Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the tone for subsequent construction in the cen-
ter of the city. With Elizabeth's death in 1761
and the dawning of the classical style, Rastrelli
lost his preeminent position in St. Petersburg. He
found employment in Kurland, at the court of
Count
BIRON
, once the favorite of Empress Anna.
Rastrelli died in 1771, but the exact date and
place of his interment are unknown.
front Razin's army at Simbirsk in October 1670.
Though smaller in number, Bariatinsky's force
included professionally trained regiments that
easily defeated Razin's undisciplined and poorly
equipped army. Razin managed to escape to his
native region but was later betrayed by other
Cossacks and, in April 1671 brought to Moscow,
where he was tortured and publicly executed on
June 16, 1671. The rebels continued fighting
without Razin until December 1671, when their
last stronghold, the town of Astrakhan, was cap-
tured by the czar's troops. Fearing reprisals and
seeking to escape serfdom, the Razin rebellion
triggered the exodus of many peasants to Siberia
in search of land and freedom.
Razin, Stenka
(ca. 1630-1671)
The leader of a 17th-century rebellion that was
long celebrated in Russian song and folklore,
Razin was born Stepan Timofeevich Razin into a
prosperous Cossack family of the Don River
area. In 1667 Razin gathered a band of loyal
COS
-
SACKS
and landless peasants and during the next
three years gained notoriety as a daring adven-
turer who raided the lands of the lower Volga
and the Caspian Sea as far as Persia. By 1670 he
returned to his stronghold on the upper Don
River but soon planned a new set of campaigns,
directed this time against Russian fortresses
along the Volga River. After seizing
ASTRAKHAN
and Tsaritsyn (present-day Volgograd), Razin
moved up the Volga River in a campaign that
combined elements of a popular rebellion and
anarchic looting. Razin's troops, which grew
from an initial 7,000 to about 200,000 by the
time they reached the river port of Simbirsk,
directed their anger at the nobility and upper
classes of the region, looting and burning their
estates. They incited peasants and the lower
classes to rebel against their masters and the
bureaucracy but were careful not to rebel against
the czar. In addition to the freebooting Cossacks
who formed the core of his troops, Razin
attracted the support of peasants, whose enserf-
ment had recently been legalized in 1649, and
some of the non-Russian ethnic minorities of the
region. As the rebellion gained support beyond
the Volga River valley and spread westward into
the Donets and Don river valleys and engulfed
parts of central European Russia around Penza
and Tambov, Czar
ALEKSEI
sent a seasoned mili-
tary commander, Prince Yuri Bariatinsky, to con-
Red Square
One of the most easily recognizable Russian
architectural landmarks, Red Square has long
served as the symbolic center of the city of
MOSCOW
and, more broadly, of Russia and the
Soviet Union. A vast, roughly rectangular open
space of about 73,000 square meters, to the west
Red Square is bordered by the walls of the
Kremlin with the 19th-century GUM depart-
ment store to the east, the 16th-century
ST
.
BASIL
'
S CATHEDRAL
at the south end, and the
State Historical Museum at the north end. First
known simply as “market square” and then
“Trinity Square,” the square itself dates back to
the late 15th century, when the completion of
the Kremlin walls created an open space on the
eastern side of the Kremlin. It continued to take
shape with the construction of the strikingly
original St. Basil's Cathedral (1555-61), also
known as the Cathedral of the Assumption, to
commemorate the Muscovite capture of the city
of
KAZAN
. The square's function was primarily
commercial, and trading stalls occupied a large
part of the square until 1679, when they were
cleared out. It was not until the 1660s that the
square became known as Red Square from the
Russian term
krasnaya,
which means both “red”
and “beautiful” (it has nothing to do with the
later communist period of the USSR). In 1534 a
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