Bulavin, Kondratii

Bulavin, Kondratii, b ca 1660, d 18 July 1708 in Cherkaske, Don region. Bakhmut otaman of the Don Cossacks, leader of an antitsarist rebellion that spread through the Don region, Slobidska Ukraine, and 43 counties of southern Russia. The revolt was the result of the government's attempts to take away the traditional autonomy of the Don Cossacks, to apprehend peasants and serfs who had fled from their owners, to expel poor Cossacks from the Don Host, and to turn the rich Cossacks into a closed military estate. Because of his initial setbacks, Bulavin came to the Zaporozhian Sich in search of aid in the winter of 1707. A number of Zaporozhian rank-and-file Cossacks joined his ranks. However, Hetman Ivan Mazepa sent the Poltava regiment against the rebels. In July 1708 the rebels were crushed by the tsar's army near Oziv, and shortly afterwards the Don Cossack officers did away with Bulavin. The Russian troops ravaged many rebel settlements and villages and tortured to death thousands of the captured rebels. Many rebels fled to the Kuban. After the Battle of Poltava the former followers of Bulavin established contact with Mazepa's supporters, who had emigrated to Bendery in Moldavia and offered to recognize the authority of the Ukrainian hetman.