The uprising of Yemelyan Pugachev is a popular uprising during the reign of Catherine II. The largest in the history of Russia. Known under the names of the Peasant War, Pugachevshin, Pugachev revolt. It took place in 1773 - 1775. Occurred in the steppes of the Trans-Volga region, the Urals, the Kama region, Bashkiria. It was accompanied by great casualties among the population of those places, atrocities by the mob, devastation. Suppressed by government forces with great difficulty.

The reasons for the uprising of Pugachev

• The most difficult situation of the people, serfs, workers of the Ural factories
• Abuse of Power by Government Officials
• The remoteness of the territory of the uprising from the capitals, which gave rise to the permissiveness of local authorities
• Deep-rooted mistrust in Russian society between the state and the population
• Faith of the people in the "kind intercessor king"

The beginning of the Pugachev region

The beginning of the uprising was laid by the revolt of the Yaik Cossacks. Yaikik Cossacks - migrants to the western banks of the Ural River (until 1775 Yaik) from the inner regions of Muscovy. Their history began in the 15th century. The main occupations were fishing, salt mining, and hunting. The villages were ruled by elective foremen. Under Peter the Great and the rulers following him, Cossack liberties were reduced. In 1754, a state monopoly on salt was introduced, that is, a ban on its free production and trade. Time after time, the Cossacks sent petitions to St. Petersburg with complaints about the local authorities and the general state of affairs, but this did not lead to anything

“Since 1762, the Yaik Cossacks began to complain of oppression: withholding a certain salary, unauthorized taxes and violation of ancient rights and fishing customs. Officials sent to them to deal with their complaints could not or did not want to satisfy them. The Cossacks were repeatedly indignant, and Major Generals Potapov and Cherepov (the first in 1766, and the second in 1767) were forced to resort to force of arms and to the horror of executions. Between the Cossacks they learned that the government intended to make up hussar squadrons from the Cossacks and that they had already been ordered to shave their beards. Major General Traubenberg, sent to the Yaitsky town for this purpose, incurred popular indignation. The Cossacks were worried. Finally, in 1771, the rebellion was revealed in all its might. On January 13, 1771, they gathered on the square, took icons from the church and demanded that the members of the office be removed and the detained salary be issued. Major General Traubenberg went to meet them with an army and cannons, ordering them to get loose; but his commands had no effect. Traubenberg ordered to shoot; the Cossacks rushed to the cannons. There was a battle; the rebels prevailed. Traubenberg fled and was killed at the gates of his house ... Major General Freiman was sent from Moscow to pacify them with one company of grenadiers and artillery ... On June 3 and 4, heated battles took place. Freiman opened his way with grapeshot ... The instigators of the riot were punished with a whip; about one hundred and forty people were exiled to Siberia; others were consigned to the army; the rest are forgiven and given a secondary oath. These measures restored order; but the calm was precarious. "It's only the beginning! - said the forgiven rebels, - is this how we shake Moscow. " Secret conferences took place on the steppe umets and remote farms. All foreshadowed a new rebellion. The leader was missing. The leader was found "(A. Pushkin" History of the Pugachev rebellion ")

“In this troubled time, an unknown tramp staggered around the Cossack courts, hiring first to one owner, then to another and taking on all kinds of trades ... He was distinguished by the audacity of his speeches, reviled his superiors and persuaded the Cossacks to flee to the area of ​​the Turkish sultan; he assured that the Don Cossacks would not hesitate to follow them, that he had two hundred thousand rubles and goods for seventy thousand prepared at the border, and that some pasha, immediately upon the arrival of the Cossacks, should give them up to five million; in the meantime he promised each of them twelve rubles a month of salary ... This tramp was Emelyan Pugachev, a Don Cossack and a schismatic who came with a false written appearance from across the Polish border, with the intention of settling on the Irgiz River among the local schismatics "(A.S. Pushkin" The history of the Pugachev revolt ")

The uprising led by Pugachev. Briefly

“Pugachev came to the farms of the retired Cossack Danila Sheludyakov, with whom he had previously lived as a worker. At that time, meetings of the intruders were held there. At first it was a matter of escaping to Turkey ... But the conspirators were too attached to their shores. Instead of escaping, they set out to be a new rebellion. Imposture seemed to them a reliable spring. For this, only a stranger was needed, impudent and resolute, still unknown to the people. Their choice fell on Pugachev "(A. Pushkin" History of the Pugachev revolt ")

“He was about forty, average height, thin and broad-shouldered. His black beard showed gray; lively big eyes kept running. His face had a rather pleasant expression, but a roguish one. Hair was cut in a circle "(" The Captain's Daughter ")

• 1742 - Emelyan Pugachev was born
• 1772, January 13 - Cossack revolt in Yaitsky town (now Uralsk)
• 1772, June 3, 4 - suppression of the mutiny by the detachment of Major General Freiman
• 1772, December - Pugachev appeared in Yaitsky town
• 1773, January - Pugachev was arrested and sent in custody to Kazan
• 1773, January 18 - the military board received notification of the identity and capture of Pugachev
• 1773, June 19 - Pugachev escaped from prison
• 1773, September - rumors spread through the Cossack farms that he has appeared, whose death is a lie
• 1773, September 18 - Pugachev with a detachment of up to 300 people appeared near Yaitsky town, the Cossacks began to flock to him
• 1773, September - Pugachev's capture of the Iletsk town
• 1773, September 24 - capture of the village of Rassypnaya
• 1773, September 26 - capture of the village of Nizhne-Ozernaya
• 1773, September 27 - the capture of the Tatishchev Fortress
• 1773, September 29 - capture of the village of Chernorechenskaya
• 1773, October 1 - capture of Sakmara town
• 1773, October - The Bashkirians, agitated by their foremen (whom Pugachev managed to load with camels and goods captured from the Bukharians), began to attack Russian villages and join the rebel army in heaps. On October 12, Sergeant Major Kaskyn Samarov took the Resurrection Copper Smelter and formed a detachment of Bashkirs and factory peasants of 600 people with 4 guns. In November, as part of a large detachment of Bashkirs, Salavat Yulaev went over to Pugachev's side. In December, he formed a large detachment in the northeastern part of Bashkiria and successfully fought with the tsarist troops in the area of ​​the Krasnoufim fortress and Kungur. Service Kalmyks fled from the outposts. Mordovians, Chuvashs, Cheremis ceased to obey the Russian authorities. The master's peasants were clearly showing their loyalty to the impostor.
• 1773, October 5-18 - Pugachev unsuccessfully tried to capture Orenburg
• 1773, October 14 - Catherine II appointed Major General V.A.Kara as commander of a military expedition to suppress the rebellion
• 1773, October 15 - government manifesto on the appearance of an impostor and an exhortation not to succumb to his calls
• 1773, October 17 - Pugachev's henchman seized the Avzyano-Petrovsky factories of Demidov, collected guns, provisions, money there, formed a detachment of artisans and factory peasants
• 1773, November 7-10 - a battle near the village of Yuzeeva, 98 versts from Orenburg, detachments of the Pugachev atamans Ovchinnikov and Zarubin-Chik and the vanguard of the Kara corps, Kara retreat to Kazan
• 1773, November 13 - a detachment of Colonel Chernyshev was captured near Orenburg, numbering up to 1100 Cossack people, 600-700 soldiers, 500 Kalmyks, 15 guns and a huge baggage
• 1773, November 14 - the corps of Brigadier Korf, numbering 2,500 people, broke through to Orenburg
• 1773, November 28-December 23 - unsuccessful siege of Ufa
• 1773, November 27 - General-in-chief Bibikov is appointed the new commander of the troops opposing Pugachev
• 1773, December 25 - a detachment of Ataman Arapov occupied Samara
• 1773, December 25 - Bibikov arrived in Kazan
• 1773, December 29 - Samara is liberated

In total, according to the approximate calculations of historians in the ranks of the Pugachev army by the end of 1773, there were from 25 to 40 thousand people, more than half of this number were Bashkir detachments

• 1774, January - Ataman Ovchinnikov took Guryev town by storm in the lower reaches of the Yaik, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks
• 1774, January - A detachment of three thousand people from the Pugachevites under the command of I. Beloborodov approached Yekaterinburg, seizing a number of nearby fortresses and factories on the way, and on January 20, as the main base of their actions, they seized the Demidov Shaitan plant.
• 1774, end of January - Pugachev married a Cossack woman Ustinya Kuznetsova
• 1774, January 25 - the second, unsuccessful assault on Ufa
• 1774, February 8 - the rebels captured Chelyabinsk (Chelyaba)
• 1774, March - the advance of government troops forced Pugachev to lift the siege of Orenburg
• 1774, March 2 - the St. Petersburg carabinier regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson arrived in Kazan, previously stationed in Poland
• 1774, March 22 - a battle between government troops and the army of Pugachev at the Tatishchev fortress. Defeat the rioters
• 1774, March 24 - Mikhelson in a battle near Ufa, near the village of Chesnokovka, he defeated the troops under the command of Chiki-Zarubin, and two days later captured Zarubin himself and his entourage
• 1774, April 1 - Pugachev's defeat in a battle near the Sakmara town. Pugachev fled with several hundred Cossacks to the Prechistenskaya fortress, and from there he went to the mining region of the Southern Urals, where the rebels had reliable support
• 1774, 9 aperlya - Bibikov died, instead of him Lieutenant-General Shcherbatov was appointed commander, which was terribly offended by Golitsyn
• 1774, April 12 - the defeat of the rebels in the battle at the Irtetsk outpost
• 1774, April 16 - the siege of the Yaitsky town was lifted. lasted from December 30
• 1774, May 1 - Guryev town was recaptured from the rebels

The general squabble between Golitsyn and Shcherbatov allowed Pugachev to escape defeat and start the offensive again

• 1774, May 6 - Pugachev's five-thousandth detachment captured the Magnetic Fortress
• 1774, May 20 - the rebels captured the strong Trinity Fortress
• 1774, May 21 - Pugachev's defeat at the Trinity Fortress from the corps of General Decolong
• 1774, 6, 8, 17, 31 May - battles of the Bashkirs under the command of Salavat Yulaev with Mikhelson's detachment
• 1774, June 3 - The detachments of Pugachev and S. Yulaev united
• 1774, early June - the campaign of the Pugachev army, in which 2/3 were Bashkirs, to Kazan
• 1774, June 10 - Krasnoufimskaya fortress captured
• 1774, June 11 - victory in the battle at Kungur against the garrison that made a sortie
• 1774, June 21 - the surrender of the defenders of the Kama town of Osa
• 1774, late June - early July - Pugachev captured the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Elabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses and approached Kazan
• 1774, July 10 - at the walls of Kazan, Pugachev defeated a detachment that came out to meet under the command of Colonel Tolstoy
• 1774, July 12 - as a result of the assault, the suburbs and the main areas of the city were taken, the garrison was locked up in the Kazan Kremlin. A strong fire broke out in the city. At the same time, Pugachev received news of the approach of Mikhelson's troops, who were marching from Ufa, so the Pugachev detachments left the burning city. As a result of a short battle, Mikhelson made his way to the Kazan garrison, Pugachev retreated across the Kazanka River.
• 1774, July 15 - Michelson's victory near Kazan
• 1774, July 15 - Pugachev announced his intention to march on Moscow. Despite the defeat of his army, the uprising covered the entire western bank of the Volga
• 1774, July 28 - Pugachev captured Saransk and in the central square announced the "tsarist manifesto" about freedom for the peasants. The enthusiasm that gripped the peasants of the Volga region led to the fact that a population of more than a million people was involved in the uprising.

