Vesenskaja Rostovskaya Oblast Russia

Peter the Great's radical reforms designed to "Westernize" old Muscovy by bringing it into the eighteenth century have been met with widespread discontent.

The pious, deeply conservative masses see his reforms as an affront to their traditional way of life and to their Orthodox faith.

Peter has even been equated to the Anti-Christ and assumed to be an impostor posing as the true Tsar.

On top of this, Peter's newly formed police state is expanding territorially, and by this expansion is encroaching upon salt resource sites coveted by the Cossacks for preservation of their foods.

This dispute over land is in one sense an economic issue, but the Cossacks also regard this as an intrusion upon their semi-autonomous political state.

In general, the entire rural Russian atmosphere is in an agitated state, waiting for a catalyst of some kind.

In response to the constraints and fears of living in Peter's police state, large numbers of serfs have absconded, abandoning the major urban areas, especially Moscow and the new capital at St. Petersburg.

While some groups have emigrated to Poland or Austria, many have chosen to avoid the border patrols and have instead fled to the rural periphery and the river regions already inhabited by the Cossacks.

It was Peter's policy to hunt down and arrest absconders and return them to their lords, where they can be counted for taxes, a policy which, by this time, has no statute of limitations.

In accordance with this policy, Peter has deployed a group of bounty hunters under Yuri Dolgoruki to scout the Cossack regions for fugitive peasants.

Despite the fact that the Cossacks harbor some resentment towards the peasants (for overpopulating their region and generally competing for local resources), more deplorable to them is the idea of Petrine agents roaming freely through their territory.

They not only refuse to give up the fugitive peasants, but on October 8, 1707, a small band of local atamans headed by Kondrati Bulavin ambushes and murders Dolgoruki and his men in the village of Shulgin on the Aidar River, opening the door to violence and beginning the Bulavin Rebellion.

Bulavin, born into a Cossack family, would have been old enough to remember Stenka Razin and the revolt of the late seventeenth century.

Little is known about him personally.

He had developed some combat experience fighting the Kuban and Crimean Tatars in his youth.

He was never a particularly great military commander, however, and throughout the rebellion that bears his name, he will forever fall short of becoming an undisputed leader.

He had risen by 1704 to the status of ataman of Bakhmut, a position he had held until 1706.

It was during this stint that he had orchestrated and participated in the destruction of the salt works on the Severski Donets, an act of retaliation for having been evicted by the government as squatters.

This conflict, which had never been entirely resolved, is ultimately absorbed into the greater rebellion as it gains momentum.

Bulavin is most likely illiterate but, like his contemporary revolutionaries, he possesses a talent for appealing to the people and inciting them to action.

Bulavin's rallying cry is simple: the goal is to move against Moscow and destroy the evil influences on the Tsar.

It is important to note that the rebellion is not against the institution of Tsardom but against the figures in power at this time.

It is generally believed that Peter is either not who he claims (i.e., the Antichrist sitting in place of the true Tsar who is hidden away), or that he is indeed the rightful Tsar but is under the control of evil advisers whose destruction would liberate him, and that if given the freedom to act, he would repudiate all of his wicked reforms.

The rebellion suffers from a number of weaknesses.

For one, despite all of his rallying, Bulavin never offers a pretender to the throne or suggests a just tsar to replace Peter.

This blunder condemns the rebellion's end goals to ambiguity and lets slip an immeasurable amount of support he might have mustered.

Second, Bulavin does not coordinate his efforts with any other preexisting Muscovite enemies, so despite being heavily engaged in war with Sweden, the military apparatus under Peter is not as divided as it could be and finds the rebellion to be more of a nuisance than a major conflict.

By means of its vastly superior size and efficiency, the regular army is ultimately capable of stamping out the rebellion at all levels.

In the end, angered by devastating reversals and Bulavin's tiring claims, factions of his own Cossack followers turn against him.

He is found dead on July 7, 1708, having been shot in the head.

It is not known whether the wound was self-inflicted or an act of treachery.

Following Bulavin's death, the rebellion peters out, with pockets of resistance persisting through 1709, but for all intents and purposes, the conflict is over.

In response to the uprising, Peter tightens his grip on the Cossack states, causing some two thousand under Ignat Nekrasov to flee to the protection of the Crimean Khanate.

Descendants of these Nekrasovites will relocate to Anatolia during the Pugachev Uprising and settle near Constantinople, where their traditional culture continues to the present day.

Peter, his forces having crushed the Bulavin Rebellion, places the Don Cossacks under close governmental control and tightens his grip on the Cossack states, causing some two thousand under Ignat Nekrasov to flee to the protection of the Crimean Khanate.

Descendants of these Nekrasovites will relocate to Anatolia during the Pugachev Uprising and settle near Constantinople, where their traditional culture continues to the present day.