226 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825The risk of this 'iron curtain' policy was that it bottled up frustrations which
might explode in organized violence. During the period we have been consider-
ing troubles of this kind were rare. The infrequent exceptions emphasize the
so!dier5' general docility. It i5 now known that among those jailed for political
offences in the early 1790s there were more men in uniform (about 200) than
any other class of Russian subject,^126 but the implications of this fact should
not be exaggerated. Disaffection, where it occurred, usually had its roots in
some ethnic, regional, or 'corporatist' grievance. This was the case with those
land-militiamen who sympathized with Pugachev's revolt-an insurgency
which originated in the government's encroachment on the liberties of the
Yaik and Don Cossack 'hosts' on the empire's south-eastern border.^127 It was
also the case with the Don Cossacks who were sent to the Caucasus in 1794 for
holding 'dubious gatherings and conclaves'^128 and their Polish contemporaries
who, having been inducted into the Russian army, came out in sympathy with
Kosciuszko's revolt.129 •
Those disturbances that on the face of it seem to have been protests against
service conditions likewise had a marked regional flavour. There was trouble
among militiamen (opolchentsy, that is, members of the national levy) at
Dubosary in the Ukraine in 1807 when, instead of being disbanded at the end
of hostilities as they had been led to expect, they found themselves drafted into
regular army units.^130 Rather similar in nature, but more serious, were the riots
which broke out among militiamen at Insar, Saransk, and Chembar (Penza
province) in the autumn of 1812. The men concerned belonged to the lst, 2nd,
and 3rd Cossack infantry regiments, and a consciousness of their rights as
Cossacks played a significant part in their action, as well as their understand-
able indignation at the authorities' needlessly violent attempts to 'restore
order'. At Chembar a Colonel Dmitriyev fired on a crowd which refused to
disperse. The Insar men (and perhaps the others too) held that they could not
legally be sent to fight away from their own locality because they had not been
sworn in (which was true); furthermore, a militia unit in neighbouring Tambov
province had been disbanded for administrative reasons, and they suspected
that they were being discriminated against. They were nevertheless ordered to
move off and the 'ringleaders' arrested. Thereupon the men promptly released
them (much as the stre/'tsy had done in 1682 and 1698), seized some liquor at
gun-point, and for two days and nights ran amok in the town, breaking into
houses and stealing property valued at some 8,000 roubles.^131 The stated
motive for this pogrom may well have concealed sentiments of a more political
126 Dzhedzhula, Rossiya i ... burzh. revolyutsiya, p. 171.
121 Beskrovnyy, Russkaya armiya, p. 452.
12s TsGVIA, f. 801, op. 62/3, ed. khr. 304 (1798); Svatikov, Rossiya i Don, pp. 234-9.(^1) ~9 Meshcheryakov, Suvorov, iii. 299, 308, 312, 327.
130 Tuchkov, Zapiski, p. 279.
l3t Shchukin, Bumagi, iv. 156-76; Beskrovnyy et al., Nor. opolcheniye, pp. 380-6. There is
some doubt about their fate; from the published sources it seems that the Chembar men were
punished but the Insar ones pardoned. About 250 men were involved in all.