By the sixteenth century the tsars were consolidating their control of Muscovy and, in the process, reducing the Russian peasants to serfdom—to mere property, a condition not far removed from outright slavery. Not surprisingly, the peasants were less than pleased. Their only choices, however, were to submit, to die, or to flee. There was no place to go except southward into the lands of the Tatars, and those who went were, almost by definition, the boldest and most defiantly self-reliant members of the Russian peasantry. Once beyond the reach of Moscow, they clashed with, learned from,
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