initiative was played by Cossacks (Razin and Bulavin were Cossack atamans, and Pugachev a prominent Cossack as well). The rank and file included serfs and free peasants, as well as ethnic and religious minorities (e.g., Tatars in the Razin rebellion and Bashkirs in the Pugachev rebellion; ethnically Russian Old Believers in the Razin, Bulavin, and Pugachev rebellions). The Bolotnikov uprising, as part of the Time of Troubles, also involved impoverished or discontented gentry, some of whom, however, parted company with the rebels at a crucial stage. The religious and cultural aspect of the uprisings reflected discontent with top-down autocratic reforms along foreign patterns. Some also view the uprisings as a cultural response of the Cossack frontier to excess regulation by the imperial center.
Rebel demands are known from their own documents (e.g., “Seductive Letters” issued by Razin) and government reports. These demands involved land redistribution, the change of peasants’ status from serfs to Cossacks, and often the elimination of the privileged classes. None of the uprisings was directed against the institution of monarchy; some rebels allied themselves with contenders to the throne (e.g., Bolotnikov with one of the Pseudo1155
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Dmitrys and then with another self-styled tsare-vich, Peter), while Bulavin and Pugachev claimed their own rights to the tsar’s scepter. On the territories occupied by rebels, peasants were declared free of servitude and debt, and Cossack-style self-rule was decreed. The uprisings were characterized by mass casualties and brutality on both sides. All of them were violently suppressed and their leaders executed; in the longer run, they may have spurred policy changes and reform efforts emanating from the top.
The most famous Pugachev rebellion was distinguished by the fact that its leader claimed to be Tsar Peter III (the actual tsar was murdered a decade earlier, in 1762, in a coup that brought his wife, Catherine II, to power). He issued his first manifesto in this capacity in September 1773. Pugachev promised to give peasants “back” their freedom “stolen” from them by the gentry, making them into Cossacks. The army of his followers counted about twenty-five thousand people. This rebellion was the first one of the manufacturing era, and was joined by serfs laboring at the manufactures in the Urals. Its suppression was followed in the short run by the strengthening and further spread of the institution of serfdom, as well as the incorporation of Cossacks into the state bureaucracy. During the nineteenth century, peasant uprisings never rose to the scale of wars. A major uprising in 1861 in the Kazan region reflected discontent with the conditions attached to the emancipation of the serfs.
Peasant guerrilla culture in Russia (as in some other countries) involved the operation of a parallel, or shadow community beyond the reach of the state, abruptly revealing itself in mass action. Guerrilla tactics followed by peasant rebels played a role in the twentieth-century revolutions (both on the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik side), due to the numerical and cultural influence of peasantry (or recent peasants among urban workers and the intelligentsia). These tactics were also employed in defense against foreign invasions (the 1812 Patriotic War and World War II).
Scholars emphasizing the continuity of peasant resistance over centuries view the revolutions of 1905-1907 and 1917 as a resumption of peasant wars, in a different socioeconomic environment. Some of them consider the 1917-1933 period as “the Great Peasant War” suppressed by Josef Stalin through artificially organized famine and collectivization of the peasantry. Peasant wars figured prominently in Russian folklore and modern arts. Alexander Pushkin, in characterizing a “Russian rebellion” as “senseless and merciless,” perpetuated the view of peasant wars as destructive explosions, characterized by savage brutality on both sides, after seemingly endless patience of the oppressed. Revolutionary democrats of the Populist tradition cultivated a heroic image of peasant rebels, while orthodox Marxists dismissed them as anarchists and enemies of the modernizing state. See also: BOLOTNIKOV, IVAN ISAYEVICH; COSSACKS; DMITRY, FALSE; PEASANTRY; PUGACHEV, EMELIAN IVANOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Avrich, Paul (1976). Russian Rebels, 1600-1800. New York: Norton. Graziosi, Andrea. (1997). The Great Soviet Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917-1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Longworth, P. (1973). “The Last Great Cossack Peasant Rising.” Journal of European Studies 3. Pushkin, Alexander. (1987). Captain’s Daughter. New York: Hyperion. Pushkin, Alexander. (2001). The History of Pugachev. London: Phoenix. Raeff, Marc. (1970) “Pugachev’s Rebellion.” In Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe, eds. Robert Forster and Jack P. Greene. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. Wolf, Eric (1969). Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper amp; Row.
During the late ninth century, under the pressure from the Torky and Khazars, the Pechenegs, a nomadic Turkic-speaking tribal confederation, migrated from the Volga-Ural region and occupied the area stretching from the Don-Donets to the Danube. Like other nomads inhabiting the southern Russian steppe from around 965 to around 1240, the Pechenegs did not create a true state. Politically, they were united into eight tribal unions, each occupying one of the four provinces (running in strips from north to south) on each side of the Dnieper. Disunited, the Pechenegs never threatened the existence of the Rus state. The Pechenegs raided
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Rus territories and traded such items as livestock for goods unavailable in nomadic economies (grain and luxury goods). At other times, they acted as Rus allies in military campaigns, as in the 944 Rus war against Byzantium. From 980 onward, they likewise served as mercenaries in the conflicts between Rus princes. The Byzantines also used the Pechenegs to counter the Rus. Thus, in 972, while returning to Kiev from his Byzantine campaign, the Pechenegs killed Prince Svyatoslav, probably on the request of the Byzantines. The Pechenegs’ one major attack on Kiev was decisively repulsed by Yaroslav the Wise in 1036. Defeated and under pressure from the Torky, most Pechenegs migrated toward the Balkans, where they were massacred by Byzan-tine-Cuman forces in 1091. The few who remained joined the Rus border guards known as Chernye klobuky or Black Hoods. Until around 1010, the Pechenegs probably practiced shamanist-T?ri religion, but thereafter began to convert to Islam. See also: KHAZARS; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Golden, Peter B. (1990). “The Peoples of the South Russian Steppe.” In The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harras-sowitz Verlag. Pritsak, Omeljan. (1975). “The Pecenegs, A Case of Social and Economic Transformation.” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 1:211-236.
The Treaty of Peking (November 14, 1860) confirmed and extended the territorial gains Russia had wrested from China in the Treaty of Aigun (1858). By its terms, the eastern boundary between the two empires was set along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers. The Ussuri boundary gave Russia possession of what became the Maritime Province (Primorskii Krai). Vladivostok, the major city of the Russian Far East, was established in this territory, providing direct access to the Sea of Japan and through the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the Treaty of Peking was the foundation of Russia’s attempts to become a Pacific power. The treaty also established, for the first time, a Russo- Chinese boundary line in the west (Central Asia) according to Russian demands, and provided for the opening of Russian consulates in Urga (Mongolia) and Kashgar (Xinjiang). The entire border was opened to free trade between the two empires.
General Nikolai Ignatiev, appointed Russia’s minister to China in 1859, took advantage of the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French conflict with China, to advance Russia’s imperial interests. At a moment of supreme danger to the Qing court, whose capital Beijing the Anglo-French forces had already occupied and ransacked, Ignatiev offered his services as mediator to the beleaguered Chinese. He urged them to accede to the demands of the Anglo-French expeditionary force while promising to intercede with his fellow Westerners on behalf of the Chinese. In exchange for his services, which were actually superfluous, he demanded and received China’s acceptance of Russia’s own territorial, diplomatic, and commercial demands.
By the Treaty of Peking, Russia became a full-fledged player in the Western imperialist assault upon China’s