“We grant by this decree named with our royal and paternal mercy all who were formerly in the peasantry and in the citizenship of landowners, to be loyal slaves to our own crown; and we reward with the ancient cross and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom and forever Cossacks, without demanding recruitment kits, capitation and cash taxes, ownership of land, forest, grasslands and fishing, and salt lakes without purchase and without rent; and we free everyone from the nobles and bribe-takers-judges of the peasants and all the people, imposed taxes and burdens previously imposed on the villains from the villains. Given July 31 days 1774. By the grace of God, we, Peter the Third, the emperor and autocrat of All Russia and passing through "

• 1774, July 29 - Catherine II endowed General-in-Chief Pyotr Ivanovich Panin with extraordinary powers "to suppress the riot and restore internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod"
• 1774, July 31 - Pugachev in Penza
• 1774, August 7 - Saratov is taken
• 1774, August 21 - unsuccessful assault by Pugachev of Tsaritsyn
• 1774, August 25 - the decisive battle of Pugachev's army with Mikhelson. A crushing defeat for the rebels. The flight of Pugachev
• 1774, September 8 - Pugachev captured by the foremen of the Yaitsk Cossacks
• 1775, January 10 - Pugachev was executed in Moscow

The centers of the uprising were extinguished only in the summer of 1775

The reasons for the defeat of the peasant uprising of Pugachev

• The spontaneous nature of the uprising
• Belief in a "good" king
• Lack of a clear plan of action
• Vague ideas about the future structure of the state
• Superiority of government troops over the rebels in armament and organization
• Contradictions among the rebels between the Cossack elite and the naked people, between the Cossacks and the peasants

The results of the Pugachev rebellion

• Renaming: the Yaik river - to the Ural, the Yaitskoe army - to the Ural Cossack army, the Yaitsky town - to Uralsk, the Verkhne-Yaitskaya pier - to Verkhneuralsk
• Disaggregation of provinces: 50 instead of 20
• The process of transformation of the Cossack troops into army units
• Cossack officers are more actively transferred to the nobility with the right to own their own serfs
• Tatar and Bashkir princes and murzas are equated with the Russian nobility
• The manifesto of May 19, 1779 somewhat limited breeders in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages

Born in 1742 on the Don, in the village of Zimoveyskaya. Despite the fact that Pugachev was a Don Cossack, the uprising under his leadership began among the Cossacks of the Yaik River (Ural). In the middle of the 18th century, the wealthy military sergeant major Yaik prevailed over the democratic Cossack self-government. The foremen introduced arbitrary taxes on fishing, and began to delay the salaries of ordinary villagers. Already at the end of the 1760s, armed clashes broke out between the top and bottom of the Yaitsk army. Empress Catherine II helped the foreman to pacify the poor, but sent a commission of inquiry to Yaik, dismissed ataman Borodin, accused of abuses, and obliged the military office to pay Cossack salaries without delay. However, the arbitrariness of the foreman soon resumed. Ordinary Cossacks sent a deputation to the queen, but the president of the military collegium Chernyshev arrested her and ordered her to be whipped.

The authorities ordered that the Yaik army sent several hundred Cossacks to serve in the Kizlyar region of the Caucasus, and also delayed the movement of the Kalmyks, who then decided to leave Russia for their former homeland - Dzungaria. The foreman began to impose these heavy services on the poor villagers. On January 13, the Cossacks of the Yaitsk town moved with complaints to the house of the head of the commission of inquiry, General Traubenberg. He brought out the soldiers with cannons, but the Cossacks dispersed them, killed Traubenberg and hanged their own ataman Tambovtsev. This speech was soon suppressed by the detachment of General Freiman, but the dull ferment did not subside.

At that moment, a native of Don Emelyan Pugachev appeared on Yaik. The man is still young (about 30 years old), he has already managed to take part in the Seven Years War, in the fight against the Polish rebels and the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, distinguished himself in battles and had the title of cornet. In Poland, Pugachev closely communicated with the fugitive Old Believers and was filled with sympathy for the schism. Released from the Turkish war due to illness, Pugachev went to his sister in Taganrog. There he helped her sister's husband, who did not want to serve, to hide in the Kuban, was arrested for this, but fled, lived in schismatic sketes, and then reached Yaik.

Showing the inclinations of an adventurer, Emelyan Pugachev first began to incite some of the Cossacks to leave Yaik to the Turks (as the Nekrasov Cossacks recently did in the Caucasus). This plan did not come true, but Pugacheva noticed some of the rich Yaik elders, who wanted to expand the autonomy of their troops, which had been cut in recent years, through a mutiny. Pugachev proclaimed himself the deposed husband of Catherine II, Emperor Peter III. Vague (and groundless) rumors circulated among the people that Tsar Peter stood for ordinary people against the nobles, so Pugachev's imposture was a great success.

On September 18, 1773, Pugachev with a detachment of 300 people approached the Yaitsky town, but failed to take it. Then Emelyan moved up the Yaik and captured several weak fortresses (Iletsky town, Tatishcheva, Chernorechenskaya, Sakmarsky town), whose garrisons consisted mostly of disabled soldiers or Cossacks who were in favor of the uprising. Anyone who refused to swear allegiance to Tsar "Peter Fedorovich" was executed, and the sworn soldiers and peasants were declared "free Cossacks." The army of Yemelyan Pugachev soon increased to 7 thousand and laid siege to Orenburg. Another part of it again approached the Yaitsky town.

Map of the uprising led by Pugachev

Pugachev was highly dependent on his entourage of rich Yaik elders - Zarubin, Shigaev, Padurov, Chumakov, Perfiliev. To prevent the impostor from getting out of their influence, they drowned their rival, Sergeant Karmitsky, killed Pugachev's mistress, the officer's widow Kharlova. This circle of ringleaders intended to support Yemelyan himself only as long as it was convenient for him. The initial easy victories of the rebels were explained by the transfer of the best troops from the Urals to the theater of the Turkish war. But the government soon moved reliable units headed by the experienced general A. Bibikov against the Pugachev uprising. On March 22, 1774, Emelyan Pugachev was defeated by Bibikov at Tatishcheva, having lost fifteen hundred killed and 36 guns. The petty officer in charge of Pugachev started negotiations with the authorities on the extradition of the impostor, but he managed to escape, and the "traitors" Shigaev, Padurov and Zarubin, who wanted to sacrifice him, were captured. Government troops liberated Orenburg and Yaitsky town from the siege.

Taking advantage of the spring thaw and the sudden death of Bibikov, Pugachev broke away from the pursuit and, with a small number of adherents, made a quick rush to the north - to the Ural factories. With his arrival, the assigned workers and peasants began to revolt there. Many Bashkirs with their long-standing tribal dislike of the Russian government joined the revolt. 5-10 thousand people again gathered around Pugachev, although they were no longer Cossacks, but a crowd devoid of any fighting qualities. The government detachment of Michelson, who rushed after Pugachev, beat the rebels without effort, but Emelyan began to quickly go north, and then west, where instead of defeated supporters new crowds joined him everywhere. Having reached the Kama, Pugachev took the cities of Osu, Izhevsk, Votkinsk, and then unexpectedly showed up at Kazan, whose garrison went to fight him at Orenburg. The pretender seized and devastated Kazan, but Mikhelson, who arrived in time, inflicted a new powerful defeat on him.

Pugachev's trial. Artist V. Perov, 1870s

With only 500 people, Pugachev went beyond the Volga, and here the uprising flared up again. Emelyan had already covered most of the way from Kazan to Nizhny Novgorod, but he did not dare to go to Moscow and turned south, towards the Don and Kuban. On the way, the peasant crowds of Pugachev brutally defeated Alatyr, Saransk, Penza, Saratov. Having concluded the Kuchuk-Karnadzhi peace with the Turks, Catherine II moved against the uprising new forces led by N. Panin and the famous Suvorov. Pugachev hoped that the Cossack Don would support the peasant war, but the Don army declared him an impostor and added their regiments to the forces of the government.

Having ruined the Don villages of Berezovskaya, Orlovskaya, Malodelskaya, Razdorskaya, Emelyan Pugachev turned to Tsaritsyn, but was repelled from this city and was finally finished off by Mikhelson near Cherny Yar. With 30 Cossacks, Pugachev crossed to the eastern bank of the Volga, thinking to flee to the Kazakh steppes. However, on the way, his escorts seized him and handed him over to the authorities.

Pugachev and Perfilyev were sentenced to quartering (Catherine II, out of humanity, ordered their heads to be cut off first, and only then their arms and legs), Zarubin - to beheading, Shigaev and Padurov - to the gallows. Pugachev was executed on January 10, 1775. His native village Zimoveyskaya was renamed Potemkin. Having suppressed the last centers of Pugachev's uprising, Catherine at the end of 1775 announced forgiveness to its surviving participants, but ordered to completely destroy the memory of the rebellion to rename the Yaik River to the Ural, the Yaitsky town to Uralsk, and the Yaitsky Cossack army to the Ural. The general Cossack circles of the former Yaitsk army were abolished after the Pugachev uprising, and the atamans began to be appointed by the authorities.

The great questions of the time are decided not by the speeches and resolutions of the majority, but by iron and blood!

Otto von Bismarck

By the middle of the 18th century, a catastrophic situation had developed in Russia for serfs. They practically had no rights. The landlords killed serfs, beat them to death, tortured them, sold them, gave them away, lost at cards and exchanged them for dogs. This arbitrariness and complete impunity of the landlords led to the rise of the peasant war.

