28 Facts About Stenka Razin

In one document, Stenka Razin was referred to as a tuma Cossack which means "half-blood", leading to a hypothesis that his mother was a captured "Turkish" or Crimean Tatar woman.

Stenka Razin was first mentioned in historical sources in 1652, when he asked for permission to go on a long-distance pilgrimage to the great Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea.

Stenka Razin then sailed down the Volga with a fleet of 35 vessels, capturing the more important forts on his way and devastating the country.

Stenka Razin revolted against the "traitor-boyars" rather than against the tsar.

In 1667, Stenka Razin gathered a small group of Cossacks and left the Don for an expedition in the Caspian Sea.

Stenka Razin aimed to set up a base in Yaitsk and plunder villages from there.

When Stenka Razin sailed by Tsartisyn, Unkovsky did not attack.

The opposition sent to fight Stenka Razin felt reluctant to do so because they sympathized with the Cossacks.

Stenka Razin went to Isfahan to ask the shah for land in Persia in exchange for loyalty to the shah, but departed on the Caspian for more pillaging before they could reach an agreement.

Stenka Razin arrived in Farahabad and masqueraded as a merchant in the city for several days before he and his men pillaged the city for two days.

That winter the Cossacks with Stenka Razin fended off starvation and disease on the Miankaleh Peninsula, and in the spring of 1669 Stenka Razin built a base on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea and began raiding Turkmen villages.

Stenka Razin plundered the city - despite its location on a strongly fortified island and the stone walls and brass cannons that surrounded the central citadel.

Stenka Razin intended to establish a Cossack republic along the whole length of the Volga as a preliminary step towards advancing against Moscow.

Saratov and Samara were captured, but Simbirsk defied all efforts, and after two bloody encounters close at hand on the banks of the Sviyaga River, Stenka Razin was ultimately routed by the army of Yuri Baryatinsky and fled down the Volga, leaving the bulk of his followers to be extirpated by the victors.

Stenka Razin proclaimed that his object was to root out the boyars and all officials, to level all ranks and dignities, and establish Cossackdom, with its corollary of absolute equality, throughout Russia.

Eight battles had been fought before the insurrection showed signs of weakening, and it continued for six months after Stenka Razin had received his quietus.

In 1671, Stepan and his brother Frol Stenka Razin were captured at Kagalnik Fortress by Cossack elders.

Stenka Razin originally set out to loot villages, but as he became a symbol of peasant unrest, his movement turned political.

Stenka Razin wanted to protect the independence of the Cossacks and to protest an increasingly centralized government.

However, Stenka Razin's movement failed and the rebellion led to increased government control.

One of the most popular cultural motifs associated with Stenka Razin is the episode with the drowning of the "Persian princess" in the river.

Streis conveys the story as drunken cruelty, and Fabricius as the fulfillment of the oath that Stenka Razin made to a certain "water god" Ivan Gorinovich, who controls the Yaik River: Stenka Razin promised that as a reward for good luck he would give this "god" the best he has.

The lyrics of the song were dramatized in one of the first Russian narrative films, Stenka Razin directed by Vladimir Romashkov in 1908.

Stenka Razin hears the murmur Of his discontented band And the lovely Persian princess He has circled with his hand.

In 1965, the Red Army Choir, with the soloist Leonid Kharitonov, performed the Russian folk song "The Cliff", which praises Stenka Razin for being the only man that was able to climb up to the top of the horrible cliff.

Beside that, Stenka Razin was glorified in the Soviet drama film of 1939 directed by Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaya.

In 1972 Monument to Stepan Stenka Razin has been installed in Rostov-on-Don.

Stenka Razin is the subject of the Landmark book "Chief of the Cossacks".