It began, according to tradition, in the days of Stepan Timofeyevich
Razin.... The workmen of Stenka robbed even in Arzamas. They fled from
here to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, nested for a while in the village
of Bolshoye Murashkino, and then passed on to Lyskovo and Makary. At
their heels came the generals of the tsar and the bloody vengeance of the
followers of Razin was followed by the not less bloody vengeance of the
tsar.
During Peter’s reign in 1708, Kondrashka Bulavin sent from the free Don
his “pleasant letters.” “Young atamans, lovers of travel, free people of
every class, thieves and robbers! He who wishes to go with the military
campaigning ataman Kondraty Afanasyevich Bulavin, he who wishes to raid
with him, to travel gloriously, drink and eat as he will, ride over
the open fields on fine horses, let him come to the black mountains
of Samara.” ... So wrote the rebellious ataman to the Cossacks of
the Don, to the Ukraine, and the Zaporozhian Syech. Along the Volga,
through cities north and south, to worthy commanders, flew the message
and also to the villages and towns. In long and business-like letters,
carefully composed with a view to their political effect, he set forth
all the oppressions of nobles and magnates, all the wrongs and injustice
under which the land had long been suffering. The appeals of Kondrashka
inflamed the whole land, more blood was shed, and savage was the
vengeance of the people.... Again from Moscow advanced the regiments of
troops in accordance with the terrible order of Tsar Peter:
“ ... Go through the cities and villages which have joined the robbers,
burn them to the last straw, slay the people and torture the leaders
on wheel and stake.... For this plague cannot be removed, except by
sternness....”
In those days there was no lack of sternness and after the pacification
even the cruel tsar wrote to Dolgoruky, not to execute the brother of the
slain Bulavin, for many had joined the revolt from misapprehension or
“from compulsion.”
The rebels were carried to Arzamas. Scaffolds, stakes, and wheels were
erected along the roads and the city during one of these periods of
vengeance was, in the words of an eye-witness quoted by Solovyev, “like
hell”; for more than a week the groans of the victims of the terrible
tortures filled the air and birds of prey hung over the places of
execution.
After this pacification arose on the mountainside houses of the “Village
of God,” and the people began to sing the requiems on the hillside....
Ere long the bone of the followers of Razin and of Bulavin were joined
by the bones of the banished Stryeltsi (Guards).... Defiantly and in
disobedience to the tsar’s order, they left Vekikiya Luki, whither they
had been sent, and they stoutly resisted the tsar’s General, Shein,
with a large force, but they were defeated in a desperate hand-to-hand
encounter, as they were trying to cut their way through to Moscow to
the Stryeltsi villages where their wives and children were living. The
victorious general filled the prisons and dungeons of Arzamas with the
men who had disobeyed the tsar’s orders. The ring-leaders were punished.
The tsar returning from abroad was dissatisfied with the weakness and the
mildness shown by Shein to the rebels. A judge was sent from Moscow to
make a new investigation.... There were not enough executioners in the
city to administer the new tortures and punishments and more had to be
summoned from Moscow for the occasion....
New houses were added to the “Village of God.” ...
Drenched with blood, the naïve and rebellious dream of the people for
a free life died away until new outbreaks commenced, a dream closely
connected with the old cross and the beard, with Cossack bands, and
with confused memories of the freedom of the steppes. The old injustice
weighed more and more heavily upon them and hardened and increased their
century-old suffering. The memory of the people involuntarily returned
to those who promised freedom and who sealed this promise with their own
and others’ blood.... Time and time again, like stones washed down to the
shore by the raging torrent, new groups of “houses of God” appeared on
the slopes of the mountain of Arzamas.
At first, perhaps, each grave preserved the memory of a definite man,
his name, and his saint on an ikon. Some one would bring these ikons and
sprinkle the tombs of shame with passionate tears of love and sympathy.
These mourners died.... The wind, the rains, and the sun faded the faces
on the ikons, and along with these there perished the living personal
memory of the people buried here. There remained hanging above the
mountain only a vague tradition and a vague popular feeling, ... a
feeling of sad inability to comprehend, which dared not pronounce its own
judgment and presented this to heaven.... And down the centuries, from
year to year, even to our own times, sounds the solemn prayer for all
those who had been put to death, be they innocent or guilty, and for all
those who died an unknown death....
... Whose names, O Lord, Thou knowest....