The biography of Stepan Timofeevich Razin, the Don Cossack and leader of the Peasant War of 1670-1671, is well known to historians, and our contemporaries are more familiar with this name from works of folklore.
He was born a hereditary Cossack around 1630 in the village of Zimoveyskaya on the Don. His father was the noble Cossack Timofey Razin, and his godfather was the military ataman Kornila Yakovlev. Already in his youth he stood out noticeably among the Don elders.
Like all hereditary Cossacks, he was a true believer and made two pilgrimages to the Solovetsky Monastery. Several times he was part of the winter villages, that is, embassies from the Don Cossacks, and visited Moscow.
He knew the Kalmyk and Tatar languages and several times took part in negotiations with the Taishi - Kalmyk leaders. In 1663, he led a detachment of Cossacks, which included Cossacks and Kalmyks, and made campaigns against the Crimeans to Perekop.
For his personal qualities he was well known in the Don. A verbal description of Stepan Razin’s appearance has been preserved in a short biography of foreign historical chronicles, which was left by the Dutch master Jan Streis. He describes Razin as a tall and sedate man. He had a strong build, an arrogant face and behaved modestly but with dignity.
In 1665, his older brother was executed on the orders of governor Yuri Dolgorukov, when the Cossacks tried to abandon Russian soldiers fighting the Poles. This execution made a great impression on Stepan Razin.
In 1667, he became the marching chieftain of a large detachment of Cossacks, which included many newcomers from Russia, and set off on his famous campaign “for zipuns” along the Volga to the Caspian Sea and to Persia. Having returned with rich booty, he stopped in the town of Kagalnitsky. Having believed in his luck and having heard how he was robbing destroyers and bloodsuckers, fugitives from all corners of the Moscow state began to flock to him.
He captured all the cities on the lower Volga - Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn, Saratov, after Samara.
From a Cossack uprising, the movement grew into a large-scale peasant uprising, which covered a significant territory of the state.
The rebels received their first defeat near Simbirsk, where the ataman himself was seriously wounded. He was taken to the town of Kagalnitsky. By this time, the mood on the Don had changed, and the desire for settled life and housekeeping began to prevail. After an unsuccessful attempt to take the Cossack capital of Cherkassk, the lower Cossacks united and defeated the rebels, and their leader Stepan Razin, along with his brother Frol, was extradited to Moscow. After severe torture they were executed at Lobnoye Mesto.
They attracted attention. Why did the life of Stepan Razin and the uprising under his leadership become the themes of Pushkin’s songs, Gilyarovsky’s poem and a 17th-century German dissertation?
Peasant revolt of Stepan Razin
To understand why Razin’s personality worried many, you need to find out who this outstanding person was. In popular memory and its exponent - folklore - Stenka Razin is a hero and rebel, a kind of “noble robber”. Without a doubt, Razin was a bright and strong personality. A good soldier and organizer. Most importantly, Razin was able to combine two images in himself: the leader of the people, a real hater of serfdom and the tsar, and, of course, Stenka Razin is a daring Cossack chieftain. A real Cossack with all Cossack customs and habits is no match for those who will later serve the serf-kings.
To understand who Stepan Razin is, you need to know what the Cossacks of the 17th century actually did. For food, in addition to the famous raids, the Cossacks were engaged in fishing, beekeeping and hunting. In addition, they kept livestock and grew vegetables in the garden. Interestingly, until the end of the 17th century, the Don Cossacks did not sow grain. They believed that serfdom would come with arable farming.
B. Kustodiev. "Stepan Razin" (wikipedia.org)
The way of life of the Don had elements of archaic democracy: its own power with a military circle, elected atamans and Cossack elders. Moreover, all atamans and foremen were elected. All the most important issues were discussed at the general meeting of the Cossacks (“circle”, “rada”, “kolo”).
