Abstract:
Based on unpublished archival data, the author analyzes forms of protests and riots of mazili and ruptashi from Bessarabia in the first decades after its annexation. The author ascertains that while mazili and ruptashi have enjoyed certain privileges, the imperial administration did not enjoy them and did everything possible to suppress them. This measure coincided with Russian imperial policy to administratively and socially unify the newly annexed province. The process produced based on their gradual elimination, particularly of mazili, from various administrative and economic positions, and the undermining of their social prestige, that caused their discontent, reflected in various forms of rebellion and protest. With time, the rights of mazili were limited, being forced to obey local duties and pay different taxes along with ordinary tax-payers. As a result, some of them for different contraventions were transferred to the category of peasants, while others ruined and dissolved in related social categories of the peasantry. Despite this fact, mazili continued to keep even in the second half of the19th century their distinctive social and spiritual characteristics.