Causes of the war

Emelyan Pugachev was born on the Don. He served in the Russian army and even took part in the Seven Years War. However, in 1771, the future head of the rebellious peasants fled from the army and went into hiding. In 1773, Pugachev went to Yaik, where he declared himself the miraculously escaped Emperor Peter 3. The war began, which can be divided into three main stages.

The first stage of the peasant war

The peasant war led by Pugachev began on September 17, 1773... On this day, Pugachev spoke to the Cossacks and declared himself Emperor Peter 3, who miraculously managed to escape. The Cossacks eagerly supported the new "emperor" and during the first month about 160 people joined Pugachev. The war began. Pugachev's delights rampaged in the southern lands, capturing cities. Most of the cities did not offer resistance to the rebels, since revolutionary sentiments were very strong in the south of Russia. Pugachev, without a fight, entered the cities, where residents replenished his ranks. On October 5, 1773, Pugachev approached Orenburg and laid siege to the city. Empress Catherine II sent a detachment numbering one and a half thousand people to suppress the rebellion. General Kara led the army. The general battle did not happen, the government troops were defeated by Pugachev's ally, A. Ovchinnikov. The besieged Orenburg was seized by panic. The siege of the city had already lasted six months. The empress again sent an army against Pugachev, led by General Bibikov. On March 22, 1774, a battle took place near the Tatishchev Fortress, in which Bibikov won. At this, the first stage of the war was over. Its result: the defeat of Pugachev by the tsarist army and failure at the siege of Orenburg.

The second stage of the war led by Yemelyan Pugachev

The peasant war under the leadership of Pugachev continued with the second stage, which lasted from April to July 1774. At this time, Pugachev, who was forced to lift the siege from Orenburg, withdrew to Bashkiria. Here his army was replenished at the expense of the workers of the Ural factories. In a short time, the number of Pugachev's army exceeded 10 thousand people, and after moving deep into Bashkiria, 20 thousand. In July 1774, Pugachev's army approached Kazan. The rebels managed to capture the outskirts of the city, but the Kremlin, in which the tsarist garrison took refuge, was impregnable. Mikhelson with a large army went to help the besieged city. Pugachev deliberately spread false rumors about the fall of Kazan and the destruction of Mikhelson's army. The empress was horrified by this news and was preparing to leave Russia at any moment.

The third, final, stage of the war

The peasant war under the leadership of Pugachev at its final stage acquired a real mass character. This was facilitated by the Decree of July 31, 1774, which was published by Pugachev. He, as "Emperor Peter III" announced the complete release of the peasants from dependence and exemption from all taxes. As a result, all the southern lands were absorbed by the rebels. Pugachev, capturing a number of cities on the Volga, went to Tsaritsyn, but failed to capture this city. As a result, he was betrayed by his own Cossacks, who, wishing to soften their account, on September 12, 1774, seized Pugachev and handed him over to the tsarist army. has been completed. Individual uprisings in the south of the country continued, but within a year they were finally suppressed.

On January 10, 1775, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, Pugachev and all his immediate entourage were executed. Many of those who supported the "emperor" were killed.

Results and significance of the uprising

Peasant War Map

Key dates

Chronology of the events of the peasant war by Yemelyan Pugachev:

• September 17, 1773 - the beginning of the peasant war.
• October 5, 1773 - Pugchev's troops began the siege of Orenburg.
• March 22, 1774 - battle at the Tatishchevskaya fortress.
• July 1774 - battles for Kazan.
• July 31, 1774 - Pugachev declares himself Peter 3.
• September 12, 1774 - Emelyan Pugachev was captured.
• January 10, 1775 - after long torture, Pugachev was executed.

When the first major outburst of indignation occurred, and until the uprising of 1772, the Cossacks wrote petitions to Orenburg and St. Petersburg, sent the so-called "winter villages" - delegates from the army with a complaint about the atamans and local authorities. Sometimes they achieved their goal, and especially unacceptable chieftains changed, but on the whole the situation remained the same. In 1771, the Yaik Cossacks refused to go in pursuit of the Kalmyks who had migrated outside Russia. General Traubenberg with a detachment of soldiers went to investigate direct disobedience to the order. The result of his punishments was the Yaitsk Cossack uprising of 1772, during which General Traubenberg and the army chieftain Tambovtsev were killed. Troops under the command of General F. Yu. Freiman were sent to suppress the uprising. The rebels were defeated at the Embulatovka River in June 1772; As a result of the defeat, the Cossack circles were finally eliminated, a garrison of government troops was deployed in the Yaitsky town, and all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I.D.Simonov. The massacre of the captured instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army: never before had the Cossacks been branded, they had not cut out their tongues. A large number of participants in the performance took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

No less tension was present among the peoples of other religions in the Urals and the Volga region. The development of the Urals, which began in the 18th century and the active colonization of the Volga region, the construction and development of military border lines, the expansion of the Orenburg, Yaitsk and Siberian Cossack troops with the allocation of lands to them that previously belonged to local nomadic peoples, intolerant religious policy led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Mordovians, Chuvashes, Udmurts, Kalmyks (most of the latter, having broken through the Yaitskaya border line, migrated to Western China in 1771).

The situation at the fast-growing factories in the Urals was also explosive. Starting with Peter, the government solved the problem of labor in metallurgy mainly by attributing state peasants to state and private mining plants, allowing new breeders to buy serf villages and granting the unofficial right to keep fugitive serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories , tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and expulsion of all fugitives. At the same time, it was very convenient to use the powerlessness and desperate situation of the fugitives, and if someone began to express dissatisfaction with their position, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

The peasants assigned to state and private factories dreamed of returning to their usual village work, while the situation of the peasants in serf estates was not much better. The economic situation in the country, almost continuously waging one war after another, was difficult, in addition, the gallant century required the nobles to follow the latest fashions and trends. Therefore, the landowners are increasing the area under crops, and the corvee is increasing. The peasants themselves are becoming a marketable commodity, they are mortgaged, exchanged, simply lost by whole villages. To top it off, this was followed by the Decree of Catherine II of August 22, 1767 prohibiting the peasants from complaining about the landlords. In conditions of complete impunity and personal dependence, the slavery position of the peasants is aggravated by whims, whims or real crimes occurring in the estates, and most of them were left without investigation and consequences.

In this situation, the most fantastic rumors about imminent freedom or about the transfer of all the peasants to the treasury, about the ready decree of the tsar, who was killed for this by his wife and boyars, about the fact that the tsar was not killed for this, and he was hiding until better times - all of them easily found their way fell on the fertile soil of general human dissatisfaction with their present situation. All groups of future participants in the performance simply did not have any legal opportunity to defend their interests.

The beginning of the uprising

Emelyan Pugachev. Portrait attached to the publication of "History of the Pugachev rebellion" by A. Pushkin, 1834

Despite the fact that the internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, the performance lacked a unifying idea, a core that would rally the hiding and hidden participants in the 1772 unrest. The rumor that the emperor Pyotr Fyodorovich, who miraculously escaped after a six-month reign, had appeared in the army, instantly spread throughout Yaik.

Few of the Cossack leaders believed in the resurrected tsar, but everyone looked closely to see if this man was able to lead, to gather under his banner an army capable of equal to the government one. The man who called himself Peter III was Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, a Don Cossack, a native of the Zimoveyskaya village (Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin, who had already given Russian history before that), a participant in the Seven Years' War and the 1768-1774 war with Turkey.

Finding himself in the Trans-Volga steppes in the fall of 1772, he stopped at the Mechetnaya Sloboda and here from the abbot of the Old Believer skete Filaret he learned about the unrest among the Yaik Cossacks. It is not known for certain where the idea of ​​calling himself tsar was born in his head and what his initial plans were, but in November 1772 he arrived in Yaitsky town and at meetings with the Cossacks called himself Peter III. Upon his return to Irgiz, Pugachev was arrested and sent to Kazan, from where he fled at the end of May 1773. In August, he reappeared in the army, at the inn of Stepan Obolyaev, where his future closest associates - Shigaev, Zarubin, Karavaev, Myasnikov - visited him.

In September, hiding from the search detachments, Pugachev, accompanied by a group of Cossacks, arrived at the Budarinsky outpost, where on September 17 his first decree to the Yaitsky army was announced. The author of the decree was one of the few literate Cossacks, 19-year-old Ivan Pochitalin, sent by his father to serve the "Tsar". From here a detachment of 80 Cossacks headed up the Yaik. On the way, new supporters joined, so that by the time of the arrival of September 18 to the Yaitsky town, the detachment already numbered 300 people. On September 18, 1773, an attempt to cross the Chagan and enter the city ended in failure, but at the same time a large group of Cossacks, from among those sent by the commandant Simonov to defend the town, went over to the side of the impostor. The second insurgent attack on 19 September was also repulsed with artillery. The insurgent detachment did not have its own guns, so it was decided to move further up the Yaik, and on September 20 the Cossacks camped near the Iletsk town.

A circle was convened here, at which the troops elected Andrei Ovchinnikov as the marching chieftain, all the Cossacks swore allegiance to the great Emperor Peter Fedorovich, after which Pugachev sent Ovchinnikov to the Iletsk town with decrees to the Cossacks: “ And whatever you wish, you will not be denied all benefits and salaries; and your glory will not expire forever; and both you and your descendants are the first to be the first with me, the great, sovereign, to commit". Despite the opposition of the Iletsk ataman Portnov, Ovchinnikov persuaded the local Cossacks to join the uprising, and they greeted Pugachev with bell ringing and bread and salt.

All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev. The first execution took place: according to the complaints of the residents - “I hurt them great and ruined them” - Portnov was hanged. A separate regiment was formed from the Iletsk Cossacks, headed by Ivan Tvorogov, the army got all the artillery of the town. The Yaik Cossack Fyodor Chumakov was appointed head of artillery.

Rebellion Initial Stage Map

After a two-day meeting on further actions, it was decided to send the main forces to Orenburg, the capital of a huge region under the control of the hated Reinsdorp. On the way to Orenburg lay small fortresses of the Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance of the Orenburg military line. The garrison of fortresses was, as a rule, mixed - Cossacks and soldiers, their life and service are perfectly described by Pushkin in "The Captain's Daughter".

