Everything that we were told about the Pugachev uprising is only part of the information, moreover, insignificant. In addition, history knows many cases when the truth about real events was deliberately distorted. And today we must admit that because of this, history has become not a science, but a certain point of view on certain phenomena and events in each specific time period.
The historical status of the Pugachev uprising can be defined as very high by the way the authorities reacted to it: if Stepan Razin was only a Cossack-robber, then Pugachev was recognized as a state criminal.
It is unlikely that we will be able to answer rather difficult questions today. Why did Emelyan Pugachev pretend to be Emperor Peter III who escaped death? Who advised a simple Cossack to take this name for himself and for what purpose? How was Pugachev able to raise a mutiny in such a vast territory - from the Volga to Yaik, Kama, Tobol and Vyatka? After all, there were many impostors in Russia, but none of them achieved such success. Who really stood behind Pugachev? Why did the Russian Empress Catherine II angrily call him "Marquis"? Why were there French, Poles, Germans and even a Protestant pastor in the Pugachev army? There are many questions and riddles … And maybe the time has come to try to answer them?
Until now, most of the materials on the Pugachev riot are not available. Therefore, our ideas about a large-scale Russian rebellion, when they are made public, can radically change and this particular episode of history will have to be thoroughly rewritten.
It is known that after the death of Catherine II, her son Pavel Petrovich, who hated his mother, believing her to be guilty of the death of his father, ascending to the Russian throne, began to change the order established earlier by his mother. One of the first decrees of the sovereign was the release of disgraced courtiers and criminals imprisoned on the orders of the former empress.
For this, a special commission was appointed, the officials of which were to give a report on all the prisoners in Russian prisons.
The report of the collegiate adviser Makarov contained the following lines: “In the Keksholm fortress: Sophia and Ustinya, the wives of the former impostor Emelyan Pugachev, two daughters, the girls Agrafena and Khristina from the first, and the son Trofim. Since 1775, they have been kept in the castle, in a special rest, and the guy is in the guardhouse, in a special room. They have maintenance from the treasury of 15 kopecks a day, they live decently. Zhenka Sofya is 55 years old, Ustinya - about 36 years old. Sent all together, from the Governing Senate … They have the freedom to walk around the fortress to work, but they are not released from it; they cannot read and write”.
There is no doubt that the emperor was familiar with this report. Since, according to his decree, even state criminals from the Shlisselburg Central were released, about whom Catherine II said that "they are worse than Pugachev", but illiterate peasant women with children were left to live out their days in the Kexholm fortress. And even under Alexander I and under Nicholas I, they did not get freedom! The reason for such a step by the Russian autocrats could have been that the wives of Yemelyan Pugachev knew about their husband such that would threaten the imperial power in Russia.
Promotional video:
His first wife, Sophia, lived with Emelyan Pugachev in the village of Zimoveyskaya, as they said at the time, “her home”. But her husband turned out to be quite unpredictable and violent, for which he was often beaten with whips "for speaking outrageous and harmful words." Sometimes he disappeared for a long time, wandered. A. S. Pushkin wrote about him in his "History of Pugachev": "he staggered around the Cossack households, hiring first to one owner, then to another and taking on all sorts of crafts." From 1772, he was officially on the run and was wanted by the police. Suddenly, Pugachev appears in September 1773 on farms near Yaitsky town. He claimed that he was the husband of the empress - Tsar Peter III and that he was ready to take his throne from the "unfaithful wife".
In 1773, the empress ordered the arrest of Pugachev's wife, children and brother, but "without any insult." It was supposed to use the relatives of the false Peter III as witnesses to expose the impostor. Catherine II ordered: “Pugachev’s direct wife brought to you, if you please, order to be kept in a decent apartment under supervision, but without any grief, and give her a decent food, because so is the decree to me. And yet it is not bad to let her walk, and so that she among the people, and even more so the rabble, could tell who Pugachev is and that she is his wife. This, however, must be done in a manner so that it may not appear from our side as a false assurance; moreover, I think, on market days, so that she, walking, as if by herself, would tell about him, to whom it is possible or by the way”.
Companions of Pugachev, in order to tie the “future emperor” to the common people, decided to marry “Peter III” to the daughter of the Yaik Cossack Pyotr Kuznetsov. The young wife of the impostor, the beauty Ustinya, was only 16 years old. And although Pugachev himself refused to marry, saying that: “I have a legal wife, Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna. Although she is guilty before me, she is still alive, and it is not possible to marry from a living wife, they say. I’ll return the throne, then it will be seen …”, the luxurious“royal”wedding took place.
The young people built a "royal palace", guarded by a guard of honor, and Ustin was ordered to be called "empress". After the siege of the Yaik fortress was lifted by Major General Mansurov, Ustinya and her mother were imprisoned in a military prison. Catherine II wished to take a look at the temporary empress. When Ustinya was presented before her eyes, she looked closely at the young woman and said: "And she is not at all as beautiful as I was told …". Since that time, there has been no information about either the first wife Sophia or Ustinya. And only after the audit of the prisons, organized by order of Paul I, it became clear where the wives of Emelyan Pugachev were.
It is known that Pugachev repeatedly spoke to his comrades-in-arms about the support that the Turkish sultan provides him. In addition, for some time before the rebellion, he lived in a schismatic monastery located in Poland.
