LECTURE#7

The 17 c. – why Russian «crossway» ? The continued successful development of Moscovite Russia. Michael (1613 – 1645). Alexis (1645 – 1676). Theodore III (1676 – 1682). Ivan V (1682 – 1696). Eastern Ukraine – becomes a part of Russia (1654). The activity & the end of the democratic Land Assembly (Zemsky Sobor) institutions. The Boyar Duma and its political role. The law code 1649 & serfdom. The salt & copper revolts. The Cossack rebellion of Stenka Razin (1667 – 1671). The penetration to Siberia by Russian settlers. The church reform and Schism: Patriarch Nikon against the Old Believers.

Beginnings of the Romanov Dynasty
The time of troubles left much of Russia in ruins. The country was broke. Moscow and other towns had been destroyed by fire. Michael struggled in his first few years as ruler to restore order. In 1617, four years after Michael had become tsar, Sweden''s king, Gustavus II, gave back territory around Novgorod in exchange of assurances from Moscow that it would not expand into the Baltic Sea. In 1618, Poland also signed a treaty with Moscow, recognized by both parties as a breathing spell in hostilities. The Poles still held that Vladislav was Moscow''s legitimate monarch, and they still held the town of Smolensk.
In preparation for more war with Poland, Michael began to reconstruct his army, purchasing foreign mercenaries and covering his increased expenses with more taxation. With order re-established in much of Russia, merchants from various nations arrived, and custom duties on trade benefited the state treasury. Trade through the port of Archangel was to double in the coming half century.

King Sigismund died unexpectedly in April 1632, followed by political instability within Poland. Moscow was eager to seize the opportunity against Poland, and for Moscow its armament program became more urgent. Moscow purchased from the Dutch cannon and other military equipment.

Poland was a weak and divided land. It was half-Polish and the other half Lithuanians, Russians, Jews and Germans. The Polish king was elected by a council of nobility rather than a dynasty, and the king and his government had no power to tax. Nobles disliked the idea of paying taxes to the central government, and Poland''s king did nothing that the nobility opposed. Poland''s nobility were sovereign over vast territories and drew wealth from exporting grain and timber. Lacking unity, Poland had little success against Moscow. The war between Poland and Moscow fought in the years 1632-34 was concluded with Moscow failing to win back Smolensk but Poland''s new king, Valdislav IV, withdrawing his claim to the throne in Moscow.

Meanwhile, Cossacks continued to defy Moscow''s authority, and war against the Islamic Tatars continued. In 1637, Cossacks seized the Turkish fortress at Azov. In 1641 an Ottoman army and navy drove the Cossacks back. The Cossacks, in turn, offered Azov to Tsar Michael, but Michael believed that his kingdom was not in good enough shape economically to war against the Ottomans, and he declined. Against the Tatars, however, Moscow built an 800-mile wall, with moats and fortresses, along a line as far south as Belgorod. The Tatars were now blocked from making their raids, saving tens of thousands of Russians from slavery and inspiring a rush by Russians to settle on the fertile lands around the area of the Oka River.

A rush to occupy other lands was in motion. It was during Michael''s reign that the Russians expanded across the southern Ural Mountains and further into the southern steppe, in conflict there with Tatars and other nomads. In 1638 Russian pioneers reached the Pacific Ocean. In 1652, (after Michael''s death in 1645) they occupied the area around Lake Baikal, just north of Mongolia, and they would occupy Kamchatka Peninsula in 1696. Siberia had been sparsely populated by native hunter-gatherers, who offered little resistance to the Russians. The Russians traded with these people (much as the French, and soon the British, were trading with natives in North America). The Russians made middlemen of themselves in the fur trade in addition to taking fur pelts of their own - furs that were in demand in Europe and China. It was the opening of Siberia to Russian domination.

Tsar Alexius
In 1645, Michael was succeeded by his sixteen-year-old son, Alexius, who was to rule for thirty-one years. In January 1648, Alexius married the daughter of the aristocratic Miloslavski family whose members became active in the tsar''s government. In the summer of 1648, increased taxation, robbery and corruption under the Miloslavskies caused people in Moscow to rebel, and revolts spread to nearby towns and to Novgorod and Pskov. Facing insurrection and the need to curb the Miloslavskies, Alexius granted concessions to the nobles, and new laws were passed overriding the previous law that limited the hunting of a runaway to nine years. Now a noble was to hunt a runaway to the end of the runaway''s life, and a noble could hold a peasant and his offspring to his land as long as he wished. Nobles were allowed to rule over their serfs as they saw fit. Military obligations by the nobility were relaxed, and the nobility were given the right to engage in urban trade and handicraft.