And on October 5, Pugachev's army approached the city, setting up a temporary camp five miles from it. The Cossacks were sent to the ramparts, who managed to convey Pugachev's decree to the troops of the garrison with an appeal to lay down their arms and join the "sovereign". In response, the cannons from the city rampart began shelling the rebels. On October 6, Reinsdorp ordered a sortie, a detachment of 1,500 men under the command of Major Naumov returned to the fortress after a two-hour battle. At the military council convened on October 7, it was decided to defend behind the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery. One of the reasons for this decision was the fear of soldiers and Cossacks going over to the side of Pugachev. The sortie showed that the soldiers were reluctant to fight, Major Naumov reported that he had found "Shyness and fear in their subordinates".

Together with Karanai Muratov, Kaskin Samarov captured Sterlitamak and Tabinsk, from November 28, the Pugachevites under the command of ataman Ivan Gubanov and Kaskin Samarov besieged Ufa, from December 14 the ataman Chika-Zarubin commanded the siege. On December 23, Zarubin, at the head of a 10-thousandth detachment with 15 guns, began an assault on the city, but was repulsed by cannon fire and vigorous counterattacks from the garrison.

Ataman Ivan Gryaznov, who took part in the capture of Sterlitamak and Tabynsk, gathered a detachment of factory peasants and seized factories on the Belaya River (Voskresensky, Arkhangelsk, Epiphany plants). In early November, he proposed to organize the casting of cannons and cannonballs for them at the nearby factories. Pugachev promoted him to the rank of colonel and sent him to organize detachments in the Isetskaya province. There he took the Satka, Zlatoust, Kyshtym and Kaslinsky factories, the Kundravinsky, Uvelsky and Varlamov settlements, the Chebarkul fortress, defeated the punitive teams sent against him, and by January with a four-thousandth detachment approached Chelyabinsk.

In December 1773, Pugachev sent ataman Mikhail Tolkachev with his decrees to the rulers of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz Nurali Khan and Sultan Dusala with an appeal to join his army, but the khan decided to wait for the development of events, only horsemen of the Sarym Datula clan joined Pugachev. On the way back, Tolkachev gathered Cossacks in his detachment in fortresses and outposts on the lower Yaik and went with them to Yaitsky town, collecting guns, ammunition and provisions in passing fortresses and outposts. On December 30, Tolkachev approached the Yaitsky town, seven miles from which he defeated and captured the Cossack command of Sergeant Major N.A. Most of the Cossacks greeted their comrades and joined the Tolkachev detachment, the Cossacks of the elders' side, the soldiers of the garrison, led by Lieutenant Colonel Simonov and Captain Krylov, locked themselves in the "retransmission" - the fortress of the Archangel Michael Cathedral, the cathedral itself was its main citadel. Gunpowder was stored in the basement of the bell tower, and cannons and arrows were installed on the upper tiers. It was not possible to take the fortress on the move.

In total, according to the approximate calculations of historians, in the ranks of the Pugachev army by the end of 1773 there were from 25 to 40 thousand people, more than half of this number were Bashkir detachments. To control the troops, Pugachev created the Military Collegium, which served as an administrative-military center and conducted extensive correspondence with remote areas of the uprising. A.I. Vitoshnov, M.G. Shigaev, D.G. Skobychkin and I.A.

House of the "Tsar's father-in-law" of the Cossack Kuznetsov - now the Pugachev Museum in Uralsk

In January 1774, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a campaign to the lower reaches of the Yaik, to the Guryev town, seized its Kremlin by storm, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks, bringing them to the Yaitsky town. At the same time, Pugachev himself arrived in Yaitsky town. He took over the leadership of the protracted siege of the city fortress of the Archangel Michael Cathedral, but after a failed assault on January 20 he returned to the main army at Orenburg. At the end of January, Pugachev returned to Yaitsk town, where a military circle was held, at which N.A.Kargin was chosen as the military ataman, and A.P. Perfiliev and I.A.Fofanov were foremen. At the same time, the Cossacks, wanting to finally make the king with the army, married him to a young Cossack woman Ustinya Kuznetsova. In the second half of February and early March 1774, Pugachev again personally led the attempts to seize the besieged fortress. On February 19, an explosion of a mine tunnel blew up and destroyed the bell tower of the Mikhailovsky Cathedral, but the garrison each time managed to repel the attacks of the besiegers.

Detachments of the Pugachevites under the command of Ivan Beloborodov, who grew up to 3 thousand people in the campaign, approached Yekaterinburg, seizing a number of nearby fortresses and factories on the way, and on January 20, as the main base of their operations, they seized the Demidov Shaitan plant.

The situation in besieged Orenburg by this time was already critical, famine began in the city. Having learned about the departure of Pugachev and Ovchinnikov with part of the troops to the Yaitsky town, Governor Reinsdorp decided to make a sortie on January 13 to the Berdskaya Sloboda to lift the siege. But the unexpected attack did not work, the patrol Cossacks managed to raise the alarm. The atamans M. Shigaev, D. Lysov, T. Podurov and Khlopusha who remained in the camp led their detachments to the ravine that surrounded the Berdskaya Sloboda and served as a natural defense line. The Orenburg corps were forced to fight in unfavorable conditions and suffered a severe defeat. With heavy losses, throwing guns, weapons, ammunition and ammunition, the semi-encircled Orenburg troops hastily retreated to Orenburg under the cover of the city walls, having lost only 281 people killed, 13 cannons with all the shells for them, many weapons, ammunition and ammunition.

On January 25, 1774, the Pugachevites undertook the second and last assault on Ufa, Zarubin attacked the city from the south-west, from the left bank of the Belaya River, and the ataman Gubanov from the east. At first, the detachments were successful and even broke into the outskirts of the city, but there their offensive impulse was stopped by the defenders' grape fire. Having pulled all available forces to the places of the breakthrough, the garrison drove out of the city first Zarubin, and then Gubanov.

In early January, the Chelyabinsk Cossacks revolted and tried to seize power in the city, hoping for the help of the detachments of Ataman Gryaznov, but were defeated by the city garrison. On January 10, Gryaznov unsuccessfully tried to take Chelyaba by storm, and on January 13, the two thousandth corps of General I.A.Decolong, who had approached from Siberia, entered Chelyaba. Throughout January, battles unfolded on the outskirts of the city, and on February 8, Decolong took it for the best to leave the city to the Pugachevites.

On February 16, Khlopushi's detachment stormed the Iletsk Defense, killing all the officers, taking possession of weapons, ammunition and provisions and taking with them convicts, Cossacks and soldiers fit for military service.

Military defeats and expansion of the Peasant War area

When news reached St. Petersburg about the defeat of the expedition of V.A.Kara and the unauthorized departure of Kara himself to Moscow, Catherine II, by a decree of November 27, appointed A.I.Bibikov as the new commander. The new punitive corps included 10 cavalry and infantry regiments, as well as 4 light field teams, hastily sent from the western and north-western borders of the empire to Kazan and Samara, and besides them - all the garrisons and military units located in the uprising zone, and the remains of Kara's corps. Bibikov arrived in Kazan on December 25, 1773, and immediately began the movement of regiments and brigades under the command of P.M.Golitsyn and P.D. Already on December 29, the 24th light field command, led by Major K.I. Arapov with several dozen Pugachevites who remained with him retreated to Alekseevsk, but the brigade led by Mansurov defeated his troops in battles near Alekseevsk and at the Buzuluk fortress, after which in Sorochinskaya it united on March 10 with the corps of General Golitsyn, who approached there, advancing behind near Menzelinsky and Kungur.

Having received information about the advancement of the Mansurov and Golitsyn brigades, Pugachev decided to withdraw the main forces from Orenburg, effectively lifting the siege, and concentrate the main forces in the Tatishchev fortress. Instead of burnt walls, an ice wall was built, all available artillery was collected. Soon a government detachment of 6,500 men and 25 cannons approached the fortress. The battle took place on March 22 and was extremely fierce. Prince Golitsyn wrote in his report to A. Bibikov: "The matter was so important that I did not expect such impudence and orders in such unenlightened people in the military craft as these defeated rebels are."... When the situation became hopeless, Pugachev decided to return to Berdy. His departure remained to cover the Cossack regiment of Ataman Ovchinnikov. With his regiment, he staunchly defended himself until the cannon charges ran out, and then with three hundred Cossacks managed to break through the troops that surrounded the fortress and retreated to the Lower Lake Fortress. This was the first major defeat of the rebels. Pugachev lost about 2 thousand people killed, 4 thousand wounded and prisoners, all the artillery and baggage. Ataman Ilya Arapov was among the dead.

Map of the second stage of the Peasant War

At the same time, the St. Petersburg Carabinier Regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, previously stationed in Poland and aimed at suppressing the uprising, arrived in Kazan on March 2, 1774 and, reinforced by cavalry units, was sent on the march to suppress the uprising in the Kama region. On March 24, in a battle near Ufa, near the village of Chesnokovka, he defeated the troops under the command of Chiki-Zarubin, and two days later captured Zarubin himself and his entourage. Having won victories on the territory of the Ufa and Isetskaya provinces over the detachments of Salavat Yulaev and other Bashkir colonels, he did not succeed in suppressing the Bashkir uprising as a whole, since the Bashkirs switched to partisan tactics.

Leaving the brigade of Mansurov in the Tatishchev fortress, Golitsyn continued his march to Orenburg, where he entered on March 29, while Pugachev, having collected his troops, tried to break through to the Yaitsky town, but meeting government troops near the Perevolotskaya fortress, he was forced to turn to the Sakmarsky town. where he decided to fight Golitsyn. In the battle on April 1, the rebels were defeated again, over 2,800 people were captured, including Maxim Shigaev, Andrei Vitoshnov, Timofey Podurov, Ivan Pochitalin and others. Pugachev himself, breaking away from the enemy chase, fled with several hundred Cossacks to the Prechistenskaya fortress, and from there he went beyond the bend of the Belaya River, to the mining and refining region of the Southern Urals, where the rebels had reliable support.

In early April, PD Mansurov's brigade, reinforced by the Izyum hussar regiment and the Cossack detachment of the Yaik foreman M.M. Borodin, headed from the Tatishcheva fortress to the Yaitsky town. The fortresses of Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya, Iletsk town were taken from the Pugachevites, on April 12, the Cossack insurgents were defeated at the Irtetsk outpost. In an effort to stop the advance of the punishers to their native Yaitsky town, the Cossacks, led by A.A. Ovchinnikov, A.P. Perfiliev and K.I.Dekhtyarev, decided to meet Mansurov. The meeting took place on April 15, 50 versts east of Yaitsky town, near the Bykovka river. Having got involved in the battle, the Cossacks could not resist the regular troops, a retreat began, which gradually turned into a panicky flight. Pursued by the hussars, the Cossacks retreated to the Rubezhny outpost, having lost hundreds of people killed, among whom was Dekhtyarev. Gathering people, the ataman Ovchinnikov led the detachment to the South Urals in the wilderness steppes, to join the troops of Pugachev, who had gone beyond the Belaya River.

