The seventeenth century saw several large-scale popular uprisings, the most momentous of which was the movement led by the Don Cossack Stepan Razin. The revolt began in the Don area, where peasant fugitives from serfdom and poverty had long since come to settle. In this area there were prosperous Cossacks but the vast majority were poor ones with practically no possessions. The Cossack poor were led by Stepan Razin, an experienced soldier who had seen a great deal of the world having crossed vast tracts of Russia on foot and seen the sufferings of the serfs and their bitter hatred and grudges against the landowners and the tsarist voyevodas.
 The revolt began with an expedition down the Volga in 1667. Razin and his men ambushed merchant and tsarist vessels, seized their cargoes, made short work of tsarist officials and persuaded the majority of the members of the ships' crews to join their band. The gunpowder and arms looted from the ships also came in extremely useful. 
After wintering on the shores of the Ural River, then called the Yaik, during the spring floods Razin and his men made their way down to the Caspian where they captured convoys of Persian ships laden with rich cargoes. After seizing large quantities of silk, valuables and many oriental luxuries Razin and his men returned to Astrakhan on the Volga. In the meantime news of Razin's Persian exploit had spread far and wide. 
A foreign visitor who met Razin gave the following description of him: "He has a fine countenance, noble bearing and proud mien. He is tall with a weather-beaten pitted complexion. He succeeds in inspiring in his men fear, mingled with respect and admiration. Whatever his commands they are without exception obeyed to the letter."
In 1669 Razin and his men returned to the Don and began to prepare for a new foray. First of all they seized the steppe road leading to Moscow, they set up strong fortified posts on the highroads and waylaid tsarist spies. Wherever they went the local peasantry took up arms, rallied to their local leaders and then came flocking to Razin's side. In this way his army soon grew from strength to strength. 
In May 1670 the uprising took on a more political character. Razin's men were no longer just out for booty and came to represent a serious threat to the landowners and the tsarist voyevodas. 
Razin's forces took the town of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) and then Astrakhan. In all the towns which surrendered to Razin the tsarist governors or voyevodas were killed or expelled and their archives, where the charters laying down the landowners' rights over the peasants were kept, were burnt down. 
Razin and his followers then made their way up the Volga and captured Saratov and Samara (now Kuibyshev). Peasants from the nearby villages flocked to join Razin's army and rose up against their masters. They were joined by the peasants living on the crown and monastery lands and the Volga peoples—Mordvinians, Chuvash and Mari—who had been subjected to cruel oppression by the tsarist authorities. Soon the uprising had spread to the whole of the Nizhny Novgorod region and even as far as Penza and Tambov. The peasants laid waste the boyar and dvoryane estates, and killed their masters. Throughout the land Razin's men sent out proclamations calling on the people to take up arms. Important new peasant leaders such as ataman Nechai and the peasant Chirok distinguished themselves. Among the peasant leaders there was even a woman by the name of Alyona, who led a band of seven thousand peasants and was completely fearless in battle. The voyevodas were in terror of her and thought she was a witch.
 The insurgent peasants saw their main aim to lie in wreaking vengeance on their own local masters. They felt that by destroying their houses they were doing away with serfdom for ever. In fact, of course, the peasants' main enemy was the system of serfdom as a whole with the supreme landowner, the Tsar, at its head. The peasants did not realise that their main enemy was autocracy and were still under the illusion that a hostile Tsar supporting the landowners could be replaced by a good Tsar who would understand the peasants' needs. But this could never be, the Tsar would always be the defender of the landowners' interests.
 Peasant uprisings kept on flaring up in various parts of the country but the campaign lacked any overall plan for revolutionary action and was not organised well enough. The peasants were inexperienced in warfare and were short of arms. They took with them scythes, cudgels and axes which were to prove sadly ineffective against the Tsar's cannon.
 The tsarist government sent out an enormous army against Razin, led by experienced commanders. Despite brave resistance, the peasant revolt was crushed. Some of the cruellest reprisals were those meted out in the town of Arzamas, which was literally littered with gallows on each of which hung forty or fifty bodies. Eleven thousand men were hanged in the course of three months. 
The leader of the uprising was also to meet with a sad fate. At first Razin went into hiding in the lands of the Don Cossacks, but some of the richer among them handed him over to the tsarist authorities. He was brought to Moscow and subjected to cruel torture. In June 1671 Razin was quartered alive on the Red Square. 
Although the peasant risings of this period failed to do away with serfdom, they served to undermine the strength of the system and shorten its life. 

"A Short History Of The World", edited by prof. A. Z. Manfred, Progress Publishers, Moscow

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