Perrie M. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689
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Moscow and other towns remained quite ‘medieval’ in appearance down
to the end of the century. The typical house or ‘court’ (dvor), for example,
consisted of a wooden structure, perhaps accompanied by outbuildings, and
the whole surrounded by a high wooden fence. A gate gave access to the
street. But Moscow had begun to change its appearance to some degree by
the mid-century when new stone and brick homes and mansions of some
of the wealthier were noted by the visiting Paul of Aleppo.
70
According to
some scholars, the stone and brick houses and mansions which began to
appear in the latter part of the century reflected evidence of an interest in
new architectural forms and a departure from those based on traditional
wooden construction.
71
By European standards Russian towns spread over
enormous areas, necessitating the construction of very lengthy walls in order
to encompass them. Townstypically included considerable areas of open space
between their built-up areas, used for growing food and pasturing livestock.
They also tended to sprawl beyond their walls into the countryside beyond
and many activities, especially some of those involving fire, were confined to
those regions.
There has been considerable debate among scholars over the extent to
which Russian towns were subject to planning. L. M. Tverskoi, for example,
argued for a degree of regularity in street patterns and suggested that towns
were generally planned even when their street patterns seemed irregular.
72
Regularity is particularly noticeable in the layout of some of the southern
military towns. Other scholars have spoken of the ‘spontaneous’ develop-
ment of towns.
73
A somewhat original argument has been advanced by G. V.
Alferova.
74
According to her, towns were planned, but the planning took a
different form from the regular, geometrically based system of much West-
ern planning from medieval times onwards which ultimately derived from
the Greek conceptions of Hippodamus. Alferova believed that Russian ideas
on planning took their origin from Byzantine laws and practices which were
translated and appeared in Russian legal anthologies and similar texts from
an early period. The latter were used in princely law courts, but it is unclear
how far the laws applying to urban affairs were applied, at least before the
seventeenth century (there is a faint echo of Byzantine urban conceptions in
70 Istoriia Moskvy,p.509; Olearius, Travels,p.154.
71 A. V. Ikonnikov, Tysiachia let russkoi arkhitektury (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1990), pp. 182–95.
72 L. N. Tverskoi, Russkoe gradostroitel’stvo do kontsa XVII veka: planirovka i zastroika russkikh
gorodov (Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1953).
73 V. A. Shkvarikov, Ocherk istorii planirovki i zastroiki russkikh gorodov (Moscow: Gosu-
darstvennoe Izdatel’stvo Literatury po Stroitel’stvu i Arkhitekture, 1954).
74 Alferova, Russkii gorod.
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Urban developments
the Ulozhenie).
75
The argument is that the Byzantine tradition paid less heed
to regularity of form than to such matters as heights of and distances between
buildings (views, ventilation, effects of shadow), the width of streets, prop-
erty boundaries, hygiene, vegetation, drainage and water supply. There was,
according to Alferova, overall concern with the profile of the townscape. After
about the fourteenth century, she avers, towns were founded and developed
according to a well-regulated procedure which included proper documenta-
tion and adherence to ritual practice. The problem is that there appears to
be only limited documentary evidence to support some of these assertions.
What may or may not have appeared in legal texts may tell us little or nothing
about actual practice. Moreover, some of Alferova’s claims almost amount to
a belief in a sophisticated form of landscape architecture long before such a
thing was possible. Clearly this is an area which demands more research. It
may be that Alferova’s study points the way to a deeper understanding of the
symbolism enshrined in townscape than has been usual to date. But whether
what she writes about is ‘planning’ is quite a different matter.
Conclusion
Whereas a traditional approach to the study of Russian towns has emphasised
their sluggish development and particularly their backwardness relative to
European towns of the period, this chapter has emphasised another angle,
following the thought of Jan de Vries.
76
This is to view towns as elements
in a network and to consider their role as co-ordinators of a growing series
of activities across the state. By the seventeenth century most Russian towns
were multifunctional and acted as important nodes (albeit varying in their
individual importance) for the organisation of commercial, administrative,
military, cultural and sacred space. This process of growing nodal significance
is termed by de Vries ‘structural urbanisation’.
77
To view the towns only in
terms of their commercial role, in other words, is to miss one of the most
important things about them. And it is to overlook the vital role they played
in the building of the Russian state.