On the evening of April 15, when in Yaitsky town they learned about the defeat at Bykovka, a group of Cossacks, wanting to curry favor with the punishers, tied up and gave Simonov the atamans Kargin and Tolkachev. Mansurov entered the Yaitsky town on April 16, finally liberating the city fortress, which had been besieged by the Pugachevites on December 30, 1773. The Cossacks who fled to the steppe could not make their way to the main area of ​​the uprising, in May-July 1774 the teams of the Mansurov brigade and the Cossacks of the elders' side began to search and defeat in the Priyaitskaya steppe, near the Uzen and Irgiz rivers, the rebel detachments of F.I.Derbetev, S.L Rechkina, I. A. Fofanova.

In early April 1774, the corps of Seconds-Major Gagrin, which approached from Yekaterinburg, defeated Tumanov's detachment located in Chelyab. And on May 1, the command of Lieutenant Colonel D. Kandaurov, who approached from Astrakhan, recaptured Guryev town from the rebels.

On April 9, 1774, the commander of military operations against Pugachev, A.I.Bibikov, died. After him, Catherine II entrusted the command of the troops to Lieutenant-General FF Shcherbatov, as the senior in rank. Offended that he was not appointed to the post of commander of the troops, sending small teams to the nearest fortresses and villages to conduct investigations and punishments, General Golitsyn with the main forces of his corps stayed for three months in Orenburg. Intrigues between the generals gave Pugachev a much-needed respite, he managed to gather scattered small detachments in the South Urals. The pursuit was also suspended by the spring thaw and floods on the rivers, which became impassable roads.

Ural mine. Painting by Demidov serf artist V.P. Khudoyarov

On the morning of May 5, Pugachev's five-thousandth detachment approached the Magnetic Fortress. By this time, Pugachev's detachment consisted mainly of weakly armed factory peasants and a small number of personal egg guards under the command of Myasnikov, the detachment did not have a single cannon. The beginning of the assault on Magnitnaya was unsuccessful, about 500 people died in the battle, Pugachev himself was wounded in his right arm. After withdrawing the troops from the fortress and discussing the situation, the rebels, under the cover of the darkness of the night, made a new attempt and were able to break into the fortress and capture it. As trophies, they got 10 guns, rifles, ammunition. On May 7, detachments of atamans A. Ovchinnikov, A. Perfilyev, I. Beloborodov and S. Maksimov pulled up to Magnitnaya from different sides.

Heading up the Yaik, the rebels captured the fortresses of Karagai, Peter and Paul and Stepnaya, and on May 20 approached the largest Troitskaya. By this time, the detachment numbered 10 thousand people. During the onset of the assault, the garrison tried to repel the attack with artillery fire, but overcoming desperate resistance, the rebels broke into Troitskaya. Pugachev got artillery with shells and supplies of gunpowder, supplies of provisions and fodder. On the morning of May 21, the Decolong corps attacked the rebels who were resting after the battle. Taken by surprise, the Pugachevites suffered a heavy defeat, losing 4,000 people killed and just as many wounded and captured. Only fifteen hundred mounted Cossacks and Bashkirs were able to retreat along the road to Chelyabinsk.

Recovered after being wounded, Salavat Yulaev managed to organize at this time in Bashkiria, east of Ufa, resistance to Mikhelson's detachment, covering Pugachev's army from his stubborn pursuit. In the battles that took place on May 6, 8, 17, 31, Salavat, although he did not have success in them, did not let his troops inflict significant losses. On June 3, he united with Pugachev, by this time the Bashkirs made up two-thirds of the total number of the army of the rebels. On June 3 and 5, on the Ai River, they gave new battles to Michelson. Neither side got the desired success. Retreating to the north, Pugachev regrouped his forces while Mikhelson retreated to Ufa in order to drive off the Bashkir detachments operating near the city and replenish ammunition and provisions.

Taking advantage of the respite, Pugachev headed for Kazan. On June 10, the Krasnoufimskaya fortress was taken, on June 11, a victory was won in the battle at Kungur against the garrison that made a sortie. Without attempting to storm Kungur, Pugachev turned west. On June 14, the vanguard of his troops under the command of Ivan Beloborodov and Salavat Yulaev approached the Kama town of Osa and blocked the city fortress. Four days later, the main forces of Pugachev came here and engaged in siege battles with the garrison entrenched in the fortress. On June 21, the defenders of the fortress, having exhausted the possibilities of further resistance, surrendered. During this period, the adventurer merchant Astafiy Dolgopolov ("Ivan Ivanov") appeared to Pugachev, posing as the emissary of the Tsarevich Paul and thus decided to improve his financial situation. Pugachev figured out his adventure, and Dolgopolov, by agreement with him, acted for some time as a "witness to the authenticity of Peter III."

Having mastered Wasp, Pugachev ferried the army across the Kama, took the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Elabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses along the way, and in early July approached Kazan.

View of the Kazan Kremlin

A detachment under the command of Colonel Tolstoy came out to meet Pugachev, and on July 10, 12 versts from the city, the Pugachevites won a complete victory. The next day, a detachment of rebels camped outside the city. "In the evening, in view of all Kazan residents, he (Pugachev) himself went to look out for the city, and returned to the camp, postponing the attack until the next morning."... On July 12, as a result of the assault, the suburbs and the main areas of the city were taken, the garrison that remained in the city locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin and prepared for a siege. A strong fire began in the city, in addition, Pugachev received news of the approach of Michelson's troops, who followed him on the heels of Ufa, so the Pugachev troops left the burning city. As a result of a short battle, Mikhelson made his way to the Kazan garrison, Pugachev retreated across the Kazanka River. Both sides were preparing for the decisive battle, which took place on 15 July. Pugachev's army numbered 25 thousand people, but most of them were weakly armed peasants who had just joined the uprising, the Tatar and Bashkir cavalry, armed with bows, and a small number of the remaining Cossacks. The competent actions of Michelson, who struck first of all on the Yaik core of the Pugachevites, led to the complete defeat of the rebels, at least 2 thousand people died, about 5 thousand were taken prisoner, among whom was Colonel Ivan Beloborodov.

Announced in the national news

We grant this named decree with our royal and paternal
by the mercy of all who were previously in the peasantry and
in the citizenship of landlords, to be loyal slaves
our own crown; and reward with the ancient cross
and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom
and forever by the Cossacks, without requiring recruitment, capitation
and other cash taxes, land ownership, forestry,
grasslands and fishing grounds and salt lakes
no purchase and no rent; and free everyone from the previously repaired
from the villains of the nobles and the bribe-taker-judges from the villains to the peasants and everything
to the people of imposed taxes and burdens And we wish you the salvation of souls
and calm in the light of life for which we have tasted and endured
from the prescribed villains-nobles wandering and no small calamity.

And what is our name now to the power of the Most High right hand in Russia
thrives, for that sake we command this by our named decree:
koi were previously nobles in their estates and vodchinas - these
opponents of our power and the troublemakers of the empire and the renegades
peasants, to catch, execute and hang, and act in the same way,
how they, not having Christianity in themselves, repaired with you peasants.
By the extermination of which opponents and villains-nobles, everyone can
to feel the silence and calm life, which will continue until the century.

Given July 31 days 1774.

By the grace of God, we, Peter the Third,

Emperor and autocrat of All Russia and passing,

And through and through.

Even before the start of the battle on July 15, Pugachev announced in the camp that he would go from Kazan to Moscow. Rumors about this instantly spread throughout all the nearby villages, estates and towns. Despite the major defeat of the Pugachev army, the flames of the uprising engulfed the entire western bank of the Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaisk, below the village of Sundyr, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. By this time, Salavat Yulaev with his detachments continued the hostilities near Ufa, the Bashkir detachments in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. On July 20, Pugachev entered Kurmysh, on the 23rd entered Alatyr without hindrance, after which he headed for Saransk. On July 28, on the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for the peasants was read, the residents were given supplies of salt and bread, the city treasury “Driving through the city fortress and along the streets ...... On July 31, the same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees provoked numerous peasant revolts in the Volga region; in total, scattered detachments operating within their estates numbered tens of thousands of fighters. The movement covered most of the Volga districts, approached the borders of the Moscow province, and really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (in fact, manifestos on the emancipation of the peasants) in Saransk and Penza is called the culmination of the Peasant War. The decrees made a strong impression on the peasants, on the Old Believers hiding from persecution, on the opposite side - the nobles and on Catherine II herself. The enthusiasm that gripped the peasants of the Volga region led to the fact that a population of more than a million people was involved in the uprising. They could not give anything to Pugachev's army in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments operated no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev's campaign along the Volga region into a triumphal procession, with bells ringing, the blessing of the village priest and bread and salt in every new village, village, town. When Pugachev's army or its individual detachments approached, the peasants knitted or killed their landlords and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, smashed shops and shops. In total, in the summer of 1774, at least 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

In the second half of July 1774, when the flames of the Pugachev uprising approached the borders of the Moscow province and threatened Moscow itself, the alarmed empress was forced to agree to the proposal of Chancellor N.I. rebels. General F.F. Shcherbatov was expelled from this post on July 22, and by a decree of July 29, Catherine II endowed Panin with extraordinary powers "In suppressing the riot and restoring internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod"... It is noteworthy that under the command of P.I. Panin, who received the Order of St. George I class, distinguished in that battle and the Don cornet Emelyan Pugachev.

To speed up the conclusion of peace, the conditions of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi peace treaty were relaxed, and the troops liberated on the Turkish borders - a total of 20 cavalry and infantry regiments - were withdrawn from the armies for action against Pugachev. As Catherine noted, against Pugachev "So many troops are dressed up that such an army was almost scary and the neighbors were"... It is noteworthy that in August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was recalled from the 1st Army, which was in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region.