Raiding is the only way to survive
With the tightening of serfdom in the 17th century, a huge number of golutvenny Cossacks, that is, those who did not have their own land and home, accumulated on the Don. They lived in the upper reaches of the Don, while the “homely” Cossacks lived in the lower reaches. By the way, they surrendered Razin when he failed to take Simbirsk. It is noteworthy that the head of the “homely” Cossacks was Stepan Razin’s godfather Kornila Yakovlev.
The Golutven Cossacks, whose leader was Razin, had to go on raids or trips “for zipuns” to get food. We went to Turkey, Crimea, Persia. The same campaign was the campaign of 1667-1669 to Persia, which was led by Razin. In Soviet historiography it is called the first stage of the uprising, but it was not so. The campaign of 1667–1669 was an ordinary unpunished manifestation of Cossack freemen.
17th century engraving from the book by Jan Streis. (wikipedia.org)
On the way to Persia, the Razins plundered the royal and patriarchal caravans of ships on the Volga, and then committed a bloody massacre in the Yaitsky town, ravaged cities and villages from Derbent and Baku to Rasht. As a result, the Cossacks returned with rich booty, their plows were filled with expensive eastern goods. A distinctive feature of Razin’s campaign “for zipuns” is that he sent ambassadors to the Shah with a request to give the Cossacks land to settle. But most likely it was just a ruse. The Shah thought so too, so the ambassadors were hunted down with dogs.
Personal qualities of Stepan Razin
So, Razin was from a dashing, daring and truly free Cossack environment. It is not surprising that his image was romanticized and largely idealized. But what about Razin’s family? He was born around 1630. Perhaps Stepan's mother was a captured Turkish woman. Father Timofey, who had the nickname Razya, was from the “homely” Cossacks.
Stepan Timofeevich Razin. (wikipedia.org)
Stepan saw a lot: he visited Moscow three times as part of Cossack embassies, participated in negotiations with Moscow boyars and Kalmyk princes - taishas. Twice I went on pilgrimage to the Solovetsky Monastery. By the age of forty, when Razin led the Golytba, peasants and Cossacks, he was a man with military and diplomatic experience, and, of course, he was a man with inexhaustible energy.
The Dutch sailing master Jan Streis, who met Razin in Astrakhan, described his appearance this way: “He was a tall and sedate man, with an arrogant, straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity. He looked forty years old, and it would have been completely impossible to distinguish him from the others if he had not stood out for the honor that was shown to him when, during a conversation, they knelt down and bowed their heads to the ground, calling him nothing more than dad.”
The story of the Persian princess
The song “Because of the island, to the core” is dedicated to how Stepan Razin drowned the Persian princess. The legend of Razin’s cruel act dates back to 1669, when Stenka Razin defeated the Shah’s fleet. The son of commander Mamed Khan Shaban-Debey and, as legend says, his sister, a real Persian beauty, were captured by the Cossacks. Razin allegedly made her his mistress, and then threw her into the Volga. Well, Shaban-Debey was indeed brought by the Razins to Astrakhan. The prisoner wrote letters addressed to the king asking him to be released home, but did not mention his sister.
Engraving from Strace's book. (wikipedia.org)
There is also evidence from Jan Streis about this: “He had a Persian princess with him, whom he kidnapped along with her brother. He gave the young man to Mr. Prozorovsky, and forced the princess to become his mistress. Having become furious and drunk, he committed the following rash cruelty and, turning to the Volga, said: “You are beautiful, river, from you I received so much gold, silver and jewelry, you are the father and mother of my honor, glory, and ugh on me because I still haven't sacrificed anything for you. Okay, I don’t want to be any more ungrateful!” Following this, he grabbed the unfortunate princess by the neck with one hand, the legs with the other and threw her into the river. She wore robes woven with gold and silver, and she was adorned with pearls, diamonds and other precious stones, like a queen. She was a very beautiful and friendly girl, he liked her and was to his liking in everything. She also fell in love with him out of fear of his cruelty and in order to forget her grief, but still she had to die in such a terrible and unheard of way from this rabid beast.”