75 Hellie, Ulozhenie, ch. 10,arts.278, 279.
76 de Vries, European Urbanization.
77 Ibid., p. 12.
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26
Popular revolts
maureen perrie
The election of Michael Romanov as tsar in 1613 is conventionally seen as
marking the end of the Time of Troubles, but social unrest continued for
some time. The cossack leader Ivan Zarutskii based himself in Astrakhan’
in 1613–14 with his mistress Marina Mniszech, the widow of the First and
Second False Dmitriis, and promoted the claim to the throne of her infant son,
‘Tsarevich’ Ivan Dmitrievich. Zarutskii and the little pretender were executed
in the summer of 1614 and, although the cossacks continued to createproblems
for the government in 1614–15, subsequent protests against the new regime
were only sporadic. The conclusion of peace with Sweden in 1617 and with
Poland in 1618 brought an end to foreign intervention, and the next decade
and a half was a period of relative stability for Russia, both internally and
externally.
In 1632 Tsar Michael’s government took advantage of the interregnum in
Poland-Lithuania which followed the death of King Sigismund III. An army
led by the boyar M. B. Shein was dispatched to the western frontier in a bid to
regainSmolensk, whichhad been ceded to the Polesin the Treaty of Deulino of
1618. Thereafter Russia was to be involved almost continuously in warfare (see
Chapter 21); the economic and social strains created by these wars contributed
in large part to the series of popular revolts which caused the period to be
described as ‘the rebellious century’. The principal urban uprisings occurred
in Moscow and other towns in 1648–50, and in the capital in 1662 and 1682; the
most extensive revolt was the great cossack–peasant uprising led by Sten’ka
Razin, in 1670–1. The first part of this chapter will provide a chronological
overview of the revolts; the second will examine the social composition of
their participants; and the third will consider the aims and demands they
embodied, within the common framework of ‘rebellions in the name of the
tsar’.
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The sequence of revolts
The first symptoms of unrest occurred against the background of the unsuc-
cessful Smolensk war of 1632–4. The government called for volunteers to
supplement the regular army, and many peasants and bondsmen rallied to
the appeal, calling themselves ‘free cossacks’ and acting semi-independently
as partisans in the vicinity of the front, sometimes in association with bands
of Don cossacks. Their actions were often directed against the property of
local Russian landowners rather than against the Poles, and their ranks were
swollen by deserters from Shein’sarmy. Soviet historians called this movement
the ‘Balashovshchina’ after one of its early leaders, Ivan Balash, an enserfed
monastery peasant from Dorogobuzh uezd who died in captivity in 1633.The
rural unrest soon subsided, and its remnants were suppressed by government
troops after the conclusion of the Peace of Polianovka with Poland in June 1634.
The episode had echoes in the capital. When the irregular ‘cossack’ leaders
Anisim Chertoprud and Ivan Teslev came to Moscow for negotiations with
the government, many discontented slaves and other members of the lower
orders took advantage of the opportunity to escape from the city by volunteer-
ing to join their bands.
1
The Russians’ failure to capture Smolensk provoked
allegations that the army commanders had turned traitor; according to the
Holstein envoy Adam Olearius, the government was obliged to execute Shein
under pressure from the Moscow mob, who threatened a popular uprising.
2
Two years later, a fire in the central Kitai-gorod district of the capital in March
1636 was followed by extensive looting of merchants’ property; but this seems
to have been primarily a case of criminal opportunism rather than a significant
episode of social or political conflict.
3
The events of 1648–50 were much more serious. The uprising which began
in Moscow in June 1648 is often known as the ‘salt riot’. In fact the unpopular
tax on salt, introduced in 1646, had been abolished at the end of 1647, but other
direct taxes were tripled to compensate for the loss of revenue, and resentment
of the tax burden was an important underlying cause of the subsequent unrest.
On 1 June the young Tsar Alexis was returning from a pilgrimage when he
1 B. F. Porshnev, ‘Sotsial’no-politicheskaia obstanovka v Rossii vo vremia Smolenskoi
voiny’, Istoriia SSSR, 1957,no.5:pp.112–40; B. F. Porshnev, ‘Razvitie “Balashovskogo”
dvizheniia v fevrale-marte 1634 g.’, in Problemy obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Rossii i
slavianskikh stran. Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu akademika M. N. Tikhomirova (Moscow: Izda-
tel’stvo vostochnoi literatury, 1963), pp. 225–35.