Suppression of the uprising

After the triumphant entry of Pugachev into Saransk and Penza, everyone expected his march to Moscow. In Moscow, where memories of the Plague Riot of 1771 were still fresh, seven regiments were pulled together under the personal command of P.I. Panin. The Moscow governor-general, Prince M.N. Volkonsky, ordered to place artillery near his house. The police increased their supervision and sent informants to crowded places in order to grab all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was promoted to colonel in July and pursued the rebels from Kazan, turned to Arzamas to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn to Saransk. The punitive teams of Muffel and Mellin reported that everywhere Pugachev left rebellious villages behind him and they did not have time to pacify them all. "Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites outrage sensitive and insensitive people"... Excerpts from the report of the captain of the Novokhopyorsk battalion Butrimovich are indicative:

“... I went to the village of Andreevskaya, where the peasants kept the landowner Dubensky under arrest for his extradition to Pugachev. I was about to free him, but the village rebelled and dispersed the team. Ottol I went to the villages of Mr. Vysheslavtsev and Prince Maksyutin, but I also found them under the arrest of the peasants, and I freed them, and took them to Verkhniy Lomov; from the village of kn. I saw Maksyutin as a mountain. Kerensk was on fire and, returning to Verkhniy Lomov, he learned that in it all the inhabitants, except for the clerks, had rebelled when they learned about the burning of Kerensk. Engineers: one-yard man Yak. Gubanov, Matv. Bochkov, and Streletskaya Sloboda Desyatskaya Bezboroda. I wanted to grab them and present them to Voronezh, but the residents not only did not let me in before, but almost put me under their guard myself, but I left them and 2 miles away from the city I heard the cry of the rioters. I don’t know how it ended, but I heard that Kerensk, with the help of the captured Turks, fought off the villain. In my passage everywhere I noticed among the people a spirit of rebellion and a tendency towards the Pretender. Especially in the Tanbow district, the department of the prince. Vyazemsky, in the economic peasants, who for the arrival of Pugachev and bridges everywhere were fixed and the roads were repaired. On top of that, the Lipnei village elder sat down with the tenants, having considered me an accomplice of the villain, came to me, and fell to their knees. "

Final Stage of the Rebellion Map

But from Penza, Pugachev turned south. Most historians point to the reason for this Pugachev's plans to attract the Volga and, especially, the Don Cossacks into his ranks. It is possible that another reason was the desire of the Yaik Cossacks, who were tired of fighting and had already lost their chief chieftains, to hide again in the remote steppes of the lower Volga and Yaik, where they once took refuge after the uprising of 1772. An indirect confirmation of such fatigue is the fact that it was on these days that a conspiracy of Cossack colonels began with the aim of surrendering Pugachev to the government in return for receiving a pardon.

On August 4, the army of the impostor took Petrovsk, and on August 6, Saratov was surrounded. The voivode with part of the people along the Volga managed to get out to Tsaritsyn and after the battle on August 7, Saratov was taken. Saratov priests in all churches served prayers for the health of Emperor Peter III. Here, Pugachev sent a decree to the ruler of the Kalmyks Tsenden-Darzha with an appeal to join his army. But by this time, the punitive detachments under the general command of Mikhelson were literally on the heels of the Pugachevites, and on August 11 the city came under the control of government troops.

After Saratov, we went down the Volga to Kamyshin, which, like many cities before him, met Pugachev with bell ringing and bread and salt. Near Kamyshin in the German colonies, Pugachev's troops collided with the Astrakhan astronomical expedition of the Academy of Sciences, many members of which, together with the leader, Academician Georg Lovitz, were hanged along with local officials who had failed to escape. The son of Lovitz, Tobias, later also an academician, managed to survive. Having joined a detachment of 3,000 Kalmyks, the rebels entered the villages of the Volga army, Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya, where they received wide support and from where messengers were sent to the Don with orders to join the Donets to the uprising. A detachment of government troops who had approached from Tsaritsyn was defeated on the Proleika River near the village of Balyklevskaya. Further along the road was Dubovka, the capital of the Volga Cossack army. Since the Volga Cossacks, led by the ataman, remained loyal to the government, the garrisons of the Volga cities strengthened the defense of Tsaritsyn, where the thousandth detachment of the Don Cossacks arrived under the command of the marching ataman Perfilov.

"The true image of the rebel and deceiver Emelka Pugachev." Engraving. Second half of the 1770s

On August 21, Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed. Having received news of the arriving corps of Michelson, Pugachev hastened to lift the siege from Tsaritsyn, the rebels moved to the Black Yar. Panic began in Astrakhan. On August 24, at the Solenikova fishing band, Pugachev was overtaken by Michelson. Realizing that the battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites lined up battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle of the troops under the command of Pugachev with the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 guns of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry attack. In a fierce battle, more than 2,000 rebels were killed, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. More than 6,000 people were taken prisoner. Pugachev and the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. In pursuit of them, the search detachments of Generals Mansurov and Golitsyn, the Yaik foreman Borodin and the Don Colonel Tavinsky were sent. Not having time for the battle, Lieutenant-General Suvorov also wished to participate in the capture. During August-September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to Yaitskiy gorodok, Simbirsk, Orenburg.

Pugachev with a detachment of Cossacks fled to the Uzen, not knowing that since mid-August Chumakov, Tvorogov, Fedulyov and some other colonels have been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of facilitating the escape from the pursuit, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with the ataman Perfiliev. On September 8, near the Bolshoy Uzen River, they attacked and tied Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Tvorogov went to the Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they notified the accomplices, and on September 15 they brought Pugachev to Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of them was conducted personally by Suvorov, he also volunteered to escort the impostor to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was underway. To transport Pugachev, a cramped cage was made, installed on a two-wheeled cart, in which, shackled hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, he was interrogated for five days by P.S. Potemkin, head of secret commissions of inquiry, and Count P.I. Panin, commander of the government's punitive troops.

Perfiliev with his detachment were captured on September 12 after a battle with punitive forces near the Derkul River.

Pugachev under escort. 1770s engraving

At this time, in addition to the scattered centers of the uprising, hostilities in Bashkiria had an organized character. Salavat Yulaev, together with his father Yulai Aznalin, led the rebel movement on the Siberian road, Karanay Muratov, Kachkyn Samarov, Selyausin Kinzin - on Nogai, Bazargul Yunayev, Yulaman Kushaev and Mukhamet Safarov - in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. They pinned down a significant contingent of government troops. In early August, even a new assault on Ufa was undertaken, but as a result of the weak organization of interaction between the various detachments, it was unsuccessful. Along the entire length of the border line, Kazakh detachments were alarmed by raids. Governor Reinsdorp reported: “The Bashkir and Kyrgyz people are not pacified, the latter are crossing the Yaik every minute, and they grab people from outside Orenburg. The local troops are either pursuing Pugachev, or blocking his path, and I do not admonish the Kyrgyz to go to the Kyrgyz people, I admonish the khan and the Saltans. They replied that they could not keep the Kyrgyz, whom the whole horde was revolting. "... With the capture of Pugachev, the dispatch of the liberated government troops to Bashkiria, the Bashkir elders began to go over to the side of the government, many of them joined the punitive detachments. After the capture of Kanzafar Usaev and Salavat Yulaev, the uprising in Bashkiria began to decline. Salavat Yulaev gave his last battle on November 20 under the besieged Katav-Ivanovsk plant and after defeat was captured on November 25. But individual insurgent groups in Bashkiria continued to resist until the summer of 1775.

Until the summer of 1775, unrest continued in the Voronezh province, in the Tambov district and along the rivers Khopru and Vorona. Although the operating units were small and there was no coordination of joint actions, according to an eyewitness, Major Sverchkov, "Many landowners, leaving their houses and savings, move to remote places, and those who are left in their houses save their lives from threatening death, spend the night in the forests"... The terrified landowners stated that "If the Voronezh provincial chancellery does not speed up the extermination of those villainous gangs that turned out to be, then such bloodshed will inevitably follow as it did in the last mutiny."

To bring down the wave of riots, punitive squads began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, on the gallows and "verbs" from which they barely had time to remove the officers, landowners, and judges who were hanged by the impostor, they began to hang the leaders of the riots and the city leaders and chieftains of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites. To enhance the frightening effect, the gallows were installed on rafts and launched along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the center of the city. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of tested means was used. In terms of cruelty and the number of victims, Pugachev and the government did not yield to each other.

In November, all the main participants in the uprising were transported to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the building of the Mint at the Iberian Gate of Kitai-Gorod. The interrogations were supervised by Prince M. N. Volkonsky and chief secretary S. I. Sheshkovsky. During interrogation, E.I. Pugachev gave detailed testimony about his relatives, about his youth, about his participation in the Don Cossack army in the Seven Years and the Turkish Wars, about his wanderings in Russia and Poland, about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. Investigators tried to find out whether the instigators of the uprising were agents of foreign states, or schismatics, or someone from the nobility. Catherine II showed great interest in the course of the investigation. In the materials of the Moscow investigation, several notes of Catherine II to M.N. Volkonsky have been preserved with wishes about the plan in which the inquiry should be conducted, which issues require the most complete and detailed investigation, which witnesses should be additionally interviewed. On December 5, M.N. Volkonsky and P. S. Potemkin signed a ruling to terminate the investigation, since Pugachev and other defendants could not add anything new to their testimony during interrogations and could neither alleviate nor aggravate their guilt in any way. In a report to Catherine, they were forced to admit that they “… During this investigation they were trying to find the beginning of the evil undertaken by this monster and his accomplices, or… to that evil undertaking by mentors. But for all that, nothing else was revealed, somehow, that in all his villainy the first beginning took its origin in the Yaitsky army ".

Execution of Pugachev on Bolotnaya Square. (Drawing of an eyewitness to the execution of A.T. Bolotov)

On December 30, judges in the case of E.I.Pugachev gathered in the Throne Room of the Kremlin Palace. They heard the manifesto of Catherine II on the appointment of the court, and then the indictment was announced in the case of Pugachev and his associates. Prince A.A. Vyazemsky offered to bring Pugachev to the next court session. Early in the morning of December 31, under a reinforced escort, he was transported from the casemates of the Mint to the chambers of the Kremlin Palace. At the beginning of the meeting, the judges approved the questions that Pugachev was supposed to answer, after which he was led into the courtroom and forced to kneel. After a formal interrogation, he was taken out of the hall, the court ruled: "To quarter Emelka Pugachev, stick his head on a stake, smash the body parts in four parts of the city and put them on wheels, and then burn them in those places." The rest of the defendants were divided according to the degree of their guilt into several groups for the imposition of each appropriate type of execution or punishment. On Saturday, January 10, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, an execution was carried out with a huge crowd of people. Pugachev held himself with dignity, ascending to the place of execution, crossed himself at the Kremlin cathedrals, bowed to four sides with the words "Forgive me, Orthodox people." Sentenced to quartering E.I. Pugachev and A.P. Perfiliev, the executioner chopped off the head first, that was the wish of the empress. On the same day they hanged M. G. Shigaev, T. I. Podurov and V. I. Tornov. I.N. Zarubin-Chika was sent for execution to Ufa, where he was quartered at the beginning of February 1775.