In connection with this information, a version is being considered today to determine the real goals and organizers of the Pugachev rebellion. If Emelyan Pugachev was a protege of the schismatic Old Believers, then the purpose of the revolt could be to weaken the central power of Russia and demand an end to the persecution of schismatics. By the way, Poland was then the center of the Old Believer emigration, and it was this center that had a very ramified agent network in Russia. It is possible that the Polish center of the schismatics supplied Pugachev's army with weapons and money.
Now to the question of how the illiterate Cossack managed to control the army, and even to win victories over the generals of the tsarist army. The fact is that neither the external data nor the age of the impostor matched the description given by Pugachev's first wife. Consequently, at some stage of preparation for the rebellion, the real Pugachev was replaced by a completely different person. If we assume that behind Pugachev No. 2 there was a well-born Polish gentry who wanted to significantly weaken Russia and get rid of their king Stanislav Ponyatovsky, who is a protégé of Russia, then the participation of the Poles in organizing and supporting the Pugachev revolt can be explained. The Austrian, Prussian and French courts did not like the fact that Poland was subordinated to the Russian throne and they needed an aggravation of Russian-Polish relations, right up to a military confrontation. Therefore it is not surprisingthat in the army of Pugachev, the military adviser was the Polish oppositionist Pulawski and foreign officers from other European countries, united by hatred of Russia.
The most obvious was the French trace in the "Pugachev case". So, in one of Voltaire's letters to Catherine, he wrote: "Probably, this farce (Pugachev's revolt) was set by the cavalier Tott, the French consul, I would answer: Quite likely." The Pugachev revolt allowed France to flood Russia, which is increasing its influence in the world, with its scouts. These special envoys, using their fellow tribesmen who settled in Russia as teachers and tutors, could collect complete information about Russia, including information that is a state secret. Together with the French, the Turks acted against Russia in the Pugachev revolt, whose goals to weaken the Russian statehood clearly coincided with the French.
The time for organizing the Pugachev revolt was chosen by the enemies of Russia very well: in 1770 the country was subjected to an epidemic of plague, after the Turkish and Polish wars, food prices rose in Russia and a sharp impoverishment of the people occurred, which became the reason for the obvious manifestation of popular discontent and the activation of faith in the miraculous salvation of the priest- sovereign Peter III. The murmur among the people intensified every day, a readiness for a riot or a mass revolt was created.
In September 1774, the Pugachev army surrounded the empress's troops “Suvorov (then Lieutenant General) joined Michelson, Mellin and Muffel, who were pursuing the rebel; they crossed the Volga behind Pugachevsky and there they stumbled on him from all sides, cutting off any opportunity to escape."
Pugachev had a plan of how to break out of the encirclement, go to the Caspian Sea, attract the Don, Graben and Terek Cossacks to the mutiny. But the "generals" of the impostor have already decided the fate of their leader. They planned to save their lives by planning to hand Pugachev into the hands of justice. Having tied him up, they took him to Yaitsky town, where they handed him over to the hands of Lieutenant-General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov.
Then interrogations began, during which Pugachev revealed the secret of the appearance of "Emperor Peter III". By the way, it was during interrogation that he said that he was a Don Cossack by birth and was married, but he had no children (with this he confirmed the assumption that he was not the real Yemelyan Pugachev).
While transporting him to Moscow, there were several attempts to poison the impostor - his “owners” did not want him to reach Moscow alive. On the trip he was accompanied by the doctor Runich. Once, when Pugachev became ill, he asked the doctor: "Tell everyone to go out of the hut, I must tell you the most important secret." The doctor later said: “…. I ordered to summon the grenadier Dibulin; ordered him to heat the kettle of water as soon as possible, stayed with Pugachev alone, who, in an intermittent voice with a sigh, told me: “if I don’t die this night or on the road, then I declare to you that it will be brought to Her Majesty the Empress’s Empress that I have to her alone to open such secret affairs, which, except Her Majesty, no one else should know; but to be presented to her in the decent attire of a Don Cossack, and not as he is now dressed."
What did the impostor want to tell the empress in a personal conversation? The fact that he was not a real Pugachev, Catherine II knew, as well as about the French trace in the rebellion. There remains only very important information that her son, Pavel, was involved in the Pugachev case! There was a mutual hostility between the empress and her son. But even if Pugachev had told about the organization of the riot by her son, Catherine II, most likely, would not have disclosed this information. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Empress ignored the report of the healer Runich.
Obviously, the impostor hoped that upon learning of her son's participation in the rebellion, the empress would have mercy on him. After all, his role in the rebellion was reduced only to the fact that he was fulfilling someone else's will. Until the last moment he hoped that they would help and save him. But that didn't happen. When the impostor realized that he was being executed, he was completely weak. Catherine II wrote to Voltaire like this: "… they were forced to prepare him with caution for the verdict out of fear that he would not die on the spot from fear …". The execution took place on January 10, 1775. The executioner fulfilled his duties so quickly that the impostor did not have time to say anything.
And although there is no direct evidence of the participation of foreign agents and the empress's son in organizing the Pugachev revolt, there are many circumstantial evidence. The ruling house of the Romanovs did everything so that no one would know the truth about the Pugachev rebellion. And this is only one of the secrets of the royal family of Russia.