2 Adam Olearius, The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia, ed. and trans. Samuel
H. Baron (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 153.
3 E. V. Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia v Rossii v pervoi polovine XVII veka (30-40-e gody)
(Voronezh: Izdatel’stvo Voronezhskogo universiteta, 1975), pp. 59–61.
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maureen perrie
was met on the outskirts of the capital by a crowd who attempted to present
him with a petition. The citizens were complaining about abuses committed
by L. S. Pleshcheev, the head of the Zemskii prikaz, the chancellery which
had primary responsibility for the administration of Moscow. The fact that
the tsar – in defiance of the traditionally paternalistic relationship between
ruler and subject in Muscovy – not only refused to accept the petition, but
also ordered the arrest of some of the petitioners, angered the crowd. The
next day Alexis again found himself surrounded by indignant Muscovites,
who heckled and jostled the boyars and officials who were sent out to nego-
tiate with them. On 2 and 3 June the crowds, now joined by many of the
strel’tsy (musketeers) stationed in the capital, began to attack the homes and
property of the most unpopular members of the ruling elite. These included
not only Pleshcheev, but also the tsar’s brother-in-law B. I. Morozov, and
P. T. Trakhaniotov, the head of the Pushkarskii prikaz (Artillery Chancellery).
Nazarii Chistyi, who was held responsible for the hated salt tax, was lynched
by the mob – he was cut to pieces and his body was dumped on a dung
heap. On 3 June Alexis sent a new delegation of boyars, including his kinsman
N. I. Romanov, to speak to the people. The boyars agreed to hand Pleshcheev
over, and he was butchered by the crowd. On 5 June, in response to the insur-
gents’ demands, Trakhaniotov was executed. Fires broke out in various parts
of Moscow – leading to predictably contradictory accusations of arson – and
much of the city was burned to the ground. The disturbances continued, and
a week later Morozov was exiled to the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery, after
the intervention of some nobles and merchants who persuaded the govern-
ment to convene an Assembly of the Land. A broadly representative assem-
bly met in September, and in January 1649 it approved the new Law Code
known as the Ulozhenie, which finally enserfed the peasantry and abolished
the tax-immune ‘white quarters’ in the towns. By a judicious combination of
concessions and repressions, the government gradually restored its authority;
Morozov was allowed to return from his northerly place of exile in October
1648, and by the beginning of the following year he had regained the reins of
power.
4
4 Gorodskie vosstaniia v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVII v. Sbornik dokumentov, ed. K. V. Bazile-
vich(Moscow:Gosudarstvennoesotsial’no-ekonomicheskoeizdatel’stvo,1936),pp. 35–92;
P. P. Smirnov, Posadskie liudi i ikh klassovaia bor’ba do serediny XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow
and Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1947–8), vol. ii,pp.158–248; S. V. Bakhrushin, ‘Moskovskoe
vosstanie 1648 g.’, in his Nauchnye trudy, 4 vols. (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1952–9), vol. ii (1954),
pp. 46–91; Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia,pp.62–106; Valerie A. Kivelson, ‘The Devil
Stole his Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising’, American Historical Review 98
(1993): 733–56.
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Uprisings also occurred in various provincial towns in 1648–9: in Kozlov,
Kursk, Voronezh, Novosil’ and others in the south; in Sol’vychegodsk and
Ustiug Velikii in the north; and in several parts of Siberia.
5
The Siberian town
of Tomsk remained in the hands of insurgents for a particularly long period: a
revolt against the governor, Prince O. I. Shcherbatyi, which had begun in April
1648 (even before the uprising in Moscow) continued until August 1649.
6
In some cases the revolts in provincial towns were triggered by news of the
events in Moscow. In Kozlov the local servicemen had been complaining to
the Moscow authorities about abuses by the town governor and other officials
since 1647.On11 June 1648, whena group of petitioners returned from Moscow
with news of the uprising in the capital, attacks were launched on the ‘best
people’ (the wealthy and privileged), and the governor and many of the gentry
fled from the town.
