established fortresses to protect themselves from Nogai, Crimean Tatar, or Kalmyk
raids and themselves lived the typical raiding life. But they were also drawn into
trading information with Muscovite authorities in return for guns and supplies,
fulfilling a valuable surveillance function as Russia moved south. By mid-sixteenth
century Don Cossacks had forged a reciprocal relationship with the Russian empire,
receiving generous annual grain payments and the privilege of trade in Russian
towns in return for serving in campaigns (such as 1552 and 1556 Kazan and
Astrakhan) and spying.
The Don Cossack territory was a self-governing enclave in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, divided into Cossackstanitsyruled by Cossack officers and
Cossack law. Their leaders skillfully negotiated their deals with Muscovy: Don
Cossacks paid no direct tax to Russia, their regimental and governing institutions
were not infringed upon, they did not permit serfdom, and by treaty they enjoyed
personal liberties including the right to distinctive colorful dress patterned on
Turkish garb. Russian speakers, they were known in the seventeenth century for
mixing pagan practice with nominal Orthodoxy—thefirst Orthodox church in the
Don Cossack capital of Cherkassk came under Peter I—and many became adher-
ents of the Old Belief.
When in the seventeenth century local social tensions rose, Don Cossack elites
found common ground with Russia. Floods of in-migrating Russian peasants had
been winning status as Cossacks but found themselves unable to acquire land; they
complained of poverty and inequitable treatment by their richer Cossack brethren.
Overturning a time-honored Cossack tradition of integrating newcomers, the Don
Cossack elite sided with Russia, rejecting the migrants’claims to Cossack status and
joining with Russian search parties to deport runaways to Russia. When Russia
concluded peace agreements with the Ottoman empire in 1681 (Bakhchisarai),
Don Cossacks deferred to Muscovy, agreeing to curtail raiding into Ottoman
territories and even respecting borders drawn by the treaty. Brian Boeck and
Peter Perdue both remark that this was long before European statesfixed such
firm territorial borders in Europe. When poor Don Cossacks rose in rebellion
under Stepan Razin in 1670–1 (and later under Kondratii Bulavin in 1706–9), the
leadership assisted tsarist troops in bloody repression, capturing Stepan Razin and
turning him over to Moscow. When Razin was executed in Moscow in 1671, he
was paraded through the streets, but only after he had been made to change from
his colorful Cossack clothing to sackcloth. Such loyalty on the part of the Don
Cossack elites gave them leverage to renegotiate with Moscow to maintain their
most important autonomies.
MODERN-DAY UKRAINIAN AND BELARUS’AN LANDS
Muscovy encountered another potent group of Cossacks—those on the Dnieper—
in the second half of the seventeenth century, but to understand the importance
that these Cossacks played in the Russian empire, a look back at the cultural and
political history of these lands is required. As we have noted, in the vacuum of
72 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801