V. Surikov. "Stenka Razin" (wikipedia.org)
Streis's words must be treated very carefully. In those years, travel books with detailed descriptions of places were popular in Europe, and authors often mixed facts with rumors. Strace was not a traveler; by the way, he was a hired worker. Nesho had a friend and future savior from Persian slavery, Ludwig Fabritius, a hired officer who served in Astrakhan. Fabricius describes a similar rumor, but without the romantic flair (“Persian maiden”, “Volga River”, “menacing and angry man”).
Floodplain of sturgeon in the Volga in the 17th century. (wikipedia.org)
So, according to Ludwig Fabricius, in the fall of 1667, the Razins captured a noble and beautiful “Tatar maiden” with whom Stenka Razin shared a bed. And before sailing from the Yaitsky town, the “water god Ivan Gorinovich” allegedly appeared in a dream to Razin, who controls the Yaik River. God began to reproach the chieftain for not keeping his promise and not giving him the most valuable booty. Razin ordered the girl to put on her best outfits, and when the canoes floated out onto the river expanse of Yaik (not the Volga), he threw the beauty into the river with the words: “Accept this, my patron, Gorinovich, I have nothing better that I could bring you as a gift.” ..."
In 1908, the film “Stenka Razin” was made based on the plot of the song “Because of the Island to the Rod”. The song, by the way, is based on a poem by D. M. Sadovnikov:
Europe is watching Razin's uprising
The peasant war, led by Stenka Razin, attracted the attention of, if not all of Europe, then certainly the trade attention. The fate of the most important trade routes along the Volga depended on the outcome of the battle. They brought goods from Persia and Russian bread to Europe.
Engraving accompanying a Hamburg newspaper from 1670. (wikipedia.org)
Even before the uprising was over, entire books about the rebellion and its leader had appeared in England, the Netherlands and Germany. And, as a rule, it was fiction, but sometimes they provided valuable information. The main European evidence of the uprising of the Cossacks and peasants is the book “Three Journeys” by Jan Streis, quoted above.
Many foreigners who were in Moscow during the execution of Razin witnessed the quartering of the main enemy of the state. The government of Alexei Mikhailovich was interested in the Europeans seeing everything. The Tsar and his entourage sought to assure Europe of the final victory over the rebels, although at that time the victorious end was still far away.
Title page of Marcius' dissertation. (wikipedia.org)
In 1674, a dissertation on the uprising of Stenka Razin in the context of all Russian history was defended at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The work of Johann Justus Marcius was then republished many times in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even Alexander Pushkin was interested in her.
The myth of Stenka Razin
Razin’s personality, despite the evidence and actions, is still mythologized, you can’t escape it. In Russian folk songs, the cruel chieftain is often mixed with another famous Cossack - Ermak Timofeevich, who captured Siberia.
Stepan Razin is being taken to execution. (wikipedia.org)
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was interested in the fate of Stepan Razin, wrote three songs stylized as folk songs. Here is one of them:
What is not a horse's top, not human rumor,
It is not the trumpeter's trumpet that is heard from the field,
And the weather whistles, hums,
It whistles, hums, and floods.
Calls me, Stenka Razin,
Take a walk along the blue sea:
“Well done, daring, you are a dashing robber,
You are a dashing robber, you are a riotous brawler,
Get on your fast boats,
Unfurl the linen sails,
Escape across the blue sea.
I'll bring you three boats:
On the first ship there is red gold,
On the second ship there is pure silver,
On the third ship there is a maiden soul."
S. A. Kirillov. "Stepan Razin" (wikipedia.org)
In 1882 - 1888, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a famous writer of everyday life in Moscow, wrote a poignant poem “Stenka Razin”, ending, of course, with the execution of the legendary man:
The head on the platform sparkles,
Razin's body is chopped into pieces.
They cut down the captain behind him,
They carried them to the stake,
And in the crowd, among the noise and roar,
A woman can be heard crying in the distance.
Know her with your own eyes
The ataman searched among the people,
To know her, at that moment, as if with her lips,
He kissed those eyes with fire.