7
In Kursk the conflict arose over the government’s right to
search for runaway strel’tsy and cossacks who had found refuge in the town as
monastery peasants. The musketeer captain Konstantin Teglev was murdered
on5 Julywhenhetriedtoenforcethesearch,andanindignantcrowdthreatened
the lives and property of other representatives of the local authorities. The
townspeople cited the killing of ‘traitors’ in Moscow as a precedent for the
lynching of Teglev: ‘Better men than he are being killed in Moscow,’ affirmed
the monastery peasant Kuz’ma Vedenitsyn, who had just returned from the
capital.
8
In Voronezh, Novosil’, Sol’vychegodsk and Ustiug Velikii, too, there
is evidence that the disturbances were stimulated by the arrival of news that
boyars and officialswerebeing attacked in Moscow. Reports that the insurgents
in the capital had not been punished, and that concessions had been made to
theirdemands,produced a strong impressionin the provinces,and led to ‘copy-
cat’ actions in some towns.
9
In parts of the south-west,urban disturbances may
have been influenced not only by news of the events in Moscow, but also by the
cossack rising led by Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, which broke out in 1648 in the
neighbouring Ukrainian and Belarusian territories of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth.
10
The risings of 1650 in Pskov and Novgorod, in the north-west of Russia,
had a specific context of their own. In 1649 a Russian embassy to Stockholm
5 Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia,pp.107–234.
6 N. N. Pokrovskii, To msk. 1648–1649 gg. Voevodskaia vlast’ i zemskie miry (Novosibirsk:
Nauka, 1989).
7 Gorodskievosstaniia,pp.93–108; Brian L.Davies, State Power and Community in EarlyModern
Russia: the Case of Kozlov, 1635–1649 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 225–42.
8 Gorodskie vosstaniia,p.113.
9 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
10 Chistiakova, Gorodskie vosstaniia,pp.156–64.
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agreed to pay compensation to the Swedes for fugitives who had settled in
Muscovy from territory ceded to Sweden in the Peace of Stolbovo of 1617. Part
of the payment was to be made in the form of rye, and the Pskov merchant
Fedor Emel’ianov was entrusted by the Moscow government with the task
of buying up this grain. As a result of Emel’ianov’s transactions the price of
rye soared, creating severe hardship and subsequent discontent in both Pskov
and Novgorod. The unrest in Pskov came to a head when the Swedish agent
Login Nummens arrived in the town on 28 February to collect the grain;
the appearance in Novgorod on 15 March of the Danish envoy Evert Krabbe,
who was suspected of being a Swedish agent, triggered a similar reaction.
In both towns the homes of rich merchants were raided and the city gov-
ernors were placed under house arrest. The Moscow authorities dispatched
the military commander Prince I. N. Khovanskii against the rebellious cities.
Novgorod surrendered on 13 April, but Pskov remained defiant and with-
stood a siege from Khovanskii’s troops until a settlement was negotiated in
August.
11
The next major uprising in the capital, the ‘copper riot’ of 1662, occurred
against the background of the protracted war with Poland (which had been
under way since 1654), exacerbated by a conflict with Sweden in 1656–8.Inits
search for revenue to fund its military operations, the government resorted
not only to increased taxation, but also to a currency reform which sub-
stituted copper coinage for silver. Counterfeit coins also came into circula-
tion, adding to price inflation. Measures taken by the government against
the forgers, many of whom occupied prominent positions in the chancel-
leries, did little to appease the citizens; rather, they simply fuelled suspi-
cion of treason in high places. On 25 July the musketeer Kuz’ma Nagaev
summoned the citizens to assemble on Red Square. A large contingent
marched to the village of Kolomenskoe, on the outskirts of Moscow, where
the tsar and his court were in residence. Alexis managed to persuade the
protestors that their allegations would be fully investigated, and they returned
to Moscow. In the capital, meanwhile, attacks had already begun on the
homes of the wealthy merchants Vasilii Shorin and Semen Zadorin. The
tsar sent Prince I. A. Khovanskii to calm the situation in the city centre,
but his mission was unsuccessful and another crowd of insurgent Muscovites
headed for Kolomenskoe. Alexis again tried to appease them with promises,
11 M. N. Tikhomirov, Klassovaia bor’ba v Rossii XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 23–169,
234–396; ‘Miatezhnoe vremia’. Sledstvennoe delo o Novgorodskom vosstanii 1650 goda, comp.