In 1652 a religious crisis erupted. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Nikon, wished to return to what he thought had been its purity in previous times. Common people resisted changes in how they worshipped. They viewed Nikon an anti-Christ. Twenty thousand of them burned themselves to death, crossing themselves with two fingers rather than the three fingers that Nikon claimed was proper, and as they burned they sang "hallelujahs." In 1667 a Church council deposed and defrocked Nikon, who went into exile in a monastery.

Since the 1650s, Russia had been at war with Poland again, following a move by Ukrainians, who were Eastern Orthodox, submitting to the rule of Russia''s Orthodox tsar rather than to Polish authority. The war was settled in the 1660s, with Tsar Alexius keeping the Ukraine and winning back Smolensk.

Then in 1670 came the Stenka revolt - in the wake of the new and harsher laws against Russia''s peasants. A commander of a band of Cossacks in the Don River region, Stephen Razin, began moving up the Volga River proclaiming freedom for common folks against tsarist officials and landlords. In town after town he was welcomed by common folks, and in town after town members of the upper classes were massacred. Razin''s subordinates had similar successes in widespread areas in the hinterland. The rebel army reached Simbirsk and grew to some 200,000 men. Poor organization and discipline in the rebel army helped forces sent by Moscow to defeat them, forces that included several regiments trained in a Western military manner. Razin and some followers escaped to the Don River area, but in the spring of 1671 he was seized by rival Cossacks, handed over to tsarist officials and publicly executed. And several months later, Astrakhan, the last center of the rebellion, surrendered.

Continuing Economic Inferiority
Russia had improved its military capability, its population NOTE had been recovering and its economy was progressing slowly. Trade was increasing. In recent decades printing with movable type had been introduced. Russians had begun their own iron industry, and with it the beginning of Russian capitalism. But in Russia, British and Dutch entrepreneurs were still playing a leading role in mining and manufacturing, in areas such as light textiles and glassmaking. The Russians were without much of a merchant fleet of their own. Russia was still not developing a prosperous and influential middleclass. The Church was becoming increasingly annoyed by the growing number of foreigners, and, in Moscow, foreigners were obliged to live in a restricted area.

Under Alexius, Russia still lacked the success in agriculture that had allowed the Dutch to advance economically. Russia''s economy was still largely subsistence agriculture: the growing of rye, wheat, oats and barley and millet, using wooden and metal plows, and growing vegetables on small plots. South of Moscow cattle and horses were bred. North of Moscow timber was harvested. And some people lived by hunting and fishing. The agricultural region in the middle of Russia had a short growing season. The soil was poor, and often it rained too much. There, grass barely sustained cattle through the winter. It took three seeds planted to produce one harvested plant, and the growers habitually practiced a downward genetic selection of their seeds, consuming their better seeds and planting their worst.

Peter the Great Looks West
The Tsarina, Alexius'' first wife, Mary Miloslavski, died in 1669 trying to bear her fourteenth child. Of the five sons she bore, two had survived. The eldest, Theodor, was not healthy. Alexius remarried in 1670, and in 1672 his wife, Natalya Naryshkina, bore him a son: Peter. The messy succession that was common to monarchies was in the making.

In 1676 Alexius died. Theodor, at the age of twelve, inherited the throne as Theodor III. The Miloslavskies were pleased and eager to reestablish their power. Soon Theodor was married and under pressure by the Miloslavskies to produce an heir. The Miloslavskies were warned that the effort might be too much for him, and the warning appears to have been correct, for in 1682 at the age of twenty he died, without his wife bearing him a child. Theodor''s brother, Ivan, now 16, was half-blind, had a speech impediment and was uninterested in ruling. Theodor''s half-brother, Peter, was bright, healthy and aggressive. Peter''s mother, Natalya, was named regent, and Peter was named tsar. The Miloslavski family staged a coup, and Peter witnessed the murder of members of his mother''s family. A council of nobles, trying to settle matters, made Ivan and Peter co-tsars. Peter''s mother was dismissed and the grown daughter of Alexius and Mary Miloslavski, Sophia, was made regent over the boys. She ruled with the support of the Miloslavski family and enjoyed the power, finding it superior at any rate to the usual isolation of royal daughters. The inevitable showdown between Peter and Sophia took place in 1694 when Peter reached the age of twenty-two. Peter won the men with arms to his side, luring and threatening holdouts. Sophia lost hope that she would be able to exercise the violence needed to combat her younger half-brother. Peter sent an embittered Sophia to a nunnery, and he executed some of her supporters on the charge of treason.
Peter had been interested in sailing and boats. He had spent much of his later teens learning boat building and sailing with Dutchmen by Lake Pleschev, eighty-five miles northeast of Moscow. He enjoyed being treated by the Dutch as a common apprentice. His mother, however, was annoyed by his interest in foreigners. She had arranged his marriage, but Peter was bored by his wife''s conversation, still preferring his life with the Dutchmen at Lake Pleschev, and his wife joined his mother''s dislike for those foreigners who were stealing her husband''s attention. Peter was inquisitive and independent in his thinking. He was a skeptic and unimpressed by Church admonitions that foreigners were evil people.