That's why he died happy,
What her gaze reminded him of
The distant Don, dear fields,
Mother Volga free space.
And he reminded me that I didn’t live in vain,
But even though I couldn’t do everything,
So freedom is a wide fire
In the slave's heart, he was the first to ignite.
Stenka Razin is the hero of the song, a violent robber who, in a fit of jealousy, drowned the Persian princess. That's all most people know about him. And all this is not true, a myth.
The real Stepan Timofeevich Razin, an outstanding commander, political figure, the “dear father” of all the humiliated and insulted, was executed either on Red Square or on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on June 16, 1671. He was quartered, his body was cut into pieces and displayed on high poles near the Moscow River. It hung there for at least five years.
"A sedate man with an arrogant face"
Either from hunger, or from oppression and lack of rights, Timofey Razia fled from near Voronezh to the free Don. Being a strong, energetic, courageous man, he soon became one of the “household”, that is, rich Cossacks. He married a Turkish woman he himself captured, who gave birth to three sons: Ivan, Stepan and Frol.
The appearance of the middle of the brothers was described by the Dutchman Jan Streis: “He was a tall and sedate man, strongly built, with an arrogant, straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity.” Many features of his appearance and character are contradictory: for example, there is evidence from the Swedish ambassador that Stepan Razin knew eight languages. On the other hand, according to legend, when he and Frol were tortured, Stepan joked: “I heard that only learned people are made priests, you and I are both unlearned, but we still waited for such an honor.”
Shuttle diplomat
By the age of 28, Stepan Razin became one of the most prominent Cossacks on the Don. Not only because he was the son of a homely Cossack and the godson of the military ataman himself, Kornila Yakovlev: before the qualities of a commander, diplomatic qualities manifest themselves in Stepan.
By 1658, he went to Moscow as part of the Don embassy. He fulfills the assigned task in an exemplary manner; in the Ambassadorial Order he is even noted as an intelligent and energetic person. Soon he reconciles the Kalmyks and Nagai Tatars in Astrakhan.
Later, during his campaigns, Stepan Timofeevich will repeatedly resort to cunning and diplomatic tricks. For example, at the end of a long and ruinous campaign for the country “for zipuns,” Razin will not only not be arrested as a criminal, but will be released with an army and part of the weapons to the Don: this is the result of negotiations between the Cossack ataman and the tsarist governor Lvov. Moreover, Lvov “accepted Stenka as his named son and, according to Russian custom, presented him with an image of the Virgin Mary in a beautiful gold frame.”
Fighter against bureaucracy and tyranny
A brilliant career awaited Stepan Razin if an event had not happened that radically changed his attitude towards life. During the war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in 1665, Stepan’s elder brother Ivan Razin decided to take his detachment home from the front, to the Don. After all, a Cossack is a free man, he can leave whenever he wants. The sovereign's commanders had a different opinion: they caught up with Ivan's detachment, arrested the freedom-loving Cossack and executed him as a deserter. The extrajudicial execution of his brother shocked Stepan.
Hatred for the aristocracy and sympathy for the poor, powerless people have finally taken root in him, and two years later he begins to prepare a large campaign “for zipuns,” that is, for booty, in order to feed the Cossack bastard, already within twenty years, since the introduction serfdom, flocking to the free Don.
The fight against the boyars and other oppressors would become Razin’s main slogan in his campaigns. And the main reason is that at the height of the Peasant War there will be up to two hundred thousand people under his banner.
Cunning commander
The leader of the Golytba turned out to be an inventive commander. Posing as merchants, the Razins took the Persian city of Farabat. For five days they traded previously looted goods, scouting out where the houses of the richest townspeople were located. And, having scouted, they robbed the rich.
Another time, by cunning, Razin defeated the Ural Cossacks. This time the Razinites pretended to be pilgrims. Entering the city, a detachment of forty people captured the gate and allowed the entire army to enter. The local chieftain was killed, and the Yaik Cossacks did not offer resistance to the Don Cossacks.