G. M. Kovalenko, T. A. Lapteva, T. B. Solov’eva (St Petersburg and Kishinev: Nestor-
Historia, 2001).
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but when words failed he used loyal troops to disperse and bloodily repress
the rebels.
12
The ‘copper riot’ lasted for only a single day, and was confined to Moscow;
but the next major upheaval – the Razin revolt – was much more protracted
and extensive.
13
After the legal enserfment of the peasantry in 1649 the gov-
ernment took active measures to prevent peasants from fleeing to the south-
ern and eastern frontier regions, where they had traditionally found refuge
with the cossack bands who frequented the basins of the rivers Don, Volga,
Terek and Iaik. Pressure was exerted on the Don cossacks, in particular, to
return peasant fugitives to the centre. The government cut its supplies of
food, money and weaponry to the Don host. This policy resulted in consid-
erable hardship for the poorer cossacks, and symptoms of their distress soon
appeared. In 1666 a detachment of several hundred Don cossacks, led by Vasilii
Us, rode northwards; from their encampment near Tula they sent a delegation
to Moscow with a request that they be taken into state service. While they
awaited the tsar’s response, their ranks were swollen by runaway peasants and
bondsmen from the Tula and Voronezh regions, and even from Moscow itself.
In order to obtain provisions, they raided and looted landowners’ estates. The
government mustered regular troops against them, and the cossacks retreated
to the Don, accompanied by significant numbers of their new recruits from the
central districts. Many of them, including Vasilii Us himself, wereto participate
in the Razin revolt which broke out soon afterwards.
In 1667, on the conclusion of the prolonged war with Poland, the situation
on the Don deteriorated further, as cossacks returned from fighting in the
Ukraine, and there was a further influx of refugees. It was in this context
that the ataman (chieftain) Stepan Timofeevich (Sten’ka) Razin organised a
piratical expedition in which several hundred cossacks crossed to the Volga
above Tsaritsyn and sailed downstream to the Caspian Sea, where their raids
went north to Iaitsk at the mouth of the Iaik River, and then south into Persian
waters. In the late summer of 1669 Razin left the Caspian and returned to
the Don by the Volga route, having been allowed to pass through Astrakhan’
and Tsaritsyn unmolested by the tsarist authorities. He wintered on an island
12 V. I. Buganov, Moskovskoe vosstanie 1 662 g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1964); Vosstanie 1 662 g. v
Moskve. Sbornik dokumentov, comp. V. I. Buganov (Moscow: Nauka, 1964).
13 Krest’ianskaia voina pod predvoditel’stvom Stepana Razina. Sbornik dokumentov, 4 vols. (in 5)
(Moscow: AN SSSR, 1954–76); I. V. Stepanov, Krest’ianskaia voina v Rossii v 1670–1671 gg.
Vosstanie Stepana Razina, 2 vols. (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo universiteta,
1966–72); Michael Khodarkovsky, ‘The Stepan Razin Uprising: Was it a “Peasant War”?’,
JGO 42 (1994): 1–19.
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in the Don near Kagal’nik, where he attracted a host of impoverished and
discontented followers.
In the spring of 1670 Razin decided on a much bolder enterprise than his
primarily piratical expedition of 1667–9: an attack on the Russian heartland
to eradicate the ‘traitor-boyars’ in Moscow. In May Razin and his cossacks
crossed again from the Don to the Volga, and captured Tsaritsyn. But instead
ofheadinguptheVolgatowardsMoscow,theydecidedtoconsolidatetheirrear,
and moved downriver to take Astrakhan’. The cossacks’ capture of the fortress
was facilitated by a popular uprising in the city. There ensued a massacre of
the privileged elites of Astrakhan’: the governor, Prince I. S. Prozorovskii,
was thrown to his death from the top of a tower, and his two young sons
were tortured. In July Razin again headed upstream, the mid-Volga towns of
Saratov and Samara surrendering to him without resistance. As the cossacks
moved up the Volga, they distributed ‘seditious letters’ in the surrounding
villages, provoking a widespread peasant revolt. Estates were looted, manor
houses burned and landowners murdered. Some of the non-Russian peoples
of the Volga were also drawn into the rising, especially the Mordva, the Mari
and the Chuvash. The rebels’ triumphant advance was eventually arrested at
Simbirsk. The town’s garrison held out against the rebel siege for more than
a month, before being relieved by fresh troops from Kazan’, who defeated
Razin at the beginning of October. At about the same time Sten’ka’s brother
Frol, who was sailing up the Don in a parallel enterprise, was halted south
of Voronezh by government troops. By the winter of 1670–1, although the
rebellion continued to spread in some regions, its back had been broken, and
the government wason the offensive. Punitive expeditions were sent down the
Volga and the Don, brutally repressing the revolt. Razin himself was captured
on the Don by service cossacks in April 1671 and executed in Moscow in
June.
