13RESISTANCE, REPRESSION, AND REFORM
THE soldiers and peasants on whom the government sought to confer the
economic and social benefits associated with the military settlements were
quick to manifest their distaste for the scheme. Their first step was to petition
for redress of grievances. These pleas were usually disregarded and the plain-
tiffs punished. Opposition then took a more drastic turn. Some settlers or their
dependants fled; others committed suicide; a few raised the flag of revolt.
Nevertheless this resistance remained episodic and, in the last resort, ineffec-
tual. The local authorities sometimes lost control of the situation, but the
government was never put at risk. Under Nicholas I the disturbances gave an
added urgency to ideas of reform, but cannot really be said to have instigated
them. What worried officials most was the prospect that the dark warnings
uttered by the scheme's conservative opponents seemed to be taking shape.
Soldiers were prominent in initiating the rebellions in the settlements. If the
whole army were placed on this basis, as originally intended, might not the
troops ignite a massive insurgency among the state peasants that could spread
to millions of privately-owned serfs as well?
In discussing these acts of resistance it is important to distinguish between
the settlements in the forest and steppe zones. In the former area disturbances
were 'few and minor', at least during Alexander's reign.^1 The most serious
trouble arose in the south, on the river Bug and in the Slobodskaya Ukraina.
In Nicholas l's reign the roles were reversed, for in^1831 the Novgorod settle-
ments were the focal point of unrest. It was the government's good fortune
that the four regions were too far apart for their residents to make contact
easily, let alone concert acts of protest.
In the Novgorod area matters were complicated by the fact that several pea-
sant communities were made up of religious dissenters (Old Believers), who
traditionally paid extra taxes in lieu of military service. When they were incor-
porated into the settlements in 1817 they were required to shave their beards,
in their eyes an act of blasphemy. Troops were sent against them. In self-
defence they took to axes and pitchforks, but to no avail. Their spokesman, an
army clerk named Fili pp Mikhaylov, was arrested and made to run the gauntlet;
11 other men were transferred elsewhere.^2 These were mild penalties by the stan-
dards of the day, and when disturbances broke out in a neighbouring district the
I Ferguson. 'Settlements', p. 193.
z Martos, 'Zapiski', pp. 530-2, 535-7; Petrov, 'Ustroystvo', pp. 147, 240-2; Fedorov, So/dat-
skoye dvizheniye, pp. 27-8; Yevstaf' yev, Vosstaniye, pp. 82-7.