches (assembled Russian) or general meetings, their first measurement was to proclaim Stépan Razine them Gosudar, i.e. their sovereign.
After three weeks of carnages and vices, Razine left Astrakhan with two hundred boats filled with troops to establish the Cosaque republic along the Volga, in order to advance then until Moscow. Saratov and Samara was captured, but the town of Simbirsk resisted, and after two bloody battles close to the river Sviyaga (1st then October 4th), Razine was put in rout and flees by the Volga, leaving the majority of its troops and its faithful to the hands of the winners.
The defeat of Simbirsk is especially explained by the fact why the troops of Razine, strong of twenty thousand combatants, formed an undisciplined and badly organized army, which faced regular troops trained according to the Western methods. Indeed, to the garrison placed under the command of the voïvode Miloslavski came to be added reinforcements of the prince Bariatinski, come from Kazan.
The popular rebellion
But the rebellion was propagated by other means. The emissary of Razine, parties of Tsaritsyne armed with ignited proclamations, went in the modern governments of Nijni-Novgorod, Tambov, Penza and even until Moscow and Novgorod. It was not difficult to encourage the population oppressed with the revolt by the promise of a delivery. Razine proclaimed that its objective was to reverse the Boyard S and the officers, to install the absolute equality in all the Moscovie, by removing the hierarchies (chart).
Razine proclaimed its hostility with the boyards and with the Masters but did not turn into to Tsar his enemy. The rumor wanted whereas Razine had as companions the Tsarévitch Alexis and the Patriarche Nikon disgraced. The people and the soldiers made warm welcome with the ideas of Razine, and the indigenous tribes even wished to reverse the established order. In the cities where it passed, the members of the higher classes were massacred. Populations of the Volga: the Chuvash S, the Husband S, the Mordve S, the Tatar S united with the insurrectionists. All the area of the the Volga and is Ukraine had been raised, the peasants besieging the convents and putting at bag the fields.
The exit of the revolt
With the beginning of the year 1671, the exit of the fight was still doubtful. Eight battles carried out during the insurrection involved signs of exhaustion on behalf of the troops of Razine, which were not made up regular soldiers and who did not have the drive necessary to a war, and that continued six months. However, in Simbirsk, the prestige of Razine had been dissipated. Even its own campings with Saratov and Samara refused to open their doors to him and the Cossacks of the Gift, learning that it had been excommunicated by the patriarch of Moscow, declared themselves even hostile. In 1671, him and his/her brother Frol Razine was captured with Kaganlyk, his last fortress, and conveyed by the authorities cossacks to Moscow, where, after torture, on June 6th, 1671, Stépan was trailed, hung and squared on the Red Place.
Astrakhan, last hearth of the revolt, went to its turn a few months later.
Consequences of the Revolt of Razine
Direct consequences
The revolt of Razine was spontaneous, local, without well stopped political program. Even if it fought the feudal system, it were proclaimed for a good tsar. However, its work was important. Many popular songs tell its history and make a hero of them. Following this revolt, the government choked the insurrection and hardens its policy, driving massive reprisals. Moreover, Razine precedes the revolt of Iemelian Pougatchev, also carried out by the cossacks of the Gift.
Interpretation of the Revolt of Razine by the USSR
The revolt of Stenka Razine was taught in the books of history of the the USSR. It constituted, according to the historians of the USSR (one can suppose that corresponds to the vision that PCUS wanted to promote) an act prérévolutionnaire, to some extent a premise of the revolution of 1905 because Razine is described like a liberator of the people rebelling against the tyrannical authorities tsarists, and obtaining the support of the Russian people. The executions, plunderings and massacres made by Razine are generally not evoked. According to certain books, the work of Razine was a vigorous act of fight of the people for his release, an important stage of the formation of its revolutionary traditions . The Soviet mode will go until giving its name to “the factory Stepan Razine of production of beer and drinks without alcohol of Saint-Pétersbourg”.
Other political Interpretations of the revolt
- Trotsky refers in its writings often with Stepan Razine, presented as leader of country rising. According to him, the latter allowed Razine and Pougatchev to emerge, then were used as foundations with the fight of other classes of the population. The case of Razine shows according to him which a revolution can be an only country-woman. In 1924, in its work Literature and Révolution, it describes the influence of Razine in the Russian literature and in the car of the political conclusions.
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Bakounine, saw him in the revolt of Razine the work of a minority of downgraded and outlaw and gangsters, who, according to him, were to be the engines of the following Russian revolution.