Peter was aware of the superiority of Western Europe, and in 1697, at the age of twenty-five, he went abroad for eighteen months to learn and to experience life in the West. He went first to Amsterdam, then the wealthiest city in the world - its harbor packed with sailing ships. In Amsterdam he worked in a shipyard. He visited factories and mills, museums and botanical gardens. He walked the streets, seeing well-dressed and friendly people. He visited Amsterdam''s open air market, where goods of all kinds were available. He visited people in their homes, met with architects, inventors and engineers, and he found himself interested in printing and the surgery of Fredrik Ruysch, who was preserving bodies with chemicals. With his Russian and Dutch companions he enjoyed Amsterdam''s taverns. And he was impressed by what he saw of religious toleration. Then Peter went to England, second to the United Netherlands in wealth. He then went to Vienna and he returned home through Poland, arriving back in Moscow in 1698 eager to change Russia.

Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.

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REBELS AND DISSIDENTS

After the election of Michael Romanov in 1613 Russia seemed to have acquired stability by the guarantee of an orderly succession. But there was still a lot of uncertainty. Foreign policy was in a state of confusion. Popular unrest on occasion verged on open rebellion. Religious dissidents added to the problems of restoration which the Romanovs tried so hard to achieve.

Despite the fact that the problem of the pseudo-Dimitries seemed to have been finally liquidated, the Cossacks were not yet tamed and subdued. Although the leader of the Cossacks, Zarutsky, was executed, sizable Cossack bands were still numerous and defied control, frequently eluding the punitive expeditions sent against them by the tsars. Perhaps, the greatest difficulty that the government had to face at home was the high mobility of the population. This situation was not new, but with the passage of time its consequences became increasingly grave. Complaints concerning the flight of peasants and burghers were frequently voiced at the Zemski Sobor. A factor that stimulated the urge of people to give up their domiciles was Moscovy''s fiscal system.

The principal taxes levied by the Muscovite government were the ''''apportioned'''' type, that is, a central agency determined the desired yield of the tax and apportioned it among the administrative subdivisions, which, in turn, re-assessed their respective quotas among the taxpayers. The basic unit of assessment was the sokha, which consisted either of a specified area of farm land or of a stipulated number of households. Sokha was an ancient term used for tax purposes as early as the thirteenth century. In the seventeenth century the basis of taxation was gradually shifted from the sokha to the dvor (household), that is, the latter was made the unit of assessment.

The household tax was levied not on property but on the labor power of the household members. The essential and significant element in both the sokha and the dvor methods of taxation was the joint responsibility of the community for the total amount of the impost which it was assessed, as well as for the integrity of the tax officials whom it elected. we know that, except for the dvoriane, army service--like taxation-- was a group , not a personal, obligation.

There were important practical consequences from the resulting legal situation. On the one hand, a taxpayer, by changing his domicile, could evade his fiscal and service obligations until he was caught anew in the net of the census-taker. On the other hand, both the state and the community were vitally interested in preventing the elusive peasant or burgher from wandering away; the state, because it needed taxpayers and soldiers; the community, because its remaining members had to shoulder the burden of those who had left. This explains much in the legislation and social history of the seventeenth century. #Another way of evading state exaction was provided by ancient institution of ''''voluntary'''' slavery, which gained great popularity in the first half of the seventeenth century. The voluntary slaves like all slaves were exempt from taxation, army service, and other obligations borne by freemen. Among those who sold themselves into voluntary slavery were men from every social class, including dvoriane.

