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from St Petersburg to impose a settlement of their localdisputes and to reorganize them.(6) The watchwords and the slogans in the four greatrevolts show the same primary characteristic, the appealto elemental uprising against serfdom and oppression.The keynote of Razin was simple enough: "to removethe constables from the towns and to go to Moscowagainst the landowners," "to kill the landowners."Bulavin's appeal was as simple: "to slay the landownersand the profiteers and the Germans"; "our affair isagainst the landlords and those who do injustice. Youbarebacks, come all of you ... on horse or on foot,naked and barefoot, come and do not fear: there willbe horses and clothing and money for you. . . . Andwhosoever seizes the common people and does not letthem pass, he shall be hanged to death."Pugachov, masquerading as the emperor Peter III,poured out edicts admirably attuned to the variegatedhopes and dreams of his diverse followers. Then theUral peasants, for instance, "began to praise God thatthe bright sun, long hidden beneath the earth, is againrisen over the whole world and can warm them oncemore. . . . They hope that the rebels will free them fromwild beasts and cut the sharp claws of the malefactorlandlords, officers, and factory owners." Above all,when Pugachov, after for a moment taking Kazan, crossedto the west of the Volga (1774) and seemed about to makefor Moscow and set the central provinces alight in wildconflagration, he proclaimed far and wide the abolitionof serfdom and war on the gentry:"We grant to all hitherto in serfdom and subjectionto the landowners . . . the old cross and prayers, headsand beards, liberty and freedom, always to be Cossacks,without recruiting levies, poll tax or other money taxes,with possession of the land, the woods, the hay meadows,the fishing grounds, the salt lakes, without payment andwithout rent, and we free all those hitherto oppressed bythe malefactor landowners and the bribe-taker officialsand judges. . . . Those who hitherto were gentry intheir lands and estates, these opponents of our rule andperturbators of the empire and miners of the peasants—166