elicited Stefan’s criticism and brought a corresponding decline in his influence. Stefan quietly objected to the secularization of church property and new restrictions on monasti-cism. Tensions between Peter and Stefan were only exacerbated by Stefan’s zealous prosecution of the Moscow apothecary Dmitry Tveritinov, whose heresy trial lasted from 1713 to 1718. Influenced by Lutheran ideas, Tveritinov rejected icons and sacraments and claimed that the Bible alone provided sufficient guidance for salvation. The heresy trial naturally brought up unpleasant questions about Western Protestant influence in Peter’s reforms. Indeed, Stefan’s attack on Lutheranism, The Rock of Faith, completed in 1718, could not be published until 1728, after Peter’s death. To make matters worse, Stefan’s political reliability came in to question after Alexei, Peter’s son, fled abroad; in one of his sermons shortly before Alexei’s flight, Stefan called him “Russia’s only hope.”
In the meantime, Peter’s new favorite, Feofan Prokopovich, authored the Spiritual Regulation, a radical church reform that replaced the office of Patriarch at the head of the Orthodox Church with a Holy Synod-a council of bishops and priests. In a vain attempt to halt the rise of his rival, Stefan accused Feofan of heresy, but was forced to withdraw the charge and apologize. In 1721 Peter nevertheless appointed Stefan to become the first presiding member of the new Holy Synod. He died a year later.
A transitional figure between the patriarchal and the synodal periods of the Orthodox Church, Stefan
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embodied the contradictions of early eighteenth-century Russia. One of several learned Ukrainian prelates who became prominent under Peter, Stefan both promoted Westernization and sought to limit it. He was deeply influenced by the thought of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and helped to introduce this theology into Russian Orthodoxy through his writings. See also: HOLY SYNOD; PETER I; PROKOPOVICH, FEOFAN; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
Cracraft, James. (1971). The Church Reform of Peter the Great. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(c. 1630-1671), leader of a Don Cossack revolt and hero of folksong and legend.
Stepan Timofeyvich Razin, also known as Stenka Razin, is the hero of innumerable folksongs, legends and works of art. The most popular motif is his (legendary) sacrifice of his bride, a Persian princess, whom he throws into the Volga River for the sake of Cossack solidarity. Over the past three centuries, the name of Stepan Razin has been associated in the Russian popular mind with freedom, social justice, and heroic and adventurous manhood. The philosopher Nikolai A. Berdyaev, assessing the phenomenon of communism in Russia, characterized it as a synthesis of Marx and Stenka Razin.
Stepan Razin, the son of a Don Cossack ataman (military leader) and, it is said, a captive Turkish woman, rose to prominence among the Cossacks at a relatively young age. Thus there was no shortage of volunteers when he led a series of brigandage expeditions to the lower Volga in 1667 and the Caspian Sea in 1668 and again in 1669, especially from among the many impoverished newcomers to the Don region, mostly former peasants escaping serfdom. Unlike other Cossack leaders, Razin welcomed the newcomers and cultivated the spirit of Cossack brotherhood and equality (obsolete by his time) among his men. His expeditions were unusually successful-Russian and Persian caravans were plundered, Persian commercial settlements and towns were devastated, a Persian fleet was defeated, and Razin’s warriors won riches and glory.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Upon returning to Russia, Razin departed from tradition by keeping his band intact and not sharing his booty with the established Cossack leaders. Moreover, as he passed through the lower Volga cities of Astrakhan and Tsaritsyn, hundreds of townsmen, fugitive peasants, and even regular soldiers flocked to his standard. The commanders of the Russian garrisons did not dare to stop the popular hero and let him and his men return to the Don region unimpeded.
Having raised an army of perhaps seven to ten thousand, Razin announced a new campaign in 1670, aimed at settling scores with the tsar’s bo-yars and officials, the “traitors and oppressors of the poor.” The towns of Saratov and Samara opened their gates to him; Russian peasants and indigenous peoples rose up in revolt by the tens of thousands throughout the lower and middle Volga region. The rebels intended to march on Moscow, although they maintained that they were loyal to the tsar. They were defeated, however, when they besieged the next large town, Simbirsk, crushed by the government’s regular army, which exploited the lack of coordination between Cossacks and peasants. Stenka Razin fled to the Don region, where in 1671 he was captured by the men of his godfather, Kornilo Yakovlev, a leader of the Don Cossacks. Stenka Razin and his younger brother Frol were delivered to Moscow in an iron cage and executed on June 6, 1671. See also: COSSACKS; FOLKLORE; PEASANTRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Field, Cecil. (1947). The Great Cossack: The Rebellion of Stenka Razin against Alexis Michaelovitch, Tsar of All the Russias. London: H. Jenkins. Fuhrmann, Joseph T. (1981). Tsar Alexis: His Reign and His Russia. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
(b. 1952), general-lieutenant of the internal troops of the Mnistry of Internal Affairs, member of Supreme Soviet and chair of the Defense and Security Committee, head of the Counter-Intelligence Service, minister of Internal Affairs, prime minister, and head of State Audit Commission.
Sergei Stepashin joined the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union and served there until 1990. He graduated from the Military Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In his last years in the Ministry of Internal Affairs he was involved in the Ministry’s response to such “hot spots” as Baku, the Fergana Valley, Nagorno- Karabakh, and Sukhumi. In 1990 he was elected to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet from Leningrad, and he served as chairman of the Committee on Defense and Security. He served in the Russian parliament until 1993. A political ally of President Boris Yeltsin, Stepashin was also appointed deputy minister of security in 1991 and held that post until 1993. In 1993 Stepashin supported Yeltsin in his struggle with the Russian parliament; Yeltsin appointed him deputy minister, then, in March 1994, minister, of the Counter-Intelligence Service. Stepashin played a leading role in unsuccessful covert efforts to overthrow the Dudayev government in Chechnya in the fall of 1994. In 1995 Yeltsin officially fired Stepashin for the fiasco in handling the Chechen raid on Budennovsk in Russia but continued his involvement in counter-intelligence activities. In 1997 Yeltsin appointed him minister of Justice. In the administrative turnover of the last years of Yeltsin’s second term, Stepashin moved up rapidly. He was appointed minister of Internal Affairs in April 1998 and then prime Minister in May 1999 to replace Yevgeny Primakov. Stepashin directed the government’s initial response to the raid of Chechen bands into Dagestan, but was replaced as prime minister by Vladimir Putin in September 1999. In 2000 Putin appointed Stepashin to head the State Auditing Commission. See also: CHECHNYA AND CHECHENS; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH; YABLOKO; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bohlen, Celestine. (1999). “Yeltsin Dismisses Another Premier: KGB Veteran Is In.” The New York Times (August 10, 1999). Bohlen, Celestine. (2002). “Sergey Vadimovich Stepashin.” National Politics. «http://lego70.tripod.com/rus/ stepashin.htm». Shevtsova, Lilia. (1999). Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
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STEPENNAIA KNIGA See BOOK OF DEGREES.
To the forest-dwelling, inland-looking Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarus), the steppes of