But the main one of Razin’s “smart” victories was in the battle of Pig Lake, in the Caspian Sea near Baku. The Persians sailed on fifty ships to the island where the Cossacks camp was set up. Seeing an enemy whose forces were several times greater than their own, the Razinites rushed to the plows and, ineptly controlling them, tried to sail away. The Persian naval commander Mamed Khan mistook the cunning maneuver for an escape and ordered the Persian ships to be linked together in order to catch Razin’s entire army, like in a net. Taking advantage of this, the Cossacks began to fire at the flagship ship with all their guns, blew it up, and when it pulled the neighboring ones to the bottom and panic arose among the Persians, they began to sink other ships one after another. As a result, only three ships remained from the Persian fleet.
Stenka Razin and the Persian princess
In the battle at Pig Lake, the Cossacks captured the son of Mamed Khan, the Persian prince Shabalda. According to legend, his sister was also captured, with whom Razin was passionately in love, who allegedly even gave birth to a son to the Don ataman, and whom Razin sacrificed to Mother Volga. However, there is no documentary evidence of the existence of the Persian princess in reality. In particular, the petition that Shabalda addressed, asking to be released, is known, but the prince did not say a word about his sister.
Lovely letters
In 1670, Stepan Razin began the main work of his life and one of the main events in the life of all of Europe: the Peasant War. Foreign newspapers never tired of writing about it; its progress was followed even in those countries with which Russia did not have close political and trade ties.
This war was no longer a campaign for booty: Razin called for a fight against the existing system, planned to go to Moscow with the goal of overthrowing, not the tsar, but the boyar power. At the same time, he hoped for the support of the Zaporozhye and Right Bank Cossacks, sent embassies to them, but did not achieve results: the Ukrainians were busy with their own political game.
Nevertheless, the war became nationwide. The poor saw in Stepan Razin an intercessor, a fighter for their rights, and called them their own father. The cities surrendered without a fight. This was facilitated by an active propaganda campaign conducted by the Don Ataman. Using the love for the king and piety inherent in the common people,
Razin spread a rumor that the Tsar’s heir, Alexei Alekseevich (in fact, deceased), and the disgraced Patriarch Nikon were following with his army.
The first two ships sailing along the Volga were covered with red and black cloth: the first was supposedly carrying the prince, and Nikon was on the second.
Razin's "lovely letters" were distributed throughout Rus'. “For the cause, brothers! Now take revenge on the tyrants who have hitherto kept you in captivity worse than the Turks or pagans. I have come to give you all freedom and deliverance, you will be my brothers and children, and it will be as good for you as it is for me.” “, just be courageous and remain faithful,” Razin wrote. His propaganda policy was so successful that the tsar even interrogated Nikon about his connection with the rebels.
Execution
On the eve of the Peasant War, Razin seized actual power on the Don, making an enemy in the person of his own godfather, Ataman Yakovlev. After the siege of Simbirsk, where Razin was defeated and seriously wounded, the homely Cossacks, led by Yakovlev, were able to arrest him, and then his younger brother Frol. In June, a detachment of 76 Cossacks brought the Razins to Moscow. On the approach to the capital, they were joined by a convoy of one hundred archers. The brothers were dressed in rags.
Stepan was tied to a pillory mounted on a cart, Frol was chained so that he would run next to him. The year turned out to be dry. At the height of the heat, the prisoners were solemnly paraded through the streets of the city. Then they were brutally tortured and quartered.
After Razin's death, legends began to form about him. Either he throws twenty-pound stones from a plow, then he defends Rus' together with Ilya Muromets, or else he voluntarily goes to prison to release the prisoners. “He’ll lie down for a little while, rest, get up... Give me some coal, he’ll say, he’ll write a boat on the wall with that coal, put convicts in that boat, splash it with water: the river will overflow from the island all the way to the Volga; Stenka and the fellows will break out songs - and on the Volga !.. Well, remember what their name was!”
