In Russian history, the reign of Catherine II is invariably called the Golden Age. The empress reigned on the throne, resembling her great aspirations as the great reformer Peter, just like he, who wants to make Russia a part of civilized Europe. The empire is growing stronger, powerful lands are joining new lands, and under the supervision of an educated queen, science and art are developing.
But there was a “horror of the eighteenth century," as Catherine the Great called the Pugachev Uprising. Its results, as well as the reasons and the course, revealed sharp contradictions hidden behind the magnificent facade of the Golden Age.
Reasons for the uprising
The first decrees of Catherine after the removal of Peter III were manifestos on the liberation of the nobility from compulsory military and public service. The landlords were given the opportunity to do their own farm, and in relation to the peasants, they became slaveholders. Serfs received only unbearable duties, and even the right to complain about the owners was taken away from them. In the hands of the owner was the fate and life of the serf.
The share of those peasants who were assigned to factories was no better. Assigned workers were mercilessly exploited by miners. In terrible conditions, they worked in heavy and dangerous industries, and they had neither the strength nor the time to work on their own allotments.
It was not for nothing that it was precisely in the Urals and Volga region that the Pugachev uprising flared. The results of the repressive policy of the Russian Empire in relation to the national suburbs - the appearance in the rebel army of hundreds of thousands of Bashkirs, Tatars, Udmurts, Kazakhs, Kalmyks, Chuvashs. The state drove them from their ancestral lands, building new plants there, planting a new faith for them, banning the old gods.
On the river Yaike
The fuse, from which the vast space in the Urals and the Volga took on the flames of popular anger, was the performance of the Yaitsky Cossacks. They protested against the deprivation of their economic (state monopoly on salt) and political (concentration of power among elders and chieftains supported by the authorities) freedoms and privileges. Their performances of 1771 were brutally suppressed, which forced the Cossacks to seek other methods of struggle and new leaders.
Some historians argue that Pugachev’s uprising, reasons, course, results were largely determined by the top of the Yaits Cossacks. They managed to subdue the charismatic Pugachev to their influence and make him their blind tool in achieving Cossack liberties. And when danger came, they betrayed him and tried to save their lives in exchange for his head.
Muzhitsky "antpirator"
The tension in the socio-political atmosphere of that time was supported by rumors about the forcibly overthrown royal wife of Catherine - Peter Fedorovich. It was said that Peter III prepared a decree "On Peasant Liberty", but did not have time to proclaim it and was captured by the nobles - opponents of the emancipation of the peasants. He miraculously escaped and would soon appear before the people and raise him to the struggle for the return of the royal throne. The faith of a simple people in the right tsar, the anointed of God, who has special marks on the body, was often used in Russia by various impostors for the struggle for power.
The miraculously saved Pyotr Fedorovich really showed up. He showed obvious signs on his chest (which were traces of scrofula) and called the nobles the main enemies of the working people. He was strong and brave, had a clear mind and iron will. At birth, his name was Emelyan Pugachev.
Don Cossack from the village of Zimoveyskaya
He was born in 1740 or 1742 in the same places where another legendary rebel, Stepan Razin, was born a hundred years before him. The uprising of Pugachev, the results of his campaigns along the Volga and the Urals, frightened the authorities so much that she tried to destroy the very memory of the “peasant tsar”. Very few reliable data about his life have been preserved.
Emelian Ivanovich Pugachev was distinguished from a young age by his lively mind and restless disposition. He participated in the war with Prussia and Turkey, received the title of cornet. Due to illness, he returned to the Don, could not achieve official resignation from military service and began to hide from the authorities.
He traveled to Poland, the Kuban and the Caucasus. For some time he lived with the Old Believers on the banks of one of the Volga tributaries - the Irgiz River. It was believed that it was one of the prominent schismatics - father Filaret - who gave Pugachev the idea to appear as a miraculously saved true emperor. So appeared among the freedom-loving egg Cossacks "anti-respirator" Peter Fedorovich.
Riot or peasant war?
The events that began as a struggle for the return of Cossack freedoms acquired all the features of a large-scale war against the oppressors of the peasantry and the working people.
The manifestos and decrees proclaimed on behalf of Peter III contained ideas that possessed tremendous attractive power for the majority of the empire’s population: liberating the peasantry from bondage and excessive taxes, endowing it with land, abolishing the privileges of the nobility and bureaucracy, elements of self-government of national suburbs, etc.
