The Bulavin Rebellion, also called the Astrakhan Rebellion (Russian: Булавинское восстание), is the name given to a violent civil uprising in Imperial Russia between the years 1707 and 1709. It takes its name from the Don Cossack Kondraty Bulavin who rose to its forefront as a sort of figurehead. Fueled by a number of underlying tensions between the police state government under Peter I of Russia and a peasantry bound to serfdom, the rebellion is generally recognized as beginning with the assassination of Prince Yury Dolgorukov by atamans under Bulavin's command. The end of the rebellion is associated with Bulavin's death by gunshot to the brain in 1709. naf naf Astrakhan coat of arms features the Khans crown and a sabre Astrakhan (Russian: ; Tatar: Ästerxan), a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. ... Imperial Russia is the term used to cover the period of history from the expansion of Russia under Peter the Great, through the expansion of the Russian Empire from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, to the deposal of Nicholas II of Russia, the last tsar, at the start... Events January 1 - John V is crowned King of Portugal April 25 - Allied army is defeated by Bourbonic army at Almansa (Spain) in the War of the Spanish Succession. ... // Events January 12 - Two-month freezing period begins in France - The coast of the Atlantic and Seine River freeze, crops fail and at least 24. ... Don Cossacks refers to cossacks that settled along the Don River, Russia it its lower and middle parts. ... Kondraty Afanisievich Bulavin (Кондратий Афанасьевич Булавин) (1660-1708) was a Don Cossack, the leader of a Cossack-serf rebellion of commonly known as the Bulavin RebellionБулавинское восстание1707-1709. ... A police state is a political condition where the government maintains strict control over society, particularly through suspension of civil rights and often with the use of a force of secret police. ... Portrait of Peter by Paul Delaroche Peter I (Russian: Пётр I Алексеевич or Pyotr I Alekseyevich) (Peter Alexeyevich Romanov) (9 June 1672–8 February 1725 [30 May 1672– 28 January 1725 O.S.] [1]) ruled Russia from 7 May (27 April O.S.) 1682 until his death. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Dolgoroukov (Долгоруков) is the name of a princely Russian family of Rurikid stock. ...

Underlying Causes

There were a number of social grievances prevalent in the peasant population of Russia in the years leading up to the Bulavin Rebellion. Peter the Great's radical reforms designed to "Westernize" old Muscovy in the 18th century were met with widespread discontent. The pious, deeply conservative masses saw his reforms as an affront to their traditional way of life and to their Orthodox faith. Peter was even equated to the Anti-Christ and assumed to be an imposter posing as the true Tsar. On top of this, Peter's newly-formed police state was expanding territorially, and by this expansion was encroaching upon salt resource sites coveted by the Cossacks for preservation of their foods. This dispute over land was in one sense an economic issue, but the Cossacks also regarded this as an intrusion upon their semi-autonomous political state, thereby complicating the matter with center-periphery tension. In general, the entire rural Russian atmosphere was agitated and waiting for a catalyst of some kind. Muscovy (Moscow principality (княжество Московское) to Grand Duchy of Moscow (Великое Княжество Московское) to Russian Tsardom (Царство Русское)) is a traditional Western name for the Russian state that existed from the 14th century to the late 17th century. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... The term Orthodox Christian refers to two Christian traditions: Oriental Orthodoxy, which separated from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in the 5th century; Eastern Orthodoxy, which separated from Roman Catholicism in the 11th century Great Schism. ... In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist is a person or other entity that is the embodiment of evil and utterly opposed to truth. ... A police state is a political condition where the government maintains strict control over society, particularly through suspension of civil rights and often with the use of a force of secret police. ...

Immediate Catalyst

In response to the constraints and fears of living in Peter's police-state, large numbers of serfs absconded, abandoning the major urban areas, especially Moscow and the new capital at St. Petersburg. While some groups emigrated to Poland or Austria, many chose to avoid the border patrols and instead fled to the rural periphery and the river regions already inhabited by the Cossacks. It was Peter's policy to hunt down and arrest absconders and return them to their lords where they could be counted for taxes, a policy which, by this time, had no statute of limitations. In accordance with this policy, Peter deployed a group of bounty hunters under Yuri Dolgurky to scout the Cossack regions for fugitive peasants. Despite the fact that the Cossacks harbored some resentment towards the peasants (for overpopulating their region and generally competing for local resources), more deplorable to them was the idea of Petrine agents roaming freely through their territory. They not only refused to give up the fugitive peasants, but on October 8, 1707, a small band of local atamans headed by Kondrati Bulavin ambushed and murdered Dolgurky and his men in the village of Shulgin on the Aidar River, opening the door to violence and beginning the Bulavin Rebellion. Moscow (Russian: Москва́, Moskva, IPA: ) is the capital of Russia and the countrys principal political, economic, financial, educational and transportation center, located on the river Moskva. ... Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991) and Petrograd (Петрогра́д, 1914–1924), is a city located in Northwestern Russia on the delta of the river Neva at the east end of the Gulf of Finland...