Don Ataman, leader of the largest Cossack-peasant uprising. Stepan Timofeevich Razin was born in 1630 in the village of Zimoveyskaya-on-Don. Stepan's father is the noble Cossack Timofey Razin, and his godfather was the military ataman Kornila Yakovlev. Stepan had two brothers: the elder, Ivan, and the younger, Frol. Already in his youth, Stepan occupied a prominent place among the Don elders. In 1652 and 1661 he made two pilgrimages to the Solovetsky Monastery. As part of the winter villages - the Don embassies - he visited Moscow in 1652, 1658 and 1661. Knowing the Tatar and Kalmyk languages, he repeatedly successfully participated in negotiations with Kalmyk leaders. In 1663, leading a Cossack detachment, he, together with the Cossacks and Kalmyks, made a campaign near Perekop against the Crimean Tatars.
The idea of an uprising against the feudal-serf system in Russia arose from Razin in connection with the autocracy’s attack on the liberties of the Don Cossacks and, in particular, in connection with the brutal reprisal in 1665 of Prince Yuri Dolgorukov of Stepan’s older brother Ivan for attempting to leave without permission with a detachment of Cossacks theater of military operations against the Poles. Thanks to his luck and personal qualities, Stepan Razin became widely known in the Don. A verbal portrait of Razin was compiled by the Dutch sailing master Jan Streis, who saw him more than once: “He was a tall and sedate man of strong build with an arrogant, straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity.”
The return of the Cossacks to the Don in August 1669 with rich booty strengthened Razin’s fame as a successful chieftain; not only Cossacks, but also crowds of fugitives from Russia began to flock to him from different directions.
Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan, Saratov, Samara were taken, and the entire Lower Volga region was in his hands. Beginning as a Cossack uprising, the movement led by Razin quickly grew into a huge peasant uprising that covered a significant part of the country. A riot flared up throughout the entire space between the Oka and Volga. The rebels put the landowners to death, overthrew the governors, and created their own authorities in the form of Cossack self-government.
The tsarist government took emergency measures to suppress the uprising. The main forces of the rebels were unable to take Simbirsk; government troops managed to defeat Razin in October 1670. The ataman himself, wounded in battle, barely had time to be rescued and taken to the Kagalnitsky town.
Having recovered from the wounds received near Simbirsk, Stepan Razin had no intention of laying down his arms. He hoped to gather a new army and continue the fight.
But in 1671, different sentiments already prevailed on the Don, and the authority and influence of Razin himself fell sharply. The confrontation between Razin and the lower-ranking Cossacks intensified. As the success of the government troops developed, the wealthy Don Cossacks were inclined to think about the need to capture Razin and transfer him to the royal court.
After an unsuccessful attempt by the leader of the rebels to take Cherkassk, military ataman Yakovlev struck back. In April 1671, the lower-ranking Cossacks captured and burned the town of Kagalnitsky, and the captured Razin was handed over to the Moscow authorities. After torture, Stepan Razin was publicly executed (quartered) on June 16 (June 6, Old Style) 1671 in Moscow near Lobnoye Mesto. Three days later, Razin’s remains “for everyone to see” were “lifted up into tall trees and placed across the Moscow River on (Bolotnaya) Square until they disappeared.” Later, the remains of Stepan Razin were buried at the Tatar cemetery in Zamoskvorechye (now the territory of the M. Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure). The burial in a Muslim cemetery is explained by the fact that the leader of the Peasant War was excommunicated from the church during his lifetime.
Razin's personality left a deep mark in people's memory. A whole cycle of songs is dedicated to him; a number of tracts along the Volga are named after him.
The material was prepared based on open sources
Razin Stepan Timofeevich - (c. 1630-1671) - leader of the Peasant War of 1670-1671, leader of a large protest movement of peasants, serfs, Cossacks and urban lower classes of the 17th century.