Such slogans on the banner of the army of insurgents ensured its rapid quantitative growth and had a decisive influence on the entire Pugachev uprising. The causes and results of the peasant war of 1773-75 were a direct result of these social problems.
The Yaik Cossacks, which became the core of the main military force of the uprising, were joined by workers and ascribed peasants of the Ural factories, landowner serfs. The equestrian part of the rebel army consisted mainly of Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and other inhabitants of the steppes on the edge of the empire.
To manage its motley army of leaders of the Pugachev army, a military collegium was formed - the administrative and political center of the uprising. For the successful functioning of this rebel headquarters, the will and knowledge of the Pugachev commanders were lacking, although the actions of the rebel army sometimes caused the opposing personnel officers and generals to be surprised at their organization and common mind, although this was a rare occurrence.
Gradually, the confrontation acquired the features of a real civil war. But the beginnings of the ideological program, which could be seen in the "royal decrees" of Emelyan, could not resist the robber character of his troops. The results of the Pugachev uprising subsequently showed that robberies and unprecedented cruelty in reprisals against the oppressors turned the speech against the state system of oppression into the same - meaningless and merciless - Russian rebellion.
Course of the uprising
The uprising fire engulfed a gigantic space from the Volga to the Urals. At first, the performance of the Yaitsky Cossacks, led by a self-styled spouse, did not cause Catherine’s fears. It was only when Pugachev’s army began to replenish rapidly, when it became known that the “anti-gun” was greeted with bread and salt in small villages and large settlements, when many fortresses in the Orenburg steppes were captured, often without a fight, and the authorities became really worried. It was precisely the unforgivable negligence of the authorities that Pushkin explained the rapid increase in Cossack indignation, having studied the results and significance of the uprising. Pugachev led to the capital of the Urals - Orenburg - a powerful and dangerous army that defeated several regular military forces.
But Pugachev’s freemen could not really resist the punitive forces sent from the capital, and the first stage of the uprising ended in the victory of the tsar’s troops at the Tatishchev fortress in March 1774. It seemed that the uprising of Pugachev, whose results were the flight of an impostor with a small detachment to the Urals, was crushed. But this was only the first stage.
Kazan landowner
Three months after the defeat near Orenburg, the 20,000th rebel army came to Kazan: losses were compensated by an instant influx of new forces from among those dissatisfied with their position. Having heard about the approach of “Emperor Peter III,” many peasants themselves dealt with the owners, met with Pugachev’s bread and salt and poured into his army. Kazan almost surrendered to the rebels. They could not storm only the Kremlin, where there remained a small garrison.
Wanting to support the Volga nobility and the landowners in the uprising region, the empress declared herself a “Kazan landowner” and sent a powerful military group to Kazan under the command of Colonel I. I. Mikhelson, who was ordered to finally crush the Pugachev uprising. The results of the Kazan battle were again unfavorable for the impostor, and he with the remnants of the army left on the right bank of the Volga.
The end of the Pugachev uprising
In the Volga region, the former zone of continuous serfdom, the bonfire of the uprising received a new boost - the peasants, released from captivity by the manifesto of "Pyotr Fedorovich", poured into his army. Soon, in Moscow itself, they began to prepare for the repulse of the huge rebel army. But the results of the Pugachev uprising in the Urals showed him that the peasant army could not resist the trained and well-armed regular units. It was decided to move south and raise the Don Cossacks to fight, on their way was a powerful fortress - Tsaritsyn.
It was at the approaches to it that Michelson inflicted a final defeat on the rebels. Pugachev tried to escape, but was betrayed by Cossack foremen, captured and handed over to the authorities. In Moscow, the trial of Pugachev and his closest associates took place, in January 1775 he was executed, but spontaneous peasant uprisings continued for a long time.
Background, reasons, participants, course and results of the Pugachev uprising
The table below briefly describes this historical event. It shows who and for what purpose participated in the uprising, and why it was defeated.
Mark on history
After the defeat of the Pugachev region, Catherine the Great tried to do everything so that the memory of the uprising would disappear forever. The Yaik River was renamed the Urals , the Yaik Cossacks became known as the Ural, the Don village of Zimoveyskaya - the birthplace of Razin and Pugachev - became Potemkinskaya.
But the Pugachev turmoil was too much a shock for the empire to disappear into history without a trace. Almost every new generation in its own way evaluates the results of the uprising of Emelyan Pugachev, calling his leader either a hero or a bandit. It so happened in Russia - to achieve the good goal with unrighteous methods, and hang labels while at a safe time distance.