Bulavin the Man

Little is known about Bulavin personally, but he was born into a Cossack family and would have been old enough to remember Stenka Razin and the revolt of the late 17th century. He developed some combat experience fighting the Kuban and Crimean Tatars in his youth. However, he was never a particularly great military commander, and throughout the rebellion that bears his name, he would forever fall short of becoming an undisputed leader. By 1704, he had risen to the status of ataman of Bakhmut, a position he held until 1706. It was during this stint that he orchestrated and participated in the destruction of the salt works on the Northern Dones, an act of retaliation for having been evicted by the government as squatters. This conflict was never entirely resolved and was ultimately absorbed into the greater rebellion as it gained momentum. Bulavin was most likely illiterate, but like his contemporary revolutionaries, he possessed a talent for appealing to the pathos of the people and inciting them to action. (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... Tatars (Tatar: Tatarlar/Татарлар) (Persian: تاتار) is a collective name applied to the Turkic people of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. ... Events Building of the Students Monument in Aiud, Romania. ... Events March 27 - Concluding that Emperor Iyasus I of Ethiopia had abdicated by retiring to a monastery, a council of high officials appoint Tekle Haymanot I Emperor of Ethiopia May 23 - Battle of Ramillies September 7 - The Battle of Turin in the War of Spanish Succession - forces of Austria and... To squat is to occupy an unoccupied or abandoned space or building that the individual does not own, rent, or otherwise have permission to use. ... Pathos (from πάσχειν paschein, the Greek word meaning to suffer or emotion) is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric (along with ethos and logos). ...

General Details

Bulavin's rally cries were simple: the goal was to move against Moscow and destroy the evil influences on the Tsar. It is important to note that the rebellion was not against the institution of Tsardom but against the evil figures in power at the time. It was generally believed that Peter was either not who he claimed (i.e. the Antichrist sitting in place of the true Tsar who was hidden away), or that he was indeed the rightful Tsar but was under the control of evil advisers whose destruction would liberate him, and that if given the freedom to act, he would repudiate all of his wicked reforms. Look up Tsar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary For the US community of Czar, see Czar, West Virginia. ...

The rebellion suffered from a number of weaknesses. For one, despite all of his rallying, Bulavin never offered a pretender to the throne or suggested a just tsar to replace Peter. This blunder would condemn the rebellion's end goals to ambiguity and would let slip an immeasurable amount of support he might have mustered. Second, Bulavin did not coordinate his efforts with any other pre-existing Muscovite enemies, so despite being heavily engaged in war with Sweden, the military apparatus under Peter was not as divided as it could have been and found the rebellion to be more of a nuisance than a major conflict. By means of its vastly superior size and efficiency, the regular army was ultimately capable of stamping out the rebellion at all levels. In the end, angered by devastating reversals and Bulavin's tiring claims, factions of his own Cossack followers turned against him. He was found dead on July 7, 1708, having been shot in the head. It is not known whether the wound was self-inflicted or an act of treachery. Following Bulavin's death, the rebellion petered out, with pockets of resistance persisting through 1709, but for all intents and purposes, the conflict was over.

Political and Social Aftermath

As mentioned, the Bulavin Rebellion bore striking similarities to Razin's Revolt a generation earlier. Both were Cossack rebellions in part, aimed against an imposing governmental institution and driven by animosity for the miserable state of peasant life. They effectively set the stage for the Pugachev Uprising under Catherine the Great.

In response to the uprising, Peter tightened his grip on the Cossack states, causing some 2000 under Nekrasov to flee to the protection of the Crimean khan. Descendents of these Nekrasovites would relocate to Anatolia during the Pugachev uprising and settle near Constantinople, where their traditional culture would continue to the present day. Nekrasov is a common Russian last name. ... Khan (sometimes spelled as xan, han, Polish chan) is a title with many meanings, originally commander, leader or ruler, in Mongolian and Turkish. ... Asia Minor lies east of the Bosporus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. ... Constantinople[1] was the name of the modern-day city of Ä°stanbul, Turkey over the centuries that it served as the second capital of the unified Roman Empire, and after its division into East and West, of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire (from the city...

References

• Evgenii V. Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress Through Coercion in Russia, Tr. John T. Alexander (Armonk, NY: Me. Sharpe, 1993)

• Paul Avrich, Russian Rebels, 1600-1800, (New York, 1972)

• James Cracraft, ed., Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia, (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994)

• Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia, 7th ed., (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005)

External links

• Biography of Bulavin