Born approx. 1630 in the village of Zimoveyskaya on the Don (or in Cherkassk) in the family of a wealthy Cossack Timofey Razin, probably the middle son of three (Ivan, Stepan, Frol). The first document about him is his request for leave to travel to the Solovetsky Monastery in 1652.
In 1658 he was among the Cherkasy Cossacks sent to Moscow to the Ambassadorial Prikaz. In 1661, together with Ataman F. Budan, he negotiated with the Kalmyks to conclude peace and joint actions against the Tatars. In 1662 he became an ataman; in 1662-1663 his Cossacks fought against the Turks and Crimeans and took part in the Battle of Molochny Vody on the Crimean Isthmus. He returned to the Don with rich trophies and prisoners.
In 1665, the governor and prince. Yu.A. Dolgorukov hanged Razin’s elder brother Ivan for leaving without permission with the Cossacks to the Don during the Russian-Polish War. Stepan decided not only to avenge his brother, but also to punish the boyars and nobles. Gathering a “gang” of 600 people, he set off in the spring of 1667 from the Zimoveysky town near Tsaritsyn up the Don, along the way robbing government plows with goods and the houses of rich Cossacks. The enterprise was called a “campaign for zipuns” and was a violation of the promise given by the Don Cossacks to the Moscow authorities to “stop theft.” “Vataga” quickly grew to 2 thousand people. on 30 plows. Having captured Yaik by cunning, Razin executed 170 people who saw in his army a “horde of thieves” and replenished the “band” with sympathizers from the local population.
Having established a camp between the rivers Tishini and Ilovnya, he reorganized the “army”, giving it the features of a regular one, divided into hundreds and dozens, led by centurions and tens. Anyone who met his “band” and did not want to go with her was ordered to be “burned with fire and beaten to death.” Despite the cruelty, he remained in people's memory as generous, friendly, and generous to the poor and hungry. He was considered a sorcerer, they believed in his strength and happiness, and called him “father.”
In 1667-1669, Razin made a Persian campaign, defeating the fleet of the Iranian Shah and gaining experience in the “Cossack war” (ambushes, raids, outflanking maneuvers). The Cossacks burned villages and hamlets of the Dagestan Tatars, killed residents, and destroyed property. Taking Baku, Derbent. Reshet, Farabat, Astrabat, Razin took prisoners, among them was the daughter of Meneda Khan. He made her a concubine, then dealt with her, proving the ataman’s prowess. This fact was included in the text of the folk song about Stenka Razin, but already at that time legends about the “bewitched by a bullet and a saber” destroyer of other people’s property, about his strength, dexterity and luck, were spreading everywhere.
In August-September 1669, having returned to the Don, he and his “comrades” built a fortress on the island - the town of Kagalnik. On it, Razin’s “gang” and he himself distributed the spoils of war, inviting him to join the Cossack army, enticing him with wealth and prowess. The Moscow government's attempt to punish the obstinate people by stopping the supply of grain to the Don only added to Razin's supporters.
In May 1670, at the “larger circle”, the ataman announced that he intended to “go from the Don to the Volga, and from the Volga to Rus'... in order... to remove the traitorous boyars and duma people from the Moscow state and the governors and officials in the cities ", give freedom to "black people".
In the summer of 1670 the campaign turned into a powerful peasant war. The rumor about Tsarevich Alexei (actually deceased) and Patriarch Nikon walking with Razin turned the campaign into an event that received the blessing of the church and the authorities. Near Simbirsk in October 1670, Stepan Razin was wounded and went to the Don. There, together with his brother Frol, on April 9, 1671, the “homely Cossacks” led by Kornil Yakovlev were handed over to the authorities. Brought to Moscow, Stepan was interrogated, tortured and quartered on June 6, 1671.
The image of Razin inspired V.I. Surikov to paint the canvas Stepan Razin (1907, Russian Museum). Razin was imprinted in the people's memory in the name of the cliff and tracts on the Volga. His personality is reflected in the novels of S. Zlobin (Stepan Razin), V. Shukshin (I came to give you freedom...).
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