14. Attempts to Recapture Escaped Serfs Sparked a Rebellion
The Russian authorities, never known for their toleration of freedom, made an exception for the Cossacks. They tolerated their de facto independence, and even subsidized them. In exchange, the Cossacks had to guard Russia’s southern frontiers. In the 1650s and 1660s, wars, epidemics, and crop failures, led to widespread misery and impoverishment in Russia. As a result, many serfs fled slavery and their oppressive masters to the Don region. Russian authorities sought to forcibly retrieve the runaway serfs, but the Cossacks resisted.
In response, the authorities cut off the Cossacks’ subsidies and food supplies, in order to compel their compliance. Rather than comply, they took up arms. In 1667, Stenka Razin organized a Cossack regiment to resist the Russian embargo. That May, he attacked a Russian caravan in which both the Russian Tsar and Patriarch of the Orthodox Church held stakes. The enraged authorities had him declared an outlaw and criminal. Unconcerned, Razin led his men on an expedition to loot Persian settlements along the Caspian Sea.