Musketeers and Other Traditional Forces 67its detailed catalogue of prohibitions and threats; officers are given no positive
inducement to behave properly or to earn their men's respect.
The inditrerent performance of the traditional forces in the campaigns of
1677-8 against the Turks and Tatars led the reformers in high places to revive
the idea of turning the musketeers into Western-style soldiers, and perhaps of
abolishing the corps altogether. In March 1680 the Moscow stre/'tsy chiefs
were given foreign titles of colonel (polkovnik) and the like to bring them into
line with their equivalents in the new-model forces.ss The move must have been
unpopular, if not with the officers concerned at least with the rank and file,
who were suspicious of alien influences. The following year, when Golitsyn set
up the commission on military reforms, the stre/'tsy do not appear to have
been represented (or at any rate, if their leaders did attend, they were not
elected). s^6
It is therefore not surprising that, when a dynastic crisis broke out a few
months later, the stre/'tsy should have become involved and helped to decide
its outcome. During the troubled year 1682 they spearheaded a movement of
social protest which generated a wide range of objectives-professional,
political, and religious-that were not easily reconciled. The rebels also
brought into being a rudimentary organization through which to press their
claims, and these elected leaders tried to control the random destructiveness
that marked the initial stages of the revolt. However, there is no denying that
the men's political views were primitive; strong believers in the sacral monarchy
and in traditional Orthodox values, they could not evolve a credible pro-
gramme of political reform. This doomed the movement to failure. After
a few months-0(.unGertainty the government was able to restore order and to
punish the trouble-makers. The uprising of 1682 was the first of a number of
military revolts which broke out during the next century and a half; it is
therefore worth examining closely, with the aid of sources that have recently
been made available. s^7The first sign of serious disaffection came in February, when men in B.
Pyzhov's contingent charged their commander with arbitrarily docking their
pay. An investigation was launched by I. M. Yazykov, a favourite of the tsar
who shared responsibility for the Streletskiy chancellery with the aged and
ineffectual boyar Yu. A. Dolgorukiy. The complaints were held to be un-
founded and the petitioners severely punished. The stre/'tsy in the capital
appreciated that the political situation was becoming highly unstable. During
55 PSZ ii. 812.
56 PSZ ii. 905. The official record mentions polkovniki ... pekhotnye, which might include the.
stref"tsy chiefs.
" Cf. Buganov, Mosk. vosstaniya; id., Vosstaniye v Moskve 1682 g.: sb. dok. The former
offers a thorough critique of the sources, among which the most important are S. Medvedev,
Soiertsaniye kratkoye ... (preferable to the account by A. A. Matveyev on which most historians
have relied) and Heinrich Butenant, Eigentlicher Bericht ... , Hamburg, 1682, which we have
tr. and ed. as 'Mutiny in Moscow, 1682'.