Stenka Razin is the hero of the song, a violent robber who drowned the Persian princess in a fit of jealousy. Here's everything most people know about him. And all this is not true, a myth.
The real Stepan Timofeevich Razin, an outstanding commander, politician, "father of the native" of all the humiliated and insulted, was executed either on Red Square or on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on June 16, 1671. They quartered him, cut his body into pieces and put him on high poles by the Moskva River. It hung there for at least five years.
A sedate man with an arrogant face
Whether from hunger, or from oppression and lack of rights, Timofey Razya fled from near Voronezh to the free Don. Being a strong, energetic, courageous man, he soon became one of the "homely", that is, wealthy Cossacks. He married a Turkish woman captured by him, who gave birth to three sons: Ivan, Stepan and Frol.
The appearance of the middle of the brothers is described by the Dutchman Jan Streis: “He was a tall and sedate man, of strong build, with an arrogant straight face. He behaved modestly, with great severity. Many features of his appearance and character are contradictory: for example, there is evidence from the Swedish ambassador that Stepan Razin knew eight languages. On the other hand, according to the legend, when he and Frol were tortured, Stepan joked: “I heard that only learned people are shaved into priests, you and I are both unlearned, and yet we have received such an honor.”
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Shuttle diplomat
By the age of 28, Stepan Razin became one of the most prominent Cossacks on the Don. Not only because he was the son of a homely Cossack and godson of the military chieftain Kornila Yakovlev himself: before the qualities of a commander, diplomatic qualities are manifested in Stepan.
By 1658 he went to Moscow as part of the Don embassy. The task he received fulfills in an exemplary manner, in the Ambassadorial order he is even noted as an intelligent and energetic person. Soon he reconciles Kalmyks and Nagai Tatars in Astrakhan.
Later, on campaigns, Stepan Timofeevich will repeatedly resort to cunning and diplomatic tricks. For example, at the end of a long and ruinous campaign for the country "for zipuns" Razin not only will not be arrested as a criminal, but will be released with the army and part of the weapon to the Don: this is the result of negotiations between the Cossack chieftain and the tsarist governor Lvov. Moreover, Lvov "accepted Stenka as his named sons and, according to Russian custom, presented him with the image of the Virgin Mary in a beautiful gold frame."
Fighter against bureaucracy and tyranny
Stepan Razin was waiting for a brilliant career, if not for an event that radically changed his attitude to life. During the war with the Commonwealth, in 1665, Stepan's elder brother Ivan Razin decided to take his detachment home from the front, to the Don. After all, the Cossack is a free person, he can leave when he wants. The sovereign governors had a different opinion: they caught up with Ivan's detachment, the freedom-loving Cossack was arrested and executed as a deserter. The extrajudicial execution of his brother shocked Stepan.
Hatred of the aristocracy and sympathy for the poor, disenfranchised people finally took root in him, and two years later he begins to prepare a large campaign "for zipuns", that is, for prey, in order to feed the Cossack idleness, for twenty years, since the introduction serfdom, flocking to the free Don.
The fight against the boyars and other oppressors will become the main slogan of Razin in his campaigns. And the main reason that at the height of the Peasant War, up to two hundred thousand people will be under his banner.
Sly general
The leader of the dwarf turned out to be an inventive commander. Posing as merchants, the Razins took the Persian city of Farabat. For five days, they traded in previously plundered goods, scouting where the houses of the richest townspeople are. And, having explored, they robbed the rich.
Another time, Razin defeated the Ural Cossacks by cunning. This time the Razins pretended to be pilgrims. Entering the city, a detachment of forty men seized the gate and allowed the entire army to enter. The local chieftain was killed, but the Yaik Cossacks did not show resistance to the Don Cossacks.
But the main of Razin's "smart" victories was in the battle at Pig Lake, in the Caspian Sea not far from Baku. The Persians sailed on fifty ships to the island where the Cossack camp was set up. Seeing the enemy, whose forces were several times superior to their own, the Razins rushed to the plows and, ineptly controlling them, tried to swim away. The Persian naval commander Mamed Khan mistook the cunning maneuver for an escape and ordered the Persian ships to be linked together in order to catch the entire army of Razin, as if in a net. Taking advantage of this, the Cossacks began to shoot from all their guns at the flagship, blew it up, and when it pulled the neighboring ships to the bottom and panic arose among the Persians, they began to sink other ships one after another. As a result, only three ships remained from the Persian fleet.
Stenka Razin and the Persian princess
In the battle near the Pig Lake, the Cossacks captured the son of Mamed Khan, the Persian prince Shabalda. According to legend, his sister was also captured, in which Razin was passionately in love, who allegedly even gave birth to a son to the Don chieftain and whom Razin sacrificed to the Volga mother. However, the existence of the Persian princess in reality there is no documentary evidence. In particular, the petition with which Shabalda addressed, asking to let him go, is known, but the prince did not say a word about his sister.
Lovely letters
In 1670, Stepan Razin began the main work of his life and one of the main events in the life of all of Europe: the Peasant War. They never tired of writing about it in foreign newspapers, their progress was followed even in those countries with which Russia did not have close political and trade ties.
This war was no longer a campaign for prey: Razin called for a struggle against the existing system, planned to go to Moscow with the aim of overthrowing, but not the tsar, but the boyar power. At the same time, he hoped for the support of the Zaporozhye and Right-Bank Cossacks, sent embassies to them, but did not achieve the result: the Ukrainians were busy with their own political game.
Nevertheless, the war became nationwide. The poor saw in Stepan Razin a defender, a fighter for their rights, they called him a father. The cities surrendered without a fight. This was facilitated by an active agitation campaign conducted by the Don chieftain. Using the common people love for the king and piety, Razin spread the rumor that the heir to the tsar, Alexei Alekseevich (actually deceased) and the disgraced Patriarch Nikon were following with his army.
The first two ships sailing along the Volga were covered with red and black cloth: the first was allegedly the prince, the second was Nikon.
Razin's "lovely letters" were spreading throughout Russia. “Get down to business, brothers! Now take revenge on the tyrants who hitherto held you in captivity worse than the Turks or the pagans. I came to give all of you freedom and deliverance, you will be my brothers and children, and you will be as good as me, be only courageous and remain faithful, "Razin wrote. His propaganda policy was so successful that the tsar even interrogated Nikon about his connection with the rebels.
Execution
On the eve of the Peasant War, Razin seized de facto power on the Don, having made an enemy in the person of his own godfather, Ataman Yakovlev. After the siege of Simbirsk, where Razin was defeated and seriously wounded, the homely Cossacks headed by Yakovlev were able to arrest him, and then his younger brother Frol. In June, a detachment of 76 Cossacks delivered the Razins to Moscow. On the way to the capital, they were joined by a convoy of one hundred archers. The brothers were dressed in rags.
Stepan was tied to a pillory mounted on a cart, Frol was chained so that he ran alongside. The year was dry. In the midst of the heat, the prisoners were solemnly taken through the city streets. Then they brutally tortured and quartered.
After Razin's death, legends began to form about him. Either he throws twenty-good stones from a plow, then he defends Russia along with Ilya of Muromets, or he voluntarily goes to prison to release the prisoners. “He will lie down so little, rest, get up… Give, he will say, coal, write a boat with that coal on the wall, put convicts into that boat, splash water: the river will flow from the island to the Volga; Stenka and fellows will sing songs - yes to the Volga!.. Well, remember what your name was!"