Yet in the seventeenth century the highest estate of the realm was the dvoriane, or service class, with whom the descendants of the former appanage princes and ancient landed aristocracy, the boyars, had by then fully merged. The principal duty of the dvoriane was army service, for which they received pomesties, that is, landed estates farmed first by free peasant tenants and later by bondsmen. After Russia''s unification the once-sharp distinction between the patrimonial estates unencumbered by the obligation of service and the pomestie disappeared, and service became compulsory for all landowners employing tenants or service labor.

The long drawn-out process of enslavement of the once- free peasantry living on the land of the dvoriane and the Church reached fruition in the middle of the seventeenth century. It must be emphasized again that nation, defense and security depended on the dvoriane''s ability to perform their duties, which was closely related to the condition of their estates. The simplest way to assure a stable labor force was to attach the peasant to his plot. The Code of 1649 abolished the time limit on the legal recovery of run-away peasants and provided heavy fines for harboring the fugitives. Serfdom, however, did not mean merely the attachment of the peasants to their allotments. The legal and economic status of the serfs was and remained highly ambiguous; they were not slaves, but they were also not freemen and seemed to possess the disadvantages of both. Serfs, like slaves, were at the mercy of their master and were at times treated like chattels.

They could be exchanged for other serfs, sold without the land, pledged for loans, and given away. But like freemen the serfs paid taxes, served in the armed forces, and had some family rights. The law made no provision concerning the property rights of the serfs, nor was there any legal limit as to services and other exactions which their master could demand from them. The powers of the landowners, moreover, had an element, of public authority'' they were government officials responsible for the performance by the servile population living on their estates of fiscal and other obligations towards the state.

The policies of regimentation I have outlined were both the cause and the effect of the deep-rooted popular unrest that was responsible for the great upheaval at the turn of the seventeenth century. The restoration of central authority which the election of Michael Romanov brought did not eliminate the conditions which brought about the crisis and, indeed, probably worsened them. During much of Michael''s reign, the Cossacks , their ranks replenished by runaway serfs and army deserters, roamed about the country. The cost of frequent unsuccessful wars aggravated economic hardships and fostered the mood of discontent and disaffection. The highly unpopular measures enacted by the government towards the middle of the century provided the focal point for the rebellious impulses of the masses and led to violent outbreaks.

The accession of the youthful tsar Alexis in 1645 brought to power his intimate advisor and former tutor, the boyar Boris Morozov. The tsar and his government were faced with a grave financial situation. The protracted war with Poland had taxed to the limit the financial resources of the Muscovite treasury, which had not yet recovered from the disorders of the Time of Troubles. To meet the emergency the government resorted to ill-advised measures; a drastic increase in the rates of the salt tax and of the excise on tobacco, and the debasement of the currency through the substitution of copper for silver coins. The resulting sharp rise in the cost of living was particularly felt by the poorer section of the population and was presumably the immediate cause of the revolt which broke out in Moscow in June 1648 and which had repercussions throughout the land.

Alexis, unceremoniously buffeted by angry crowds, was forced to surrender to the rebels two of his trusted councilors, Leonid Pleshcheev and Peter Trakhanitov, who were then murdered; but Morozov, who was also sought by the crowd, escaped unhurt, although he was compelled to retire to a remote monastery. The movement, however, was not directed against the Crown, even though the tsar had to endure grievous personal indignities.

In 1650 Novgorod and Pskov rebelled against Moscow. The latter city demanded, among other things, the right to have its representatives participate in the administration of justice by the appointed governor. The situation was judged serious enough to warrant the convocation of a Zemski Sobor. The insurgents were defeated after a stubborn struggle, as Pskov was able to hold back government troops for nearly three months. The so-called ''''copper rebellion'''', allegedly a belated protest against the substitution of copper coins for silver Coins in the middle 1650''s, broke out in July 1662 but was actually due to the iniquities of the regime. On this occasion, as in 1648, the tsar was roughly handled, although his authority was not seriously challenged. The movement had ramifications all over the country and was suppressed with great severity.

