Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (born 1742 - died on January 10 (21), 1775) - Don Cossack leader of the Peasant War of 1773–1775. in Russia.
Origin
Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev was born in a Cossack village in the Don region. Now this is a village in the Volgograd region, here Stepan Razin was born earlier. The surname Pugachev comes from the nickname of his grandfather - Mikhail Pugach. He was not taught to read and write. The family lived in poverty. In his youth, Emelyan, together with his father, was engaged in arable farming. As Pugachev himself pointed out during the interrogation, his family belonged to the Orthodox faith, in contrast to most of the Don and Yaik Cossacks, who adhered to the Old Believers.
Cossack service
Pugachev was drafted into service at the age of 18, at the age of 19 he married a Cossack woman. Emelyan, while still a very young Cossack, got into the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), fought for about 3 years and was taken as an orderly for “excellent agility”.
From 1763 to 1767 he served in his village, where the Cossack's son Trofim was born in 1764 and the daughter of Agrafena in 1768.
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1768-1770 - Pugachev took part in the Russian-Turkish war, earning the rank of cornet. After the withdrawal of troops to winter quarters in 1771, Emelyan fell ill ("… and his chest and legs rotted"). He went to the military capital Cherkassk to ask for resignation. His resignation was refused, he was offered to be treated in the infirmary or on his own. The Cossack preferred independent treatment. Not wanting to serve anymore, he made escapes more than once, he was arrested, but he fled again.
Among the schismatics
One of the schismatics, suggested to him a way to return to legal life. To do this, it was necessary to get into Poland, and then use the decrees of the Senate of 1762 on the permission of the schismatics-Old Believers who left Poland to settle at their request in the Orenburg province. So the future chieftain declared himself an Old Believer and, having received a passport, went to a settlement in the Orenburg province. He arrived at the place in November 1772, here he first settled in the Old Believers' skete of the Introduction of the Virgin, with the abbot Filaret, from whom he heard about the unrest that had taken place in the Yaitsk army. Subsequently, it was rumored that it was Filaret who suggested to him the idea of imposture.
Imposture. The uprising of Pugachev
But Pugachev was again arrested and put on a chain in a cell. 1773, May - he escaped from the Kazan prison to the Yaik River, where, among the Cossacks living there, he declared himself Emperor Peter Fedorovich, who was miraculously saved from murderers sent by an unfaithful wife. Pugachev's imposture is not the first attempt to use the name of Peter III. This name did not come up by accident. The overthrow of the emperor by his wife, which took place shortly after the publication of the manifesto on the liberty of the nobility, aroused among the people the hope that the tsar intended later to free the peasants from the noble power. The popular imagination endowed the tsar with those qualities and intentions that he wanted to see in a "good" emperor.
On September 17, on his behalf, the first manifesto about the beginning of the uprising was read, the core of which was the Yaik Cossacks-Old Believers. In the first months of the uprising, Pugachev's extraordinary abilities as the leader of a mass popular movement were manifested: unusual energy, courage, great natural intelligence, knowledge of military affairs, cruelty, but he failed to become a just peasant-Cossack king. The Pugachev uprising covered an area of more than 600 thousand square meters. km, shaking "the state from Siberia to Moscow and from the Kuban to the Murom forests" (AS Pushkin).
Delivery of guns to Pugachev.
The Don of the second half of the 18th century could no longer become an area of uprising, as in the time of Stepan Razin. The autonomy of the Don Cossacks by that time was already severely curtailed. Representatives of the tsarist government, who worked closely with the Cossack foreman, kept the rank-and-file Cossacks under vigilant surveillance. The antagonism between the Cossack mass and the foreman - the wealthy elite, which has emerged as a result of internal stratification - appears more sharply. Illegal extortions, concealment of salaries and other such abuses forced ordinary Cossacks to complain about the sergeant major to the Orenburg governor and to Petersburg. In such a tense atmosphere, Pugachev began to act on Yaik.
Empress Catherine was well aware of the seriousness of the geopolitical problem that the uprising could entail. Therefore, Suvorov himself was sent to suppress it. Moreover, the great commander personally escorted the ataman to Moscow.
One of the most interesting features of the Peasant War of 1773-1775. consisted in the speed and intensity of events. There are three main periods in its history: from September 1773 to April 1774, when movement mainly took place on Yaik, in Bashkiria and in the mining regions of the Urals (on both sides of the mountain range); from May to July 1774, when, after heavy defeats suffered by the Pugachevites, the uprising broke out again in the Middle Urals and Kama; from July 1774 to 1775, when it spread with incredible speed along the Middle and Lower Volga and to the west of it and in the end was defeated.
Pugachev's trial (Art. Perov).
Fatal mistakes. Captivity and execution
Although the course of the Peasant War showed that Pugachev had organizational skills and military talent, he made serious mistakes. Instead of sending his army on a campaign to the Volga region, which was ready to flare up like gunpowder, he took up the siege of Orenburg and other fortresses. Because of this, the ataman narrowed the area of action and missed the time that was needed to consolidate the forces of the rebels.
Pugachev tried to impose discipline in his troops, but the situation got out of his control. In Alatyr, despite the ban of the impostor, robberies and drunken orgy began. It was agony. In Penza, Saransk and Saratov, he still tried to play the role of the "people's leader" - he "judged" the landowners brought to him (in total during the "Pugachevism" more than 3 thousand noble families were massacred), promising his supporters that soon Cossacks of the Don army must join them. However, having suffered a defeat at Cherny Yar on August 24, 1774, Yemelyan Pugachev was arrested by his own bodyguards and taken to Yaitsky town (on the way to Yaitsky town, Pugachev made two attempts to escape, but failed), then to Moscow in a cage at the disposal of the investigating commission.
November 4, morning - the escort team brought the chieftain to Moscow, where he was placed in the basement of the Mint building at the Resurrection Gate of Kitai-Gorod. Together with Pugachev, all the surviving prisoners of the uprising were taken to the capital for a general investigation. Empress Catherine II was keenly interested in the progress of the investigation, indicating the directions in which interrogations should be carried out. After the end of the investigation, the composition of the court was determined by the manifesto of Catherine II of December 19, 1774.
Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev was sentenced by the court to quartering "To quarrel Emelka Pugachev, stick his head on a stake, spread the body parts to four parts of the city and put on wheels, and then burn them in those places."
The verdict was carried out on January 10 (21), 1775 on Bolotnaya Square. According to the stories of contemporaries, the executioner received a secret instruction from Catherine II to reduce the torment of the condemned, and Pugachev was first cut off his head and only then quartered.
Execution of Emelyan Pugachev.
It only remains to add that a day later, on January 12, the remains of Pugachev were burned along with the scaffold and sleigh on which he was carried to execution.
To destroy all memory of Pugachev, the Zimoveyskaya stanitsa, where he was born, was renamed Potemkin, the Yaik Cossacks into the Ural Cossacks, the Yaik River was renamed - into the Ural, the Yaitsky town - into the city of Uralsk.
Treasures of Yemelyan Pugachev
According to rumors, the Pugachev treasury contained countless treasures of the Tatar and Bashkir khans. But to this day, neither a horse blanket embroidered with thousands of rubies and sapphires, nor a huge diamond, which the chieftain allegedly owned, have not been found. Nikita Khrushchev himself was interested in this treasure, which, according to legend, is kept in the Emelkina Cave near the village of Nagaybakovo in the Urals, and even sent an expedition of treasure hunters there. But all to no avail.