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seize them, punish them, hang them, treat them in thesame way as they, having no Christian feeling in them,oppressed you, the peasants. With the extermination ofthese enemies and malefactor gentry every one will beginto enjoy quiet and a peaceful life, which will continueevermore.''Small wonder that Pugachov, voicing thus the passionsof the underdog, "was for us, common people, nocriminal, but our friend and protector"; much as Razinwas heroized in popular song and folk-tale up anddown Russia as the protector of the weak and needy,as well as the lusty conqueror and the magician, whoflew on a carpet, whom no bullet could harm, whoescaped from his chains through the eye of a needle.Small wonder either that over 1500 of the gentry, men,women, and children, perished at the hands of Pugachov'sbands, besides another 1300 of other classes; thatCatherine had to appoint one of her most prominentgenerals with dictatorial powers and send large forcesof regular troops to round up Pugachov and restoregovernment and the landowners in the Volga lands; thatshe hastened (1775) to refashion the system of localgovernment; and, above all, that the governing classeslooked back upon the revolt of Pugachov as the yawningchasm of social revolution, against which only the mostruthless upholding of the forces of law and order couldavail.(7) And yet the revolution of the peasant underworldwas not thought of by that underworld in terms ofrevolution against the tsar. Except among some of theCossacks and the Bashkirs, the rule of the tsar in someform was accepted as something given, like the sun andthe moon. Two Russian proverbs are highly indicative."Oppression comes not from the tsar, but from hisfavourites." "The tsar is gracious; not so his kennelkeeper."It is typical that Razin sallied out "to standfor the Lord Sovereign and to remove the traitors," i.e.officials and landowners. The great revolts, just likethe small local risings, had hardly anything in the wayof a political programme with which they might combinetheir social programme.167