Raskolnik

Uprisings and persecution

In the lower strata of the popular, peasant defense of the old traditions, opposition often materialized as popular uprisings. Some of the supporters of the Old Believers took part in Stepan Razin's rebellion in 1670–1671. After Razin's beheading, many of his supporters joined other Raskol popular movements, such as the Solovetsky Monastery uprising and the Moscow uprising of 1682. At the Solovetsky Monastery, both monks and enserfed peasants rebelled against Tsarist authority, opposing what they saw as the exploitation of secular power: for the monks, this was the consolidation of central authority during the church schism, and for the peasants, this was feudal system which supported the centralizing Nikonian reforms. Both groups were united in their defense of the Old Belief. In the Moscow uprising of 1682, Old Believers openly preached to the Moscow Streltsy regiments who were in rebellion due to discontent with their superiors, and one of the leaders of the rebels, Prince Ivan Andreevich Khovansky, openly supported the pre-reform traditions. While occupying the capital, part of the rebel unit's conditions were that the official church must agree to a public disputation with the Old Believer priest Nikita Pustosvyat; his well-known debate with Patriarch Joachim of Moscow led to his beheading and to the Moscow uprising's alternative title as the "Raskolnik rebellion".