Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China by Roland Mousnier

Author:Roland Mousnier [Mousnier, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061316197
Google: mRRnAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 13033847
Publisher: Harper & Row
Published: 1968-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Peasant Revolts of the “Time of Troubles.” The False Dmitris. Bolotnikov

The deplorable situation of the petty pomeshchiki, craftsmen, and peasants gave rise to a permanent state of banditry. Many bands of outlaws terrorized the countryside. They sometimes numbered as many as a hundred men, organized in military fashion, each under the orders of an ptaman. These bandits carried on methodical operations, hiding in the forests and emerging to ambush merchants, or peasants who were taking their tax money to town, or else to raid an estate and carry off the crops. The people saw these bandits as their avengers. The peasants refused to cooperate with the authorities against them. On the contrary, they acted as guides and scouts for the bandits, gave them shelter, and harbored their stolen goods for them. Sometimes an ataman would become a popular hero, and his legendary feats would be celebrated in songs.

Wherever the inhabitants asked for it, as a measure against brigandage, the tsar granted a guba charter. In the rural canton, or volost, and sometimes in the district, or uyezd, an assembly of the people—clergy, nobles, townsmen, peasants—by unanimous vote elected an “elder,” chosen from among the nobles. The man elected went to Moscow to be sworn in at the Banditry Office and was handed an official deed. He was to fight against bandits, robbers, and murderers. He commanded a force of wardens who were peasants and craftsmen chosen and paid by the bigger taxpayers. The élection was not a democratic procedure: its purpose was to ensure that every elector, by signing the record of the élection, pledged himself to fulfill his obligations toward the state, and the working of the guba was based on the principle of mutual guarantee.1

However, the guba system proved ineffective. Banditry persisted. From time to time, sudden explosive outbreaks by the peasants occurred: by the peasants of St. Antony’s Monastery in 1578, by the men whose suzerain was the Volokolamsk Monastery in 1593 and 1594.

Boris Godunov was not popular. The masses were not convinced that he was a “true tsar.” The boyars were angry because he governed without them, using his own family, through an inner Duma consisting of relations of his, and because of the trials he held at which the best families of Russia were accused, with great publicity. Everyone trembled with honor as a result of his system of suspicion, informing, and torture.2

In the view of his contemporaries, Boris Godunov’s reign was not blessed by Heaven. In 1600 the rumor spread in Moscow that Prince Dmitri Ivanovich had not died at Uglich but was still alive. Then Heaven made plain its disfavoring of the so-called Tsar Boris. The summer of 1601 saw torrential downpours of rain. The ears of corn, already full, could not ripen, the cornfields remained “green as grass.” On the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, August 15, a sudden frost destroyed the crops of barley and oats. Sowing had to be undertaken with frozen seed. In spring, 1602, the fields were bare.

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