As was to be expected, the onward march of serfdom and its enshrinement in the Code of 1649 added fuel to the smoldering flames of peasant revolt. The lavish distribution of landed estates to the members of the service class and to the favorites of the day, especially in the reign of tsar Michael, reduced large groups of state peasants to the status of serfs, which meant greater exploitation and heavier financial burdens. Peasant disturbances flared up here and there throughout the earlier decades of the seventeenth century and reached their Zenith in the movement of Stenka Razin, a Cossack leader who made his appearance in the region of the upper Don in 1667. He met with considerable success in the Ukraine and in the territories along the Volga, which were teeming with disaffected elements. Razin, however, sailed on the Caspian sea and carried out raids on Persia. In 1669 he was back in the Ukraine, took Astrakhan, and in the following year opened military operations against Muscovy.

Like the leaders of other popular movements of this period, he claimed that he was fighting the boyars and the landlords but not the Crown. Razin made triumphant progress along the Volga and was acclaimed as their savior by Russian peasants and by the native tribes. His army, however, was poorly organized and poorly equipped, and in October 1670 it was defeated near Simbirsk by government troops. Razin withdrew to the Don, where he was arrested by the conservative Cossack leaders, was surrendered to the Russian authorities, and was executed in Moscow in June 1671. The peasant war, as Razin''s revolt is sometimes called, thus came to an end, but unrest among the local tribes continued into the 1680''s. Meanwhile, cleavage in the Church added another strain to the subdued but powerful movement of revolt.

The state of disorder prevailing in the Church under Ivan IV continued throughout the next 100 years. It was probably inevitable that ritual, prayers, and other religious observances should suffer changes with the passage of time. The prevalence of illiteracy among the clergy and its low intellectual levels favored this unintentional and unwanted transformation. Errors inexorably crept into religious texts which had once been translated from be Greek--perhaps not very satisfactorily--and had since been copied by hand many times. The visiting Greek hierarchs repeatedly drew attention of Muscovite authority to the widening gap between Russian and Greek practices. Assuming that it was desirable to remove the irregularities which had gained acceptance, the obvious thing to do would have been to compare the Russian religious texts with the Greek originals, to make the necessary corrections, and to restore the old ritual. The execution of this program, however, met with formidable difficulties.

First and foremost was Muscovy''s traditional attachment to external observances. Ritual, as understood by seventeenth century Russians, was the very essence of Christianity. Any changes in the accepted practice, however trivial, was regarded as an abandonment of true faith. Another reason for the resistance to the revision of the books was doubts about the Orthodoxy of the Greek Church. Since the fall of Byzantium and the espousal of the doctrine of ''''Moscow--The Third Rome'''' and "Moscow--The Second Jerusalem,'''' the Russian hierarchy tended complacently to assume its own infallibility and looked with suspicion upon its former mentors: Were the Greek patriarchs to be trusted? Did they preserve intact, under the rule of the infidels, the purity of the ancient faith? These suspicions were deemed to be all the more warranted because the Byzantine Church had first accepted and then repudiated the union of churches proclaimed by the Ferrara-Florence Council which was anathema to the Russian theologians.

Attempts at correcting the Church books were made in the first half of the sixteenth century but met with no success. They were in part responsible for the undoing of Maxim the Greek, who was tried twice by a council of bishops and spent long years behind the bars of an ecclesiastical prison. But agitation for the correction of religious texts continued and in the middle of the seventeenth century found ardent supporters in a group of influential laymen and clerics led by Patriarch Nikon.

Nikon was a born reformer, a man of imagination, conviction, energy and vast ambition. He came from peasant stock, received little or no formal education, and took the vows while still young, monastic status being the prerequisite for the elevation to the bishopric and other higher Church offices.

A forceful and eloquent preacher, Nikon commanded a devout following that included highly-placed persons who introduced him to tsar Alexis. The pious, youthful and impressionable Alexis fell under the spell of the authoritarian churchman and for a time blindly accepted his guidance. The patriarchal see being vacant, Alexis secured in 1652 Nikon''s election to that office by a Church council. Conforming to tradition, the patriarch-elect went through the motions of withholding his consent but finally agreed after being promised complete obedience and the powers to restore order in the Church.

Nikon was much concerned with the conditions prevailing in the Church and was animated by the sincere desire to get rid of the irregular practices, but the revision of the Russian ritual to make it conform to that of the Greek Church assumed the superior authority of the Greek patriarchs which Nikon had once challenged. His espousal of the cause of the Greek Church had, in part, political motivation. He believed in the supremacy of the spiritual power over the secular power and endeavored to enhance the political authority of the Church by reviving the dual form of government such as had existed in Russia in the reign of Michael, when Patriarch Filaret actually ruled the country. Nikon, like Filaret, adopted the style of ''''Majesty'''', and his name appeared next to that of the tsar in official documents. Although a signatory of the Code of 1649, Nikon denounced it because it imposed restrictions on the Church.

