Untitled - OUDL Home

other privileges accorded to converts), the closing ofmosques and other measures against the Moslems wereimportant stimulants to anti-Russian feeling; untilCatherine the Great reversed Elizabeth's support ofOrthodox missionary militancy, returned to the usualearlier practice of religious toleration, and was stirred bythe revolt of Pugachov to encourage a positive policy offavouring Moslem religious leaders.Although Islam and defence against Russian colonizationtended to draw the non-Russian peoples together,they were themselves increasingly rent by social divisions.For their own princelings and landowners and merchantsthe revolts of their own people usually meant revoltagainst themselves, as well as against the Russians. Afterthe early seventeenth century they only combined inpart with their own dependants against the Russians.Then, too, there were many 'serving Tatars' in Russianemploy who stood by the government and aided insuppressing rebellion, notably in the time of Razin.Thus, two of the greatest motives for rebellion amongthe non-Russians—Russian colonization and defence ofIslam—in the nature of things could not be shared bythe Russians; while the motives that were common tonon-Russian and Russian peasantry alike—the weight ofserfdom and governmental misrule—were not in generalshared by the most powerful sections of the non-Russianpeoples themselves. Divided within themselves anddivided from the Russians they could not combine withthem on any scale in joint mass revolt.(5) In the eighteenth-century risings the appeal to theOld Believers (see pp. 190-192) was pronounced, oftencombined with invective against the foreigners, 'theGermans,' who corrupt with novelties and grind thepoor with oppression. "We stand for the old faith,"one of Bulavin's henchmen proclaimed, "and for theHouse of the Mother of God and for you, for all thecommon people, that we do not fall into the Greekfaith" (i.e. the reforms of Nikon; see pp. 189-191).On the Ural river, from which Pugachov started (1773),the Cossacks were mostly Old Believers, and they hadhad ten years' struggle with German officers sent down165