References
Music
- Stenka Razine is the hero of a Russian popular song (whose Dimitri Sadovnikov wrote the words), more known under the name of " The Volga, the Volga mat' rodnaya". The song was used in Russian film Ponizovaya Volnitsa turned by Vasily Goncharov in 1908. The melody was taken again by Tom Springfield in the song The Carnival is Over which, in 1965, placed The Seekers in first place of the sales at the the United Kingdom and in Australia.
The extract of song hereafter, more known, tell that Razine threw its mistress over edge to prove with its men that he had not forgotten them and that he still believed in his ideals.
You gather and listen to this old song In connection with Stenka Razine the cossack! With the turning of a meander, beyond the island Where the Volga widens Elegant three-masted ships with the bright colors And multicoloured water splits.
On the ship of head, Stenka Razine Grayed and of merry mood Sat, impassioned, with its princess They celebrate their new alliance.
Around him the crew ronchonna “It gives up us for this girl That he courted the one night space; He lost the head of it.
O The Volga, the Volga, very expensive mother The Volga, large river of Russia It remains you to receive the present Of a cossack of the Gift!”
This song, taken again per many large interpreters such as Paul Mauriat and the choruses of the Red Army , is interpreted in particular with the accordion.
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the type-setter Dmitri Chostakovitch carried out the Execution of Stenka Razine, sometimes called the Death of Stenka Razine, a famous musical work.
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Alexandre Glazounov, celebrates Russian type-setter, wrote in 1885 a Symphonic poem entitled “Stenka Razine”.
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the French singer Charles Aznavour interpreted a song entitled “the legend of Stenka Razine”, adaptation of the song evoking Razine jettant its mistress to water. The latter would be a princess captured during Persian forwarding.
Extracts:
But Razine remains calm
Squeak the teeth, raise the tone
Nothing can change its heart
Neither love, nor the rebellion
Raising its powerful hands
The joys cry, bursts the hope
Its liked frail and trembling
It throws it in black water
Cinema
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One can regard as first Russian film the film “Stenka Razine” (1908), illustrating its exploits. The scenario is of Vassili Gontcharov, the realization of Vladimir Romachkov and it is produced by Drankov. It is in this film that one finds the popular song " The Volga, the Volga mat' rodnaya" , especially made up. The scenario turns around the recurrent theme of the popular songs on Stepan Razine. The cossacks of Stepan Razine, jealous of the attention which it pays to his wife, write a letter showing the princess of treason, then will give it to Razine which will then order to sail on the Volga and where it will precipitate his wife.
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In 1939 a second film entitled Stepan Razine, with the large actor Vladimir Gardine, was carried out by Olga PREOBRAJENSKAIA. It met only little success.
Literature
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celebrates It Russian poet Alexandre Pouchkine, in 1826, devotes a series of poems to Stenka Razine, of which he admires the revolt. Pouchkine dedicates of the poems to large revolted which are Razine and Pougatchev.
- Nombre of poets however refers to Razine and Pougatchev as symbols of the rebellion. Vassili Kamensky generally referred to Razine.
- the Cartoon Taïga reveals the character of Stepan Razine, which accompanies the hero Roslav Tarelkine.
- the Soviet literature often evokes Stepan Razine. Thus, at the time of the commemoration in 1918 of the revolution (in Pétrograd), the Russian poet Proletkult describes the procession thus:
- Jules Verne in his novel Michel Strogoff, described the character of Ivan Ogareff while stating which it presents the features of Razine: One had taken it, to hear it, for one of these cruel descendants of Stepan Razine, the famous pirate who devastated southernmost Russia with the XVIIIe ''. Jules Verne locates thus by Razine error at XVIIIe, perhaps thought it of Pougatchev.
Video game
One finds a reference to Stepan Razine in the video game Cossacks: European Wars. In the first mission of the Russian countryside, the objective is precisely of subduing the revolt of Stepan Razine. This mission places the player at the command of regiments of Lancier S and of Strelet S. At the beginning of the mission, a peasant betrays and marries the cause of Razine, then it is necessary to subdue the revolt thanks to the assistance of a member of the Okhrana (secret police of the Tsar) which will discover where Razine is. This play describes well the scorn of the aristocracy for the farming community, with abusive words like " maraud" appointing the Russian peasant and threats addressed to the lower classes.
Sources
This article contains texts coming from the Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, which is in the public domain.
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