Sheet-cutting shop. Painting of Demidov serf artist P.F.Hudoyarov

The Pugachev uprising caused enormous damage to the metallurgy of the Urals. 64 out of 129 factories existing in the Urals fully joined the uprising, the number of peasants assigned to them was 40 thousand people. The total amount of losses from destruction and downtime of factories is estimated at 5,536,193 rubles. And although the factories were quickly restored, the uprising forced them to make concessions in relation to the factory workers. The chief investigator in the Urals, Captain S. I. Mavrin, reported that the assigned peasants, whom he considered the leading force of the uprising, supplied the impostor with weapons and joined his troops, because the breeders oppressed their assigned peasants, forcing the peasants to overcome long distances to factories, did not allow them to cultivate and sell them food at inflated prices. Mavrin believed that decisive measures must be taken to prevent such unrest in the future. Catherine wrote to G.A. Potemkin that Mavrin "What he says about the factory peasants, then everything is very thorough, and I think that there is nothing else to do with these, how to buy factories and, when there are state-owned ones, then the peasants will be cleaned up"... On May 19, 1779, a manifesto was issued on the general rules for the use of peasants assigned to state and private enterprises, which somewhat limited breeders in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages.

There were no significant changes in the position of the peasantry.

Research and collections of archival documents

• Pushkin A. S. "History of Pugachev" (censored title - "History of the Pugachev revolt")
• Groth Ya. K. Materials for the history of the Pugachev rebellion (Papers of Kara and Bibikov). Saint Petersburg, 1862
• Dubrovin N.F. Pugachev and his accomplices. An episode from the reign of Empress Catherine II. 1773-1774 According to unpublished sources. T. 1-3. SPb., Type. N. I. Skorokhodova, 1884
• Pugachevshchina. Collection of documents.

Volume 1. From the archive of Pugachev. Documents, decrees, correspondence. M.-L., State Publishing House, 1926. Volume 2. From investigative materials and official correspondence. M.-L., State Publishing House, 1929 Volume 3. From the archive of Pugachev. M.-L., Socekgiz, 1931

• Peasant War 1773-1775 in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. M., 1973
• Peasant War 1773-1775 on the territory of Bashkiria. Collection of documents. Ufa, 1975
• Peasant war led by Yemelyan Pugachev in Chuvashia. Collection of documents. Cheboksary, 1972
• Peasant war led by Yemelyan Pugachev in Udmurtia. Collection of documents and materials. Izhevsk, 1974
• Gorban N.V. The peasantry of Western Siberia in the peasant war of 1773-75. // Questions of history. 1952. No. 11.
• Muratov Kh. I. Peasant War of 1773-1775 in Russia. M., Military Publishing, 1954

Art

The Pugachev uprising in fiction

• A. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
• S. A. Yesenin "Pugachev" (poem)
• S. P. Zlobin "Salavat Yulaev"
• E. Fedorov "Stone Belt" (novel). Book 2 "The Heirs"
• V. Ya. Shishkov "Emelyan Pugachev (novel)"
• V. I. Buganov "Pugachev" (biography in the series "Life of Remarkable People")
• V. I. Mashkovtsev "The Golden Flower - Overcome" (historical novel). - Chelyabinsk, South Ural Book Publishing House,,.

Cinema

• Pugachev () - feature film. Director Pavel Petrov-Bytov
• Emelyan Pugachev () - historical dilogy: "Prisoners of Freedom" and "Will, Washed in Blood" directed by Alexei Saltykov
• The Captain's Daughter () - a feature film based on the story of the same name by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
• Russian revolt () - a historical film based on the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter" and "The Story of Pugachev"
• Salavat Yulaev () - feature film. Director Yakov Protazanov

Links

• Bolshakov L.N. Orenburg Pushkin Encyclopedia
• Vaganov M. Major Mirzabek Vaganov's report on his mission to Nurali Khan. March-June 1774 / Commun. V. Snezhnevsky // Russian antiquity, 1890. - T. 66. - No. 4. - S. 108-119. - Under the headline: On the history of the Pugachev rebellion. In the steppe near the Kirghiz-Kaisaks, March - 1774 - June.
• Military-marching journal of the commander of the punitive corps, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhelson I.I., about military operations against the rebels in March - August 1774.// Peasant War of 1773-1775 in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. - M .: Nauka, 1973 .-- S. 194-223.
• Gvozdikova I. Salavat Yulaev: a historical portrait ("Belskie open spaces", 2004)
• Diary of a member of the noble militia of the Kazan province “About Pugachev. His evil deeds "// Peasant War of 1773-1775 in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. - M .: Nauka, 1973 .-- S. 58-65.
• Dobrotvorskiy I.A. Pugachev on the Kama // Historical Bulletin, 1884. - T. 18. - No. 9. - P. 719-753.
• Catherine II. Letters of Empress Catherine II to A.I.Bibikov during the Pugachev revolt (1774) / Soobshch. V.I. Lamansky // Russian Archive, 1866. - Issue. 3. - Stb. 388-398.
• Peasant war led by Pugachev on the website History of the Orenburg region
• Peasant War led by Pugachev (TSB)
• Kulaginsky P.N. The Pugachevites and Pugachev in Tresvyatsky-Yelabuga in 1773-1775 / Message P. M. Makarov // Russian antiquity, 1882. - T. 33. - No. 2. - P. 291-312.
• Lopatin. Letter from Arzamas dated September 19, 1774 / Commun. A. I. Yazykov // Russian antiquity, 1874. - T. 10. - No. 7. - P. 617-618. - Under the title: Pugachevshchina.
• D. B. Mertvago Notes of Dmitry Borisovich Mertvago. 1790-1824. - M .: type. Gracheva and K, 1867. - XIV, 340 stb. - adj. to the "Russian Archive" for 1867 (Issue 8-9).
• Determination of the Kazan nobility about the assembly of the cavalry corps of troops from their own people against Pugachev// Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, 1864. - Book. 3/4. Dept. 5. - S. 105-107.
• Oreus I. I. Ivan Ivanovich Mikhelson, the winner of Pugachev. 1740-1807 // Russian antiquity, 1876. - T. 15. - No. 1. - S. 192-209.
• Pugachev's sheets in Moscow. 1774 Materials// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 13. - No. 6. - S. 272-276. , No. 7. - S. 440-442.
• Pugachevshchina. New materials for the history of the Pugachev region// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 12. - No. 2. - S. 390-394; No. 3. - S. 540-544.

• Collection of documents on the history of the Pugachev uprising on the site Vostlit.info
• Cards: Map of the lands of the Yaitsk army, the Orenburg region and the Southern Urals, Map of the Saratov province (maps of the early XX century)

The main cause of popular unrest, including the uprising led by Yemelyan Pugachev, was the strengthening of serfdom and the growth of exploitation of all segments of the black population. The Cossacks were unhappy with the government's attack on their traditional privileges and rights. The indigenous peoples of the Volga and Ural regions experienced oppression both from the authorities and from the actions of Russian landowners and industrialists. Wars, famines, epidemics also contributed to popular uprisings. (For example, the Moscow plague riot of 1771 arose as a result of a plague epidemic brought in from the fronts of the Russian-Turkish war.)

MANIFESTO "AMPERATOR"

“The autocratic emperor, our great sovereign, Peter Fyodorovich of All Russia and others ... In my name, my decree depicts the Yaitsky army: how you, my friends, served the former tsars to a drop of your blood ... so you will serve me, the great sovereign, for your fatherland to the Emperor Pyotr Fedorovich ... Wake me up, the great sovereign, are granted: Cossacks and Kalmyks and Tatars. And that I ... wine were ... in all the wines I forgive and spare you: ryak from the top to the mouth and earth, and herbs, and money salary, and lead, and gunpowder, and grain praviyants. "

The self-proclaimers

In September 1773, the Yaik Cossacks could hear this manifesto "by the miraculously saved Tsar Peter III." The shadow of "Peter III" has appeared in Russia more than once in the previous 11 years. Some daredevils called themselves Tsar Peter Fedorovich, announced that they wanted, following the liberty of the nobility, to give free rein to the serfs and to favor the Cossacks, working people and all other common people, but the nobles intended to kill them, and they had to hide for a while. These impostors quickly fell into the Secret Expedition, opened under Catherine II to replace the dissolved office of secret search cases, and their life ended on the chopping block. But soon a living "Peter III" appeared somewhere on the outskirts, and the people grabbed at the rumor about the new "miraculous salvation of the amperator". Of all the impostors, only one - the Don Cossack Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev managed to kindle the flames of the peasant war and lead a merciless war of commoners against masters for the "peasant kingdom".

At his rate and on the battlefield near Orenburg, Pugachev perfectly played the "royal role". He issued decrees not only on his own behalf, but also on behalf of Paul's "son and heir". Often in public, Emelyan Ivanovich took out a portrait of the Grand Duke and, looking at him, said with tears: "Oh, I'm sorry for Pavel Petrovich, no matter how accursed villains would exhaust him!" And on another occasion the impostor declared: “I myself do not wish to reign any more, but I will restore the Tsarevich to the reign”.

"Tsar Peter III" tried to bring order to the rebellious element of the people. The rebels were divided into "regiments" headed by "officers" elected or appointed by Pugachev. In 5 versts from Orenburg in Berd he made his bet. Under the emperor, a "guard" was formed from his bodyguards. Pugachev's decrees were stamped with a "big state seal." Under the "tsar" there was a Military Collegium, which concentrated military, administrative and judicial power.

Even Pugachev showed his associates birthmarks - then among the people, everyone was convinced that tsars had "special royal marks" on their bodies. A red caftan, an expensive hat, a saber and a resolute look completed the image of the "sovereign". Although Emelyan Ivanovich's appearance was unremarkable: he was a Cossack in his early thirties, of medium height, dark-skinned, his hair was cut in a circle, his face was framed by a small black beard. But he was such a "tsar" as the peasant fantasy wished to see a tsar: dashing, insanely brave, sedate, formidable and swift to the trial of the "traitors." He executed and complained ...

