angry at Russian seizure of their lands or newly imposed taxation or enserfment.
None of these rebellions was successful in changing fundamental structures, but
both Razin and Pugachev engendered vibrant folk songs and tales evoking nostalgia
for frontier freedoms that migrated into mainstream literature and art. Alexander
Pushkin set his novellaThe Captain’s Daughter(1836) in the time of Pugachev; the
artist Vasilii Surikov immortalized Stepan Razin in defeat (1906). In the seven-
teenth century, the government punished such opposition with calculated steps. In
the heat of battle, they strung rebel leaders up on gibbets for all to see, as discussed
in Chapter 7; they staged an elaborate execution for Stepan Razin in Moscow. But
for the mass of the rebels, the state moved cautiously, demanding oaths of loyalty
and sending them home, following up with reforms to improve policing to prevent
a recurrence.OTHER TAXPAYERS
Landlords’serfs constituted about half of all the peasants in the realm; the rest were
in direct relationship to the tsar as state and crown peasants or native communities.
In lands north of Moscow (the Dvina basin, Pomor’e), where landlord serfdom was
untenable, state peasants had strong communal government. Villages were small,
and organized in regional communes to handle common legal and economic issues
and to represent their interests to the local governor. They regularly petitioned and
won Moscow’s cooperation on issues such as relief from taxation after natural
disasters, onerous labor services, bands of highwaymen. They negotiated the best
deal they could with the center, and they were good at it. Many who emigrated
(forcibly or not) to Siberia brought these strong communal traditions to their
isolated outposts, contributing to Siberians’reputation for independence.
Moscow’s expanding empire grew to include many other taxpaying groups by
the end of the seventeenth century, each with its own deal with the center. East
Slavic peasants and serfs acquired in the Grand Duchy with westward expansion
were treated like Russian peasants in tax and service obligations. Non-Slavic
populations fared differently, primarilyiasakpayers who lived in territories of
historic Chinggisid rule.Iasakpayers were as varied as the empire’s vast terrain.
They included nomadic Bashkirs in the Urals and Iakuts in Siberia, reindeer
herders and walrus hunters near the Arctic Circle, Tatars and Chuvash in the
Middle Volga. They generally lived in tribes, sometimes organized at a larger level
(the Buriats and Iakuts of eastern Siberia).Iasakwas paid in kind and in cash
depending on the setting—in furs in Siberia until they ran out.Iasak-paying
peasants were not recruited into the new model army, but some were asked to
perform labor services for local garrisons and other military needs.
Outside the tsar’s direct taxation through the seventeenth century were several
semi-autonomous areas—Don Cossack territory, the Hetmanate, semi-autonomous
Sloboda Ukraine, nomadic Kalmyks. Muscovy dealt with each differently—
providing grain subsidies and gifts to the Don Cossacks and Kalmyks, taking
customs and other indirect taxes from Sloboda Ukraine, demanding that the
Rural Taxpayers 231