On taking office Nikon, on his own initiative and without consulting a Church council, ordered the revision of certain generally accepted practices. He directed the use of three instead of two fingers in making the sign of the cross, the reduction of certain prayers, and so on. Icons, which are revered by pious Russians, were to conform to the approved Byzantine pattern. Ownership of icons which deviated from the model sanctioned by the patriarch became an offense. Homes were searched for the offending images, which were publicly destroyed. The faithful were aroused and some resisted.

The patriarch retaliated by imposing on the dissenters severe penalties: anathema, excommunication and deportation. Nikon assembled a groups of so-called experts, made the desired changes in the texts and many more and thus the reform seemed to be successful. But the faithful objected and Nikon lost the support of the tsar who himself preferred the old traditional ways of worship. So a breach between Nikon and the tsar developed and his meteoric career came to ''n end, although his work survived his downfall.

While the fate of Nikon hung in the balance, resistance to the reform gained momentum and became a nation-wide movement'' Dismayed and confused, the Muscovite government in the sang of 1666 convoked a purely Russian Church council which addressed itself to three familiar issues'' Were the Greek patriarchs truly Orthodox Could the Greek books be trusted? Were the decisions of the Church council of 1654, which had ordered the revision of the religious texts, valid? The answer to each question was in the affirmative. The government''s next step was to summon another Church council--this time with the participation of two Greek patriarchs. It was this council that condemned Nikon; it approved his work, however, and made a decision of momentous consequence to the Church and the nation; those who refused to use the corrected books, and to adhere to the revised ritual were anathematized.

This edict basically altered the situation. What was a dispute--admittedly a passionate one--over trivialities became a formal cleavage, a schism or raskol. It must be emphasized again that no question of principle or dogma was involved. The disagreement was exclusively about inconsequential minor points such as the correct spelling of the name of Jesus, the direction to be followed by religious processions (with or against the sun), the repetition of the exclamation alleluia two instead of three times, and the like. Ironically both sides ostensibly sought to preserve the old faith: the reformers wished to purge the books and the ritual of the irregularities which had inadvertently crept in; to their opponents, however, the alleged restorations of ancient rites and texts were damnable innovations. Historical tradition had decided the contest, at least formally, in favor of the dissenters (raskolniki), who are usually referred to as old-believers or old-ritualists. with the anathema of 1667 they were expelled from the fold of the official church.

The intransigence of the government and the ecclesiastical authorities was matched by that of the dissenters. Neither would consider a compromise. Nationalistic-minded Russians were outraged by the notion of the superior authority of the Greek hierarchy which had been so unexpectedly proclaimed. Rigid formalism had been traditionally a characteristic of the Russian Church. Interference with the customary practices, therefore, was all the more resented and led to indignant rejection. The schism added greatly to the ferment throughout the country. There were many people who believed that a wretched government was deliberately attempting to deprive them of what they most treasured--the hope of eternal salvation. The more extreme dissenters saw in the revised ritual and the corrected books the work of the anti-Christ and held that to escape this abomination no sacrifice was too great.

The Solovetsky monastery, on an island in the white Sea, rejected the reform and for nearly ten years withstood a siege by government troops. the priest Avvakum, a fanatical advocate of resistance, was burned at the stake. This penalty for the leaders of the opposition to the reform was specifically provided by a decree of 1684 issued by Tsarevna Sophie, whose regency marked the high tide of persecution. The deterrent effect of this cruel edict, however, was not great. In the wooded wilderness of northern and eastern Russia, where many dissenters had fled from their tormentors, there developed a movement of mass suicide by self-burning. At least 37 human holocausts involving some 20,000 people took place between 1672 and 1691, when persecution subsided.

The schism showed remarkable vitality and had adherents throughout the land, although it thrived particularly in the areas of recent colonization--the Ukraine and the eastern and northern provinces. All efforts of the Church and the government to stamp it out failed. The legal status of the dissenters was altered many times during the subsequent 250 years, but legal disabilities were not finally removed until the beginning of the twentieth century. Nevertheless the number of old-ritualists remained large and, indeed, continued to increase, adding a sizable group of dissidents to the already existing force of rebellious peasants and Cossacks.

http://mars.vnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/russia/lectures/10poles.html
by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.