He executed landlords and officers. He favored ordinary people. For example, a workman named Afanasy Sokolov, nicknamed "Khlopusha", appeared in his camp, seeing the "tsar" fell at his feet and obeyed: he was sitting, Khlopusha, in the Orenburg prison, but was released by Governor Reinsdorf, promising to kill Pugachev for money. "Amperator Peter III" forgives Khlopusha, and even appoints him colonel. Soon Khlopusha became famous as a decisive and successful leader. Another popular leader, Chiku-Zarubin, was promoted by Pugachev to the counts and called only "Ivan Nikiforovich Chernyshev."

Among those granted soon there were working people who arrived at Pugachev and assigned mining peasants, as well as the rebellious Bashkirs led by the noble young hero-poet Salavat Yulaev. The "king" returned to the Bashkirs their lands. The Bashkirs began to set fire to Russian factories built in their region, while the villages of Russian settlers were destroyed, the inhabitants were slaughtered almost without exception.

Egg Cossacks

The uprising began on Yaik, which was not accidental. The unrest began in January 1772, when the Yaik Cossacks with icons and banners came to their "capital" Yaitsky town to ask the tsarist general to remove the ataman and part of the foreman who oppressed them and restore the previous privileges of the Yaik Cossacks.

The government at that time pretty much pressed the Yaik Cossacks. Their role as border guards fell; they began to tear the Cossacks away from home, sending them on long campaigns; the election of chieftains and commanders was abolished back in the 1740s; at the mouth of the Yaik, the fishermen set up, according to the royal permission, barriers that impeded the movement of fish up the river, which hurt one of the main Cossack industries - fishing.

In Yaitsky town, the procession of the Cossacks was shot. The soldiers' corps, who arrived a little later, suppressed the Cossack indignation, the instigators were executed, the "disobedient Cossacks" fled and hid. But there was no peace on Yaik, the Cossack land still resembled a powder magazine. The spark that blew him up was Pugachev.

THE BEGINNING OF PUGACHEVSHCHINA

On September 17, 1773, he read out his first manifesto to 80 Cossacks. The next day he already had 200 supporters, and on the third - 400. On October 5, 1773, Emelyan Pugachev, with 2.5 thousand associates, began the siege of Orenburg.

While "Peter III" was on its way to Orenburg, news of it spread throughout the country. They whispered in the peasant huts, how everywhere the "amperator" was greeted with "bread and salt", bells solemnly hum in his honor, the Cossacks and soldiers of the garrisons of small border fortresses without a fight open the gates and go over to his side, the "bloodsuckers-nobles" "the king" without he executes delays, and favors the rebels with their things. First, some brave men, and then whole crowds of serfs from the Volga, ran to Pugachev in his camp near Orenburg.

PUGACHEV AT ORENBURG

Orenburg was a well fortified provincial city, it was defended by 3 thousand soldiers. Pugachev stood near Orenburg for 6 months, but he did not manage to take it. However, the army of the rebels grew, at some moments of the uprising its number reached 30 thousand people.

Major General Kar hurried to the rescue of the besieged Orenburg with troops loyal to Catherine II. But his 1,500-strong detachment was defeated. The same happened with the military command of Colonel Chernyshev. The remnants of the government troops retreated to Kazan and caused panic among the local nobles there. The nobles had already heard about Pugachev's fierce reprisals and began to scatter, leaving houses and property.

The situation was serious. Catherine, in order to support the spirit of the Volga nobles, declared herself a “Kazan landowner”. Troops began to move towards Orenburg. They needed a commander-in-chief - a talented and energetic person. Catherine II for the sake of benefit could compromise beliefs. It was at this decisive moment at the court ball that the empress turned to A.I. Bibikova, whom she did not like for his closeness to her son Pavel and “constitutional dreams,” and with an affectionate smile asked him to become the commander-in-chief of the army. Bibikov replied that he devoted himself to serving the fatherland and, of course, accepts the appointment. Catherine's hopes were justified. On March 22, 1774, in a 6-hour battle near the Tatishchev fortress, Bibikov defeated the best forces of Pugachev. 2 thousand Pugachevites were killed, 4 thousand were wounded or surrendered, 36 guns were captured from the rebels. Pugachev was forced to lift the siege of Orenburg. The riot seemed to be suppressed ...

But in the spring of 1774 the second part of the Pugachev drama began. Pugachev moved eastward: to Bashkiria and the mining Urals. When he approached Trinity Fortress, the easternmost point of the rebels' advance, his army numbered 10,000. The uprising was overwhelmed by the elements of robbery. The Pugachevites burned down factories, took away livestock and other property from the registered peasants and working people; they destroyed officials, clerks, and captured "masters" without mercy, sometimes in the most savage way. Some of the commoners replenished the detachments of the Pugachev colonels, others huddled in detachments around the plant owners, who handed out weapons to their people in order to protect them and their lives and property.

Pugachev in the Volga region

Pugachev's army grew at the expense of detachments of the Volga peoples - the Udmurts, Mari, Chuvash. From November 1773, the manifestos of "Peter III" called upon the serfs to deal with the landlords - "the troublemakers of the empire and the ruiners of the peasants", and the noble "houses and all their estates to take as a reward."

On July 12, 1774, the emperor "took Kazan with a 20,000-strong army. But the government garrison was locked in the Kazan Kremlin. The tsarist troops, led by Michelson, came to his aid. On July 17, 1774 Mikhelson defeated the Pugachevites. "Tsar Peter Fedorovich" fled to the right bank of the Volga, and there the peasant war unfolded again on a large scale. The Pugachev manifesto on July 31, 1774 granted the serfs the will and "freed" the peasants from all obligations. Insurgent groups arose everywhere, which acted at their own peril and risk, often without communication with each other. Interestingly, the insurgents usually destroyed the estates not of their owners, but of neighboring landowners. Pugachev with the main forces moved to the Lower Volga. He took small towns with ease. Detachments of barge haulers, Volga, Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks joined him. The powerful fortress of Tsaritsyn stood in the way of the rebels. Under the walls of Tsaritsyn in August 1774, the Pugachevites suffered a major defeat. Thinning detachments of the rebels began to retreat back to where they came from - to the South Urals. Pugachev himself with a group of Yaik Cossacks swam to the left bank of the Volga.

On September 12, 1774, former comrades-in-arms betrayed their leader. "Tsar Peter Fyodorovich" turned into a fugitive rebel Pugach. The angry shouts of Emelyan Ivanovich were no longer active: “Whom are you knitting? After all, if I do nothing to you, then my son, Pavel Petrovich, will not leave a single person of you alive! " The bound "tsar" was on horseback and was taken to the Yaitsky town and there handed over to the officer.

Commander-in-Chief Bibikov was no longer alive. He died in the midst of the suppression of the riot. The new commander-in-chief Pyotr Panin (the younger brother of the tutor of Tsarevich Pavel) had a headquarters in Simbirsk. Mikhelson ordered to send Pugachev there. He was escorted by the famous Catherine's commander who had been recalled from the Turkish war. Pugachev was transported in a wooden cage on a two-wheeled cart.

Meanwhile, Pugachev's associates, who had not yet laid down their arms, spread a rumor that the arrested Pugachev had nothing to do with "Tsar Peter III". Some peasants sighed with relief: “Thank God! Some Pugach was caught, and Tsar Peter Fedorovich was free! " But in general, the forces of the rebels were undermined. In 1775, the last centers of resistance in forest Bashkiria and the Volga region were extinguished, and the echoes of the Pugachev rebellion in Ukraine were suppressed.

A.S. PUSHKIN. "THE HISTORY OF PUGACHEV"

“Suvorov did not leave him. In the village of Mostakh (one hundred and forty versts from Samara), a fire broke out near the hut where Pugachev spent the night. They let him out of the cage, tied him to a cart together with his son, a playful and brave boy, and all night long; Suvorov himself watched them. In Cosporia, opposite Samara, at night, in wave weather, Suvorov crossed the Volga and came to Simbirsk in early October ... Pugachev was brought directly to the courtyard to Count Panin, who met him on the porch ... "Who are you?" he asked the impostor. “Emelyan Ivanov Pugachev,” he answered. "How dare you, yur, call yourself a sovereign?" - continued Panin. “I’m not a crow,” objected Pugachev, playing with words and speaking, as usual, allegorically. "I am a raven, but a raven still flies." Panin, noticing that the audacity of Pugachev amazed the people crowding around the palace, hit the impostor in the face to the point of blood and tore out a piece of his beard ... "

RULES AND PENALTIES

The victory of the government troops was accompanied by atrocities no less than what Pugachev did over the nobles. The enlightened empress concluded that "in the present case, execution is needed for the good of the empire." Petr Panin, inclined to constitutional dreams, realized the call of the autocrat. Thousands of people were executed without trial or investigation. On all the roads of the insurgent region, corpses were scattered about, exhibited for edification. It was impossible to count the peasants who had been punished with whips, batogs, and whips. Many had their noses or ears cut off.

Emelyan Pugachev laid his head on the chopping block on January 10, 1775 in front of a large crowd of people on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. Before his death, Emelyan Ivanovich bowed to the cathedrals and said goodbye to the people, repeating in an interrupted voice: “Forgive me, Orthodox people; let me go what I have rude before you. " Several of his associates were hanged together with Pugachev. The famous chieftain Chiku was taken to Ufa for execution. Salavat Yulaev ended up in hard labor. The Pugachevshchina is over ...

The Pugachevism did not bring relief to the peasants. The government's policy towards the peasants became bitter, and the sphere of action of serfdom expanded. By decree on May 3, 1783, the peasants of the Left Bank and Sloboda Ukraine passed into serf bondage. The peasants here were deprived of the right to transfer from one owner to another. In 1785, the Cossack foreman received the rights of the Russian nobility. Earlier, in 1775, the free Zaporozhye Sich was destroyed. The Zaporozhians were moved to the Kuban, where they made up the Cossack Kuban army. The landowners of the Volga region and other regions did not reduce the quitrent, corvee and other peasant duties. All this was exacted with the same severity.

"Mother Ekaterina" wanted the memory of the Pugachev region to be erased. She even ordered to rename the river where the riot began: and Yaik became the Ural. The Yaitsky Cossacks and the Yaitsky town were ordered to be called Ural Cossacks. The village of Zimoveyskaya, the birthplace of Stenka Razin and Emelyan Pugachev, was christened in a new way - Potemkinskaya. However, Pugach was remembered by the people. The old men told me in earnest that Emelyan Ivanovich was the revived Razin, and he would return more than once to the Don; in Russia songs sounded and legends circulated about the formidable "emperor and his children."