19. The River Pirate of the Volga
The first mention of Stenka Razin in the historic record dates to 1652, when he sought permission to go on a pilgrimage to a monastery on the White Sea. He next appears in documents dated to 1661, when he was listed as a member of a diplomatic mission from the Don Cossacks to the Kalmyks, a Mongolian subgroup that lived on the Steppe in Russia and modern Kyrgyzstan. His next appearance in the historic record is in 1667, when he was described as the head of a river pirate community.
Razin and his men preyed upon and exacted “tribute” from all vessels that plied the Volga River, and despoiled those that refused to pay up. The Cossacks from whom Razin hailed were semi-military, democratic, self-governing communities along Russia’s southern and southwestern frontiers. They were not agriculturists but subsisted upon tolls on merchant shipping on the Don and Volga rivers as they traversed their lands. In exchange for their agreement to Russia’s southern frontiers on behalf of the Tsar, the Russian authorities subsidized the Cossacks and tolerated their de facto independence.