A major uprising, often known as the ‘Khovanshchina’ (and depicted in
Musorgskii’s opera of that name) occurred in the capital in 1682.
14
Although
the eponymous Khovanskii princes played an important part in the events,
the main role in the revolt belonged to the strel’tsy, nearly 15,000 of whom
were stationed in Moscow at the beginning of the year. The musketeers had
complained about harsh treatment by their officers in the winter of 1681–2,but
theyfailed toobtain satisfactory redressfrom the authorities. Thesituation was
14 V. I. Buganov, Moskovskie vosstaniia kontsa XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 87–318;
Vosstanie v Moskve 1682 goda. Sbornik dokumentov, comp. N. G. Savich (Moscow: Nauka,
1976); Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657–1704 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990), pp. 52–88.
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Popular revolts
exacerbated by a dynastic crisis. On 27 April Tsar Fedor died childless, creating
a problem for the succession to the throne. The choice lay between Ivan,
Fedor’s only surviving full brother (from their father’s first marriage to Mariia
Miloslavskaia), and Peter, the only son of Tsar Alexis’s second wife, Natal’ia
Naryshkina. Ivan was sixteen, but physically and mentally handicapped; Peter
was intelligent and healthy, but not yet ten years old. On the day of Fedor’s
death, a hastily convened Assembly of the Land chose the younger brother as
tsar; custom therefore dictated that his mother should be regent. This resolu-
tion of the succession issue was controversial, however, and the grievances of
the strel’tsy against their commanders were soon extended to the Naryshkins
and their supporters, who had – it was claimed – usurped the throne
from Ivan, the rightful heir, in order to establish boyar rule during Peter’s
minority.
On 30 April, in response to a petition from the rank-and-file strel’tsy, Tsaritsa
Natal’ia ordered that some of their most corrupt officers should be flogged.
This did not satisfy the strel’tsy, and on 15–17 May they rioted, bursting into
the Kremlin and brutally murdering members of the Naryshkin clan and their
allies. A compromise solution to the dynastic crisis was provided by the novel
arrangement that Ivan and Peter should rule jointly, but with Ivan as the ‘first’
tsar and his full sister Sophia as de facto regent. The strel’tsy continued to
influence events throughout the summer. They insisted on being renamed
‘court infantry’, and on 6 June they erected a large column on Red Square
on which they listed the victims of the uprising of 15–17 May and justified
their ‘execution’ as traitors. Prince I. A. Khovanskii, who had become head
of the Musketeer Chancellery (Streletskii prikaz) after the uprising, tried to
use the situation to promote his own interests. In July he organised a debate
between a deputation of Old Believers (who enjoyed considerable support
among the strel’tsy) and representatives of the official Church, in the presence
of Tsarevna Sophia and her sisters. Sophia, however, soon gained the upper
hand. Khovanskii and his son Andrei were accused of treason and executed in
September. In October the regent was able to muster regular troops to protect
her, the strel’tsy submitted to her authority and she established control over
the capital.
Unrest continued for some time on the Don and in other parts of the south.
This had begun before the Moscow events, when the Peace of Bakhchisarai of
1681 with Turkey and the Crimea blocked the cossacks’ access to the Black Sea.
In the spring of 1682 some Don cossacks planned to follow Razin’s example
and attack the Russian heartland; news of the unrest in the capital subse-
quently encouraged them to go to the aid of the strel’tsy against the boyars.
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